Joe Rogan Experience _1647 - Dave Chappelle

0:00This is Matt Rogers from Lost Cultures, thus with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Cultures, thus Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food, and suddenly it's like, okay, hold on. I got a new favorite food. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayon. Yeah, it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it at the grocery store. And this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really care about flavor use it, put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Almost Amused Podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots

1:02and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $1,500. Once you post your daycation, people are gonna ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. The Joe Rogan Experience. Shrink my day, Joe Rogan podcast my night all day. Hello David. Hello Joe, how are you? What's going on with your mask man?

2:03Not I just fucking with you, I just want to take it. I just want to see how you react. Oh this, Ronatalk. Oh this Ronatalk. Sick of it. Yeah. Yeah. Headphones and no headphones. Oh I'm going to do the phones. Okay. There you go. I just don't want to be the only one. No, no, that's all good. Hey I turn them up right here. Yeah. Check, check, check. Here we go. What's up fingers? He's over there typing every few minutes he goes like this. Let's go. Let's do this shit. So first of all man, congratulations. You're the first guy to beat the system. You're the first guy to get fucked over by the system. Go public with it and then get your money. I've never heard it happen before. I don't think it's ever happened before. Bro, bro, I still can't wrap my mind around it. But I do have to shout out Chris McCarthy over with CBS Viacom. That guy, you know, when we were working this out, his approach was someone who was actually trying to resolve something. Came through. It was amazing man.

3:03It's amazing. It's a happy ending because usually those artist gripes, they never get resolved, not to where the artist feels comfortable or happy with it. Right. They always feel bitter and angry. They got fucked over and someone else is a producer and they make millions of dollars off of your work and they continue to sell it and make money off of it. Well, I could say with a high degree of honesty, let's say I was never angry about it, but I don't think I was ever like bitter. By this point in my life, I was a bit... You were joke about it. You were angry about it, but not to the point where it fucked with your head, but you were joke about it. Well, I mean, you know, the bottom line is no matter what happens to you, you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going. And bitterness is quite cumbersome. Yeah, it's bad for you. Right. So, you know, jokes is a way of shaking that off or processing something with the alchemy of levity. Yeah. Holding grudges, bitterness, it's very bad for you. It doesn't ever help. No, and now we're getting on an age, you know what I mean?

4:04We were younger. It's fine to hold a grudge. You didn't realize that, you know. You didn't realize it was fucking with you. What is that expression that it's about jealousy? The jealousy is the only poison that affects the container that's holding it. Right. That's exactly right. bitterness is the same thing. Same thing. Yeah, it's not good. Yeah. It's just not good for you. You gotta be able to let shit go. Yeah. I mean, but in your case, you made a ploy. Like you said, what happened? How you felt about it? And they were like, he's right. I think, yeah. It was given the money. It wasn't a court of law. I don't believe I would have got anything. It's kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing. And a court of law. Public opinion, it was a good time for me to say my piece. And through the years, it wasn't something that I would harbor. I mean, I did interviews and stuff. People would always ask me about it. But it was something I was actually reluctant to talk about. It was a lot. Yeah. What's hard for other people to relate to this idea that you want more money, you know.

5:04You're talking about regular people and you're saying this thing, even though it is yours. Money is hard for people. Money is, if you look at life, anything in life through the framework of money, you're you'll miss most of the picture. Yeah. And, you know, in business, especially this stage in our career, you realize through the years, people playing incentives. You know what I mean? That if they incentivize a certain way, that's the way they're going to behave. So, so what they want is never really surprising how they get there is where all the surprises are. So, I feel like I can forgive somebody for playing an incentive. Disappointing. But, what was so remarkable when I walked away from the show, right, is that it was against incentive. So, people couldn't understand it at the time. It was so much money. How could you do that and blah, blah, blah.

6:05But you know, if I had taken that money and finished the show, well, it got the money, but I might never have been the same. I think it was one of the most gangster moves in the history of entertainment. And it made you a legend. And the fact that you then started doing shows like I heard like Dave's doing a show in the park in Seattle. It's got like a box. He pulls out a speaker and just do it stand up. That was important, yeah. Because, in that sense, it was freeing. Yeah. Something about, you know, I was geared a certain way growing up because I wanted to make it in show business. And boy, that should fell all the way apart. And as far as I knew, my career was over. So, where'd you go from there? Yeah, but your career wasn't over. You just decided you were going to just sort of lay back for a while. In hindsight, yeah. But when it was happening, you really felt like it was over. I'd never seen these things before. I didn't see anyone else do this and get back up. I didn't see, you know, and the drum beat is, he's crazy.

7:05He smokes crack. This is that. It was a wild experience. The way people close to you react to it. Like I had failed or I had ruined my life. You know, and then, you know, when you're cold, that phone will ring that often. Right. And then I had an over a decade of sitting in that choice. But I didn't languish in just that experience. I started doing stand up for much better reasons than making it. I still enjoyed it. I started seeing the places where I was performing. Normally when you're like successful in comedy, you know, you get off the plane or the bus, you hit, do you do the hit, you go back to the hotel, you get back on the bus, you don't really see anything. You don't really, like even now, like this last run we did here in Austin. We were here for weeks. And then I got to see Austin. I got to fly in a restaurant and say, like, I met people that I probably called because I'm in town, stuff like that. And it was like that all over the world.

8:05Not just the country. I started going around and just seeing the world. I got overwhelmed with this idea that none of my information was firsthand. I just read it in books. I heard it from friends. And I was eager to just see something for myself. And I kind of entrenched this philosophy that my memories are some of the most valuable things that I have. These first hand experiences. Yeah. Can't take that away from if I reminisce on a nice day, then, you know, it feeds you. Everyone's something is neurologically almost identical I've read to experiencing it. Yeah. I think that there's a real value in having experiences where you do it on purpose. Like you go someplace to have experiences and think about having those experiences. Because most of the time, you know, like you were saying, if we do shows, you just kind of show up, you do the show, and then you go home. And if you set aside some days to do things, like that's very valuable for your perspective,

9:07which is ultimately valuable for your act. It's valuable for everything because you're choosing to take in more information and data specifically to enhance your perspective on life. Right. You learn things. Yeah. You gain perspective, which is very valuable for comedian and a person. And it's humbling and it's empowering at the same time. Yeah. That was a big theme during like the 90s, right? Where comics would all tell the same stories about being on the road. There were all the jokes were about airplane travel, hotel food, and that kind of shit, and the maid do not disturb knocking on your door because that's what they related to. Right. The road worries. Yeah. That was their life's perspective. And it kind of shows that experiences, interesting experiences are very valuable. But you don't think of them as valuable. You think of them as recreational, but they really are valuable. Right. And I call any information as valuable. I call it the expensive knowledge. Right. It's like your buddy that's a war veteran or something.

10:10You don't want to know the shit he knows if you knew what he had to do to know these things. That's what they call expensive knowledge. I would not recommend quitting your show the way I did if you can avoid it. Yeah. But the way you did it was so cool because you got to drift it off. I promised I wouldn't try to be cool. It was a series of troubleshooting. It was like, fuck it, man. What are you going to do? You got to, whatever you go through, you got to live. You got to make a way and find your happiness. And you know, I'm lucky. I'm in show business, which is a pretty, it's a multi-dimensional career path. This thing could go a lot of ways. Yeah. Especially today. Oh my God. It's so strange. Yeah. And another time, would I have ever gotten that money? I don't think so. No, because there have been no social media, no pressure. Right. No dropping specials on the gram, no, you know, no comment section, no move on, dot

11:14or work, no. And if you had gone to say like the tonight show and made a pitch like that, they probably wouldn't even aired it. No, of course not. I had a gripe with someone that owned a six of the media. Yeah. What I'm going to do, tell the media on them. It's never going to work. Right. They would definitely edit that part out. They'll be like, why stay section only four minutes long? Yeah, edit it, spin it, whatever, whatever it is they do. But, yeah. But again, you know, all parties involved. I thought in repairing that situation, and I don't want to go all into what those conversations were like, other than to say, and it's just not like I'm just happy because they paid me. It was classic. It was like, that's beautiful. It really was. It was, it was a very encouraging. That is very encouraging. I think that coming up behind us, these kids are going to be playing in a whole new ball game that we did. I hope so. I think there's more accountability now because of the internet, because of, you know,

12:17people's ability to express themselves is so much different than it used to be. So you can't just be some ruthless, evil executives fucking over the artist like they did during the, you know, in the music business. And I mean, it's legendary. The music business is legendary for you doing that. Man, look. This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try on new food, and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. QB only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Like sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

13:18Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are.

14:19Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. It's Paul in America. Make it count at the Ram Drive into Fall sales event. Make it powerful with our strongest Ram 1500 ever. Make it move with the Ram Heavy Duty with an available Cummins diesel and make it go to the distance with a 10 year or 100,000 mile powertrain limited warranty. Hurry in now for great deals during the Ram Drive into Fall sales event. Excludes fully electric vehicles applied to 2026 model year vehicles non transferable visit MoPAR.com for complete details and a copy of the powertrain limited warranty. Cummins is a registered trademark of Cummins ain't Ram and Hammy are registered trademarks of FCA US LLC. First of all, we got get into this music business thing in a second, but I was looking on the internet. It was a bunch of waitresses talking about what celebrities did or didn't tip them. Nobody can fuck up anymore. It's true. Yeah, they got a whole website dedicated to bad tippers. Yeah, all of a sudden breaking news. Ellen DeGeneres is a bitch.

15:20What? What? You know, no. By the way, I like it when a lot of them just saying this. This is what we're faced with. Yeah. I don't know. Personalities get helped. Yeah. The thing is like, if you talk to enough people, you're going to have disagreements with people. If someone cumulates, if they curate only those disagreements and only take it from the perspective of those people that you had problems with, they could paint you out to be a piece of shit. Even if you're a really nice person who just doesn't take any nonsense from people. If you talk to enough nonsense people, you're going to have enough conflicts. If they only curate those conflicts and make a compilation, like Dave talked to this guy and told them to eat shit. Well, that's why I usually don't do interviews. Because I feel like this is about fame in general. And I see you go through similar shit. It's like they blow you up like a balloon and twisting all these wild shapes like a balloon animal. Yeah. This one's the one's the one's the one's the one's the one that they can control the perception of.

16:21That's why I fuck with it. Gaslighting. Yeah. And, and, you know, again, people play incentives. I give an example. You know, I'm not years ago, not that long ago, you remember when all those writings of Gandhi came out. They're like, well, this really racist shit. Do you have your redness? I did. Yeah. And you know the context of that. At the time he wrote those things, he was an attorney in South Africa. And South Africa had a racist legal system. And in order to be successful, you had to be a good racist. And he was just succeeding. I'm sure he wasn't right now this niggasheet in India. I shouldn't have said that, but, you know, forgot I was wondering. We're on the internet. That's fun. Didn't Gandhi, there's people that were upset at him because he slept with a bunch of girls too, right? Didn't like they meet him to Gandhi. Yeah. I think he tempted himself by sleeping.

17:23I think that was the way he described it. Like he would sleep with young girls to tempt himself. Yeah. I think that was the evil, con evil of pussy. And now I will tempt myself. Don't fuck us this. I think I'm remembering that correct. That's what I tell my wife. I'm going to the city bar to tempt myself. Yeah. He tortured himself. He called it. Is that what he called it? Yeah, let's get this right. I actually revered. I'm a fucking ad bloggers. Sexual torment of a saint. A new book reveals Gandhi tortured himself with the young women who worshiped him and often shared his bed. Yeah. And so a lot of... Daily male, so this has got to be true. He was killed by an assassin in 1946, huh? Wow. Well, that part was in the movie. I don't know about all this torturing system stuff. I didn't know it was that. I thought it was later. And then they just showed a picture of him walking with some... You know, we don't know. I don't know. But go back to what it said there. Gandhi, a London trained lawyer-turned-guru was a ruthless cult leader who enslaved his followers

18:30with such bizarre sexual demands that it became difficult for many people to take him seriously, even during his own lifetime. What? Crazy book. Oh, it claims Gandhi naked ambition claims that Gandhi. It's called Gandhi naked ambition. Go so far as to suggest that the draconian practices instituted by this iconic figure in the Ashraoms he founded prompted the perverted 20th century cults of Jim Jones and Jones town guy. OK. OK, all right. There's some of them on this book. I look at Gandhi as the person that fought against white supremacy in his homeland. So there you go. Yeah, so he liked it. People shrugged off a little bit. I'm sorry. He liked to lay down and get hard on. That's the big deal. I'm sorry I brought that up. I didn't know naked ambition just hit the stands. Was it Gandhi? Was it called? Yeah, but how would anyone know whether or not he tortured himself? Because does his writings say that? Does he? Did he talk about it openly? Did he like to just get blueballed? Yes. Yes, he is. It's that though, man. It's all this like, you know, I hate the debunking of great legacy.

19:33Right, right, right. You know, I mean, like imagine how the whites might feel. They tear down a civil war statue. This kind of thing to me is that. My equivalent of that. Like, oh, now we're debunking Gandhi. It was really funny when they started tearing down statues. Trump was like, what are they going to do next? They're going to tear down George Washington and everybody's like, well, that's ridiculous. They're not going to do that. And then they started tearing down George Washington statues. They tear down all the statues. I mean, I mean, I mean, George Washington did on slaves. You did? Yeah. Yeah. So the time is Jefferson. Yeah, yeah. Many of the framers. Yeah. But it's, but it's one of those things where it's, you shouldn't revere what they did, but what a statue is supposed to represent is here's an image of some person who's historically significant and established in the country. Doesn't mean that's the analogy. Yeah. To me, Gandhi fought against white supremacy and was very successful. And then they decades later started tearing the statue back.

20:35Yeah, the worst thing he did was get hard on. Yeah, I mean, yeah, later and get tortured. Yeah, I'm not, yeah, now I'm not trying to put no value judgment on any of this shit. I'm just saying he did expel the British, the British peacefully, which was unprecedented in the world, a peaceful expulsion of oppressors. Yeah. And it's interesting how peaceful protest, like peaceful protest resonance for years and years and years. And when someone does something signal, like, remember that image, I'm sure you do. Of that, there's a video of it of a, a monk in Vietnam lighting himself on fire and protest against war. It's on the cover of one of the rage, rage against machine alms. Yeah, it was, it was crazy. Crazy. With everybody remembers that. Yeah, there was another guy who did that underneath the window of the Pentagon here in the United States during the Vietnam War. Oh, did he? Yeah, White fellow. I can't remember his name. Whew. I mean, but, but Gandhi didn't call it a peaceful protest. He called it civil disobedience, the idea being that I will not participate in my own

21:39oppression. It's fine idea. It's a good idea. Yeah. Why would anybody concentrate on the hard on? Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, he's the idea. Yeah, yeah. Gandhi has so much positive. Let me tell you about this guy that you fucked with. He didn't even do anything. He just laid there. Yeah, that's it. That's a weird move though. But they just lay down and get hard and go like, uh, beat it bitch. Go and get some sleep. It's crazy. I think that, uh, I don't know, man. I don't know where this culture is headed. I don't know what the fuck everybody's doing anymore. It's COVID here. Like I'm a little, I'm a little packed away. You know, I've been out. Yeah. Just doing something to us collectively. Like we talked about this the last time I was here and I told you I was going to come to the show. I wasn't bullshit. And remember that day I said, I'll come after the inauguration because we all smell that

22:40coming. Yeah. It's a tough one. It's a weird one. We're being tested. It's testing the foundations of our culture, the foundations of our civilization. It's testing how well, well, we can be peaceful with each other and make sense and get along and how much we value getting along with each other and how much there's just so much divisiveness because we've never been, there's never been a time in history where the whole economy and the whole society basically just got frozen for a year and stuck in some weird, weird sort of side patch where we had to figure things out fresh and people lost, like how many people lost their jobs, how many people lost their lives, how many people lost their grandparents. They love ones, that's right. Yeah. It was a weird fucking year and everybody's very sensitive and everybody's quick to pull the trigger. And everybody who's, there's so many people that have just been online all day long this whole year and that's not good for you. I still think at the core of all of this, this what you call weirdness is, is these profound

23:43trust issues. You know, it's like I said on lettermen that these people that, they're hordered toilet paper and, and, and, you know, went and bought bullets out and, you know, there's none of these things are good signs. I think that something about the nature of COVID punched us square in our American identity. We're individualists. We're, you know, the, the mask and all these things. I don't actually, I don't think are actually oppressive, but I can see why Americans would feel they are. Yeah. They just don't trust the messenger anymore. There's too many mixed signals. It's hard in the beginning of the Fauci saying you don't have to wear a mask and then eventually they were saying you got to wear one of the huge mistakes. I agree. Yeah. If you, if you give people information that, it may, may not be true, even if you have the intention of having them behaving a way that's beneficial for everybody, the misinformation, the way you achieve these things, the separation from ends and means can be a profound problem if you're managing something like a nation of 300 plus billion people.

24:46Yeah. You need, we need to be able to trust the institution. You'll hear Americans say shit like they should fix this, they should fix that, but in reality, the idea is we are they. Nobody feels that way now. Well, we did before. I think people had faith in the government in the sense that worst case scenario, even if they're incompetent, everything will stay together. Now you realize no, no, doesn't have to stay together. It can be irreversibly fucked. Like I think some of our cities are right now. I think there's some, there's some sections of LA. I don't know how the fuck they're going to bounce back. You drive down the street and you see everything boarded up and go, how does this come back? How long does it take? It takes a year, it takes 10 years. Like what is, what is this? And I have no point of reference to even make an educated guess. I've never seen any of this before. Nobody. I tell you like, okay, so my experience during COVID, I live in Ohio, I don't live in a cough's distance from anyone I don't know. You know what I mean? It's open space. So we were isolated, but it wasn't a present.

25:49This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. It's Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're out of the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast.

26:50You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot deals at Vons and Albertsons.

27:51This week at Vons and Albertsons, baby back pork ribs are 2.99 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks. And ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 2.99 with digital coupon. Plus personal seedless watermelons or canelope are 1.99 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. I can take a walk, I can whatever. I go to New York, I was telling you, maybe a couple weeks ago when they opened all the comedy clubs back up. You know, just to show support for the clubs that nurtured my career early on. And it was it was a tough one. I've been there before like the Saturday live week. That week was you know, unseasonably warm, biting at just one that weekend so people were celebratory. This time around I got a sense of the emotional carnage that happened in that city.

28:52And it was it was significant. It was probably like you would notice I did. And to hear them say is like things are getting better. I was like better because I hadn't seen New York since it was like incredibly healthy. You know, in a non-COVID time is that I've heard a $2 trillion economy just in the five girls in New York. I don't know what's going on there now. You know, restaurants open limited capacity. People take it takes courage just to go to a coffee shop or this that or the other, especially with this problem of trust being indeficent. Yeah. It's a tough one. Well, it's also a lot of people are moving out. When people are moving out, you get the sense like it's an abandoned ship. Like it's a sinking ship. And then people don't want to invest money in it. They don't know what to do. They're not sure if they should stay. They start looking at other states where things are open. Maybe we should just move. Maybe we should forget about this business and start fresh and Florida or move to Texas or whatever.

29:53Yeah, I can't imagine New York City not coming back from this. It'll come back. It just won't come back the same. It's going to be different. It's going to take a long time. You think anything will be the same after that? It'll take a minute, bro. It'll take a minute. It'll be a new normal, though. Well, even Austin, like it's not the same, it's actually bigger. It's growing. This city grew. I'm sure a lot of people from the Bay moved here for the tech job. Yep. The weather's good. Yep. The restrictions on is impressive. People are nicer, too. That's the big one for me. My feelings here are different. I feel less anxiety here. I feel like people are nicer, they're genuinely friendly. But do you think that people that are nicer do you think the circles you were rolling in in California weren't as nice? No, it's just regular people that you meet. Like, there's a guy in my neighborhood. I look forward to waving to this guy every day. He's an old dude who works on his lawn. And this motherfucker will wave it. Everybody who drives by. He's there digging. He's a car. No, that's hilarious. And every day I see that guy, I get ready.

30:55I'm going to wave to my friend. I see him on the thing. Waves me, make a little eye contact. It feels good. I never got that in California. Nobody ever stopped from digging in their lawn to look up and wave at you at every car that passes by. It's kind of waves at every car. That's sweet. It's sweet. How old is this guy? Probably 70s, 80s. Okay. Older fellow. This is a guy in my age would be weird. What's happening? That might want to see that shit. Yeah, that's a little odd. He's a little too friendly. Call the police. Yeah. People, people, people, people, people, people, they lose their value. They become annoying. There's too many of them in the highway in front of you. There's too many of them around you. You know? Well, let me ask you this. What is the mechanics of your day like? Is your day mechanically the same as LA?

31:57You might as the comedy, obviously, it's COVID. But I would imagine you work out a few hours a day, no matter where you are. You do your show a few hours a day, if you're here or there. You kick it with your wife a few hours a day. You're getting kids. What else do you do here that you don't do there? It's just quieter. It just feels better. It feels better. It feels better. Like, I just like, I like the vibe of the city better. How so? It's like, no one's trying to be famous here. There's a thing in Hollywood, even if you're not a person who's in show business, maybe you had an ambition and you abandoned it. Or maybe you think like now because of reality shows and because of social media, maybe you don't even have to be famous for your talent. You just have to be famous. Like look at the Kardashians and a lot of people that are famous, just for being famous. There's a weird currency in having a lot of people know who you are.

32:59There's a social status to that that exists in LA that is primary. It's above all. That's very strong. It's above all. All right, well, let me say this. First of all, when I remember meeting you in the 90s, this thing never really seemed to affect you. You seem serious about comedy. You heard whispering that you did kung fu. You know, well, you weren't like a, you were, I mean, you were social with all the comedians, but you weren't like to hang out kind of guy. You always often do your own thing. And even this podcast, even though it grew to be a big thing when it started, I don't even think you would start it with the intention. I'm going to blow this motherfucker up. You just did it. Yeah, there was never a thought of blowing it up. It was just silly. There's a video. It was a funny video that was in the comedy store documentary. Tom Sagura, leaving my house, talking about leaving my house and talking to Red Band, saying, what is he doing? Why does he do this? And he's like, I don't know. He just wants to do it all the time. He wants to do this stupid fucking podcast that no one's listening to. Yeah, it's dope.

33:59It's dope. I mean, but at that time, and even still, the way I remember L.A., it's when it's circle. Yeah. And earlier in my career, like, if you're doing well in L.A., like, now it's fun as fuck out there, you know, all the ropes open up and, oh, Mr. Spell, and they accommodate you expertly because they're so proficient with hospitality. Yeah. But if you're not doing good, then remind you just as quick. Yeah, it makes you feel bad. It makes you feel bad. I've seen people look on their face when you pass through the line and the security guard goes, oh, come on, come on up here. And the other people that are waiting, they watch you walk through, they feel terrible. Oh, God, I hope not. Because I do it all the time. I'm a rope passing mother fucker. No more waiting for me. And would you know what I'm saying? Like for those people that are in that line to be that person that gets called to the front of the line and the doors just open, the grab that velvet rope, oh, Mr. Shepel. Right. Flagrant elitism. Yeah, they love it. They love it.

34:59They wish it was them. Yeah. And they want to be hanging with you. Maybe if I'm hanging with Dave, I'll get through that rope. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with Dave. Oh, you were Dave. Come on in. I told you the first time I met Denzel Washington, a guy did that to me came with my table like, you know, Dave, I hate the body, but Denzel Washington is here. Would you like to meet him? I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah. He brings me to the table. Wow. Denzel Washington is St. Shepel. I'm like, oh, my God. He's Denzel. Very gracious. And then the guy goes, and my name is I'm like, oh, this motherfucker didn't know me. He used me. He used me. That's hilarious. That's wild out there, man. That's hilarious. That's wild out there, man. Yeah, it is wild. And then the social climbers in LA, it's an art form. They're skilled. They know how to do it. I think I moved to Ohio initially to be free of these feelings you describe. Yeah. This idea that, you know, I started so young that I didn't know how to untel the rest of my life from those interests.

36:00And geography was the quickest life hack. I love the way you talk about Ohio. I really do. I've always loved it. Do you do a lot of things that I think are awesome? Thanks, bro. It's just, you've always been a kind person. Despite all of your success, all the accolades, all the love that you get, you've never let it, never let it turn you into someone who felt like you were better than other people. Like, I've seen you, the way you interact with the door people, the store. That to me is everything. How do you treat the door staff? How do you treat the bartender? Are you friendly with all those folks? You know, and if you're not, man, you're kind of missing the whole point. You can make someone's day just by being cool. That's what always makes me laugh about punky. Yes. She was the last time I saw her. She was a bar back. Now she's on SNL. And the next time I saw her, she was rehearsing at SNL. I made me feel real good for her. She's amazing. And I thought of all the comedians that might treat the bar backs like shit, but you better be careful. Yeah, right.

37:01Security. Idris Elbow, the famous actor, he used to be a security guard. Realizing. You asked me to buy weed from him. You know, you used to buy weed from Idris Helbow? Yeah, I don't know if I was talking about it. Yeah, you could talk about it. I did. Yeah, I did. It's legal now in New York. Yeah, yeah. You know, he had a kickbox in fight. He's a legitimate Moitai fighter. I heard he's nice with it. Oh, yeah, he's good. And he fought a good guy. Like, it wasn't a bullshit fight. It was a fight. It wasn't like he went out there and just knocked this guy out with one punch. They were scrapping. Oh, yeah, it's a good fight. And he trained for a long time. Like this, pop some video footage of Idris Elbow hitting the heavy bag. Yes, I got to see. Idris Elbow's got skills. He trains hard. And I think he did it for a television show. So I think they documented his training. And he trained for quite a long time. And you know, Moitai is a fucking brutal way to fight. Kicking legs and... Is that the sheen they do in Thailand? Yeah, that's the shit they do in Thailand. I went to the Moitai fights and I look at it. Yeah, he's getting after it. So he would train at this like legit Moitai gym and you watch him.

38:06I mean, if I saw him about to fight in the UFC, I'd go, eh, fucking, not a good move. Look at it, he got dropped there. Like he's training. He's doing real. I mean, he's getting his legs kicked the whole deal. And you could tell that this is, you know, they're not cutting any corners. He's doing the hard work. The real hard work. Man, I came across... So here's his fight. So he had like a fucking real fight. Oh, it's a real fight, man. A real Moitai fight. I mean, they were getting after it. Does it show in the fight? Yeah. Oh, so there's a whole documentary on it. Everything about most actors, you know, too. I don't know the best. Yeah, it's this kind of grit. No. Or humility to possibly get their ass whooped in with everybody. Oh, yeah. That's the thing. I mean, every human being, he'd get knocked to fuck out. Right? We saw that with Jorge Mazvedal. Jorge Mazvedal, when you got knocked out by Usman. Mazvedal, he had an iron chin his whole fucking career. He'd only been like dropped a couple of times and he was fine every day. This is Matt Rodgers from Los Cultures.

39:08That's with Matt Rodgers and Boan Yang. This is Boan Yang from Los Cultures. It's Matt Rodgers and Boan Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try QB Mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. QB only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying,

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41:11Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews. These traveler loved stays are recognized by the details that matter most and validated by real experiences. Choose confidently for rentals you can trust. Verbo, book now of occasion rental loved by guests. Time, I'm like drop by. Big guys like Darryl Tild dropped them, but I mean he's one of the best strikers in the sport. And then when Usman flatlined them, everybody's like, oh shit, everybody can get knocked out. The human brain, the human body, the way your face is constructed. It's just not designed to get punched. So look at this, right here. That could have easily killed. They would have dropped me. Yeah, a good shot. I mean, he's got good defense though. He fought well, he did everything well. I could be in a fight or alive at the press conference. But that shit, forget it. Yeah, it is a real fight. They're showing in slow motion. It's hard, fighting is hard.

42:11It's hard not to look sloppy. It's hard to look perfect. To get to a point where you're looking like, you know, an Andre Bertot, Floyd Mayweatherer, you know, it takes a long fucking time to develop that kind of timing and poise and movement. A lifetime. Yeah, forever. So what he did though is it shows character that he took that chance. That's a rare person. My kid was young, my youngest son. He got really into boxing. He took him down a wild card. Really? A Hollywood were in LA. And he trained with Justin Jucco and shit like that. Yeah. Jucco was a great trainer because he'd make everything fun for my son. And my son got really into it. And one day he was young. He's like, I'm going to spars somebody. And so they put him in a ring with this, like his top amateur contender, a little guy, but you know, he was nice with it. And my son and his little child talk was like, I'm going to fuck this guy up. No, he's not. They got in there and, you know, he did all right. But the gym got real apt.

43:13And I remember one of the fighters came over to me and was like, this thing your son has, you can't train that either this way or you're not like he liked it. He liked it. Yeah. So I always thought about that. You can't train that either this way or you're not. Well, some people, they can get better at it. You can get better at, at tenacity. You can get better at mental strength. It's not totally innate. Like some people are just born with it though. Some people are ferocious from the jump. Where did you fall in that spectrum? I don't remember because it took, it was so long ago. But I always had, I always had unusual power because I have a weird frame, like a very large hands for my body and of wide shoulders. And I can generate a lot of force. And so the problem with that is I would load up and it took me a long time. I would try to knock people out all the time. That was all the way around. This is the kind of magic.

44:13Take one dough tournaments, like a lot of, they get, most of the fights are won by points, they're won by decision. I won most of my fights by knockout, a lot of them by knockout. I mean, they're not most of them, but I was always trying to knock someone unconscious. What does it feel like to knock somebody? As a satisfying, is it, is it scary at all? It's shocking and it doesn't feel good. It never feels like, like great. I would pretend it felt great. I'd be like, yeah, but meanwhile, what the fuck? Part of me would be like, what the fuck? It's always felt weird. There was one time that I never recovered from. When I was 19 years old, I fought in Anaheim, California. I flew out here to fight in the nationals. One of my first fights, then I won my second fight. I was fighting this kid. I was there with just me and my friend, Junkzick, he was coaching me, he was cornering me. They had their whole team with them and there's all these people in the stands that were... I remember him saying, come on, Johnny, get him, Johnny, get him, Johnny.

45:14I knew this dude was just a little slow. He was doing some things and I was seeing some openings and I hated him harder than I've ever had anybody in my life. I hit him with a wheel kick, which is, I hit him so hard, I was limping for a couple days afterwards because my heel hurt from hitting his head. I flatlined him, he faced planted, he started snoring and he never got up. They carried him off of the stretcher, he's unconscious for half an hour. They eventually carried him off, put him in the stretcher, brought him to the hospital, but he literally never stood up and walked around. That's scary. It scared the shit out of me. I went like the dude. I didn't know the dude. He was from Chicago. I was from Boston and we just met in California. That's what's weird about boxes. Like, beating somebody up that you're not angry at is why I'm thinking about. It is why. Yeah. They do it all the time. You know, a lot of MMA fighters, they're good friends up until the, you know, they, a lot of them trained together and then they go and they fight.

46:14But I went back to my instructor. And my instructor was a hard man. It was a Korean dude who had been taught by General Che Young Ye, who's the original founder of Taekwondo, who used to train troops in Vietnam. I mean, this guy was hard. And when I went back and told Mr. Kim, I said, you know, we were talking about the tournament. He goes, I heard you had a really good knockout. And I said, it was very scary. I go, maybe nervous. I go, because he never got up. I mean, I thought he was dead. And he goes, sometimes they die. And then he walked away. And then I was like, oh, shit. They is me. How old were you then? 19. And that was the decline of my Taekwondo career from that moment on. My fighting career, I fought for a couple more years. But I lost a lot of my enthusiasm with that one fight. Did the fighting and the standup overlap? The overlap for three kickboxing fights. I had three kickboxing fights while I was doing comedy. And I wasn't committing 100% to either one of them.

47:16I was half in with both. And then I realized I couldn't do it anymore. And I actually got told by a dude who was an open micer. He actually said something that was so true. I couldn't even argue with him. He goes, yeah, he goes, you started out pretty funny. He goes, but he lost steam somewhere along the line. And I remember looking out and going, fuck, he's right. Wait, wait, wait, wait. In what context did he say this time? Talking about comedy, like who's getting good, who's getting bad. We were all like a year in, you know. We were all struggling. And we were sitting around talking about, oh, this guy is really funny. And that guy's really funny. And he's like, yeah, he started out pretty good. But it seemed like you lost steam. Really? It wasn't even being mean to me. He was just being honest. What was he seeing? I just wasn't as, I wasn't as into it. Because I was still fighting. I was still doing both things. And I was still teaching. I was still teaching at Boston University. I taught a core. So you started staying up in Boston. Yeah. That's a weird circuit. It was a good circuit. It's a great circuit. It was a weird, it's an anomaly.

48:16It's a good, it was a good place because it was, they have no tolerance for bullshit. Like there's no dilly down there. They want punchline, set up punchline, set up punchline, bang, bang, bang. They want entertainment. That's gone Gavin. Don't be late. Yeah, yeah. Don Gavin. Lenny Greeney. Steve Sweeney. Yeah, man. I remember when I was a kid, I used to catch train up the Boston and work out with these kids. It was the first circuit I'd ever seen guys making like six figures and never leaving their city. It trapped them. They would go to bars and shit and you think they played for the Celtics or something like the town, embraced the local community. It was like, they were stars in Boston. Oh yeah. Like nothing else. There's no other comparison to any other city that's like that. What was the guy you should drink all the time? Teddy Burgeon Run. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. And he was a beast. Teddy Burgeon Run had one tonight show set that was so fucking brilliant. It was so brilliant. And then apparently he got fucked up on pills and booze and they made him stick around.

49:20But he came back and he was so fucked up on drugs that it like tanked his career. Like so he had this one set that was magic. And he watched that set. You're like, my God, that guy might be the best comic alive. He was so smooth. I remember opening fire. He was so smooth. He was so good. He was so good. He was such a smart guy too. Such a good writer. But you know, success in the demons. I mean that's why one of the things that's very impressive to me about people like you that manage the success and it doesn't change your personality. Whatever anxiety comes out of all the pressure and all the people paying attention to what you're doing, you got you roll. You roll with it and you handle it. But some people don't. You know, it's that scrutiny being the object of attention. It's crippling for some people. I think earlier in my career I didn't want to handle that. You know what I mean? I was a kid. I was immature. It was a weird thing. But you still handle it well. Even though you didn't know how to handle it, you figured it out.

50:22Like you did it. It was a struggle. But you never became an asshole. No, no. You never fell apart. I think life is too just humiliating of practice. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm not how you feel about it. You give them more and take that first shit of the day. You're a person. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers are like grills. No, it is true. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I mean, the more things that I do that are humiliating or humbling, humbling is probably better word. The more things I do that are humbling, the better it is for me. Well, the thing I like about your comedy origin story, like I was fighting, I was teaching, and I was doing stand-up, I didn't commit to all of them. But now, that sounds like the recipe for everything you do. Well, the things I do now, they enhance the other things. It's like if I'm doing a podcast, I think it enhances my stand-up. It could enhance my perspective. The more people I can talk to, the more ideas I can take in, the more conversations I can have with people. I get a better understanding of people.

51:22Like I'm building a mountain out of layers of paint. Like every day, I'm getting a little bit more understanding of people. A little bit more understanding of myself. You got a broad base, man. I see you talking to people like Malcolm Gladwell. I read his books. It would intimidate me to just chop it up with them. He's a good dude. He's a talker. He seems like a good guy. I don't know him at all, but you are a brilliant dude. But it's just weird. It's weird that I know you. It's just so strange. I think back when we're all so young, nobody knew if we're going to make it, not make it this day or the other. And what our career is evolving to. And I use the word evolve very specifically in your case, because none of it was obvious. No. The MMA thing, it's not obvious. This podcast is not obvious. And these things were what made you, you know, a multi-million dollar play. I mean, we all sit comms. That's like the obvious. We all did that shit. Yeah. But you found your lane. And it's a really hard thing to do. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

52:24This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas. What's your face of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang? You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cutie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Examages, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it, grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything, then you'll understand. Cutie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Almost Amused Podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying,

53:25we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort, day passes, start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a Big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese, MacGridels,

54:28make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra with a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium Coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. I've just been lucky that I've always listened to my own instincts in terms of like, what do I enjoy doing? Whether or not it's a good career move or not, I enjoy doing it. Like the early days, MMA wasn't a good career move at all. Like the people that I was working with on news radio, they would talk to me about it like I was doing porn. Why are you doing this? You're going to Alabama to do some cage fighting commentary. Like what the fuck are you doing? Back then I wasn't even doing commentary. I was an interview and fighters. I was just interviewing them. I was the guy who would interview the fighters after the fight was over. Would you call fights? No, I didn't call fights until 2001.

55:30That was the first time I called a fight. 1997 was just an interviewer. I did it for a couple of years. And I enjoyed it, but it was just fun to be there. It was cool. I would just fly into these weird places, like, you know, with Dothin Alabama. Weird little spots. You would obviously never go to other wars. And MMA, that MMA thing was just kind of starting out. I remember I didn't see, I started seeing the horse-gracing fights and shit like that in the early 90s. They started doing the Shamrock was another thing. Yeah, 93 is when it started. Yeah. I was somewhere around in 1997. So I was doing it. I did it in 1997 and 1998. And then I couldn't do it anymore. It was costing me money. Like, I could make more money doing a club for a weekend, a comedy club than I could. Doing these gigs. And then, you know, I just decided I was just going to stay a fan. Just watch it from afar. I did it. I did the little interview thing. It was fun. And then the UFC was purchased by the Frateras. And Dana White and I became friends because I was on Fear Factor.

56:30And he gave me free tickets to come to the fight. That's when no celebrities really knew what it was. And so if you could get a celebrity to sit up in front row and then they would interview me. And I knew so much about fighting. I started asking questions about guys that are fighting in Japan. And then, Dana and I went out to dinner and he was like, why don't you do commentary? And I said, man, I don't want to do commentary. I want to get drunk and watch fights. Like, come on, man. And then, props and Dana White though. That's a good move. Yeah. He saw me on the Keenan every way and showed too. Making fun of Steven Segal. We were talking about martial arts. And Dana thought it was hilarious. And then we started talking about commentary. And then he talked me into doing one. I did like the first 15 of them. I did it for free. I did it for a while. Like more than a year. Like maybe two years. I did it for no money. I just got free tickets. He just flew me out. It's that, bro. You know, these pads in life, they reveal themselves. And this goes back to what we were saying earlier. If you look at things through the lens of money or monetary gain,

57:31you'll miss so much. You miss so much. Yeah. This thing about just following a passion, having a good dinner with somebody. Yeah, I'll do it. That's usually how the greatest things happen. When I did Star's point, I don't do movies. I'm so glad I did it. And it was just because I liked Bradley Cooper. I kept meeting him at parties. That's awesome. And I just like, I just like the guy. No, yeah, that's being able to just do what you enjoy doing. That's the real success of life. Because if you're making a lot of money, but you hate what you're doing, like when I was doing fear factor, I didn't enjoy the job. I enjoyed the people I was working with. It was fun. They were a good group of people. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of laughs. But it wasn't what I wanted to do. I was doing it for money. Right. And I'm a, but it gave me, the good thing was it gave me fuck you money. So it gave me money where I had money squirreled away. I was like, oh, I can relax now. Now I just do what I want to do. And what I wanted to do is like do the stupid podcast. And then, you know, do the, these MMA shows go and do commentary. And I did all that shit. Again, it was all just because I enjoyed it.

58:35And then that became my life. My life became only things I enjoy. So now, whether it's podcast or whether it's stand up or whether it's commentary, it's just I enjoy it. I look forward to it. I had a year like that. Right. Maybe like a year before I did Shepel show, it was just like I was saving up to take a chance. You know what I mean? So that when it came time to do Shepel show, you know, the money was terrible. But I'd saved up. I could take the shot. Yeah. I could come off the road and take a real shot. And it made all the difference in the world. Real, when you take a chance, it's such a weird feeling, taking a chance, like doing something, even just moving here. It's so exciting. So exciting when you don't know how it's going to play out. It's so nerve wracking. Like it gets you. You're like, fuck, is this the right move? Maybe I should just play it safe and stay where I am. I mean, LA's got to open back up eventually. No, this was a great move. And I can't imagine what you saved in taxes. I don't know. It's a lot though. It's got to be 13% is what California state taxes are.

59:37Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not even good at math. And I know that's 13%. It's going to get worse too, man. It's going to get worse. What? Because they're jacking the taxes of the Triumph. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's going to jack them up in New York. You know what? Yeah, they're fine. Listen, if I felt like it fixed things, I would be happy. It's that. You know, it's with John Stewart. We went Copenhagen and, you know, socialized country. And John Stewart said to me something that he said, you know, the difference between a taxpayer here and a taxpayer in America. He said, these people think they get something for their money. Yeah. But I think socialism or something like that only works in homogenized countries. Like everyone in China is Chinese. A lot of white people in Copenhagen. I think, you know what I mean? I think in America, it's the them or the they of it all that fucks us up. It's also small populations, right? It's like one of the things I was saying about Austin, one of the ways Austin works is there's only a million people in the city.

1:00:40And then there's another million in the outskirts. That's not a lot of people. That's not a lot of people. That's not a lot of people. It's one of the reasons why it works. It's like people are valuable. They're not a problem. Even when you're in traffic, it's like five minutes. Like, oh my God, it's so much traffic. They take you extra five minutes. Right. It's nothing. No, not coming from L.A. Nothing is traffic after L.A. Maybe Atlanta. Yeah, Atlanta's rough. Chicago's rough. I remember doing, doing radio in Chicago. I was doing the Schomburg improv. And you do radio in the city. And then you got to go back out to Schomburg. You're like, holy shit, this is far. There's so much traffic. There's so many people. Big cities. That's the rub on big cities. Is that people, they don't value each other as much. When you're in a place like Copenhagen or any of these, any like whether it's Denmark or these places are not that bad. They're big enough, but they're not that big. United States is so big. It's so big. It's so big. And it's so different. There's so much going on.

1:01:41So many cities everywhere. Ever is different. So many climates. 350, whatever the fuck it is. Million people. Yeah, but if you see an American, when you're outside of America, you know, they want of us. A lot of times. A lot of times. A lot of times. There's lines are getting blurry now, though. How do you mean? You might think someone's American, you talk to him and like, hello, mate. Oh, look at you, motherfucker. Were you backwards, baseball? Oh, that is true. Yeah. I play overseas a lot now. And, you know, you should do it when I was a kid. It was more challenging. This internet makes all the crowds kind of the same. Yeah. They know every reference. Yeah. And American culture is still a market culture. You know, they know so much about our political lives. They know so much about our cultural lives. So much more than we would know about them. Yeah. Going over there. Yeah. For sure. And on stage, like, I was doing a show in Tokyo. I'd never worked in Tokyo before. What was that like? If I took a picture from the stage and asked you where I was,

1:02:42you think I was playing San Francisco? Really. It was interesting. Yeah. Some of the people who came didn't even speak English. They just wanted to see the spectacle of. Oh, wow. Because they had heard of me. Oh, wow. That must be wild. It's Netflix, man. Like, look, you get out of that world, Joe. You're famous everywhere. You've never been in these places. But when you get there, they're going to know you. Or there's a thing that happened to me years ago in London, where I was in a restaurant and I was kind of waiting for the table and one lady, she asked for my name. She said, what's she going to go to David? She goes, well, David on the list, what's your last name? She'll tell. And she looks up. And I look around and everyone's kind of looking. I could tell they had heard of me, but they didn't know that one. Oh, right, right. That kind of thing. Yeah. This was after I quit the show, but not long after, like, 05, 06. What did you do for those 10 years? Oh, no, I learned a lot. I mean, but it was a humble existence. I had had young children.

1:03:43And I was raising my kids. I was living a suburban life. And then every once in a while, I get this feeling like I'm the funniest guy. I got to get out there and I would like fly to Denver, do a week in Denver. And that's when he would read. I was doing like these six hour shows. I performed my guys' desperate for it. I loved it. Yeah. And at one point, I had done one of these big comedy tours that Lavonation put together, that Oddball tour. And I did all right. I had a good run. I wiped out in Hartford and Ed was all over the Internet. That was the first time that thing had happened to me. But for the most part, the tour went good, but it was a tough tour. This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. It's Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try QB Mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before.

1:04:44And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge thing. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. QB only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap. Next time you're at the store, you'll see it. Grab the bottle with the red cap. Next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay.

1:05:48And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort, day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. Well, for me, because it was a long show. I had to close it. You know, my chops weren't as tight as they normally were. But I wasn't, I didn't suck by any means, but you know, it could have been better.

1:06:48It was humbling. But it made me want to go back. And the shows were like, every show was like 20,000 seats. They were like, all these. What year was this around? Shit. I can't remember. Obama's president maybe. I know 8, 9, 10. But you were famous for just showing up places. You were just flying. That's the one. I, that's when I started. I should, in the summer, I started riding motorcycles, which is like very uncharacteristically. But I loved it. And I wrote, I said, I'm going to ride my bike across country. And I did, I cheated. I had a tour bus with me. It's a trail or something. If it rained or something. Or if I just wanted to bail, I could. But I wrote across country. And I'd never seen America like that. And we told how big it is and expansive. And man, I saw all the little pockets on a bike. You know, you really feel the environment. You see things. And I would. I'd stop and play one of my favorite birthdays was here in Austin. I was, I'd never been in Austin really.

1:07:48And I pulled up on the sixth street. I'd been in Austin, but I'd never seen Austin. Pulled up on six streets. My birthday. I was riding with the guys. I would go and do for your birthday. And you know, at that time, I wouldn't drink and smoke and anything. I said, I wanted to stand up. And I found a bar. It was right around closing. And I saw the DJ packing up and I said, can I use your microphone? And he recognized me. So he was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went up there and I just started talking shit. And you know, but it was just like, you know, teasing the bar staff. Was it cleaning up, talking to patrons and you know, get a home fast buddy on that shit. Right. And people laughed and they kind of, it was like doing, they used to do street comedy in New York. It kind of reminded me of that like building a crowd. And it's the wild people stopped and listen. Now, now I'm not a tech savvy dude. Twitter had come out. And I guess people had started tweeting like, yeah, it was just crazy. Dave Chappelle just in here, writing. And it might have took like an hour. That place was packed. And I must have stayed on stage three or four hours. Wow.

1:08:49And you know, they closed the door. They locked the door because it was after hours. And I was in there killing it. Wow. Best birthday ever. One of the best birthday ever. Sometimes around when I turned 40, I just decided that I'm going to have fun. You know, like right now, you know, this is a weird thing to talk about. But after DMX passed and Black Rob and, you know, now far more often, people from my peer group pass away. And it just makes me feel like, it's not a midlife crisis. It's almost the opposite of that. It's like, look, I know I don't get to stay here forever. My time is limited and precious. And I don't take any of these things for granted. I'll take this money for granted, this platform. And I'm not talking about the fame platform. I'm talking about comedy. This genre, like, I make this genre. It's been so good for me. My social life. The people that I've met, the friendships that I've had, something that I've lost along the way.

1:09:51These memories we made, you know, as the years go on, I'm like, what a special, special way to live your life. You know, see the world. Like, say, when we did those dates, we were being Seattle and... Yeah. And you told me it was Salt Lake City? Yeah. And one of those nights, there was a massacre in Dayton. It's not far from where I live. You know, people who I live hang out in Dayton. Was that the night we were there? We were together when that happened. That same night, the guy that owned one of those comedy clubs in New York was murdered too. It was like a really dark night. Oh, that's right. And I found all this out right before I was going on. Like, you didn't know, you were already on stage as this news is unfold. I'm sure you got a earful when you got off. Yeah. But I was like, shhh. You know, during the run, we would go places and I'd see flags that have staff. And I'm like, oh, shit, that's for like my city. I really hit home. And the best part of that experience was being with comedians.

1:10:55If anything bad ever happens, comedians are who you want to be with. You know, 9-11, I was in a room full of comedians because I had to, you know, I was staying on West Broadway in Canal Street, which is not far from the trade center. But Canal Street, I'm on the north side of the street from the south down the city was evacuated. So I got to stay in my hotel. But during the day, we didn't know that we, you know, had a new baby and I ended up going to a comedian's house. They lived in Greenwich Village, bunch of comedians with it. As bad as that day was, that was the room to be in. It's something that these guys and girls have always inspired courage in me and levity in me. Something that's some subtext of comedy that everything's going to be okay. I spent the day with Joey Diaz and Ralphie May. Oh, wow. Yeah, 9-11. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who else would you rather have been with? When you think back of the tragedy, I bet you can think of four or five things you laughed at. Yeah.

1:11:55Like that day. Not about the tragedy with them. We were just laughing. We were high as fuck. And we were just freaking out about the fact there's no planes. Like, look at this guy. There's no planes. Yeah, it's that. comedians. Yeah. It was funny that this genre is under attack because to me, this is the everything's going to be okay, John. It's under attack because people have this ability to complain about things now and then people pile on. It's a new thing and they realize it's very useful. It's a good weapon. And if you choose targets, you could take targets out. You can go after them. And so it becomes a hobby. It comes a hobby like if you see a window and you got a rock, you feel like throwing that rock. And so a lot of times these targets aren't justified. But you can find a justification. You can say, oh, they put these words together in this order. And if you look at it and quotes written down on paper, you go, oh, well, this is a ableist or this is this. Or this is that this is something we can attack. Let's attack. This is transphobic.

1:12:55This is this is a homophobic attack attack. And they it becomes. It's a recreation. It's recreational outrage. It is exactly, you know, the last time I came when you showed when Donnell was here. And I fucked up. I looked at the comments section. I'll never do that shit again. I'll never do that shit. First comment is somebody said Dave looks like he stinks. Where? Where? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? But. When Risa was on with Donnell, as the first thing I said to Donnell, after the show, I go, hey, man, that was fun. Don't read the comments. Yeah. Don't read the comments. Don't. And Donnell just dove right into that comments. And he was on a deep spiral of mental illness for several days. Yeah, he said, man, it keeps on hand to roughs, son. Yeah. Yeah, I heard all about it. We was on tour after that. He was traumatized. He got shook. I told him, stay out of there. Don't read that shit. You're the same person. You don't want to be affected by those people. No, you know. No, because they just want to bring you down to their level.

1:13:55No, but whoever wrote that comment is that Dave looks like he stinks. It's probably going to watch this and be like, nailed it. So congratulations, motherfucker. And I can't rate to read your comment about me commenting on you. You're in a big time, bitch. Your mother's thanks. Coming on that too. Ah. It's a weird thing. Comments are a weird thing. And it is. Yeah, it is. But like you say, and here's the rub, you can just not read them. Yeah. Oh, you can just not click on that special that's going to hurt your feelings. At a certain point, you got to look at this shit like food. What do you eat? What are you putting in your mind? That's what I keep saying about me when people get outraged about me. I'm like, well, you don't have to listen to it. Like why are you listening to it looking for things that are pissing you off? Like what are you doing? Yeah, it's like listening to someone's ass when they take it. It shouldn't be like, ew, you farted. What the fuck are you doing in there anyway? It's for all these people. People are looking to get mad. There's plenty of people who are watching you. I'm like, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it.

1:14:55There's plenty of things that will be authentically mad about. Yes. But those are confusing and frustrating. And it takes time, patience, research. There's a lot going on though. Why do that? Yeah. Why do all that? Yeah. I don't know, man. It's just a... I'm optimistic about the future. But I think because I've never seen these things before, I can't quite call words going on. It's a challenging time, but human beings have always done better than the previous generation. Every single generation, if you follow Stephen Pinkers' work, from the beginning of time, from recorded history to now, it's the safest time to be alive ever. It's a very clear trend. We struggle. We have conflict. There's ups and downs. There's mistakes. And there's good decisions. But ultimately, things become safer. They become better. We accept each other more. But when you think about, like, when I was a kid, gay marriage was impossible. Like, no one... you couldn't get married if you were gay.

1:15:55Whenever they were proposive, people would freak out. Now, it's nationwide. It's like, things change. Even though there's more violence now than ever. I mean, there's not more violence now than ever before. You see it. You see violence now more than you ever have before. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try on new food, and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cutie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Exanages, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

1:16:56Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're out of the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cutie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort, day passes, start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are.

1:17:56Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. With verbal care, help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind. Before because of social media, you could pull up Instagram videos or car accidents and gun fights and crazy shit. But the reality is there's less violence than ever before. There's less murder than ever before. It's a slow trend. And pinker gets criticized for this because people don't want to hear that. Because they go, but what about all the injustice? What about all the murders? What about all the crime? There is all that shit. There is rape. There are all that stuff is real. But it's way less than ever before in history. And I think as time moves on, it'll get even better. There'll be hiccups. There'll be up to now. But it's not less. It's not less because people are sick of that behavior.

1:19:01It's not like these things happen less often because people had to do things to make these things happen less often. It didn't organically just be like, that's enough murder for us. We had to do some shit. People had to do some shit. We had to, you know, we gave marriage. People had to be made aware of how people are struggling. One of the great things they're moving was when everyone started coming out of the closet and everyone realized, oh, like five of my best friends are gay and were embarrassed when we were saying this, that, and the other. And they realized you like this person more than you like whatever prejudice you're carrying around. These types of actions, what change? Information. Information. Information. Yeah. And as more information gets out about what's avoidable and unavoidable. And the more we get to understand each other, the more realize we have way more in common than we don't. Right. You know, it's, as time goes on, I think we're going to get better. I think our culture, our civilization will be improved upon.

1:20:04Like what we have now, we have, we have now is a very unique struggle that's never existed before. Because it's a combination struggle, right? It's a virus, a disease, it's fear, it's anxiety, and then economic depression. All thrown in together, and it scares the fuck out of people because they're powerless. Because all of a sudden the government comes along and says you can't work or your business is not essential. Imagine being told you don't have an essential business. I was. Like comedians are, yeah. We're not essential. Fortunately podcasts were for whatever weird reason, an essential business. So we're liquor stores, which is kind of crazy. Well, because your podcast was like a beacon of some semblance of normalcy. It didn't look so much like, joe, you look good and the world's going on. But there's also something to lose to read about it. Yeah. Because if they see us on yachts popping bottles while they're going through this thing, they're going to feel like, well, it's some wrong with me or like. Yeah. There's a lot of tone deaf folks out there that didn't get that right there,

1:21:06taking that photo in front of a private chat with a Gucci bag smiling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's not the time for flossing. No. But for some people, that's like a part of their image, you know, part of what they do. Yeah. Many people. I think in their understanding that that's almost, almost definitively what celebrity is. Yeah. It's like, how am I going to be successful without doing that? And they sell something different than say, you or I might be trying to sell. Right. Right. You can't, you're not selling that if you're a comic. Yeah. You have to be careful. Nah. I'm trying to think, is there a comic that flosses? Kevin Hart flosses a little bit. Never bothered me though. No. He's happy. Well, first of all, who the fuck works harder than that guy? Nobody. That me, fuck that. Fuck that. He makes me feel lazy. He's always like co-producing some project and animating some movie and doing a voice over

1:22:07this and starting that and then doing a theater tour. And then he's got Jumanji 5 coming out. You know, he's always got something happening. And he's relentlessly kind. And everyone that works with him looks elated and happy. He's not a tyrant. He's like hanging out with a self-help book of some shit. He just makes you feel good. He's a powerful, powerful guy. Hart, impossible not to like him. Yeah. In fact, in my mind, he's a great case scenario that a good person can do well. Because there are some cynics that believe that they can't. I don't know about any crime behind that portion. It's just a good dude. No, it's just a good dude. You can be a good person to make it. It's just the problem is like making it is usually connected to ambition, which is usually connected to aggression. It's usually connected to, you know, someone who's like really fiercely. And fiercely trying to succeed. And a lot of that is usually in a lot of people's eyes.

1:23:07That's at any cost. You know, ruthlessly trying to get through the maze of show business of life to succeed. And some people, back to the said, to adopt this ruthlessness thinking, well, that's how things get done. Yeah. If I can't do this, then I'll never make it. And that's a myth. So that's just a little bit of a great quote on the acting studio. He's talking about Rocky being a metaphor for acting. And saying that some of the best actors he knew were so sensitive that they couldn't survive the environment. So some of the greatest talent that he witnessed, the masses will never see because they couldn't navigate the rocks as far as commerce is concerned. And that was his fight, so to speak. Yeah. I would imagine that that's... I mean, there's actors that are like real artists. When they're putting together a role, whether it's a Denzel Washington or a Daniel De Lewis,

1:24:08or you know what I mean? There's like levels of acting. And there's a certain level where they're not like just a regular guy trying to be famous. They got some thing that they've tuned into. Right. They can become Gary Oldman. They can become a person. Man, Daniel De Lewis, that motherfucker, think about it. When he's not working, he's like making shoes and shit. He's not... What I call the whole struggle, that red coffee. He's not going to eat them and shit. No, no. He's a serious actor. He's a great artist, and that's why he makes a premium for his work. I think he quit acting. He said he retired. And playing Abraham Lincoln was one of my favorite things that I've seen someone do. And it's not my favorite movie he's been in, it's a movie about the passing of a bill. I can't think of a more boring process than fucking the bureaucracy of passing a bill, no matter what the bill's about. But man, something about that performance made me excited about like art itself.

1:25:08For me, it's that there will be blood. Yeah, it's the fucking greatest movie ever. There will be blood as the one. That character. He was so many things. He was a murderer. He was evil. He was kind. He was ambitious. He was a victim of circumstance, a victim of his environment, and also kind of a tyrant. Yeah, like I picture myself as an actor reading that script and just be like, yeah, I don't get it. Let a little untangling, an emotional life for this guy and a rationale for behaving this way. Yeah. He's got nailed it. Yeah, he nailed it. But that's what people, when people think of the worst aspects of ambition, they think of that kind of person, that character that he portrayed, the worst aspects of it, the dehumanizing aspects of ambition. Yeah, geez. Some dark shit. Yeah, dark shit. I drink your milkshake. And the guy with the bowling band and I'm finished.

1:26:09Yeah. No spoiler alert, my bad everybody. Yeah. Fucking heavy. Great though. Yeah, brilliant. You know, it's kind of like one of the things I did after I left the show, I got into boxing. I don't know. I just go to the fights. And part of it was because that era was like, man, he packed, yeah, I was fighting. And the Mayweather fight, the Marqueas was fighting. All these guys were great fighters. And I got this notion that anytime I can be a witness to greatness, I should see it. Yeah. And it's like the fast food of greatness, a Floyd fight. You know, that's going to be it. Yeah. It's going to be good. It's like a pack-out fight. You know what I mean? I was there when he got knocked out like these moments. So you were there when Marqueas knocked him out? Boy, what's that? With my Filipino mother-in-law, she saved the national anthem and everything. I was like, sorry. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy, man. But, you know. That was a crazy punch. That was. Now, who do you have on Saturday? Can L.O. and Billy Ray Saunders? Yeah. Billy Ray Saunders is a problem. And I got good feet.

1:27:09He can move. Yeah. He can move. But there's no one in the business hard to hit in Canelo right now. He learned something from Floyd Mayweather. Man, it was like a Harvard-ass-whip and Floyd gave him. Yeah. And he went, he was like a, it was a clinic, bro. Trouncing. Yeah, it's a trouncing. It went as-whip and split. Floyd didn't hit hard enough to really give him a real ass-whip and we really heard him and punish him and have him in real trouble. But he boxed him up. Boxed him up, no. It was like watching a glow trot escape. Yeah. Yeah. It was a-it was beat handily. But then if you watch Canelo, like, because Floyd was impossible to hit and I think Canelo was like, he thought he was going to be able to hit him and then he realized somewhere in the fight like this guy knows everything I'm going to do long before I do it. Like my language, my way I'm speaking and with boxing and so- This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayo.

1:28:12It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Exanwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it, grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're out the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy.

1:29:15You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort, day passes, start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. Premier hosts on Verbo deliver quality vacation rental stays with fast responses and clear instructions. So you don't have to worry about surprises. I asked our host a question about the house last night and he got back to me super quick. See, that's the Premier host move right there. I wish I had a Premier group chat. I asked them where we should have dinner last night and they left me on red.

1:30:16I know you saw it. It says it. Classic group chat move. Don't walk into a surprise. You know, you're the top rated Verbo stay with a Premier host. If you know, you Verbo. Slow. Right. He just like, right. Right. He just many steps ahead. But then you watch Canelo now like he's slick. He's so slow. The Danny Jake was fired to great example that he said right in front of him. Just moving the head. His head movements phenomenal. And that's not indicative of a classic Mexican box. No, they come straight at you. Yeah. Die on their shield. He's not that guy. He's so skilled. He got the rub. That's what we call it. When a great fighter fights another great fighter, they learn something. You learn something from the higher levels. Like when you get beat by a guy, you get that rub. You see a lot of times a guy will come out of a fight with a great fight. He might have lost. But then the next fight, you see like, oh, he recognizes the higher frequencies, the higher RPMs of the real true great ones. I think that was a problem boxing. This idea that people were addicted to undefeated fighters, but there's something to be said in greatness.

1:31:18Yeah. For getting beat up sometimes. Yes. You come back. If you can come back from it with your whits intact and learn the lessons that the ass will be taught you. You might see something even more special from a guy that got a loss of two on his record. Yeah. But there's a fine line. There's a type of loss that you never bounce back from. Like the Julio says a chavez, Melder Taylor loss. Melder Taylor lost the chavez. He got knocked out with like, Richard Steel stopped the fight with like two seconds to go in the last round. But chavez is just getting to him. Just getting to him and Melderick was so fast. Melderick was a part of that team that 76 Olympic gold medalist team, not 76. Was it 84? 84 team where it was like Mark Breeland, Riddick Bow. Riddick Bow on that team? No, Tyrell Biggs. Mark Breeland, Tyrell Biggs, Pranel Whitaker, Melderick Taylor. There were so many great fighters, all gold medalists. And Melderick Taylor was so fast. He was so good. But chavez was relentless.

1:32:18Julio says his chavez was relentless. He just would bob and weave and bob and weave and come pop pop pop pop. And if you start to get into him, start to get into him and then finally last round, boom, drop some. And Richard Steel looks in the Melderick Taylor's eyes and he waves it off at two seconds to go. Oh wow. And everybody's like, oh shit. And he never came back from that. Never came back from that. He fought after that. He always looked like something. Julio says his chavez took a piece of him. Never, never returned to 100%. I'd tell you another, it's a guilty pleasure fighting because I know what, I see what it does to guys. You brought a Riddick Bow. You know, I talked to him once at a fight and I'm like, man, it's got to some shots. Took some shots. And I'm not saying this disparagingly. You're saying this reality? Yeah, it was tough. It was a tough one because you know, I think about how much I enjoy watching these fights and then come face to face with the price that so many pay. I saw Terry Norris at a fight once and he was talking to a fan and I was moving on my way to the seat.

1:33:19I heard Terry talking to the sky and I was like, oh no. It was bad. Yeah, it was bad. How am I going to leave my hero? It's tough to watch. Tough to watch. You know, it happens to all of them eventually. If they keep going, it happens to all of them. Yeah, you got to hang them gloves up at some point. Yeah. Some of them are, you know, like, that's what makes Andre Ward so special. Andre Ward wins a gold medal in the Olympics, wins two world championships and two different weight classes, retires undefeated. They offer him money to come back and he goes, I think I'm better served as a commentator I'm done. I talked. Talks. Talks perfect. Talks perfect. How do I mind the podcast, brilliant guy, thoughtful, articulate, smooth, classy, you know? And one of my prize possessions is some gloves he signed for me. You know, I'm a big fan of the Bay Area and I was, you know, before the Warriors were champs, you know, Andre Ward was carrying Oakland.

1:34:20He was, he was their champion. And he's doing it with one arm, you know that? No. Yeah. Andre Ward's right shoulders basically. Oh, that's right. Okay. Most of his career. Yeah. This is when he was, you know, what kind of contractual disputes he had. He had the shoulder surgery. He was going through all that and we had a conversation about it. I was really like inspired meeting him and we had a conversation about exactly what you're talking about. He was talking to me. You know, we didn't know each other. I just happened to meet him and he talked to me about hanging his gloves up. It was a crazy thing for comedian to hear like, you imagine saying I'm done with comedy. Like I could quit. I could say I quit the line like, I don't know if I quit doing stand up in some way, shape or form. I don't know if I could have taken 30 years off like Eddie. Right. Yeah, Eddie keeps talking about coming back, right? But he still hasn't. He's, listen, bro. He's funny as fuck.

1:35:21As far as like a naturally athletic comedian, I don't know that I've ever seen as equal. Yeah, I think you're right. I remember that. I've ever seen as equal. That speech where he talked about them taking Bill Cosby's Mark Twain prize away. I was there when he said that it was so I can remember two all the comedians who were there crowding around the monitor because was the first time he did anything that looked like stand up. Right. And he was smooth. He stopped doing stand up in 87. It's the year I started. That's incredible. It's entire time. And so if he does come back, you know, I'd be the first person to buy a ticket. I would watch a bad Eddie Murphy show. If he was really trying to do a thing, then before I would go see one of my own. I remember I forget what club in New York we were talking and Chris Rock was talking about how good Cosby was. He went to see Cosby. At the Apollo. I've heard of it. Yeah. And Bill Burr and I were planning on seeing Cosby.

1:36:22We were trying to figure out where we should go. I'll tell you where the correctional facility in the Pennsylvania has wings at. As we speak. It was before all that should happen. We were thinking about going to see him somewhere. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like I look at these kids coming up. And there's things that they do much better than we did. They can all produce. They can all generate. They don't. They make you that nothing. Right. In the 90s, you go to the fucking comedians parking lot at the comedy store. That she used to be filled with shitty cars. Yeah. And now you'll see a guy you never even heard of getting to the hottest whip. Yep. It's that now. Yeah. I don't know. These guys look like straight up contest winners. I mean, the fuck is this guy? But they're killing it. Internet money. Right. But what's too bad about it is we're from a process of refining. There doesn't exist anymore. Right. They'll never. The road when you're anonymous. Right. The road we're anonymous. They're just being on the strip. And it's smoking night when not smoking.

1:37:23No one smokes anymore. But then being one of those night clubs. Yep. They're going to. It's a lot to miss. Yeah. The grind. The long grind of developing a real act. And to do it also. In where there's no cell phones. There's nothing. No distractions. Right. They're competing with too much. And it's too bad for them. But I don't fault them for them. I'm impressed that these kids made a new way. But I like the way we thought. There's a new way that they're doing where they... One of the things that showed a lot of people's ability to improvise and to change was during COVID a lot of people started doing things online. And like Andrew Schultz, the best example, I think. He started doing those things like turn your phone sideways. And there's long rants, like 10, 15 minute rants with photographs and punchline after punchline after punchline. And then they did a whole Netflix special about it. Like he did a series of Netflix pieces on it.

1:38:23And what he did was he said, okay, I can't do stand up. But this isn't stand up. So I shouldn't do stand up like this because there's no audience. So the key to that. And he figured it out. He's like, the key to this is you've got to hit it fast. The punchlines have to come one after the other. It's got to be fast paced and with images. So he would use all these visuals while he was hitting punchline after punchline. He figured out a new way to do comedy. He figured out a way to do internet, Instagram, 10 minute comedy. Well, okay. But that's not, like you say, that's not stand up. Like this thing that you're describing, God bless them. That's not what I do. Yeah, it's different. It's different. It's different than the way he does stand up, which is interesting because his stand up is slower. He holds laughs. He holds pause. He laughs at shit. He fucks around. He works a crowd a lot. His stand up is loose. Right. He has fun. He's comfortable up there. Right. But his little clips that he does on Instagram are rapid fire. Bang, bang, bang.

1:39:23And he has worked with a series of writers. They all work together. They put these things together. They work it out, man. But one of the times it's done. And it is a polished machine. And he used that time and innovated. That's clever. Yeah. I don't think I'm not interested in it because, you know, disrespect them. I like happening in real life. Yeah. Like even during COVID, the fact that we found a way to get in front of audiences again, meant the world to me. That's what I do. Yeah. It's a different thing. Yeah. I mean, I could throw a slide showing the shit if I wanted to with. That crowd's not there. Right. And he's Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. He's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake.

1:40:23Because this Mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Eggs sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay.

1:41:23And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all on me at McDonald's. I can point for me. I know what you mean, but for him, he's coming up still. You know, you'd already made it. Well, no, yeah, yeah. You're back in there. Yeah, and it's a whole different boy. What's he been up saying? Like that thing that he was that evolution he was able to make.

1:42:26I'm like the old guy who has that high outfit from the 70s. Go fashion. Go on without me. I look fine. I'm that. I'm good with what I do. Those shows we did it stubbed felt real special. They might not ever be that special again. Because it was hard. It was hard to do and it was weird. And it was the fact that you could do a show in a pandemic, like a real legitimate pandemic. And what it did for the people who were able to come. Yeah. And for the comedians who were able to participate, we all felt better. We felt a lot better. We had some wild fun. Yeah, fun. Life might be okay everyone, you know, just to laugh around other people. During a shit show of a circumstance. It was great. It was great. You know, I wish that we could have done a more diverse array of shows. But we were locked into the circumstance, we locked in.

1:43:27Yeah. We tested everybody that like everyone bought a ticket got a COVID test, free mask, you know, and as a comedian, it was a new experience. Being in a room full of people or whatever that venue was full of people, they just realized that they don't have the dreaded coronavirus. Right. And they were the show and the music's playing and comedians they recognized come on the stage. It was like pure joy in there. No matter what we said at a certain point, we were all happy to be the comedians. Yeah. Didn't take it for granted. Like, you know, you do a million sets, you start thinking it's just another idea of the office. But every night of the office could've been the last night of the office. Yeah, that was the thing about it too. You're never going to have another day like that where or another, another series of nights like that where there's the first real pandemic of our lifetime where things are shut down, but yet we do have this weird opportunity to do shows. So they felt electric.

1:44:28They really did. They felt electric. Those shows that we did will remain etched in my mind. That was special. The fact that, you know, and also, you know, no gas or nothing, but the fact that you're successful as you are at all these things, you're wildly famous, you're also very unaffected, but you got nervous before your first set. I respected that. I said, okay, see this guy makes all this money. Still cares. It's that. You see some guys, you can see that you're a fighter. Sometimes the fight gets out of them. Yeah. They get tough. They better get full. You don't feel like going as hard as he used to. Or you might start worrying about what they're saying to press and all that shit. That none of that shit ever got to you, bro. You was going hard in the pain. It was fun to watch. I'm like, yo, you're going hard in the pain, bro. But it was fun, man.

1:45:29And the spirit that I love about the genre was ever present. Everything's going to be okay with the spirit of comedy always. Yeah. And it was there. It just made me feel like wildest is. If I can't do comedy, I'm not going to do comedy. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I can't do real comedy, if I can't do comedy the way I've always on comedy, say wild shit that you don't even necessarily really mean, but it's funny. That's why you're saying that. And everybody knows. They know what you're doing. That's right. I know guys that you know and they're famous. I don't, but they struggle with this thing. Yeah, they do. Yeah. And they stop coming around and I miss their presence and their voices. And a lot of these young comedians, this process of refinement is gone because they don't have these guys to look to. Right. Because, you know, they're making money and I don't want to upset anybody. Yep. Yep. Kids are in college or whatever it's going to be. They don't want to ruin what they already put down. Yeah. They lay down some nice roots. They got a good thing going on. They don't want to fuck it up. Would you ever leave the limelight?

1:46:30Yeah. Sure. Does it bother you? The limelight? You don't live in a way, would it? I don't do limelight things. You know what I'm saying? Like I don't go to work. You're going to try somebody shit out, bro. It's not bad. I mean, look, you don't have to do it all the time. Once and again. Once and again. I mean, I'm, I have needs in my needs are, you know, like, exercise. Keep my mind straight. All, all those needs like they, they, those, there's have to be fulfilled. Help me. Yeah. They have to be filled for mental clarity. I get that. If I don't do that, I don't, I'll lose my way. You also have a lot of access to shit. Who are you talking to yesterday? Yesterday was David, a whole house who's a documentary filmmaker. It's a journalist. Yeah, every day you talk to some kind of jogging up in some field. Elon Musk, Malcolm Gladwell, we think about this shit Elon is going through with Saturday

1:47:32Night Live. Ridiculous. Yeah, it's puzzling. No one is woke enough. They don't, they can't appreciate the fact that you're dealing with literally one of the most brilliant men that's ever lived. Who's going to come do your show? You're talking about a guy whose simultaneously runs multiple world changing businesses, whether it's Tesla, whether it's SpaceX, whether it's the boring companies, making tunnels underneath the fucking earth. He's putting satellites into space to put high speed internet around the world. He's doing all these things simultaneously. Good candy right in monologue. Cause we're going to find out. Let's get it. He's not funny. He's a brilliant guy. He could probably do anything if he said his mind to it. But the fact that they've decided somehow that he's problematic. Like it doesn't make any sense. And they have no one's really saying what is it just because he's rich? Who knows? It doesn't matter anymore. They just decide like what the fuck is this and everybody's like what the fuck is this? This is bullshit. So there was no there was no obvious catalyst for this.

1:48:34No, I was just curious. There was some people that felt like he dismissed COVID's danger at one point in time. They didn't like them because of that. But he did it just because he's intelligent because his perspective was he was a reduction in his perspective on it was like looking at the numbers and looking at what it is. Instead of looking at the emotional impact of people losing loved ones. And so sometimes someone is like a genius might say something that appears to be insensitive. I don't think he's insensitive. I think he was just looking at it in terms of like what is the odds that you're going to die and saying that children are essentially immune. And he was saying things that a lot of people felt were insensitive. That was the first of all, A was a long time ago and B, he was just explaining his perspective on the disease. He wasn't as fearful as they thought he should be. And then he came to our shows and his pictures of all of us hanging out maskless and then

1:49:35people got COVID afterwards. A lot of people thought that it was his girlfriend that gave us COVID. By the way, he was, he and she were very incredibly kind. Super nice. I'm not affected. I tease him about being the richest man in the world. He took a good humor. And what's funny is I had hung out with him years ago after I quit your pal show. When I was on that tour that I was telling about, there was a tough one. We hung out on a tour bus and he, he, he, he says to me that night when we's all together here in Austin, he goes, I met you before. I'm like, I don't have no recollection. And he looked kind of hurt. It was a long time ago. He said there was like two, three companies ago. And I just thought it was funny. Like, that he was the richest man in the world. I think these, whether the people that are complaining that he's going to be on center at live, I think what's going on now is like they want someone to be a hundred percent compliant to whatever ideology they're a part of. And any deviation of that is problematic.

1:50:35Whether it's because they think like I saw an article that said Elon Musk donated a hundred and fifty million dollars to some charity and they called him a cheap skate. That's hilarious. How hilarious is that? Wait until they see what I'm a billionaire. They're talking about getting ready for this cheap skate. No, my brother. But it's, it was such a, it was such a shitty article. It's just a poorly written knucklehead article. Yeah, it's, again, like you say, no one can be woke enough. You know, I'm torn because I like a warrior for good cause, but I'm really in the tactics. You're not going to nag people into behaving in a way that's, you know, in fact, if you continue with this tone, even if you're right, you'll be very hard to hear. Yeah, I think so. And it's just, I don't, I don't mean, maybe it was the COVID thing, like I'm saying. But again, if I think back on the statements, I don't think they were particularly insensitive.

1:51:38I think they were just, you know, it was, it was more of like a factual bluntness to the way he discusses things. This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. He's just with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. He's just Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait, that's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. QB only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. Once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really care about flavor use it. Never try it, grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store.

1:52:39Put it on just about anything, then you'll understand. QB, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100.

1:53:39That's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese, McGrittle's, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Sun rises, prices fall. Get a sausage McMuffin with egg or sausage egg and cheese, McGrittle's small hot coffee and hash frowns for just $6. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da. He's a numbers guy. He looks at things in terms of equations. He's trying to put people on Mars, you know what I mean? I remember seeing him on your show once. Just like on one of these YouTube clips. But I dug the clip because it was just one sound bite. He said, I have so much in my mind. Yeah. You remember this? Yeah. Because I asked him, I'm like, what's it like to be you? Like, what's it like? Just think he was, he wouldn't want to be me.

1:54:40I remember, yeah. Yes, it was the one. Listen, it wasn't bragging. He's just like, he's being honest. Like, he wouldn't want this. His brain is like a hurricane. Like, this is just ideas like, like, you could see it while he's sitting there. He's trying to sit here and just have a conversation with you. And he's probably going over fucking equations and thinking about concepts and new ideas and plotting things. And I remember talking to somebody once. I'm not going to say who, but they go more than half the people on earth live on a dollar a day. And at least half of them are happy. He says, I know 20 billionaires and all of them are miserable. Wow. This is reminiscent of the thing my father used to tell me about, just the nature of money and what he wants your life to be about. Now, I mean, I'm a lucky guy. Met some billionaires. You know, I don't know who's brimming with happiness. You know what I'm saying? I get a good time that night. Kanye sometimes, he's having a great time.

1:55:42But I don't know when they're having fun if it's the money that's doing it. No, it's probably not. The money gives you a certain amount of freedom to do whatever you want to do, but it also comes with so much pressure, so much responsibility and so much scrutiny. And think about how many people are looking at every single thing that Elon does. Like this satirant life thing is a perfect example. They've just decided that it's not good that he's on satirant life. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is like a specific thing they're upset about, but I haven't heard it. That's what I'm like literally asking. I'm not in doubt even the cast members and I'm fond of all of them, but this one puzzles me. I see what I'm talking about when I'm saying I see people online going, what the fuck is this? It's not even people that were the cast members that were saying that. It's just folks online that were upset. And I'm like, I don't get it. Like why are you upset? What do you think, Santa for Elon? Like if I was the richest man in the world, what I do set in a live, I don't know. I mean, I might just because I love comedy so much, but what do you think?

1:56:42I guess he loves comedy. Yeah, he loves comedy. Yeah, he does. I've seen him at the store a bunch of times. Yeah. He's like, well, probably cool. It's probably the thought. Oh, that'll be cool. Yeah, I'll do it. But they probably call them a satirant life once in a while if you want to host satirant life. Uh, okay. He probably said, okay. Yeah, there's something about that this endearing. It's going to be interesting to watch his monologue. I'm going to watch. Oh, yeah. Depending on where that fight is, because I've got to watch that another one. Oh, that's this Saturday, right? Yeah, that's right. Oh, hopefully they won't be against each other. Is that fight out here in Texas? Dallas, yeah. Oh, 70,000 camp. Oh, 70,000 people. Holy shit. Country's about to open up, man. It's open. I did Jacksonville, Florida. We did the UFC a couple of weeks ago. Holy shit. It was wild. Then was it been 15,000 people? Oh, yeah. I'm scared of over Florida. It was wild. It was wild. You probably see that Corona cloud from space. Florida. Everybody's fucking not being given it. It was interesting. Nobody had a mask on.

1:57:43It was like there was no COVID. You go everywhere you go. People were just out there walking around normal. Remember the last time when I was here, when we were doing the shows together? And gosh, remember we increased the caps. Maybe we were up to like 700 people a night or a busy night, right? We must have tested a few thousand people that week. I don't know that we got a single positive that week. I think we did. I think we got out of all the weeks we did it. We only got like four positive tests. Out of thousands of people. Yeah, thousands of people. That's when I was like, okay, this is, it was, I remember just feeling like, well, we're gonna do the MGM. That's gonna get wild David. Oh, man. Let me tell you something. Joe, let me tell you something. That gig, I know, they're not gonna say the dates, but I know we talk about doing another two dates. I mean, towards the end of the summer, I'm very excited about this. I'm very excited too. We're gonna get wild. Yeah, oh, it's a fine weekend too. Oh, yeah.

1:58:44Yeah, it's UFC weekend. It's McGregor's fighting. Yeah. Connor and Dustin Porier. Who's Dustin Porier? Dustin Porier is the last guy who beat Connor. He knocked him out. Oh, so it's his rematch. Yeah, they fought twice. One time, I think six years ago, Connor knocked him out and then he just knocked out Connor. They traded knock. That's a good one. Oh, it's a good one. Real good one. Maybe I'll stay an extra night. Fuck, yeah. Watch, you know, I've never been to an MMA fight. What? That's outrageous. This is the one to go to. It's funny, man. I'm such a boxing fan because it's the gentleman sport. You know what I mean? MMA all that grounded pounded shit is like really intense. I remember talking to you one night at the store. You were like, Dave, I see so much violence. I'm starting to worry about myself. You know what I mean? Yeah. I worry because people get hurt and it doesn't bother me. Yeah, that's normal. Yeah, that's a tough one. This is one of the things that happened. My wife cut her head. She like a hatchback, you know, the car thing was up and she was pulling something out of the car and didn't realize that the corner of the she miscalculated.

1:59:45Oh, yeah. And it stood up and it dug right into her head and blood was pouring down her forehead. And I was like, hand with bro. I just looked at it. I was like, that's nothing. It's nothing. She's like, what are you talking about? Oh, this blood. I go, it's a tiny cat. It's nothing. It's like, oh, Jesus, like what's wrong with me? Like it does. I'm so accustomed to people being broken. So accustomed to lacerations and concussions and broken bones and blood all over the play. I'm so accustomed to blood. It's a crazy, like I can't even conceive this. It's a weird thing because I've definitely become desensitized. I've seen, I don't know how many thousands of fights up close. I've seen so many people get fucked up. And then there's my time from being a young guy and competing in martial arts tournaments and seeing so many people get fucked up there. So I've just seen like my whole life people get fucked up. If you had like a, if there was like a chart of all the people throughout history of seeing

2:00:46people get fucked up, like just the fuck beat out of them, I'm right up there. I'm a, the gang is kind of level. Yeah, it's not like a lot of people that have probably ever lit other than like warriors who fought with swords and shit. There's not a lot of people in the modern era. I've seen as many people get the fuck beat out of them as me. That's crazy. That is a crazy thing. It's crazy. Yeah. Super desensitized to violence and injuries. It's real strange. Do you think you'd ever come back from it? If you think if you took a break? No. And someone's getting a knee, you'd be like, I don't know. I'm too used to it. And then there's hunting, you know? So I'm used to it with animals. I'm used to taking animals apart. Okay, I see that's some next level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you get used to things like that. People get desensitized. Like doctors talk about that, like trauma room, surgeon, stuff like that. They talk about that. They get very desensitized injuries. I remember talking to a doctor once about just that, but this conversation was more about

2:01:47from their work realizing the fragility of life. Hmm. That's fragile. Yeah, humans are fragile. Yeah. Very fragile. So it's we're so easy to injure. You know, it's so easy to hurt people. But and not just physically, you know, emotional emotionally. Emotionally. Yeah, I don't know, bro. I feel like recently our country is our biggest export is heartbreak. Like we got to do better. Not just our country, the whole world. Yeah, but we emotional heartbreak, like emotional pain being given out online. That would be interesting to see like the emotional impact of like online interactions and harassment and people just fighting with each other online. How much different the emotional content of like online interactions? How much of an impact that's had on human beings? That could be measured. If like there was a number that you could attach to it.

2:02:50Quantify, but I'll tell you what, I tell you what. So we're a thing with comedy, most comedians that I know. And a matter of fact, this even goes with proficiency to a degree. The more proficient they are, usually somewhere you can see that they're wildly sensitive. Or empathetic. Yeah. They do have a profound acuteness to how awareness of how they make other people feel. Yeah. Yeah. People would think comedians are callous and, but it is mostly not. They're not. Most are not. But sometimes they appear callous because they'll go after somebody just for the laugh. Yeah, but I don't even know that that's callous. It's almost like well, I got to sacrifice you for the joy of the rest of the world. That's what it is. Comedy without victims can be boring. Sometimes people got to take a hit. I want roasted a guy that both love. This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. This is us with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

2:03:51This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this Mayo is different. This Mayo uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're out of the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually

2:04:53plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay. And I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. This code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a Big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's, make

2:05:55it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra with a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Bada Bada Bada Bada Bada. He lost both his legs in the water and I roasted him. Wow, that crowd was uncomfortable. Him and his buddies were laughing so fucking hard because of one of those things, we were like, I don't know if I should talk about it. But when we, let me just, and then this guy was dying to talk about it. It had a real interesting story like, you know, met the president many times and was like, you know, he sacrificed everything for the country. But his sense of humor was paramount. He survived this thing and I can tell that his sense of humor was very instrumental in doing it. And the laugh that we had together, I was one of those special nights where it was like,

2:06:57you know, people that, people that dope, people that dope. For the most part, people are dope. And they're dope when you're in front of them. They're dope people to people. You need to look at each of those eyes, being around each other. I think it's part of the problem that we're dealing with with the online shit is that all the normal cues of looking at someone and saying, and talking to them, being right there. It's not there. So you have this ability to write things in a text and say mean shit to people and you think it's okay. Because you don't see them cry. You don't feel they're pain. You're just pushing buttons. You're just pushing buttons. Metaphorically and literally. Yeah. That's what it is. How do you like doing this podcast that you're doing? It's very good, by the way. It's very interesting because it's produced. You have music and it's edited. It's like, it's a different thing. It's dope. Now, it's a weird reason why it's done it with, because ultimately they'll all exist on vinyl.

2:07:57Oh. That's why the shows are the duration that they are, so that they can fit on signs of vinyl. Oh. It's a, it's a while. You know, I'm curious to see how people will react to it, but I love doing it. They're going to love it. The people that I'm working with, you know, Yassin Bay, following those most deft, tallip quality, these guys are like great, great friends of mine. They're great artists. And, you know, it's like, you, I could talk to you guys forever about a diversity of stuff. Yeah. And so, in that sense, it's a joyful experience. It was during COVID. And the whole concept of the, the genesis of this show was just literally us finding excuse to be together, you know, everyone's always so busy, you know, as we get mature in the business and we got kids and we got this and we got that. And we never catch up as much as we should. Yeah. And I'm telling you, in this season, we keep losing people that are important to our culture

2:08:59and important to our community. It was almost like an emergency. Like, yeah, why are we fucking around? Let's just do something together. It was one of these things, definitely went about the money or anything like that, but it was about, you know, spending time with your friends. And as you well know, there's art form of conversation. Yeah. You know, you're very, you're graded, you know, most quality. I could talk to them forever. They're well read. They're well traveled and their hilarious dudes and they got an interesting perspective. Now, some friends you have, you know, you go around the world and you don't see each other often. But when you see each other, it's like you've seen each other just a moment ago and you can download all these obscure and wild experiences and it's safe and comfortable and there's no judgment in it because your friends, your truly friends. And that's the way I feel about those guys. And I think that's one of the things that makes the show so special, like fun to do. I look forward to it.

2:10:00Yeah, that's everything. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you're having an enthusiastic conversation with someone, that's one of the things that makes it interesting to listen to because like when you're listening, it's like, like you're a fly on the wall. That's what people like about a good conversation. You could be in the room without being in the room. You're here and like this folks listen to us right now in traffic and they're here. Right. They're here. There's not much different. I mean, they don't see us if they're driving, but maybe they're watching it on the video. If it's not much different than sitting in the room. There's a missing element because you're not physically here, but it's pretty damn good in terms of the ability to be a part of a conversation and it changes the way you look at things. The more people that I can talk to and get their take on how they think and how they do, it enhances my own way of looking at things and talking to people. Yeah, and that's again the big problem with all the lip buttoner now. I can't like hearing all these different perspectives.

2:11:02Whether I agree with them or not. You can't silence people. You've got to let them fuck up. If they fuck up and you know, there's nothing wrong with apologizing either. If you fuck up and you say something wrong, it's nothing wrong with apologizing. I don't disagree with that. I think context is everything. Yeah. It depends on where I am when I said it. Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? If I'm on a comedy stage and you fucking print a joke, I wrote like it was a stump speech but it's a fucked up thing. It's a fucked up thing to do. Yeah. You know, but you know, or for me to press conference and I woopsy poopsy. There you go. Sorry, everybody. Yes. Well, it's just, you know, especially with stand-ups. I mean, Jesus Christ, how many times his stand-ups just going out dinner having a couple of drinks, we say the most ridiculous shit ever. It's the greatest. That's like one of the joys of my life. Now, think about being a politician now. Who was signing up for that shit now? All these Republicans talking on that shit and I'm not trying to be partisan but when their motherfuckers rushed to Capitol, did any of you guys go to greet your constituents?

2:12:06Now, you ran to the bunker. Yeah. I feel like, you know, but constituents aren't like fans. Did you ever see those videos of cops open in the doors and letting people in and open in the gates and letting people through? I did. What the fuck is that? I don't know. I've never had a sprained. There was, there was an investigation about that. I don't know the results of it but I've heard about it. You know, what's ominous about it is you got to think there's probably like 300 cops on duty, Capitol Hill, right? By the end of it, DC police get called in, Homeland Security gets called in, you know, FBI's and so now there's a thousand guns inside of the Capitol. You know, it's like a, it could have went a million different ways. You have members accusing other members of Congress of giving tours and showing people sensitive areas. And, you know, this kind of suspicion within law enforcement, within government, it's

2:13:07a very ominous sign. Yeah. This type of partisanship is a very ominous sign that, you know, this lexicon now, so binary, Republican Democrat, Republican Democrat, this is not doing us any favors. You know, that in a perfect world, the best idea wins. Right. And in this current situation, I don't know that people even agree on what the truth is. That's a problem. It's a real problem. Chris Rock had a great bit about it. What do you say? What about gangs like that people just join gangs? No. Yeah. What do you say? It's just a, I don't want to fuck it up, but it's basically how, whether they're a Democrat or a Republican, they really just get into gangs. It is that. Yeah. They just decide that this is my, this is my gang. Right. And they're constituents of worry that they're feckless. And like you say, the speed of information is so much faster now than the speed of bureaucracy. Yeah. That's a problem.

2:14:08It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. Especially with the stimulus checks, right? Like, how long did it take before they actually sent checks out in the mail? Remember all the talk about it? Oh, I do. Took forever. I wonder why they never, I guess I know why. I was going to say, it was a stupid question. Why they never suspended the give tax? Like if I wanted to give my brother and my sister and my friends some money during a time like this, why did you tax that transaction? They want the money. Well, not just they want the money. Think about how rich people would move their money around. Of course. If they unfettered that. Yeah. It's the greed. It's killing us. They agreed. I agree. It's killing us. It's not good. No, it's not good at all. But you know, It's getting like what we were talking about before. Like you would give the taxes up if you felt like it was for something. Right. You really felt like it did. Like if you knew that your tax money was really enhancing the world, really helping. Right. Instead of going to some fucked up red crowns to the ghetto.

2:15:11What? Why are you doing that with the money? Because kids meet crowns in the ghetto. It's like who's prioritizing this shit? I don't know, bro. I mean, not to be cynical, but this thing. It's tricky. This one we're doing now. I hope everyone does anything that they can do to help force the trust amongst each other. Yeah. I'm not talking about government and politics. I'm going to give a fuck of someone like Trump or anything. I know a lot of good decent, hard work and people that have political ideas that I think. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Bowen people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake.

2:16:14Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cutie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Examages, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it, restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it, grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything, then you'll understand. Cutie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away. But you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage, without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world.

2:17:20And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury, resort, day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why trade pros trust Fiber cement, party backer board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking and help block moisture. Chosen in over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms, party backer board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating home depot, lows and floor into core stores. For more information, visit jameshardy.com slashhardybacker. Because nonsense. But I don't, I don't conflate that with their character.

2:18:22I don't conflate that with culture. These things are all different issues. You know, what they say, though, the baby out of the bathroom, they can't do that. I'm not going to throw a whole person away because they have four ideas I don't like. I just hope that if the economy can bounce back, people will start to relax again. And if not just vaccines, but also some form of effective therapy. So that even if someone's not vaccinated and they get COVID, there's a very effective way to treat it if that does happen. All right. What about this? This is what if say they they didn't cure COVID. They had no vaccine and nothing was just like six months ago. Right. But during that time, they stumbled on to a cure for AIDS. Do you stay in or do you go out? Stay in it or go out? Do you stay inside of the go out? The COVID's still out there, but AIDS is keep going out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I keep going out. Yeah. No, he's break out that disco ball.

2:19:22We're going through the goddamn disco fuck over that. The real problem is if it becomes some like not even COVID, but something else, it's worse. It's a really bad one like a Spanish flu, like something that kills a large percentage of the people that get it. That's what was pretty bad though. But it was less than one percent, which I'm talking about something that kills 10 percent, 20 percent. Jesus, I couldn't imagine. Those are real. I mean, those have existed throughout history. This one, when we say it's pretty bad, it's pretty bad, but it's pretty bad because of the sheer numbers of human beings. We've got lucky in the sense that, I mean, obviously not lucky for anybody who died. And nothing but love and respect to all those people that lost loved ones. That's right. But we're talking about just raw numbers. And I think this is also what got Elon in trouble. When you look at the 99 point, whatever it is percentage of people survive when they get it, especially when they're young, especially people with no comorbidities, that is a relatively mild pandemic in comparison to what's happened in history.

2:20:24If you look at any sort of real plague, like horrific ones, again, like the Spanish flu. I mean, this last one, New York City for one straight lost 2,000 people a day. It's hard to wrap my mind around it. It's hard to wrap your mind around it. I met some woman who was a E.R. nurse in New York, you know, who had a witness, the carnage up close. I couldn't, I mean, there was a lot of mistakes made that I wonder if they would go back. First of all, the respirators. Remember when they were all looking for respirators? Yeah. New York City needs respirators and they realized, no, no, respirators kill people. Right. I do remember that. Yeah. They didn't know. But that's the thing with COVID. Like nobody, it's like, it's like getting COVID. When I got COVID, the first few days, like you just sit around, wait to see what it'll do to you. You know what I mean? And I was incredibly lucky. I was like, largely asymptomatic. You know, so I was smoking cigarettes the whole time, the whole shit. But I was waiting to get flattened.

2:21:26How many days did it take for you to test it negative? Maybe inside of 10. Inside of 10 days. Whatever my immune system did, that should work. And you take vitamins, do you take care of it? I did all the shit. No matter if you gave me a vitamin regimen, I took it very seriously. I took all that shit. Oh good. Yeah. What was it? Zank and all this other shit. Percitin. Yeah. I took the shit. D3. You know, whether that was what was doing it or not, I don't know. But I did it. Well, it most certainly would help. You didn't hurt me. Yeah, I didn't hurt you. Didn't hurt me. And like I said, I was largely asymptomatic. So, you know, I felt very lucky. But other people that I knew, and that same outbreak, you know, they had tough time with it. Everyone, thank God, is healthy. But it's not, you know, just done do the same thing to everybody. It doesn't. And that's what I guess, vitamins are everything. And that's one of the things that made me furious during this time that there was no emphasis

2:22:26on taking vitamins. They didn't make it seem like it was a big deal. And there was no emphasis on getting healthy and losing weight. Not in the media, but, you know, every health, you know, again, this is the latest thing to say, but every health care professional I talk to, because I have access to decent health care, did bring up the importance of vitamins. And when you said that, it wasn't, it wasn't like completely formed to my ears. I had heard such thing. You just gave me a very specific regimen. Yeah. And I tried it and it worked. But it didn't hurt me. Yeah. No, you, you cruise through it. So did Donnell, which is hilarious. I know, because he's in terrible shape. It will smith things. He's in terrible shape. And he doesn't take a look at Donnell. For real. I mean, I mean, I will smith dip pose a dead body. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm in the worst shape of my life. He's a big smile on his face, though. He's a funny dude. Yeah. Well, I think what Will Smith is probably going to do, Will Smith's one of those dudes that just like sets his mind to things. I bet what he's going to do is take that photograph and then you're going to see him

2:23:28four or five months from now shredded. That's what I bet. Oh, I can see that ahead. Yeah. That's the motivation. The pose looks terrible. Looks like shit. Tells everybody, hey, is the worst shape I've ever been in my life? And then he's like, all right, now it's go time. Yeah, it's funny. He still look like a movie star in bad shape. How the fuck are you doing as Will? Remember when he played Ali? It's amazing. Dude, he looked great. He looked fucking great. Yeah, he did. He looked great. I mean, he got in tip top McGoo shape. He looked fucking fantastic in that movie. If you think about even the courage, he would take to take on a role like that. How about Jamie Foxx? Who's he playing? Tyson. Yes. Okay, that's going to be dope because Jamie, I'm sure probably by now, if he couldn't before it, can talk just like Mike Tyson. Oh, yeah. If I memorized the rhythm of Mike Tyson. Oh, yeah. And he'll probably look like him somehow. Jamie's an alien. He's so nice with it. I remember watching Ray being like, I can't believe I noticed, dude. And he was doing Ray Charles so good and he took the sunglasses.

2:24:29I'm like, oh, he Jamie again. He's so talented in every way. He's so talented as a singer. He's talented as a comedian. He's talented as an actor. He's just got away. He's got a thing. He's got, there's no fat in his portrayals. You know, he just cuts through it. It's clean. He just knows how to do it. He's also one of those feel good people. Yeah. Yeah. And that's super positive. Yeah. He's just fun to be around it. He's never seen him as like a party poo. Whatever. Right. He's fucking jacked right now. Is he really jacked? Yeah. Because he's building up to play Tyson. Look at him. Jeez, the weasel. Yeah. And, you know, he's not even done yet. He's building up into Mike Tyson's shape. Yes. That's never going to happen to me, by the way. I got, I got small for a minute, but I was like, this is stupid. You did. You got pretty big for a while. It was ridiculous. What happened?

2:25:30You know, I got a lot of it. Well, before COVID. Yeah. I started working out in COVID. Last time I could remember being in a gym was like February 2020. You know what I mean? And then after that, it was just like, you know, I was on a road. I was in London. Why'd you get jacked, though? What made you decide to start working out? That should tell show shit, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, what I think one of the catalyst was, not the catalyst, but one of them was the fact that the fact that they kept saying I smoked crack. And I was a skinny dude and felt like I can't defend myself in this. I'm so skinny that this thing is believable. That bug the fuck out of it. How many people said you smoked crack? Was it in articles? Like what was it in? I believe it was an article in Newsweek. Didn't stay a smoke crack. It was a legal precision. It was with some guy saying, I'm not saying it was the drugs. At the time I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't do nothing. I was like, this is fucked up. Yeah, crack. So that's one of those, like if you were going to do something to ruin your life, that's

2:26:36the thing. I mean, I was from DC. My mayor smoked crack. The C-Sync fight. That is not. Well, it's just good luck. Yeah. Wouldn't that obscure as poor people go gain? Yeah. That's exactly what it is. Do you know who Dr. Carl Hardis? No. He's a really interesting guy. He's a guy who is a clinical researcher and was real straight laced. But he was a university researcher. I forget what university is he at? I forget. But Columbia, brilliant, brilliant guy. I've had him on the podcast a couple of times, but was researching the effects of drugs and started realizing the depictions, the depictions of drugs and drug use are all fucked up. He's a distorted idea of what these drugs do to you. He loves heroin. He talks about it. He does heroin. He snorts heroin all the time. He's like, pure heroin is wonderful. It's great. It enhances my relationship with my wife. He talks about trying pure cocaine and all these different drugs.

2:27:38He's like, he does drugs all the time. And he's a professor. He's a professor at Columbia. Oh, wow. Brilliant guy. And it's tough to argue with him because he knows so much about drugs from the perspective. This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. That's with Matt Rogers and Boan Yang. This is Boan Yang from Los Cultures. This is Matt Rogers and Boan Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction. A lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. That mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupi only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it.

2:28:39People who really care about flavor use it. Never try it. Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're out of the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Cupi, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool, spa, massage without booking an overnight stay. And I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resort pass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resort pass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20

2:29:43off when you spend $100. This code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous. Rubric is the security and AI operations company built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters automated recovery, clean data, a business that keeps moving no matter what hits. One platform, not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business at rubric.com. Again, rubric.com of an actual researcher and plus a guy who actually uses them, but goes out of his way to time he has dreads like you don't look like a typical professor in that sense. It is like you look like what is he a professor of exactly? Yeah. There you go. Okay. Psychology. Psychologist. Okay. Psychiatrist prescribes drugs.

2:30:44But it's like colleges, diagnosis, mental illness. Right. Yeah. Psychologists try to help you work through things, right? Is that the idea? Yeah, but this guy doesn't sound. He sounds like any functional drug act I've ever met in my line of work, I have met and do no many. Yeah, but he's not a drug addict. He's actually an impact. Well, he just said he does drugs all day. Does whatever drugs he wants. Let me guess. He can quit anytime he wants. He's actually put himself through withdrawals on purpose to document it. So he's put himself into a situation where he did heroin multiple days in a row to point where his body became physically addicted and then got off of it just to document what the withdrawal process is actually like. This is the most clever drug addict I've ever done. I'm not sick. I'm documenting sickness. That's crazy. Yeah. I don't know, bro.

2:31:45I think that's it. I've seen so many wonderful people that I'll never know in the same way again because of drugs because of drugs. That's true. It's heartbreaking. But what makes them what makes one person fall apart due to drugs in another person not? That's where it gets tricky because some of it's biological. Some of it's right. It's just like COVID and why did I feel fine in 2000 people a day in New York? I mean, they don't start because I know the fat people are like, you're right. It's a, there was a lot of things going on in New York. It wasn't just the obesity, but I have a friend who was a doctor there and he said, did say there was a lot of obese people, unfortunately. He'd eat bad food. Bad things happen. And that is just, that's just the reality of being a human being. I mean, but also things the reality of being a drug addict. Right. Take bad drugs, bad things happen. Right. Yeah. And how many minds are strong enough like this professor to responsibly do hard drugs?

2:32:50Yeah. This is a rare, it's like an X-Men superpower. Well, he's also a guy who understands the actual physical reaction these chemicals and compounds have on the brain and on the body. He knows it from like, you know, an academic perspective. I mean, and Michael Jackson, though, deed by drugs that was administered by a physician. Well, that was weird shit, right? Imagine the kind of stress that that guy was under. He was under so much stress he had to get anesthetized every night. Yeah, I couldn't imagine anything Michael Jackson did. Once he bought that first giraffe, I was like, you want to hold a new level, bro? I don't know what any, I don't know any of the emotional stuff. The emotional content of a guy's life like that. There's people that were pioneers in the fame game. And you think about Michael Jackson's one of them. Elvis is another one. There's people that were pioneers in being super famous to the point where nobody had been super famous like Michael Jackson before Michael.

2:33:51I don't know that anyone ever will again be what he was. Right. Or Elvis was or the Beatles were different thing. No, that shit is, I think that shit is done. Yeah, maybe it's a different thing. I can't think of one thing that everyone will agree on that much ever again in this context. I remember Michael Jackson, I've told this before, but Michael Jackson, I was listening to WBCN, the Rock of Boston, and they were going, look, I know this isn't rock, but it's so fucking good, we're going to play it anyway. And they played Michael Jackson. Oh, that's, it's that. It was that good. Yeah. And it was a rock stations. He was ubiquitous. Yeah. I mean, you know, who knows the fuck that scope was like the closest thing that I've ever like seen of that up close would be like Eddie. Yeah. One of the guys who's been, you know, on that level. Yeah. And Eddie is a cool motherfucker.

2:34:51In fact, if you're in his orbit, it feels normal in there. Yeah. His watch Gang Burled, you know King and Dug Sound, whatever it feels, maybe. Does it look like that? No. I don't know. Here. Nice. Nice one. Eddie is in capacity. Got a hair polish in his lips and Bull, he should be my suit. He likes toAmericom too. I can't, I can't, but I kinda like that. Yeah. I know what he likes the best that he can do. Oh, Paul is the who? I don't know B. Except Doug Rivers, John BenOWN, David's在. All of it, and then we can even, and you know, a little more. Michael Jackson doesn't want all of that, I'm Puerto Rico's in Boulder. сы. He's he's an anomaly in the sense that I'm sure it would come right back to him Like when he cuts up in the house it should be real funny But I don't know what it would mean. I don't know what it means to him having been This person with the right what's also he feels like his material when he goes back and watches raw He's like kind of embarrassed by it. He's a you know that it's you know It was funny when I put out my first two Netflix joints like that was on Kimmel was the only press I did

2:35:57But there was a thing going on the press where everyone was saying that the specials were dated, you know because There were jokes in there that they consider transphobic, you know And I still don't think those jokes transform, you know, I'm not gonna have that discussion But if I ever have to boy, I'm ready But the point is the point is that The thing I said the Kimmel was I don't get mad at a photograph because it wasn't taken today In other words, whatever was going on in 87 when he laid that set now It was working in 87. That's where people are at and a good comedian is an indicator of the time or their context And I look at Eddie shit like that like I wouldn't look at any of his old material as embarrassing Sometimes I'm starting why I could never do that now, right? But it makes it even more fun to see that there was this time when he was saying these things I'm you know, I'm a comedian. I don't smell any malloc in it

2:36:57I don't think he's trying to hurt anybody. No, it's just guys just cracking. He was doing comedy that was relevant during the time that he was doing it It was the world was a different place. Right, and it's not irrelevant now The thing that's remote was he's a different guy, right? Which is why he feels embarrassed Yeah, about what happens to the world? Well, I'm to this guy in the world. He sees the world different now and this happens crazy thing is he doesn't look a day older It looks great. He looks amazing. He looks great Yeah, it's amazing one time I was watching TV with Eddie And San Francisco rerun was on And he says I'm as old now His red fox was in this episode San Francisco that's crazy, right? Didn't look at television. I look at Eddie my damn He goes, yeah, I'm as old now as Carol O'Connor was in all in the family You think how archie bunker look them on the fuck good look terrible crazy Look terrible there goes Eddie looking like his 1987. That's crazy. Yeah

2:38:03That is that is wild. Yeah, he's just taking so good care of himself What does he do is he exercise a lot? No, I have no idea. It's like prints. I you know, I've never seen prints eat or drink anything I'm sure he does it I don't know what Eddie does He bolls he's a family guy and stuff like that like he's really into his family In good to see it's normal, bro like like For all the thing you know for all the things you'll hear about Hollywood. I'm always startled how normal Everybody is I don't know if it's just the angle I get to see or But all that Pageantry and shit that's completely unsustainable nobody can do that all the time. Yeah, somewhere somehow you're just gonna be yourself isn't it weird that that's what we think about when we think about Hollywood we think about red carpets and people with tuxedos on and ridiculous watches and purses and And I'll just On the red carpet

2:39:04It's a tough one. It's weird. I mean, I don't know by the way. I don't knock anybody for doing that I don't think but that's you know that ain't what we doing. No, I'm not interested No, it's fun sometimes It's it's just so weird. It's so different than real life Yeah, but in a weird way that is their real life. That's a work thing. It's a peak work thing It's like this is peak glam Ta-da but this thing were And I think this is changing in the culture remember it was this thing about celebrities could never be unhappy Yeah, fuck that man. That's that's You know, I'm not saying they should display that but you assume just assume everybody is a bad day right? Fuck that red carpet face I only make that fucking face for the red this is Matt Rogers from Los culture east that's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang This is Bowen Yang from Los culture east of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo

2:40:08It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle You've probably seen it in the grocery store before and if you've ever just walked past it Some people would say that's a huge mistake because this mayo is different most mayonnaise uses whole eggs Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor It's smoother deeper and almost buttery once people try it they start putting it on everything Egg sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it once you notice it You start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it never try it Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything then you'll understand Cupid the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is actually like an Eddie from the almost famous podcast You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass calm. There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy

2:41:11You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home But it felt like it was a whole different world and I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort pass calm choose your resort choose your day Luxury resort day passes start at just $25 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good to resort pass calm slash almost famous and use the promo code Almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 that's code almost famous at resort pass calm slash almost famous Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters That's why trade pros trust fiber cement party backer board to keep tile firmly in place resist cracking and help block moisture Chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms party backer board what the best build on shop now at participating home depot

2:42:14Lows and floor into core stores for more information visit James Hardy dot com slash Hardy backer Best of my life Look at that. I think you know I'm as I get older. I'm overwhelmed by how human we all are It really makes me like people more And forgive people more that's important. That's everything forgive people and forgive yourself. Yeah, I just think that I don't know in this season of my life I'm into I hope hopefully I'll do something I will make this mean something other than just the trappings of success how hot my whip is or You know I pretty my bitches and all the stupid shit that that we have been trained to focus on I want it I want it. I want to be better than that. I don't want to do you have an idea?

2:43:17I have some ideas nothing I would really want to I don't want to make any public declarations because then I might have to do the shit but But I as just a general rule it by the way There's so many surprising ways that you can be of use to people Big things everyone always trying to hit a home, but Sometimes it's smile you muster for a person, you know It's a lot of things you can do. I just try to you know walk softly on the earth and that's a fun you know But I just know that Investing celebrity into more to getting more celebrity as a treadmill I don't feel interested in running on in the twilight of my life right and fuck that Yeah, no you get it You know what it's like to be famous. Yeah, yeah, and I'm not mad at famous. You say fame I'm not mad at that celebrity. Well, that's the one was a difference. It's fine. It's on the letterman about it

2:44:19Celebrities the role. That's what the one on a red carpet. You're famous It's not that you're not a celebrity, but it's not like you're sticking your pinky toe out on the red carpet And you're not going to play the people saying what are you wearing right you didn't make your life about that? You know you're not tethered to endorsements and this dead and the other You're tethered to yourself to your journey to your life which makes it meaningful, you know and You know for you to talk the shit that you talk even in this context There's a courageousness that you have to you know you're subject to so much Outside scrutiny, you know I mean, but you do it anyway. That's why it's courageous, you know you're relentlessly yourself Takes it take this is a practice skill. This is takes some consistency You have to choose in the beginning You have to take an inventory know who you actually are some people think they are the famous guy famous your

2:45:25Circumstances it's not necessarily who you are trust me when I left the show I wasn't famous It was circumstances that I left behind I mean I was famous, but it wasn't that thing right it's different And and and I realized you know when we came up we coveted that thing without even knowing what it was Because it seemed unattainable you would see other people that had it, you know someone would show up at the club walk through and Oh shit look at him. Yeah, everybody is You know right, but it was it was still an abstraction like you know, right Martin walks in and You know, he's brimming with happiness. Right Martin lot walked it Martin was the first guy that I ever saw that walked in with security hilarious I was like wow he's got security at the store and needed it, bro. Oh, yeah I People forgot how fucking strong Martin Lawrence was God damn his act was powerful. I used to have to follow him. It's he sure was hilarious

2:46:29She used to always she thought you were funny. She would put you on after the best comedians and just throw you right to the wolves She always thought it was funny She always put me on after I was you know 27 26 years old whatever I was She put me on after Martin Lawrence all the time, you know, just bomb But that's what that's how you get great. I remember the first time I met Martin. I was in high school Wow I saw Martin do a show him and Tommy Davis might be one of the best single comedy shows I've ever seen And it was like a local DC club Marlon Wayne's was there. He was going to college in DC at the time was the night. I met him and man First of all Tommy Davidson went on he man this motherfucker Tommy can crack He's a funny funny funny funny guy a great performer great impressionist Every every skill set that you could think of he has an abundance and Martin was headlining I watched Tommy show and I I was worried for the headliner. What does that ever happen?

2:47:30Hmm, Lauren was fine Martin was fine like like like the city did on that stage that night and and this was like in The area that he grew up in so he had that set Hmm, you know, there's probably a couple girls in high school that missed him that was there and that kind of shit He did the thing, bro, and I'll tell you the Martin Lawrence was a He was a beast on stage people forgot for some reason shit I'll never I'm from DC so I can't forget like like when I when I was starting out he was the local legend already Well when I first came to LA was in 94 he was in his peak Oh, yeah, Jesus. Yeah, that was you you so crazy days Yeah, that was some over shit He was hosting dev jam. Yeah, he had the sitcom. Yeah, he was he was putting out specials and just started getting big in that movie game and The spec that when you watch his sitcom people forget like he did a bunch of different characters on that show like it was all him

2:48:32The show was all him. Yes, he was he was nice with it. He's probably still nice with that. I mean I haven't seen Martin a long time. I haven't seen him forever. I ran into him at the store like a few years back Which is briefly You know, he was doing all the few sets every now and then he called me after one of my the mark twang prize If you know because I'm from DC. I got to tell you this call Means a lot to me. Yeah, he was yeah, he was one of my Early local heroes. I came up on a good circuit to like One boss and with DC wanted to start out with me patinals. Well, I was around you know Tony Woods Marlord's time Davidson There was some there was some great comics. That's one thing the comedy always needs needs you need to be around other great comics That's true the circuit. Yeah, and back in those days, you know internet nothing every city Has some different energy and the comedians they're like it's always exciting to go to a city and check out the other acts

2:49:35Yeah, Boston like you say that was one of those cities. It was a weird city. It was but it was a trap Those were talking about before those guys can make six figures staying in town But that's what they did because if they went on the road that actually make less money. What made you go to Hollywood? Why didn't you fall for that? I saw what they were doing and even though they were great comedians I saw that they couldn't do the road and I was like if you want to get on HBO or if you want to you know You have a special you got to you got to get out of town and the young guys coming up kind of saw the old guard That these some of the best headliners I've ever seen in my life. I've seen Don Gavin have sets Steve Sweeney have sets that I mean I will put those sets up against any comic I've ever seen ever you know It was funny the first night I saw Dane Cook They go young after so so you know I was a cocky I don't worry about that shit But but they I heard the crowd screams so loud. I thought they had introduced me Wow It was Dane. He was just starting out. These were crowd reactions. Okay. There was a there was a thing in Boston

2:50:42Everyone was a room ripple like All about volume intensity. Yeah, Don Gavin that rapid fire style. I'll never forget you And then in the midst of all that you'd have a counterweight like Stephen Wright. Mm-hmm. This Wandafully understated deadpan comedian. It was that shit was fire. Boston was a good circuit Have you ever seen the documentary when stand-ups stood out? No, this is a comic named France, all of me now. He put together this documentary on Boston It's really good. It just shows you what what it was like back in those days like they kind of invented a movement There's really a lot of it was Barry Krimman's rest in peace Who's Barry Krimman's Barry Krimman's was like the godfather of Boston comedy in a lot of ways because he was this really brilliant guy very politically savvy and He kept everybody from being a hack because everybody was scared of him He was like this fucking both boys like loud bold guy who he would go on stage and He had a jack-on he would pull Budweiser on the inside pocket of his jacket and set it on the table

2:51:47Had like these things he would do, but it was a great comic, but Maybe more important he was like a cornerstone of the scene This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. He's just with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures. There's Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle You've probably seen it in the grocery store before and if you've ever just walked past it Some people would say that's a huge mistake because this mayo is different most mayonnaise uses whole eggs Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor It's smoother deeper and almost buttery once people try it they start putting it on everything Egg sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it once you notice it You start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it Never try it grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything then you'll understand

2:52:51Cupid the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley like you're Eddie from the almost famous podcast You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass calm. There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home But it felt like it was a whole different world and I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort pass calm choose your resort choose your day luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000 once you post your daycation People are gonna ask where you are good of resort pass calm slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 that's code almost famous at resort pass calm slash almost famous

2:53:53Like if if Barry didn't like you you were fucked right if Barry thought you were a hack you were fucked and they didn't tolerate hacks He didn't tolerate thieves he was quality control quality control Yeah, every every circuit I guess yeah, yeah, and they this is the thing that Dan Cook's talked about this too that they were all men these guys were all these big guys They were all like six foot plus big burly guys who did a lot of coke and gotten street fights all those comics They weren't like nebyshy, you know comics who would you know talk about their insecurities? They were wild dudes who like rock stars. Yeah, I remember doing a show on Boston I think I'm like seeing things, but I just remember seeing a guy who's heck on me and And and and the security threw him down steps. Yeah, and I'd never seen anything like was so casually like This is what we do with trash Like Jesus man. Yeah, there was a lot of violence in Boston. It was it was a weird and I never really got a Feel for that city I would meet these intellectuals and idiots in the same block

2:54:57The fuck is this place? Well, there's more colleges per capita in Boston anywhere else in the country. Yeah, yeah I used to go up there and play college gigs all the time and you know the Remember the Boston police felt particularly minising. Yeah, those fucking high boots. They wear with no horse to match Fuck I use to stop away That's a weird city, but then they produce so many great You know sources of comedy even people who are from Boston guy like how it's turned and went to be you Got like Patrice O'Neill came out of the hood move down New York and clean shit up out there was yeah The interesting thing Patrice is a similar type of thing, right? He was like a cornerstone of Of comedy in New York when people talk about like people getting silly or being stupid They go God. I wish Patrice was here to see this. Yeah, Patrice. Yeah, yeah, the world weary kind of swag about Early on me and him didn't like get along, but we became friends

2:55:59Because this guy was like he was he's a real deal. He was a real deal. God. I wish he stayed alive. I do too, man The comedy he would have put out during all this shit and we as well That's interesting because I don't know what would happen to a guy like him in this context. Mm-hmm He's not bucklein. I tell you that I know so I say right. I don't know what's gonna happen to him Yeah, it would be interesting to see it really would be you know one can only imagine one can only imagine but But he was man, he was something though. He's funny, dude I remember him and Kevin got to New York around the same time. I just think Kevin was from Boston because I'd see them together so much. I just so And they arrived along the scene was like both you know Both these guys make out on the scene it was it was noticeable. Mm-hmm. It wasn't like they came in quietly They they they was doing some shit That's another thing that every scene needs every every scene needs a rocket

2:57:01Yeah, someone that shakes shit up. Yeah, like whoa like someone who's not stagnant. They're not complacent. They're going for it. I got to tell you New York City in the 90s Some of the greatest comedy I've ever seen like it was it was weird too because I was one of those guys that would be in New York and then go out to LA a little earlier than everyone else Like you know, I did Montreal and then I'd go out for this and I go out for that and I started you know auditing both scenes You know New York was like the dream but LA Those comics were like The work ethics were different New Yorkers write more you know in general If you do if you do Ten spots in the night you come up with a new joke on a third show You got seven cracks at it by the end of the night. Yeah, you know, you just thought of the thing is refined. Yeah Yeah, LA didn't have any opportunity to do that. That's a different world. Right LA people were so competitive about stage time

2:58:08They was that shit's like the karate kid tournament these motherfuckers got killed every night sweep the leg But since they you got a problem with that That's LA no mercy LA in the 90s was everybody trying to get a sitcom too. That was part of the problem. Oh, yeah, it was it was a gold rush Yeah, they saw what happened with Rosanne and Jerry Seinfeld and I don't even know if that was come of Completely from the comedians the studio system was so hungry for comedians to build these shows around yeah They would give you these crazy development deals. Yeah, I you know, I did a million of those That's they took me like 13 14 of them shit to be like me fuck that shit before you get a shapel Sure, but the good thing is I learned how television work basically how supposed to work and what I'd like to do with it What was interesting is that you they basically gave you free money The people don't understand this like they would give you like a half a million dollars or a quarter million dollars And you would get this development deal need to attach you to a bunch of writers They put together a script and it may or may not go and if it didn't go

2:59:11You just got a free quarter million dollars and you worked on a script and maybe it went to pilot maybe it didn't yeah But if it didn't go you were a bad investment you had a couple of those in you and it could hurt It could hurt you it could you know if they ever looked you like your bum investment thing wasn't me. I was funny But they didn't quite know what to do with me. Yeah, and and I didn't know either. Yeah I Don't know those days of the Montreal days were weird right people go out there Just go out there to showcase showcase their talent try to get a deal and then Do you remember chicken? Do you remember that guy? I do remember he got it He got some huge deals in the 90s and it didn't it late 90s flop terribly like for whatever reason they thought he was funny And nobody else did yeah the name chicken should have tipped them off. Maybe this is bad ideas Who should we make the check out to chicken? Well, he had a big crazy act. It was like a lot of energy. I never saw him work I saw him work. I worked with him in Montreal, but that name is stupid

3:00:16No, no disrespect chicken, but that's stupid his name so it all fell apart and then he wound up hanging himself in front of a school Oh now you got to bring that up and I feel bad cuz I said I mean I just shouted out chicken and this nigga's dead five years Oh my god He hung himself in front of school. Yeah, yeah There you go. Yeah Because of comedy it didn't work out It fell apart so like he thought he was on this rocket ship to fame like oh my god I got the biggest deal ever he got like the biggest development deal anybody had ever heard of I remember and then they were like they're gonna make a show around him I forget what kind of show it was gonna be and then Didn't work out and then he slowly faded away and then he vanished and then one day killed himself How long after the deal fell apart quite a long time more than a decade He never got over the experience of almost making it. I don't know who knows I mean, maybe he was mentally ill maybe you suffering from depression from the beginning and maybe that big crazy wild act was his like

3:01:20So it may have not had anything to do with show business totally possible But it's not a good narrative. The good narrative is show business got him right? Yeah See if you find that guy I never saw it said I remember everyone in town was talking about never seen them Comedians couldn't understand what was going on he would make a lot of noise a bounce around on stage and screaming and yelling and everyone's like What is he doing I've seen a few comics like that with the We kill a no and I'll and I'll be like I don't understand Well the agents thought they had it like this is it he's gonna be huge we got him and you know they played against each other and Got this giant deal This is tragic. It's weird now. I'm mourning the lowest of chicken I never even met this mother there were quite a few people that thought they were gonna be giant I remember quite a few people who got development deals and and all of a sudden they had assistance like You got an assistant people would show up with an assistant and someone would take notes while they're on stage and They'd have their coffee ready for them and they were you know, they drove him or Sadie's like what are you doing?

3:02:23We got a got a development deal my show's gonna go. It's a got a got a guarantee and then they do the pilot Right, that's why I call my company pilot boy. You know, I'm gonna be the fucking pilots I did It's like fuck this is like gonna be for it was hell. That's what you call it pilot boy. That's it That's hilarious development hell I With decade in my life Tinker around with that shit. That's hilarious Do you do you think you're gonna do more of these podcasts the ones that you I've produced you You gotta keep doing that I'd like to yeah, I think uh You know, it's it's not like this gig, you know, I mean it's as joyful as this like I talked to people I enjoy talking to You know, I don't want to like tip my hand too much because I want people to like listen and see for themselves what it is I don't like describing It's like telling a girl how you gonna fuck up before you do it. Let's see what it feels like You know it's but but I enjoyed it man like again who I'm talking to I hope you do it one day

3:03:26This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang You know when people try out new food and suddenly it's like wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle you've probably seen it in the grocery store before And if you've ever just walked past it some people would say that's a huge mistake because this mayo is different Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs QB only uses egg yolks which gives it this rich umami flavor It's smoother deeper and almost buttery once people try it They start putting it on everything egg sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it Once you notice it you start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it Never try it grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything then you'll understand QB the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast

3:04:27You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort past calm. There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home But it felt like it was a whole different world and I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort past calm choose your resort choose your day luxury Resort day passes start at just $25 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good Resort past calm slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 That's code almost famous at resort past calm slash almost famous You love it. I've heard episodes. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I would love to do it. I would definitely do it

3:05:31I love what you did in y'all springs too because you were the first guy to figure it out You were the first guy to say you know, I was just I'm gonna do comedy. We got to it early man When did you start like what was the first shows? June 6th the first night was denied I did the Video that was on YouTube 846 that George for a very first night 70 people maybe a five acre field Wow, I was like as soon as I you know what was happening so many people alive in attainment were furlough That I started finding out from the production world who had gotten furlough and I'd stop picking them up It was like you know, and it's a lot of these people I'd paint and cash because if I if I did it you know straight down the middle Right, they lose their benefits and if for any reason I had to cancel the shows then they're just stranded with no benefits I couldn't do that right so it was like the the 80s and shots painted by on the table even though I'm doing thing illegal, but You know and The night before the first show

3:06:34I was like a condemned man. I had to put a call into the governor's office. I'm not there. I mean fucking nightclub Commer going to I'm calling the governor Uh, and it was it was a long shot, but but shot out to governor Dwayne. He hit me back And he he let me do it because of you know after that massacre and dating we had done a big Thing that really I think really helped heal the community And because of that he was like okay. I'll I'll actually do it, but the COVID protocols were so strict And we had to learn from scratch how to how to do it, you know, nothing's gonna be perfect It's a pandemic everything you do is gonna be risky, but we had to figure out how to do it Is safe as possible within the within the parameters of guidelines that the government saw fit But we were able to work. Did you sell booze? Uh, no, we had to give it away Oh, wow, you know like you know, there's a lot of stuff that we've built into the ticket to mask and all these things You know, we try to make accessible the shows are expensive produce

3:07:37So I didn't make anyone I lose money every night, but You know here we are a year later. I might be 105 shows ahead of everybody right right cuz work you stay doctor Yeah, we you know, we might have done like what we might know a good a good 3040 shows here. Yeah So it's that you've we found a way and and the best part like I said is we all got to be together. So you know people would fly in from LA and in New York And we'd work three nights a week and some people stay and we you know, we Good chill because we eventually we got Access to testing that was the game changer. So we test every day and So when you first started out there was no testing? No, it was just it where there was for the comedians You know, but but the crowd it's like going to the grocery store right coming to your own risk everyone mask up Everyone was outside everyone was out everything was outside everything was probably social socially distance one of the things I learned early on is selling tickets and payers

3:08:42You know that was a game changer because it allowed us to get more people in and You know, we it was it just made everything easier because you imagine if if there's two single seats You can't put two strangers together right in a time like this of course, you know It worked um As far as the audience was concerned not a single reported incident I've heard of someone getting sick on fact in one of these shows. We were very careful You know and then eventually started testing the crowd You right as testing got became more available in the beginning having tests was like oh my god can't believe me Right kind of hands on these very difficult to get testing and The test one is rapid it would take longer So you wouldn't have time to test All those people I mean the staffing that you'd have to do To give you know a few hundred people a test that takes 30 minutes for results. Mm-hmm. Who has that kind of time? Yeah

3:09:44Yeah, you can't wait 30 minutes. Right And oh, but now like like you know when we play in Vegas, we we have the capacity and we could test All 13,000 people and get them in and in a reasonable time Yeah, sounds crazy, but it's possible. Yeah, and now it is yeah Early on in the pandemic. That was I think like you know When one Trump said something like just stop testing everybody. Yeah, I'm telling you from experience That's a terrible terrible idea It's ridiculous thing is that yeah, like I can't believe that motherfucker was in charge at a time like that We say that was a while It was saying the reason the numbers are so high is because we're testing more people. Yeah Yo my man like come on. Let's think this through Well, that's just something take a quick a lie. So my fucking think about what you say The fuck is this guy talking about that's your leader It's so interesting that that guy's not on social media now

3:10:47They try to he tried to get back on Facebook and they're like now come back in six months It's like he's up for a parole Yeah, you know, it's a weird thing being a comedian because there's a thing about Trump that If the circumstances weren't so dire and the consequences so high that would have been hilarious to watch yeah Yeah, yeah But man people died and countries all fucked up now and capital looks like jail. I know it's crazy It just looks like a green zone now. Yeah, I'm from DC. I gotta tell you that shit was particularly offensive to me And DC that's the town business is government And those people that were in that building so many of them are people from the neighborhoods like it feels like you fucking my studio. Yeah It's just a scary precedent when you decide you're gonna break down boundaries and you're gonna rush the capital building And you're gonna do it with no real plan And you're gonna take pictures on Pelosi's desk with your feet up and take pictures holding the flag wearing a buffalo

3:11:50All right, there's no one to negotiate with who should I talk to this motherfucker with the zip ties and this bullwink one nigga like who the fuck all these people May fuck these people you guys are fucking the country up Changed everything one day one day change everything because then people knew that that was possible that never happened Yeah, they didn't happen at the million-man march and they was ready for us But look at this shit And the president was the catalyst for it. Yeah, whether you want to say he's legally responsible or not that's fine, but He did say go take the building back You gotta be strong. Did you say go take the building back? Is that what he said? He said I take out country back He said I mean I put words in this fellow's mouth and I'm not no I'm not an anti-Trump guy. I'm not pro and he like this shit is like Theater to me. I remember when he won you had a great speech said give him a chance Right, and you know I said that because he was duly elected and stormed the capital remember my shit on the wall

3:12:55Thanks Someone rubbed their shit on the wall. I believe a person did Is this his first time in the capital he got excited. It's kind of amazing only one person got shot You know as sad as that was it is amazing because I mean that could have been a terrible terrible terrible situation. Yeah, and Miraculously, you know, it could have been so much worse if it was like carnage there Jesus If one shot went off in the wrong context, right that whole building would have been lit up. Yeah There were four different five four five different law enforcement departments in there by the end of it. It's crazy You know seeing seeing your officials Flee their constituents. Well, that's crazy. You know, what's crazy is that was five months ago And they're still catching people Oh, that's not gonna stop right now. No, they're will stop. They're getting people off of photographs facial recognition software

3:13:59videos People turning their friends in right it's it's this is this is all like I'm in a shit bro But hopefully it's a growing pain and on the other side of this People be more willing to do You know right by each other. Yeah, we just need a legitimate leader I'll put an ad in the paper Someone who can who can inspire Everybody that you actually want to do that job. Mm-hmm. Don't want to do that job. Yeah You know if it's this hard being a comedian. I can't even imagine Even a guy like Obama I think about it. That shit looks really hard to do being black And it sounds tight, but it's not that was it that was a a cultural it was like the moon landing seeing somebody who's not White be president nice especially with a name like Barack Hussein Obama, my this is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures

3:15:00That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang this is Bowen Yang from Los Cultures of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang You know when people try on new food and suddenly it's like wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle You've probably seen it in the grocery store before and if you've ever just walked past it some people would say that's a huge mistake Because this mayo is different most mayonnaise uses whole eggs QB only uses egg yolks which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper and almost buttery once people try it They start putting it on everything egg sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust And once you notice it you start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor Use it never try it grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything Then you'll understand QB the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is actually like an Eddie from the almost famous podcast You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away

3:16:03But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home But it felt like it was a whole different world and I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort pass.com choose your resort choose your day luxury resort day passes start at just $1,500 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good resort pass.com slash almost famous And use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 that's code almost famous at resort pass.com slash almost famous god man, we we did that You know fond of what that meant culture you could argue about policy this that or the other but but I'm you know Ohio

3:17:08We voted for Trump twice I voted for mama twice too. It's an interesting swing state. Oh, I mean and normally we pick right like whoever we pick Is the president this last going around being the exception. Maybe the only exception You know Uh If fuck politics man. Yeah, like literally That's fabulous. I'm telling you I'm on my kindness conspiracy Is as long as I'm kind to feel like if if we live by an ethic of kindness if we force the trust amongst each other Well, matter less with corporations and politicians say because we'll be able to trust Our society's cohesiveness. Yeah, but if you politicize these things It's gonna be very it's gonna become increasingly difficult to come to an understanding and agree Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I think it's just It's so difficult when people get attached to whatever Political party they are they're in it's very difficult for them to disagree with that party

3:18:11And so easy for them to go along with it and then so easy for them to hate the people that are opposed to it The people that are on the other party. It's such a binary thing. It's so dumb. It's also a cold thing to do in front of all of us Yeah I don't think people feel that way. No most people don't But when we're talking in groups. That's when it gets weird Right talking in tribes. Yeah, it's getting tribal here. I don't know Moe that was funny I don't even really know what you politically believe or don't believe but Give us a fuck I get along with every time I see I know you funny I know you're nice dude. We laugh about shit. We learn shit from each other We you're from boss and I'm from DC's very two very different Types of places and types of cultures this culture comedy is coming to nominate Makes me feel like we're of the same tribe for sure and there's trans people in my tribe and there's white and black and Asian And all kinds of people and all of them are committed to this

3:19:14Concept of levity and we all get there different and interesting unique ways And what's wrong with that? It works and we say terrible shit to each other all the fucking time everyone's fine But it's fun. We look forward to it, but it is a tribe. It's a different kind of tribe You know when I get up in the morning and I dread getting on a plane if I have to go do a work thing I was excited to come here today not to be on a big podcast. I'm gonna hang with you I'm sure I probably said four things that I wiped already. I don't even know it yet. No I don't take a look at the comment section. Yeah, it's good shit. There's everything you said is a dead-on Likewise, hey, man. You got any of your cups. What does this thing you got with this buffalo? Yeah, I can't see you and not celebrate Now obviously is this some cheap shit Joe? That's the shit, bro. Kentucky Street, Burden, and Whiz. Buffalo Tracy has been around Longer than America. It's 1773 that company really. Yeah, wow

3:20:16Taste like slavery Hey Hey fingers you don't got a cup. Do you right here? Oh, put out your water. Oh my man. It's out That's good. All right water drinks that shit. All right, so to Joe Rogan Good, I'm gonna be nice. Come on. Yeah, man. No ice My own wins was at my house in Ohio. Yeah, the cheers man. So Lou My own wins. I can tell you it's one of my favorite people He's a wildly consistent dude in my life He's hanging out in Hollywood and sometimes I drank too much and but I knew where he lived He's like one of the people I knew he lived and I just knock on his door He's opening. He got some rum in his basement. He just stole blankets and then I'd sleep really? Because I trust him Yeah, he's just a fucking cool dude, man. He's a funny guy. He does he's cool dude That's awesome anyway, I brought him up because he came to my shack. That's why I do my shows like my little hang out

3:21:20I got a little clubhouse around corner from the crib. We all just hang out there nothing the fairies But Marlon was so in sense that I didn't have ice That he bore me an ice machine. It was a weird gift She just he didn't even tell me she just sent it in the mail Who does that? Tell me about this club that you're opening Comedy club. Yeah had conversation once with Chris rock Yeah, I love Chris rock too. I love all comedians, but but Chris And I was talking about And this is an interesting question. I'm gonna see you how you feel about I said how many seats Are you optimal like when you look at a crowd? How many people do you want to see out there? We feel like I'm home Chris said Like six thousand And I forget sometimes got big big star Me 200 That's like a sweet spot for me. That's why I love playing the punchline, you know But I don't even need that many the belly room one of my favorite rooms

3:22:22On earth is the belly room the comedy store. Yeah, that's like 70 seats. So can wet right? Yep I want to make this club 120 This club is not for people who are trying to count the gate this club is for people who want to like rock like really get into some shit Like try some shit out. Yeah, it's like It's like when that alternative scene in the 90s for people at home Joe Not saying the same. I know you know, but in the 90s it was an alternative what they call an alternative comedy scene This was pat and I swallowing and gendine garafalo and and and Dave cross Bob Oden Kirk these type of people And it became real popular became like a scene And I would check it out now traditional club comics hated that scene They resented it because the things that was going on there these jokes weren't structured It was more it was like a lab almost people would go there and try shit out What was interesting about it to me wasn't what the comedians were trying as much as it was

3:23:28The way the crowds would listen to them like it was when they set up If you went there and just did your act You know man how funny act is that's not what they wanted to see what they wanted to see Was someone take a chance and that shit was like heaven on earth When a crowd pushes someone to just try some stuff they don't You don't have to land the trick But the beauty is in the attempt to just try it Whatever this thing is that you worry to make you nervous on comfortable and that That scene made a profound impression on me That that was possible that you could make a crowd into that Because I'm you know comedians are addicted to the process of refinement You know guy like sign fellers He would never do a podcast because it's such a spontaneous off-the-cuff and devil And his skill is a comedian one of his super super duper pause very sign fell

3:24:28is like a Well-refined comedian he can take an abstraction and make it a refined piece This scene didn't have any of that refinement Sign fell does that but then he also does that cars comedians getting cars in cars getting coffee show Yeah, where he's like a podcast he's loose I did that show I enjoyed it actually we did it in DC. What kind of car did you drive? A French piece of shit It like broke down Thing they cut that yeah, it was good looking car, but it was a piece of shit. He's in though. Well, he's mostly in the porchus His most of his thing is porches if he's driving those other cars. It's really more for show. I think But it reminds me that show reminds me you a little bit in the sense that it's about his passions Yeah, loves cars He loves comedians he loves comedy. Yeah, and apparently he likes coffee That Jay Leno you ever done Jay Leno's garage? No, I've done that

3:25:29He is so much better at that show Then at least the way I not that he was bad at hosting it tonight show, but he's himself He really is himself like he doesn't have to dress up He wears like the same shit every day like a jean shirt and jean pants and it doesn't give a fuck what he looks like He's got no hair makeup on the set. He just wants to talk about cars The guy's got like hundreds of cars. He's got warehouses filled with cars full-time employees all over the place like working on All these people he's got fabricators people that make sheep metal like fix vendors and shit and all kinds of stuff And the fucking man loves cars and I brought my 1965 Corvette in and just he and I just geeking out over lines and Steve stroped the guy who built my car He came with me and you know We talked about all the various aspects of the car and all the improvements all the different things that he had done to it And you'd see Jay Leno going over it and knows the details of the 1965 the original mode

3:26:29This is talk. This is Matt Rogers from Los culture east. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang This is Bowen Yang from Los culture east of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle You've probably seen it in the grocery store before and if you've ever just walked past it Some people would say that's a huge mistake because this mayo is different most mayonnaise uses whole eggs QB only uses egg yolks which gives it this rich umami flavor It's smoother deeper and almost buttery once people try it they start putting it on everything Egg sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it once you notice it You start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it never Try it grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything then you'll understand QB the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is actually like an Eddie from the almost famous podcast

3:27:31You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass calm there are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home But it felt like it was a whole different world and I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort pass calm choose your resort choose your day luxury resort day passes start at just $1,500 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good of resort pass calm slash almost famous And use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 that's code almost famous at resort pass calm Slash almost famous one of the different things then and then he drove it He's the only one other than me has ever driven that car really yeah

3:28:33He takes it a ball and go out to the hills and went up into Los Angeles crest forest, you know May he took me out one night you had a hot one at that poor sheets to drive. Oh, yeah, I still got that That was a hot one. That was fun that night was wild And you started doing the mother for you know, we was up in them Hollywood Hills. He started on them James Dean turns. I got scared I got scared the Joey you doing that car's glued to the ground though. Oh, I know you that's what you were demonstrating Yeah, yeah, you were whipping at shit. Oh, that was a night. We went to the name of Campbell's book release party Yeah, actually it was fun though. It was wild. It went at weird. It was weird to me Well, cuz you want to expect it. Yeah, you you were just at the comedy club. I ran into you Yeah, and was like yo, I need DD. Let's go to this party jump. Buh-buh-buh. We were so high too. I was like okay. Let's go It was fun, man. It was really fun, but it was it was like you know I thought it was just gonna be a regular night at the store next you know we're in an elevator That's going up the side of the hill. Oh, that mountain. Yeah, that was crazy weird and nice house giant naked picture of names

3:29:37Cambell on the side of the building remember that No, it's like 40 foot tall nude It was crazy and then you get in there and there's all these famous people This is one of my favorite parts of the night We're sitting around and you and I are talking to you man I would not want to be famous like these people and I looked to you go do you the most famous person here? And you know, it was you Joe and you're like no am I I go you were the most famous person in this fucking And I don't have you know You know I I could forget about it. Yeah, it's yeah, you can forget about it You know how to let it go, but it was Lenny Kravitz was there and Demi Moore and there was all these famous people's wild Like oh, there's that guy. You know, again, I'm always talking about like Lenny Kravitz is a cool mother fuck a lot Very cool. I really dig him the first time I met him Uh Sherman Helms that he used to play George Jefferson. Yeah, introduce me to right?

3:30:38Did a movie with him years ago? It was me Norma Donald Sherman Helmsley was in it. Wow and and I remember I didn't know him well, but you know all struck as a Jefferson's fan. I'm any normal leadership What I was watching and he invited me to come to this concert with him I didn't realize the time that Lenny Kravitz mother was on the Jefferson's which is how he knew him Ah man I smoked a joint with George Jefferson and we went out to see his Lenny Kravitz show And Lenny could have been nicer. Yeah, he was very normal. Doesn't he he lives on a like a giant ranch in Brazil He has a giant ranch in Brazil. Oh, he lives there. He just goes there. Okay. Yeah, he got yeah He's one of them. Do you see got a beautiful house in Paris? I've never been but I heard stories got You know spread in the Bahamas where his family is from oh wow and then and then he got the the Brazilian jump off So you know he he does it big and and Lenny is a style guy like Mm-hmm everything he does is it's just fly prints was like that too

3:31:39Everything just kind of fly they did a tour of Lenny's house. It's a video And he's going over all the art pieces and who designed this chair and who made all these things and showing this this video of this place in Brazil His beautiful man. He started making furniture designing furniture stuff like that. Now, you know, it's funny I don't have really Kanye is like this Kanye West Is a design genius like it's not a trick And then it's eight people call Kanye jeans all the time This is not just a label that's slapping on it if you ever see him in a studio session Smoth fucker look like captain Kirk running the bridge like he's yeah, he knows we he's nice with it I'm very lucky to get to see people were great at things up close even being on his podcast Feel like you can make podcast stuff, but you kind of make podcast up and just And I know he is fucking a strange neighborhood in life You know It's one of the like joys of my life getting to know these people knowing and singing

3:32:45them Be human, you know we struggle through these names. We Belieic about decisions. We but but everyone know none of these people that I know are contest winners They all work very hard. Yeah be great at what they do everyone is gifted But these people spent time refining their gift and getting rejection and taking all those shots that you take in life And they made something of it. I can't begrudge them that you know and I always hope that none of us white We all survive it. That's why that cancel culture should bother me I don't I'm not even opposed to the ideas behind you know some of these cancellations. I get it. I get I get Stopping harassment, you know stopping all racism harassment. This is them. That is this phobia that's I get it. Let's fight it And the inclination all of it is to make the world a better place. That's the inclination It gets abused and misused sometimes by the wrong people and bad actors But at the end of the day what they're trying to do at least what they think they're trying to do is eliminate bad

3:33:47Aspects of our culture in our society. Right. They're trying to do right because society doesn't correct itself And in that sense I appreciate like when these my kids make me very hopeful for the future You know, I mean like a lot of people say I wouldn't want good people. I know I don't want to bring kids into this world like my age no kids Don't do that shit if you if you think you're a good person please Have a kid Put all your good ideas in that kid So that the world will be better. I quote you all the time because there's something He said to me in the parking lot of the comedy store. He said My children didn't just increase the amount of love in my life. They increase my capacity for love. Oh, it's very true They they say they save my life wasn't a dying stress, but man I I wouldn't be fractionally I think when I am or I have some of the courage that I was able to must have It's not like I'm not scared. I'll be scared, but I just do shit anyway Everybody who knows me says there's like me pre children and post children

3:34:49Maybe a different person. I'm so much nicer. I always liked you, Jada. I never I never saw he was a mean guy. You always kind Uh, you always edgy and everyone was scared of you because you know kung fu But you know, it's not like he was in the comedy club sweet kicking niggas and shit. He was kicking it and I don't know bro like I just feel real grateful for the years. I got to do this like I don't feel the I feel grateful to You know, I think we're so fortunate that you know, you look at people that are living their life and That uh that famous quote that I love most men live lives of silent desperation Wow who said that and why did they say such a thing uh Walden pond. What is his name? Femisin thorough. Yeah. Oh, it was oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was his throat quote It's a great quote and it's so true most most people are just just fucking

3:35:52God every day is struggle. They don't whether it's What they they're not doing what they want to do they don't feel love They're not surrounded by interesting people. They're not stimulated like every day My problem is I just have a lot of shit to get done. That's my only problem every day But it's funny because a lot of the shit you do There's less social capital than This is an easy existence now men don't have to lift heavy things anymore. Mm-hmm. You know You're out here hunting your own meat Shopping your kung fu lifting weights Yeah, I'm not doing none of that shit, but I realized a long time ago. I have to do all those things to keep my head right I get that I get that I don't know that I have a similar passion, but you know what I find my solace and in people There's so much shit that I see You know, I want to say like I'm talking about circumstantially what they'd say is the normal circumstantial people

3:36:53who have these incredible Capazis in them It's harder now that I got notoriety to be around the people that move me the most But it's people like that that guy that goes to the guy that goes to the job he doesn't like. Yeah, I respect this guy Oh, yeah, you know, you know, there's so many people that met it's will that's a real willpower People who do actual public service not these fake woke to this but the woman that works at the shelter for For the abused women or helps women get out of relationships. Yeah, abusive with their lives Or helps veterans cope with PTSD or get counseling and this guy I met that launched both his legs and was Cracking up laughing with me when he was talking about it. These people blow my fucking mind. Yeah, I was issued. It's exciting Yeah, there's a lot of exciting people out there and just because someone's famous doesn't mean they're exciting. Oh boy ain't that the truth I'm gonna start naming lemons, but some of these niggas is lemons

3:37:55Lames It's so true. There's so many of them. They're so bland This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like Wait That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try QB mayo It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle you probably seen it in the grocery store before And if you've ever just walked past it some people would say that's a huge mistake because this mayo is different Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs QB only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery once people try it they start putting it on everything Eggs sandwiches fries burgers some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it once you notice it You start seeing it everywhere chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it Never try it grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store put it on just about anything then you'll understand

3:38:58QB the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is actually like an Eddie from the almost famous podcast You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass calm There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed so just go to resort pass calm choose your resort choose your day Luxury resort day passes start at just $1,500 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good to resort pass calm slash almost famous And use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 that's code almost famous at resort pass calm slash almost famous

3:40:01Yeah, but then I'll meet somebody who doesn't have any notoriety and they humble me because yes They're such spectacular people. Yeah, I've been very fortunate to meet a lot of interesting people And I think doing the show has really changed the way I look at life But your kung fu has suffered Joe That's a little bit that's a drive that too, but it's also just the lack of practice all the time I just couldn't keep getting injured. That's the problem. You wouldn't never find again. No, not now. I'm 53 years old Would you find another 53 year old like like on some Mike Tyson? Yeah, Mike Tyson still fighting demons man Wow, those demons are still there this Mike Tyson is the reason why this desk is this with Did I tell you that now? I had a yeah, yeah I had a smaller desk that I was planning on using for the new studio This is the exact same with as the studio desk in my old place the exact same one And I had a small one. I'm like maybe we better if I'm a little closer to the people But then I did a podcast with Tyson

3:41:02I did two of them with Tyson one when he was high when he's running Tyson's ranch He had a little bit of a belly. He was jolly. He was just high all the time We had a wonderful conversation and then next time he came in as when he's preparing for the Roy Jones fight Oh, wow jacked and he had these big ass muscles and his forearms and he just looked ready to go And he made me so nervous like he was so keyed up. You could tell like he was ready to go Oh, what? I'm like no, no, no, no, no, fuck this small table. I need to be I need I need I need to not feel so nervous I need to have some distance. So I was thinking if I was any closer to Mike So instead of like here if I was like like this and he was that amped up It probably like affect the way I was communicating with him. I'd be nervous. He's an intimidating guy. Oh, yeah I am Fascinating with him as a public figure. Well, he is so multifaceted There's so much going on if you just looked at him as this This brute who used to be one of the greatest knockout artists of all time you'd miss so much

3:42:05He's a scholar of boxing and he does probably not our man alive who knows more about the all-time great So you can talk to you about like Harry grab and jack johnson and the Stanley Stanley catchal he'll he talked to you about guys. They'll you never even heard before even the tattoos He's got oh, yeah, Arthur Aish and yeah, and Mao I think it's it's chagwave very on him too I don't think so does he have tergivera? He definitely got Mao and Arthur Aish. Yeah, if he has chagwave I hope he lays it it off That was like that's like the bad boy eyes Or keep on trucking or something Keep on truck such as silly does he have chagavar? Yeah, I think he does on his stomach, right? Yep. Yep right there. Yeah All right. Okay. I thought I was making that up the arse there arthia ash one though And then you know it's got one on his face One of the only celebrities that pulled off the face that too I mean chagavar and fidel Castro did take over Cuba when they were in their early 30s

3:43:06That's when I was doing the second season shepel show My fuckers was taking over Cuba that's the crazy the gochew in the United States and Russia fidel ran Cuba till he fucking died. He did Crazy, but she know he's one of these guys, and I know you know is an American especially people always kind of frowned at fidel Castro But I remember like the the the deployment of Cuba doctors and the Reason they were able to do that is because the education system was so good. Cuba doctors some of those were now doctors in the world Aid packages that Castro sent to Africa when like Cuba was rolling in dough I don't know There was he's an interesting guy for two and now I say these things people and think it was days of communism He's not even close no one's all bad No, I'm afraid few people are all bad and I'll be the first to tell you communism does not look fun to me No, it's not it removes incentive. Yeah, everybody that looks at people like Bill Gates or

3:44:09You know Jeff Bezos look at these billionaires and say they have too much. We got to eliminate billionaires They have too much. They're they're the outliers They're the weirdos that have figured out how to accumulate so much wealth that it's preposterous But you can't take away all incentive for people to perform because if you do that You're not going to get any innovation. You're not going to get all the things you enjoy You would have iPhones and sure microphones and fucking Samsung TVs if people couldn't make money It's funny because In our business we make you know millions of dollars and all this shit But like famous and they still have award shows like like This is a pun and I got a trophy too. This is crazy It's really fun and a red carpet to take pictures on. Yeah, this is like it's just so It's very strange Yeah, it is very so you think you're ever gonna do any more acting or you just sticking a stand-up now Man, I got this weird idea. I want to go to Africa and do some of these

3:45:09Nollywood movies. I've been watching them And it's like this I was telling the only bad part podcast was the same thing I'm talking about with these Cuban docs People can solve problems With so little resources. This is what these African directors are like. Yeah, movies look crazy But it's funny how crazy they look but it's also all inspiring because I can't believe this guy with no resources Solve the complicated filmmaking problem with this type of ingenuity Because they had to What if something had a A reputable American starter apply these tricks to Come with the funny you just give me that look baby. Don't you worry. It's all my work out Like I want to I want to do that. I want to just see What's popping over there? I ever goes popping right now What do you would you have an idea of like a script like or an outline of a story? I don't know that I need one You gotta see one of these movies I know what I'm talking about but it's just like

3:46:10It's something about it makes me feel like joyful when I watch it Like someone is just I don't know That's one chance to tell you what Africa's taken over in the UFC right now. Are they really? Three African champions and the three arguably the best of all time what countries, do you know? Cameroon that's uh, that's um This is the guy you were telling me about he was yes He was they kept trying to get him in game and see he fled the country up. Yep. Yeah, found a way to train Yeah, he's a crazy story He got they kept catching him when he's trying to get into Morocco or from Morocco to Spain To Spain and they kept sending him back to this a harrow desert. Oh wow That's what they they just dropped you off of the desert like good luck and he made it back seven fucking times And finally made it across to Spain They put him in jail in Spain for two months Which they do and you get over there and then finally they released him He was homeless in France slept in a parking lot made his way to a gym and They he wanted to be a boxer and they're like man, you should try MMA and they treat he was like, you know

3:47:14I want to be a boxer and they but they paid him 500 bucks to fight so it's like okay I'll do it so he beat the fuck out of some people and now he's the heavyweight champion of the world Oh wow and not just the heavyweight champion of the world the most terrifying heavyweight champion of all time nice guy Nice guy super nice guy super friendly just a sweetheart of a guy Terrifying in the cage terrifying just nukes people As Joe that's oh oh dear. Oh exactly He'll get interest apple on the phone interest. I want you to fight somebody He's such a specimen and he just won the title beating the greatest every weight of all time steve Miochic he just nuked him in two rounds. What is what are you thinking like a flick like that? What is he way? He's 265 when he gets on the scale, but he's about 270 something when he gets in the in the cage Yes to lose weight to make the heavyweight limit of 265 because you have see as a heavyweight limit And he's he's without a doubt the scariest heavyweight that the sports ever seen because he flatlines people 65

3:48:16He's huge see show the video of him knocking out Oh Yeah, go to the top KO finishes. Yeah, watch this go full screen. I mean he just fucking flatlines people It's different because you can't make any mistakes with him because as soon as he touches you boom see do just go down As soon as he touches you you just like what and the fuck just hit me and he can do that to everybody Fine give me another one What is the UFC ref looking for that was when you back up a little that was the where you just were That was the steepest fight. What is a UFC referee looking for yeah like watch this one But like he's clearly out okay. Yeah, he did the right thing right there They there's I mean that fight is a beat up a dead body wouldn't they well the the thing is guys recover Yeah, they have a state number cut. Oh, he's he's devastating with everything he does and then he goes in for his Man, you know that guy's clearly sleeping. Yeah, no one's faking sleep in the octagon. Are they?

3:49:21No, but you know what by the time he's throwing that shot. He doesn't know if that guy's gonna get up on the way down He's something special man like real unique because he's a he's Just a top of the food chain specimen of an athlete how How does this fellow 34 It's old for fighting no no not for a heavyweight okay for a heavyweight it's a good age Heavyweight to mature later in life Joe the shit you know If you ever wrote a book what would it be about? Nonsense. Yes, I think I'm the same I think I was saying but every time I talk to you I can't bring I can't stump the band. It's anything I can talk about You Tending to know something about I know a little bit about a lot of stupid shit That's all useful if you if you got a job like this Yeah, if you got a job like this, but it's all because of talking to so many people But unfortunately I forgot so much of it too because so it's like my hard drives is over spilling. It's like a a garbage

3:50:24Pale that's just garbage is just falling out of it. There's like too much in there this Spotify give you time off Can you take a break? Would you take a break? No, I enjoy it. I don't enjoy it All these podcasts that I that I book it's all based on my It's all based on my interests like I get a list of people that are trying to get on and I go with that guy write a book about Oh, that looks I want to talk to that dude, and it's just entirely based on me wanting to talk to this person Do they say they said you know you? You Spotify has nothing to do with it. No, I'm saying that the people on the show like some of them. Yes Yeah, like I called you. Yeah, but some of them I'll call them some of them. I'll watch a documentary I'll go hey, can you get this guy? Oh, yeah, and then you know reach out and try to get him or some of them I'll read their book or someone else will recommend something to me It's all it's all different If you could cast a dinner party For guest who you invite and you don't say me Uh, I'll definitely bring Elon He's one of my favorite people to talk to

3:51:26Um, I don't know people I know they know him really do like him a lot. I like him a lot. He's a sweet dude I you know, I gotta say that night when we were all just sitting around talking You know, he's one of these guys who seems to actually shine Well, he's um, I don't know shy is the word, but he's not he doesn't need attention No, which is yeah in anomaly in our walk of life But he's he's cool to talk to you know like he's he's genuinely there. He's not Like even though I'm a moron in comparison to him when I talked to him He he'll talk to me in a normal way, you know He just he'll just communicate like I'll go well. Well, how do they do that and he'll explain it And I go what what does interesting about that to you? And then we'll have these weird conversations will he like explain his thought process about what's intriguing about something or what What made him interested in pursuing something? He doesn't mind explaining these things not at all. No, not at all Sometimes you think a person like that would lose patience with exactly your layman is elected exactly and he does not does not he was explaining me that night

3:52:29We're hanging out Uh, how do you decide winning where to do a launch from? Ah, I got to tell you I have a public school education That was tedious I was gonna write a sentence I might have to go we don't explain that shit on show That that becomes a problem with the people that are really smart is that some of the subjects do get tedious You like I read in some article that Alba Einstein used to fuck a lot of bitches. Yeah, so to richer Feynman Yeah, they just made me laugh like Einstein picking up girls at a bar I think there were professors and girls through themselves at them. I think it was like a celebrity thing Yeah, he was a renowned academic man. I'm a roach said she had a crush on it And he had the crazy hair. I mean, he just looked like a character and he Had that mind. Yeah You know most of us walk around in a state of complete befuddlement We feel a certain way, but we don't really know right

3:53:29this guy He was also of an age where public intellectuals were celebrated like stars You know, he was celebrated. I mean if you think about his contribution to modern life. Yeah It's insane. That's a hell of an equation Not just that, but all of his contributions right he was just a constantly evaluating the very nature of the universe itself The very nature of matter and life and energy and gravity and all these different forces that it wasn't Oppenheimer one of his students I don't know is that true? I don't know. I'm making sure that happen The internet people looked at you that for yourself Oppenheimer's quote when they detonated the nuclear bombs one my favorite quote ever What he said he quoted the Bhagavad Gita they detonated the first nuclear weapon and he quoted the Bhagavad Gita He said I am become death destroyer of worlds As what he said after the first atomic bomb got detonated there was a black guy named Earl Charles

3:54:31It was there when it happened and he has a famous quote from that very moment. He said shut the fuck Fuck you talking about Yeah I am become death Destroyer of worlds Yeah It's a wild thing to say when you just see a bomb detonate but you imagine being there when the very first nuclear bomb gets detonated and imagine it's from your mind It's a bunch of other people working on the Manhattan Project had a lot of people working on it, but It was a lot of it was Oppenheimer Oppenheimer really There's that Oppenheimer and Einstein So right here this fuck the world up. Let's sit down and draw out some planes fuck Genius Yeah, you know Einstein looks exactly like my grandfather Really? Oh, yeah, like so crow so close is terrifying take away the hair You know my grandfather didn't have crazy hair like that

3:55:31But with that mustache in his face he looks so much like him especially in that picture right there Yeah, he could have been my grandfather and how kind his face is yeah, wow That means you do though You imagine being the guy who's just that much smaller smarter than everybody else Yep, I'm trying to explain to you but We use shut up bitch. I'm thinking about math No, it seems like an island yeah, I don't know what that I can't imagine honestly. I can't imagine what that'd be like I do think that I Know The shit that his mind conceived in his lifetime. Yeah If he were a comedian he'd have the angles that none of us all yeah, that's that kind of thing. I mean The the thing is like we have Elon Musk is not Einstein in a sense that he's not creating equations that are gonna shape the way our universe is

3:56:32Is thought of and perceived but what he is doing Is creating these businesses and these these Articles of technology whether it's Tesla or whether it's SpaceX these rockets that they're designed he's he's changing The potential of our future right and he's changed the he changed what it means to have an electric car He made an electric car instead of a thing that's practical He made this dope spaceship that goes zero to 60 and a little over two seconds They're they're if you've been in a Tesla like a Model S. Yeah, when accelerates a lot of people know they drive You know they're preposterous. It's a it's amazing the self-driving shit You know it's weird because I feel like We live in the future. Yeah, we used to watch the Jetsons and all this and Dick Tracy. Yeah, it's better than what they thought it would be They didn't think of the internet. No, the Jetsons didn't even have an iPhone Right

3:57:32Yeah, he did it captain Kirk. He had to go Kirk out. Yeah, we yeah, man. I got a walkie-talkie in my pocket I can watch the news yeah All this information it might dispose you get FaceTime people it's it's that yeah Kirk didn't even have FaceTime. Yeah, and it's just an amazing piece of technology and then people set it up in In the house in a room by themselves and twerk in front of it Fuck we doing man. What are we doing? Dick talking Yeah, it's strange I hope everyone's gonna be okay Joe David. I think they are I think they're not gonna be okay I think it's gonna take time and it's gonna be like most moments in history It's not gonna be smooth. It's not gonna be one clear ascension to Enlightenment and peace and love, but we're gonna get better It just we're gonna get through this rocky era that we're in right now It'll take time, but I think we're gonna get through it with the lessons of the pain and suffering that's been caused by bad decisions and the way we live right now

3:58:33Well, this minimize the pain and try to Expand the upside down. Yeah, let's make these motherfuckers laugh David should tell let's get them. Let's go out and get them I love you Joe. I love you too, brother. Cheers. Cheers That's a wrap thing. That's a wrap bringing home Bye everybody. Bye Oh This is Ashley Akinetti from the almost famous podcast you ever noticed you and your spouse keep saying we need to get away But you never actually plan anything that was us until we did something fun and spontaneous We went to resort pass calm. There are hundreds of hotel resorts pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy You can spend the day at a luxury resort pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay and listen

3:59:34I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed So just go to resort pass calm choose your resort choose your day luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000 once you post your daycation people are gonna ask where you are good at resort pass calm slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100 That's code almost famous at resort pass calm slash almost famous