https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=pZKuwgcKXwY
I Guess the first thing I’d like to just ask you is how you doing? I’m doing great. So what are you? What’s great about what what you’re doing? What’s so good about your life? Well right now I’m in the process of putting together my next stand-up comedy special So I’m at the process now where I’ve actually put together a full new hour of material Since my Netflix special which came out in October So that’s that’s great for me That’s that’s always a relaxing moment because it’s very difficult to put that hour together And so it’s and so how do you go about doing that? Lot of writing a lot of performing a lot of reading a lot of going over notes a lot of examining material a lot of reviewing Sets and trying to find out what I like and what I don’t like it’s a long and brutal process It’s the most fun but also the most difficult part of stand-up is the creation of new material So how many hours do you think you put in of work to do an hour’s worth stand-up? Any idea that’s a really good question. It’s usually about I can do a so I can create a solid Ten minutes a month That’s usually what it is So it takes me six months to do an hour and in that six months on an average week. I’ll do eight or nine sets So that’s eight or nine either half hour or hours of material Sometimes 15 minutes usually an hour depending upon where I’m working and how many other people are on the show And then a lot of time writing So you’re doing those sets in front of live audiences all the time. Yes. Yeah, you have to let’s that’s the weird thing about stand-up comedy It seems to be that It’s not something that you can do in a vacuum it has to actually be done it actually It has to come alive in front of the audience like I can I can write in a vacuum. I can write alone I can contemplate go over my material review Edit I could do all sorts of things by myself, but it really doesn’t come alive until it’s in front of an audience Yeah, well, I guess it’s not so easy to figure out what’s funny. You kind of laugh Yeah, it’s that but it’s also there’s a state of mind that you only really achieve when you’re performing in front of an audience And you can try to recreate it, but it’ll be fake if you try to do it on your own I don’t write I don’t write in joke form. Like I don’t write the way I say it on stage I write in sort of a conceptual form I write in an essay form and then I sort of extract things that I think are funny out of that But they really only Find their true the true way. I’m going to do them I only find that in front of an audience because it’s like when the when I’m in front of an audience Then it becomes clear to me how I should and shouldn’t say things based in part on how they’re reacting And based in part on how I feel when I’m performing the idea like I find where the the fat of the bit is and that’s where you kind of Appreciate economy of words and you know what to edit out and what to elaborate on what people aren’t totally Understanding and what maybe is over explained and all that stuff kind of comes together in front of an audience So the essays that you’re writing or the writing that you’re doing like are they on serious topics? Are they on things you’re thinking about philosophically or are you trying specifically to be funny? Are you just trying to get some thoughts down, you know about the way you’re thinking about the world? both You know, it’s like the ideas it’s Say I would say the stand-up comedy at least the way I do it it comes in three forms Like there’s three steps in the beginning. You’re really just trying to get laughs. You’re fighting for survival out there. You’re scared That’s in the early days of your career. Then you start doing What you think is funny like things that would make you laugh, but then in stage three you start Trying to make ideas funny and you try to cleverly introduce ideas into people’s heads that maybe they wouldn’t entertain without the humor aspect of it and So when I write if I write on a subject whatever the subject might be I Write without thinking. Oh, I have to make each word funny or I have to make each sentence funny I write just what are my thoughts on this subject and then along the way I Find irony and I find ridiculous Perceptions and all the things that lead to stand-up comedy material We’re not track those right and how much of that like humor the whip just occurs to you spontaneously on the stage Sometimes a lot it depends on the subject But it’s always a possibility some of the best lines that I’ve ever come up with in My act come up with I come up with on the spot while I’m just talking about things, right? Well, that should be when you’re like into the subject and things are going well with the audience Yeah, yeah, that’s basically how it goes. It’s a tricky business Yeah, it sounds like an extremely tricky business and one where the cost of failure is humiliation and and and emotional pain Yeah, it’s the worst. Yeah. Yeah, there’s there’s not there’s not that many things that are more embarrassing than like Trying to be funny, especially if you’ve put Say a hundred hours into one hour of preparation, which is less than you’re doing and then finding out that you’re just not that amusing So how many Netflix specials have you done now I’ve done three and I’m working on my fourth one right now, but overall I’ve done nine different hours of comedy either a comedy album video special Yeah, what and you what’s it be like working for Netflix? It’s great. They’re very easy Oh, that’s yeah, they they don’t they really don’t have any notes They just let me it, you know Fortunately, I got to them at a stage in my career where I was already advanced and I was already a headliner and I’d already Been doing stand-up comedy for decades. So it was it was good in that sense that I was well prepared But they you know, they when we first signed this initial deal They were they were really just wanting me to do what I do best, right? Oh, they liked it and easy There’s no they’re really relatively little input almost none, right? So they’re they’re they’re not willing to mess with success fundamentally Yeah, they like what I do. So they’re just like good just they know that my goal is to do my best I’m not trying to I mean there are comedians that will release Material just for the money. They’ll try to capitalize on their fame and put something out that’s sloppy and I feel like For me at least that’s that’s not an option and that would taint my legacy and taint my my body of work I’m not interested in doing that right right? Yeah. Well, I’ve seen your Netflix specials and they’re pretty damn funny Thank you. That’s that that that that ver that Little skip you did on the Kardashians Was killer man. Thank you. That’s it forever to work out. I had a way to make fun of that guy God it was it was ridiculous. You make it extremely intense demonic gargoyle Good sense of humor. Yeah, so that was killing me. I thought Jesus he’s not gonna go there is he? Oh, yeah He’s gonna go farther. Yeah It’s good to see that kind of like horrific courage manifest itself on stage you really like that in a comedian You know when you see them get going and I used to see this with Sarah Silverman You could see her eyes sort of flash and she’d think I Shouldn’t say that. There’s no way Then she’d say it you think yeah, no one should have said that but man it was deadly Yeah, I think out of all the women doing comedy right now. She’s probably the best at that You know pushing that envelope yes for sure she’s got there’s some very dark recesses in that woman’s mind Yeah, yeah, okay, so the Netflix thing is going well do you do you enjoy do you enjoy doing that yeah What do you like about it the danger of it the the difficulty the challenge That one it’s done and people enjoy it that I’m legitimately affecting people I love I love that will people though get a chance to sit down and watch it for an hour And it’ll make them feel better. They’ll laugh they they they it takes them out of the dreary dullness of their day or the agony of whatever they’re going through in their life and they can escape that for an hour and For comedy man. It’s just about it’s just in the same domain as music for necessity Yeah, I agree Campuses now where there’s like no sarcasm rules say oh, that’s hilarious God can you imagine I’d like seconds? Yeah, it’s sarcasm considered a microaggression Unless it’s real sarcasm in which case it’s a macro aggression I just keep thinking that in time this is going to be one of the most hysterical But periods of time that people look back on periods of history like you know when we look at guys with powdered wigs and you know Preposterous behavior from the past and we go. God. What were they thinking? I really think we’re going to do the same thing about today I think well, I hope one of the most I think for sure I hope so that means that we’ll be more sane when we’re looking back or at least we’ll be Saying in a different way, and I’m pretty much ready for a different form of insane personally Well, I think the insane that you’re getting is so It’s so pronounced and it’s so much more intense that It’s less effective and then the reaction to it is more Popular the negative reaction to a lot of this insane rhetoric and it’s insane behavior It’s more popular now to understand how ridiculous some of these people are you know when you see like what? Antifa’s doing in Portland blocking traffic and you know telling people where to go and what to do and then beating people up that don’t comply and Saying that you’re a white supremacist if you don’t listen to them and like this this all this stuff is so ridiculous It’s so over-the-top and they keep feeding on themselves They keep attacking people that are not progressive enough. They keep literally eating their own and It For the from the outside from the perspective of people that don’t share their ideology It looks more and more ridiculous and that makes them more and more Frenzied and it ramps it all up and I think it’s ultimately going to crash It’s just like what kind of damage is it going to do the landscape as it’s crashing, right? Right? Well, that’s that’s the thing that you know, hopefully can be mitigated so that the landing isn’t too hard You know, I thought lucky every time we’ve talked we’ve talked a lot about me and like I’m quite sick of talking about me actually And probably have been for like a year or maybe even longer So I thought that it would be really good to talk about you and I’m curious about you because you’re such a strange character and so You know in the in the most interesting of ways and so I thought I’d like start at the beginning So I don’t know that much about you. So um Where’d you grow up? Well, I grew up in a lot of places. I was born in New Jersey I lived there until I was seven my mother Split up from my dad and married my stepdad We moved to California. We lived in San Francisco from age 7 to 11 that I lived in, Florida He was going to the University of Florida at Gainesville Live there from age 11 to right around 13 then we moved to Boston and I lived in Boston for The next I guess the next 10 years and that’s really where I grew up I grew up basically when I when I think of where I come from I think of Boston It’s also the place where I started doing stand-up comedy, which means a lot to me It’s also where I started fighting so I started doing martial arts All the significant things that happened in my life happened in Boston in my developmental period I didn’t so you moved to Boston when you were how old? 13 13. I see. Yeah, right, right. And then you were there for how many years? 11 11 years. Oh, yeah, so that’s a long time. Yeah, we’re gonna live in Boston Newton Newton Upper Falls. It’s a suburb of boss. Yeah. Yeah, nice in New England a Yeah, I love it out there yeah, you know the people have a great sense of humor It’s like Toronto in a way that you have to deal with that wicked winter and I think that develops character in people I think funny when I moved to Boston Cuz I well I’d lived in Alberta then Montreal and Montreal is Bloody horrible in the winter and Alberta is even worse and so I was I’d go down to Boston and I Went down there to interview first and it was February and like it was spring as far as I was concerned I didn’t even have a coat on and then when we lived there for years, you know, it was so funny We lived in this old house by a park and we get those nor’easters blow in you know with a hurricane level winds and it bloody Well snow three and a half feet and I’d be thinking in my Canadian way that Jesus I better not go outside Cuz I’ll just freeze to death the second I step outside, but I’d go outside it was like Well, it was 34 degrees or some damn thing it’s like I was expecting minus 40, you know, just horrible So my Boston winters never I mean apart from the snow which was you know, deadly significant They never really struck me as winter. They sort of struck me as well This is the sort of winter that you’d like to have if you wanted a like a showy winter that people could be pleased with Rather than one that just killed you. Yeah Yeah, Canadians are on another level when it comes to winter I have some pretty good friends that live in Alberta and when I whenever I go up there, it’s like whoa Yeah Where do you go? They’re outside of Edmonton. They’re about two and a half hours north of Edmonton where I Don’t know the name of their town. It’s where I go bear hunting Uh-huh That’s uh, yeah, cuz there you know, you might one thing you notice about bear they have fur They have fur See that’s where they live there They don’t have fur. They actually live there. Yeah, two and a half hours north of Edmonton in the winter. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, you go outside in the wrong day and you’re out there too long then you die So yeah, or you run into a grizzly which is all That yes, there’s also that those those those are those are nothing to contend Those are nothing to take lightly man when we used to go camping, especially in British Columbia Grizzly bears were always a concern because like a black bear if it chases you and First of all, it’s only about third the size of a grizzly bear and it’s still pretty big like it’s a black bear You know, it’s not it’s not like a house cat and if those things chase you and you and you play dead they’ll usually leave you alone, but if you Grizzly chases you and you play dead then it eats you and so and then of course if you fight back Well, I’d also eat you it just maybe get a blow or two in and probably not so Yeah, that was a believe it or not more people are Prayed upon by black bears when a black bear attacks you It’s usually because it’s trying to eat you when a grizzly bear attacks people It’s usually either mistake or it was it was scared or it’s really hungry Yeah, the black bears tend to be like that too. A lot of them are old if they attack you. Yeah. Yeah You’re getting you’re getting so they can’t catch a real animal So they’re they’ll settle for like, you know as an arctic monkey with no fat Yeah, they get desperate yeah, so okay so New Jersey, what do you remember about New Jersey? Oh Boy that’s where I went to Catholic school, which was a horror in and of itself and It’s you know where my relatives lived and I just remember the the ethnic ethnic Italian environment and what that was like You know what it was like being around my relatives are out there very sopranos like if you’re watching the TV show Yeah, that’s that’s really representative of a lot of New Jersey, you know, I don’t remember too much other than that though You know, it was pretty little when we left relatives out there I have one uncle well two uncles who still live there. I Haven’t seen them in years Okay, so New Jersey mostly positive memories do you think or just it’s just I mean seven and below that’s pretty young so Well, it was tumultuous time period for me. My parents Were always fighting and it just wasn’t a good time. So when we escaped New Jersey It was a relief and that was also when your mom split up from your dad Yeah, and do you do you do you do it? Are you in contact with your dad? No, I haven’t spoken him since I was seven years old Is he still alive? He’s still alive and his name is Joe Rogan, which is even crazier ha So you ever think about him? No, no, no, no, no, no, it’s a long time ago. Well, that’s huh Well, and do you remember what he was like to you? He was nice to me. He just wasn’t very nice to my mother. They had a very bad relationship Right, right Okay, so you leave New Jersey and you go to California? Yeah, where do you live there? we lived in San Francisco and that was an interesting time for me because it was during the Vietnam War and It was sort of the height of the hippie movement, right? My stepdad was a hippie My father was a police officer in New Jersey. Oh, yeah Went from being around a cop who was a pretty brutal guy to being around a long-haired Hippie was all about peace and love and was an architecture student, you know, it was a completely different sort of vibe Yeah, sounds like a completely different sort of vibe. Yeah, I was around a lot of gay folks Yeah around a lot of hippies a lot of pot smokers a lot of real open-minded Thinkers and weirdos around Haydashbury and that that sort of area we live near Lombard Street It was real classic San Francisco in the 70s 70s. So yeah, so yeah, let’s see So you would have been you said seven how? So when we’re like 74 74 because I was seven years old right born 67 Yeah, so you’re five years. I see you’re five years younger than me. So that yeah that places you there So yeah, it was still pretty hippie central. Yeah, it was pretty it was pretty interesting And then I went from there to Florida, which was like a total polar opposite, you know That was the first time I’d ever heard anybody say the n-word was in Florida and I didn’t know what it meant I had asked my mother my mother got upset at me. She thought I knew what it meant. I was just playing games I don’t know what it means. Like tell me what it means. She said it’s a bad word for black people and I was like wow really Okay, because I was hearing it all the time. I Never heard it in San Francisco and literally didn’t hear it until I was 13 years old or excuse me 11 years old And so yeah, so where do you move to void Florida? We moved to Gainesville Which is where the University of Florida was where my stepdad was going to get a He was he’s studying architecture and then we eventually moved to Boston so he could go to the Boston architectural center That’s why we wound up moving there and it’s your mom and as your mom and your step did still together Yep, still together and do you see them all the time? Yeah, they have a great relationship. It’s really completely different They’ve been together forever. They they just they get along fantastic and in many ways that sort of modeled my Expectations for a real relationship, you know, I saw the worst and then I saw a really great one and I’m like, okay You know Yeah, that’s a good choice. That’s that that shows some wisdom on your part picking the second one rather than the first one Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, has that worked out? Have you had good relationships? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean my wife’s awesome I’ve been married for how long almost ten years ten years and you have two girls or three? I have three girls three girls, right? Yeah young ones and one adult one Right, I remember on the special that I was referring to that you were bemoaning the fact that you were absolutely saturated in a feminine environment Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting man. It’s interesting, but I think it balances me out. I think ultimately it’s probably good for me Yeah, you think it’s interesting now you wait till they hit teenage hood Yeah, then it’ll be interesting. All right. Yeah for sure Yeah, I actually enjoyed having teenagers, you know weirdly enough I mean we had a good rule in our house with our kids brought their friends over to our house a lot and It was funny because when they first came over when my teenagers friends came over they were always afraid of me But after about a month being there, you know Like getting to know the place a bit not staying there all the time obviously but getting a bit familiar with it They ended up being a lot more afraid of my wife I Know she just looked like she’s looked at dangerous on first impressions and she’s kind of soft-spoken, but she’s very Unforgiving that might be one way of putting it and then we had a pretty good rule in our house with the teenage kids Which is was it’s a good one to know which was look. We’re really happy you’re here You know, but if you do something really stupid and we never ever have to see you again, that would actually be okay with us That’s a good rule it’s a good rule They also do and so the kids could have their friends over, you know And they could have a reasonable they could have a reasonable amount of fun or maybe even a slightly unreasonable Amount of fun, but they couldn’t have an overwhelmingly unreasonable amount of fun Great way to put it Overwhelmingly unreasonable amount of fun is a great way to put it. Yeah, that was too much too much We had a good drug policy too. I think I Think it went well the rule was Look, I know perfectly well you’re gonna experiment they were going to art and art school, you know It’s like I think I think one of the majors hot smoking and another was Experimentation like there was just no way they weren’t gonna experiment and my rule was I Better not be able to tell because you’re being too much of a fool. So if you’re gonna You better handle it because otherwise you’re pathetic That seemed to be pretty good well, that’s you know, because I thought I really thought it through, you know, because there’s a there’s a literature on Experimentation among Adolescents both criminal experimentation, you know delinquency minor delinquency and that sort of thing and drug use and you get Pathology at both ends the ones who are you know smoking pot every day and taking drugs on a regular basis Their outcomes not so good, but the ones who abstain completely and never experiment their outcome is also not so good They tend to be on the dependent anxious end of the distribution. And so, you know, you want your kids to well Play with the rules a little bit, but then I thought well what so okay, you got to play with the rules What are the rules about playing with the rules and one should be try not to be a bigger fool than necessary That’s a good one. So, you’re not compromising yourself in the present but the biggest the biggest issue I think really and I think this is the fundamental rule for Experimentation with adolescents is you don’t get to screw up your future Hmm, right. Yeah, that’s that’s the killer Well what I worry about more than anything is opioids I worry about those Because people are dying from them. Yeah, you know, no one’s dying from pot It’s very rare that anybody is doing something so stupid that they put their life in danger from pot or mushrooms I’m worried about the ones that kill you. No, I mean I I worry about pills more than anything That my children might possibly face especially when I consider the fact that these Opiate manufacturers these opioid manufacturers. They keep making these damn things stronger and I don’t understand I mean, it’s not like Oxycontin wasn’t strong enough as it is But now they have fentanyl and now they’re coming up with things that are stronger than fentanyl. It’s disgusting Yeah, what weird arms race say because I mean this is something that’s really an unexpected consequence of the Of the illegalization of drugs is that now we’ve generated all these Chemists who are really good at making tiny variations on every psychoactive substance known and now instead of like 10 Addictive substances you can get yourself into serious trouble with there’s 300 Yeah, that doesn’t seem to be a big plus No, it doesn’t it’s it’s it’s disturbing and it’s disgusting and you know They’re finally starting to bring some of these guys to justice and they’re arresting some of these people and bringing them to court Some of these manufacturers They’ve been pushing this stuff down people’s throats for years and incentivizing doctors to subscribe them and It’s you know, it’s a tough one man. Like my when my daughter was sick When she was a kid She was in extreme It’s got to be agony is the right word, you know for like two years about that Because she was walking around on two broken legs, you know her story a little bit and uh Her physician at sick kids which was which was the person who was dealing with her arthritis would only prescribe her basically uh, you know anisine, you know minor league over-the-counter painkillers, which was like trying to kill a grizzly bear with a fly swatter it really It wasn’t right the right tool for the job and we found a family doctor who had enough courage to prescribe her Oxycontin That was no joke, you know because for the first couple of weeks she was on Oxycontin it was really Odd and rough because it was like she was drunk and so that was Well, that was weird socially to say the least and also rather frightening, but it did control her pain And we actually had to mix Oxycontin with uh Ritalin which is a strange combination, but a good one to know about because Oxycontin sedates and Ritalin stimulates but the combination of the two are synergistic so they can really control pain And so her pain was controlled enough so that it didn’t drive her insane over about a two-year period and then once she got her Operations and had her had her legs fixed She went off the opiates and she went through the whole withdrawal stick You know, she had like night sweats and she had ants crawling under her skin and like it was pretty brutal Although she she stopped cold turkey and never tried them again. She hated them She said they just made her feel dead and it’s funny a lot of people, you know a lot You hear their horror stories that you know, if you try opiates once you’re pretty much screwed because they’re so wonderful But lots of people don’t like them, but there is a sizable minority of people, you know who Really liked them and and then there is the danger that you described of overdose and that’s You know, that’s that’s a frightening thing. Hopefully your kids aren’t enough to stay mostly away from pills Yeah, hopefully what are you know, you got to worry about the influence of their friends and peer pressure Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well the terrible thing about teenagers, you know is that Everybody always says well, why do you succumb to peer pressure when you’re a teenager and the answer is well, that’s why you’re a teenager You know, you’re getting away from your family And you’re even getting away from your like elementary school best friend and you’re starting to join the broader social group And your job is to fit in Like not to fit in so much that there’s nothing left of you You know But your job is to fit in to the tribe to the group and to learn how to do that And of course the downside is well, you’re susceptible to peer pressure But there’s it’s hard to distinguish that from actually being properly socialized. You know, the two things are very tightly aligned All right. So so you were in florida and you learned you learned some words that That you didn’t know and what was florida like for you you were there only for a couple of years Yeah, florida is a strange place. I mean, I still have a love hate relationship with florida. It’s the land of the lost It’s where people go to escape wherever they’re from billy corgan who’s a billy corbin who’s a Documentary director he directed cocaine cowboys and a bunch of other great documentaries He uh, he lives down in florida and every time he and I talk we just talk about how ridiculous florida is and it’s This place where people go to escape They go to escape from the brutal cold of the northeast winter or they go. Oh jesus My phone is Yeah, my phone is telling me that i’m running out of batteries I’m gonna have to switch headsets and plug this in but it only took a second. Yeah, that should be fine but uh I just think that florida is just like a uniquely stupid place It’s a weird place. You know, it’s yeah, it’s it’s one of the things that’s really struck me about the united states It’s really different than canada for what that’s worth It’s not like americans really care why the united states is different than canada apart from the fact that it isn’t like freezing cold six months in the years There’s a there’s a lot of the u.s. It’s like a movie set You know so much of it is like it’s manufactured to look like something else And florida is really like that Yeah, and it it’s it’s a very strange place to visit Because everything is not in the old towns, but the beach towns are like that a lot that there’s so there’s some genuine old florida But most of it is it’s manufactured fake utopia for exactly the sort of people that you’re describing You know that doesn’t get unbearable or anything I mean the weather’s nice and the beach is nice and you know, there’s worse places to live but there’s something about it that’s like a I don’t it’s it’s like a Uh, that’s a real it’s not this well, obviously it’s like a resort but resorts have that sort of fake utopian element to them that is Is I don’t know what it’s like exactly kind of like a child fantasy or an adolescent fantasy something like that, you know It’s what you think you want If you don’t yeah, I I always say that if you want to starve to death open up a bookstore in miami uh-huh right Right like legitimately this there’s no reading going on down there It’s just a strange place where people go to party and It’s just it’s weird Right now. I have to warn you that there is a beam of light shooting directly out of your head Oh right here. Yeah, it’s very impressive and and move this around. There we go. Yeah, that’s probably better because you know, I had the Plug in Because uh the power was dying on my phone. I guess this video stuff sucks a lot of power I guess I guess so I guess so. I mean I didn’t like The light thing shooting out of your head, but you never know you don’t want to get any rumors on the internet You know how easy that is Well, yeah you amongst all people know how easy that is. Hey Hey, I haven’t been in this scandal for a whole a whole week. Well, this podcast is still young Yeah, fair enough fair enough. We might be able to cover something that’ll cause trouble You are At all the people that i’m friends with you are probably the most misrepresented friend that I have and I defend you quite often and I I Don’t get where people are coming from with you. I don’t understand their inability to listen to your words And instead they try to generalize and formulate these distorted Distorted the descriptions of who you are and what you stand for and it’s very strange to me and I don’t know I mean I kind of do know that you’re challenging a lot of people’s beliefs and the way they You know, they’ve structured these beliefs, but it’s very frustrating to me and i’m sure it must be way more frustrating for you it’s it’s kind of it’s kind of on it’s surreal to me because I was talking with my kids about this the other day you know The the way people think I am especially if they read You know the hit pieces that the journalists have written and maybe even watched me in those interactions You know, they think i’m provocative and they think I like combat and conflict and you know, um And I don’t i’m not combative actually and I really don’t like conflict that much um, I go out of my way quite a bit to avoid it and you know I’m misogynist except that almost all the people i’ve ever worked with in my whole life have been women and i’ve been in a women-dominated field and like And I never thought of myself as right wing. That’s for sure I mean, I mean maybe now that the far left has gone completely off the deep end. It’s like well Maybe i’d be classified as a conservative, but that’s mostly because as a social scientist I learned that you shouldn’t conduct large-scale experiments on huge swaths of the population and assume that your stupid idea is going to work Out correctly because it won’t You can’t even get people to behave properly in a lab for like half an hour So how you think you’re going to get a whole society to do what you want? You know as a consequence of passing a piece of legislation is beyond me But yeah, it’s it’s and here’s something else that’s weird, you know, like if you read the newspapers On this this new you knew I got disinvited from cambridge cambridge divinity school I mean what what a thing to be disinvited from a divinity school christ You have to be satan himself to get disinvited from a divinity school and Well, it’s so crazy You know and I just wanted to go down there and learn some more about the biblical stories the exodus stories. That was the idea and and then to get disinvited to have that be a whole big scandal it was just like What the hell man? It’s it’s It’s quite the crazy situation and then so you read about all this and and you see this online and you think God his life must just be hell Because of all the controversy, but then when I go out in the streets Or to my lectures or anywhere. It’s completely different. It’s unbelievably different like so now if I walked it Walk down the street. I mean when you walk down the street, you must just get I you just must get identified all the time Like yeah, if you go out in an hour, how many people will come up to you? Depends where I go But if i’m in hollywood, it’s pretty pretty crazy If I go around young people if you see men and they have shaved heads and tattoos it gets nuts Those are my people Men So so if I go out, you know and i’m walking down the street and it doesn’t really matter where usually I get approached Five or six times in an hour by people and you know, they’re always very polite and they’re very apologetic and they They are happy about something they’ve read or listened to or whatever or often they talk about our podcasts That’s pretty damn common. That was common throughout europe As well And you know, they tell me about some dark part of their life and how they’re doing much better and you know How their friends have been watching my videos and are feeling better about it. So it’s just Ridiculously positive just all the time and then when I go to my lectures It’s the same thing It’s like yeah crazily positive. So, you know, we’ve had 350 000 people at the lectures so far and there hasn’t been one Negative occurrence we had one heckler once who was rapidly escorted from the building and he knew he was going to get escorted So he was kind of a cooperative heckler, but like no one’s coming there with any Thing negative on their mind They’re there to listen to a psychological lecture to have a deep discussion and to try to get their act together And the goddamn journalists they just don’t seem to be able to fathom that like they’ve got this false Cynicism or maybe real cynicism that makes it absolutely impossible for them to believe that you know tens of thousands of people could actually be serious about improving their life and that I could be having events that were basically 100 positive and so online i’m a bloody monster, you know, i’m a misogynist and racist and a transphobe and uh, what else am I? I’m a homophobe and uh, oh a nazi lots of times and sometimes a jewish shill and um Well, there’s a bunch of other things too Oh, it disturbed me Excuse me what disturbed me about you is when they pulled your books out of new zealand When a new zealand bookstore decided to pull your books because of the christ church massacre like what does a book on self-improvement? And taking responsibility What does that have to do with a horrific mass murder? I mean the idea that they can Connected those two together and that they decided that in some way or shape your words of encouragement and recognizing the importance of discipline and of taking responsibility and Self-reliance that those things your your book Somehow or another had something to do with someone doing something as awful as what happened in christ church It’s it’s so distorted And that’s like the perfect example that I cite when I say like think about the fact that this guy’s book was removed Right after something had taken place and had literally nothing to do with anything you’ve ever said ever Yeah, well They kind of got their comeuppance in some ways because people started to point out that they were still carrying mine camp and so that turned out to be a problem and then they were also carrying a book that Showed you how to turn a semi-automatic into a fully automatic And so, you know You got to be careful when you go after someone for their sins that you don’t have a few sins of your own like lying around Where people can you know sort of observe them anyways, they did reverse that decision, but but uh, that’s good Yeah, yeah, that was good, but it is it’s very weird It’s it’s it’s it’s a i’m going to the uk here right away now We’re talking about me and we weren’t supposed to be but i’m going to the uk right away because the paperback is launching there And so i’m going to be talking to journalists and talking to uk journalists, man that’s like jumping into a Tub of well, not full-grown crocodiles, but you know like five-footers anyways So what you’re trying to say is Yeah, they’re pretty snappy So yeah, i’m i’ve got some trepidation about that But so it’s a funny it’s a funny life to it’s a very peculiar life to be involved in and i’m not exactly ever sure What to make of it on a day-to-day basis, but it does give me what’s most So that’s what’s most peculiar for you is that you were not famous for most of your adult life And then over the last four years You’ve been catapulted and become one of the most famous if not the most famous psychologists on the planet earth Yes, it’s very Disconcerting it’s hard to get it. It’s actually rather hard to adjust to that I mean, maybe it’s a function of age I found you know when when I was younger and I I used to move from place to place take me about a year To adapt but I also noticed that as I got older Every time I moved it took me longer to adapt by the time you’re 56 You know if you know someone for 10 years, it’s like you feel like you’re just starting to get to know them a bit You know when you’re 17, you have a roommate for six months. It’s like your best friends for the rest of your life So it is a very difficult thing to adapt to I I can’t I can’t I can’t really wrap my mind around it and it I guess it’s also partly because it’s true No matter where I go like I went to Slovenia, you know, and it’s Everybody speaks English in Slovenia, by the way, and you are a big hit in Slovenia I don’t know if you know this but I I it looks to me like the podcast youtube world Has even more impact in places where the press is not very reliable And so like everybody knew about our everybody knew about our interviews and our podcasts And so I was stopped in Slovenia constantly which is that was a real shock, too So but again, so the shock is and this is the weird thing about youtube and about podcasts is that it’s not It’s just not one country or two countries. It’s like every damn country and so it’s But I’m I’m really fortunate. I’m really fortunate because like I said all the public encounters I have are Are extremely positive they’re hard to cope with though, you know in some sense because people are always they always tell me a serious story You know they say I was in some sort of hell of some sort six months ago too much drugs or alcohol or bad relationship or Not getting along with my family or underemployed or nihilistic or depressed whatever, you know Like whatever little corner of hell they have to occupy and they’ve been Practicing something like maybe developing a vision for their life or trying to live a more meaningful life or taking more responsibility Or like really making an effort to pull their families together um And to and to advance at work regardless of what their job is and and it’s working And so they’re always like shell shocked that it’s working and thrilled to death, but it’s so strange to have these intense 20 second 30 second conversations with people about really deep elements of their life and then you know It’s a shock and then you’ve walked along the street and it’s a normal day And then someone else comes up and does the same thing. It’s like I don’t know what to do with it emotionally. It’s it’s Because maybe you know someone might tell you that I don’t know. Maybe they tell you that’s something if you’re you’ve been helping them Maybe they tell you that once a year once every five years or something but to have it happen all the time is I don’t know. I think it fills me with a kind of sorrow like i’m really happy that it’s happening and everything but There’s still something about it. That’s deeply and and and deeply moving and difficult to adjust to so The sorrow because so many people are struggling out there and that you’re yeah well, the sorrow is that there’s so many people struggling out there and They don’t have this sort of they they have so little support that My lectures and podcasts in the book were what was necessary to help them straighten themselves out It’s like, you know, you just can’t imagine how many people out there haven’t heard an encouraging word No, it’s like they’re home on the what’s the old song and home on the range Yeah, that’s where you don’t hear a discouraging word Well, these people have never heard an encouraging word and that’s it’s sad to see how Common that is and how little It takes to turn that around and it’s so fun out in the lectures because you know A lot of the people in my lectures are correct. They’re the same people you were talking about that stop you in hollywood You know, they’re kind of rough working class guys that’d be about 30 percent of my audience I would think you know, and they’re not the sort of people that you would Stereotypically presume would come to an hour and a half lecture on you know philosophy and psychology But man, they’re listening. They’re listening like mad and it’s so fun and interesting to watch them think it through and to And to take this seriously and you know, they come up afterwards and they say, you know I’ve been watching your lectures and i’m a much better husband or i’m a much better father and sometimes they have their girlfriend or Wife with them and she says the same thing and you know It’s really nice, man It’s really something. Yeah Well, you really are making a giant impact and it’s only understandable that it would be difficult for you to wrap your head around What this is and it’s it’s not something that very few human beings ever get to experience a very very very tiny Percentage of our population Worldwide is ever put in a position like you’re put into so Let’s look at your position. I mean I asked you this at one time so You you last time we talked I think you were getting something 100 million downloads a month on your podcast. What are your figures if you didn’t if you don’t mind? Double that Jesus christ, that’s just unbelievable with youtube With the youtube and all the youtube clips and it’s it’s it’s actually probably more than that. It’s nuts it’s gotten to the point where I try to pay as little attention to the numbers as possible and just concentrate on doing the show Because I think if I pay attention to it too much Excuse me. I think if I pay attention to it too much i might lose my mind. I mean it’s just it’s Untenable that’s just the sheer volume of human beings When you if you if you were ever on a stage and you were looking out at 300 million people What would that look like? I mean, it’s not 300 million people because it’s 300 million downloads in a month But the the real number of human beings you’re interacting with. I mean, I don’t know what that is It’s 50 million people. I don’t know how many actual million people are listening to the show or watching the show on a regular basis But it’s an unmanageable number in terms of like reading comments or trying to pay attention to what they want or what they don’t want It’s uh, it’s very strange Yes, it’s a very weird. It’s a very weird position to be and there’s no doubt and the strange thing is too is that Well, we’ve talked about this before too. Like this is early days, right? I mean This has only been happening for about how long have you been doing your youtube videos? The youtube videos are only a few years. So I think it’s only three or four years The podcast will be 10 years in december Right. Okay. So 10 years that’s starting to become a decent chunk of life, but three or four years. That’s still new And yeah, I mean the podcast market and the youtube market are still they’re brand new technologies fundamentally Yeah, fundamentally and now you’re seeing corporations trying to capitalize on it And I’ve started to get these very bizarre offers to make my podcast exclusive on this platform or that platform And you know these these companies are they’re throwing crazy amounts of money around that podcast like networks Hundreds of millions of dollars to buy podcast networks So it’s it’s it’s becoming very very strange because what was a joke five or six years ago? Literally, like why are you wasting your time doing a podcast? I used to hear that all the time Now it’s how did you do this? How did you make this podcast so popular? That’s a totally different question yeah, well, it’s so strange because so many people have nobody realized that there was a An audience for on-demand audio and you see the same thing But not just on-demand audio but long-form conversation Yeah One of them I mean even my friend Ari who’s one of my best friends would always tell me you got to edit your shows Nobody wants to listen to anything that’s three hours long. So i’d say well then they don’t have to listen And he’s like, yeah, you like you’re you’re doing yourself a disservice. I’m like, I don’t think I am Like why not if if someone only has an hour then listen to it for an hour Like you’re not gonna I mean you might miss out some information, but it’s not going to change your life like do whatever you want to do, but I like talking to people for long periods of time because I think you really only get cooking after like the first half hour 40 minutes That’s when you get comfortable you sort of get a into a groove of communication you know figuring out this person’s rhythm and thought processes and It you and then as you expand on these ideas and you share information back and forth with each other After an hour an hour and a half two hours That’s when things really start getting deep and oftentimes the last hour of a three-hour podcast is the best hour Yeah, well that intuition was certainly right and revolutionary You never know when you come up with a revolutionary idea You know what? I mean part of my revolutionary idea is just me being stubborn Just like I didn’t care. I wasn’t doing it for money So the only reason why I was doing it was because I enjoyed talking to people like you or many of my other guests I I want to talk to it’s a very rare opportunity where I would get a chance to sit down with someone like you With no distractions. No other people in the room. No cell phones and just talk for three hours Yeah, that’s so unusual in our world and our constantly distracted world And I think i’ve gotten gotten a fantastic education because of that I mean, it’s really enlightened me on so many different subjects and expanded my understanding of people in general and Theories, I mean man, you’re up on those I’ve got some of those too. Yeah, so that’s Important to be up on the conspiracy theories just to keep track of the damn things Well, you got to know what people think of you, you know, i’ve been lately i’m a zionist shill This is the more most recent one. I didn’t know it was a zionist shill. Oh, yeah, you’re zionist shill Yeah, i’m a white supremacist too depending on who you ask Yeah. Yeah. Well, i’ve got those two things as well So and that’s like it’s real interesting to be able to juggle both of those identities. It’s like yeah Yeah One day white supremacist the next it’s sort of like gender fluid except on the political spectrum Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. Yeah Why do you have to be conservative or democrat? You know, sometimes you’re one and sometimes the other it depends on the day and there’s no reason Yeah, then that like all the way out to the edges You know, yeah gender fluid is my favorite That’s my favorite thing that’s going on right now Or someone could be like a woman for a few hours and then be a man for the next six You know, I read back and forth. I read although I don’t know if this is true but I but I read it several places and I actually looked I read that the Olympic committee is going to let trans people compete in the Olympics in the next competition I’m not surprised because the Olympic the IOC the Olympic committee is incredibly corrupt and I think what they do first of all is disgraceful They make billions of dollars the athletes make zero. I think it’s disgusting I think everything about what they do is corrupt and the idea that they’re there for fair and and and and Pure competition is nonsense. They’re there to make shit loads of money and that’s what they’re good at And what they’re good at doing is putting on these gigantic events where they profit in Spectacular and staggering ways and the athletes dedicate their entire life To these moments and they literally make nothing and then after that if they’re lucky If they’re very famous and popular they can eke out a living with uh endorsements, right? Or you know for the rare person like michael phelps or someone like that who’s just a true outlier They can actually get wealthy from it, but it’s very very rare Most of those athletes will be in severe debt most of those athletes either have to get sponsored or they have to find someone who is willing to share the burden and and help them achieve their goals, but without some sort of altruistic Benefactor who’s got millions of dollars to pour into their camp. I mean it’s just It’s disgusting they’re professional athletes I mean, that’s what they do with their entire life if you want to win a gold medal in the olympics In gymnastics, you can’t have a side job. You can’t be working eight hours a day No, you have to be a professional athlete and the olympic committee knows this and and if you’ve ever paid attention to how They’ve let people get away with cheating. I mean, there’s a fantastic documentary out right now By brian fogel called icarus and it’s all about the sochi olympics and how russia cheated in the sochi olympics and the ioc Barely punished them they they punished a few people and how the ioc and the world anti-doping agency all They have people from each They have from each organization. They share like they go back and forth They work for one and they work for the other And they’re totally in conflict it’s a total conflict of interest and it’s a it’s a dirty business so if the tide of political Perception is that it’s a good progressive thing to have trans women competing in the ufc or not in the ufc I shouldn’t say the ufc because that’ll never happen the trans women competing in the olympics and that this was Uh what everybody wanted they would just do it they would do it regardless of whether or not it’s fair Regardless of whether or not it made sense and they would do it just to get more eyes on the show Just to get more money and that’s that’s what they’re there for That’s what they’re good at fascinating to see how all that plays out because it’s so absurd I was looking I looked up some stats the other day because I was curious, you know, it’s like, okay I know that all the differences between men and women are socially constructed. But nonetheless, I went looked up the biological comparison of strength You know and the typical woman has 30 percent of the upper body strength of the typical man and about 55% of the lower body strength now that’s like that’s a big difference man That makes the average man three times as strong in the upper body. Jesus that gives you an advantage. That’s just well, it’s criminal So well it is but the question is how much do you lose from the conversion? How much do you lose from estrogen you lose some but if a woman Say look if you have an athlete who’s a woman who’s 32 years old and it turns out that she’s been taking steroids Her entire adult life So she’s been taking steroids for 12 years every day and then decides to stop taking them right before the olympics Wouldn’t everybody agree that she has a massive advantage? Wouldn’t everybody agree that most likely her tendon strength her muscle strength her bone structure all of that has been Completely altered by taking Performance enhancing drugs we would all agree to that Well, guess what? That’s what you’re doing if you’re a man for 30 years and then you decide to transition And become a woman for two even if you’re taking estrogen even if you go through this thing. I don’t understand is apart from the obvious unfairness of that Uh what what I struggle with understanding is the Triumphalism of the victors It’s like they enter these contests and then they win And then they celebrate their victory as if it’s a genuine victory despite the fact right wiped out these women who’ve been working mostly within the rules for like You know Maybe not decades but certainly many many years in succession and they just blow them away Especially in like strength contests and then they they actually treat that like they won And then they also claim it as a moral victory, you know And for me that that’s just that the only the only thing I see in that is a narcissism That’s so deep that it’s almost unfathomable. It’s like how can you take pride in that sort of? Victory unless you don’t see who it is that you’re defeating I don’t get it Well It shows how? Pathological this whole thing really is when you’re when you’re dealing with the idea that you can turn Uh a person into someone of the opposite gender not just Recognize them as being a woman and treat them as a woman and allow them to use whatever name they would like I’m all for that But it’s that you are going to say no This is a woman and she should be able to compete with women including in combat sports rugby There’s a male to female Trans-athlete and that plays rugby in australia. That’s 240 pounds And just smashing women and I don’t think there’s any real standards that are universal in terms of like what? Do you have to go through in terms of your conversion therapy? And like what what about size differences when you’re dealing with uh, high impact sports No, because that’s a political minefield like the right radical end of it is well You’re the gender that you say you are and the medical conversion is irrelevant And I don’t know how that translates into the sports world But my sense is that if the same thing happens in the sports world that’s happened in the political world that it will be basically Distinguishable from whim. It’s like well now i’m a woman Just like I had a guy on my podcast recently and this this came up and it was a big argument And he his essentially his stance was he is all for inclusiveness and he wants Uh, he he would like to move towards a world where trans athletes can compete and they’re included And they can compete as women and I was trying to explain the the benefits of Being a male the physical benefits of being a male and competing against women And you know, he just didn’t want to hear it. It was just in denial of it. It was it was It was going against these preconceived notions that he had and that this and the ideology There’s a part of progressive ideology that is you’re supposed to look at a trans woman as every bit a woman Yeah, well that’s because you’re supposed to accept the doctrine that all Differences between men and women are socially constructed, which is of course and a doctrine that’s I think nonsense. It’s delusional nonsense. It’s yes, and it’s delusional for some even deeper reason That’s even harder to fathom And I don’t know what it is. Yeah, it is hard to fathom. I don’t I don’t understand the root of it I really don’t I even when I talk to people who? Subscribe to these notions. I don’t understand the logic. I don’t understand Where’s where’s the breakdown in their perception of the world where they don’t see and there’s nothing that we got into Now saying another thing that we got into was children Transition and then he was in for the four. I keep hearing this. This is something I keep hearing. It’s driving me mad that hormone blockers That these puberty blockers are reversible they keep saying that they’re like they’re harmless They’re reversible if the child changes their mind They could always just get off the boat and the results are reversible. That’s not true You’re affecting the development of a child if you’re using these hormone blockers You are changing the way the child is going to develop because they’re not going to have testosterone The way a normal boy would if they’re transitioning from male to female if you’re doing this to a six-year-old kid The the the notion that this is completely reversible It’s completely disingenuous because that child is not going to go through the same developmental period Physically as they would if they had access to testosterone. They’re just not it’s just not true It’s not true if you talk to medical doctors. It’s not true if you talk to a biologist It’s it’s just not true and it’s something that they use to try to justify the in air quotes Harmlessness of this particular type of therapy that they’re encouraging and it’s just It’s just to say that there’s nothing wrong with being trans and I don’t think there is anything wrong with being trans But I think there is something wrong with making decisions for a child or allowing a child to make decisions that will Massively impact them for the rest of their life and to make that decision when you’re six like I could only imagine if I was a person who had gone through that and then having this conversation with my parents going Why the fuck did you let me make that decision? It’s gonna be really interesting to see that play itself out in the courts in about 12 years Oh, it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be ugly and it’s gonna be ugly man because I am You don’t let kill you don’t want to let your game six-year-old get a tattoo Right exactly. I mean and that tattoo is fairly reversible the whole thing about it is nonsense and it’s it’s this whole Aggressive ideology that they’re subscribing to there’s a doctrine like you have to there’s all these different things that you have to subscribe to If you want to accept that ideology, and this is one of them. This is one of them Yeah, yeah, yeah trans children. You can’t you can’t say yeah, that is problematic You can’t you’re not allowed to say that you can’t even entertain the notion that this could be a particularly egregious offense On a child if they decide that that was a bad idea If the primary idea is that Our society is an oppressive patriarchy and I think that’s like number one idea Then anything that touches on that in any way immediately becomes untouchable. And so in order for the adults to make the decision Then you have to believe in authority because the adults have the authority and if you’re going to believe that the adults have the authority Then you have to believe that hierarchy has some value and then that tangles you up with your insistence that you know hierarchy is definitely Oppressive and and the especially the western form of hierarchy And so I think that central axiom is so vital that anything that gets near it gets twisted and bent Like it’s too close to a gravitational field and and the logic is irrelevant because that fundamental central issue has to be supported at all costs Well, this is one of the conundrums of our conversation one of the whether we came to this one point where I said Now if a child identifies as a girl I said, why not just let them be a girl? Why do you have to fuck with their hormones? Why do you have to? Yeah, if it’s all nonsense what I mean, this is my take on all this like be just be a girl anything where you need Science to consistently it yeah, right anything where you need medical science to consistently inject chemicals into your body they’re going to alter your hormones Irreversibly at a very young age like why? Why is that natural? Why are you saying this is the this is what? What this person? Biologically or psychologically needs are you sure this seems like something that human beings have constructed? It’s particularly damn weird if you insist that gender is a social construct Yeah, like if it’s a social construct then what the hell are the hormones for? Exactly. So that was my point. Yeah, he didn’t have an answer to that. No. No, that’s not That’s a rough one man. That’s that’s okay. So we’re gonna go back to boston Okay Okay, so you said that’s really where things started for you. So you moved there where you were 13 And so what did you get involved in? First of all, like what kind of kid were you in school? I Barely paid attention. I was If add is real, I certainly had it And I was very very interested in what I was interested in I was very uninterested in people telling me what to do and I essentially couldn’t wait to get out of school but I would excel at things that I had interest in and the Initially was art. I was I wanted to be a comic book illustrator Until I really got into martial arts and martial arts became the focus of my life around 14 15 years old that’s when I really Became massively obsessed and that was really the first thing that I ever did Where I I really didn’t feel like a loser like I really felt like oh, I actually have some talent There’s I actually can be exceptional. There’s like something because I you know, I grew up Constantly moving didn’t really have a lot of friends. I would be new in this town I’d get picked on I wasn’t a big kid And there was a lot of a lot of issues with that psychologically And I didn’t like being afraid of other kids. I didn’t like not knowing what to do ever ran into kids They were going to bully me and pick on me So, uh, I learned that’s an annoying thing not to do what to do about Yeah, yeah and um You know martial arts changed that 180 degrees and then I became someone who I would be afraid of You know, I became the opposite of what I was So what I was was someone who was terrified of conflict didn’t know what to do And what I became was, you know, a taekwondo champion. I became a martial arts champion and I knew how to fight So how did it so many times? So like what did you do? You just walked into a joint one day and decided that that’s what you were going to do Like how did it come about? It was very fortunate Well, I’ve done a little bit of martial arts training at a different place and then one day I was in boston for a red sox game at fenway park and as I was walking home to the train station Uh with a friend of mine, um, there was a lot of people that were leaving the baseball game So the lines from the train for the t which in boston, um, public transportation was very long So, uh, we decided to go check out the j hun kim taekwondo institutes right there And I had been really into martial arts because of what I said, you know, the aforementioned insecurities and So I went up the stairs and as I was walking up the stairs just fortuitously a guy named john lee was training and john was a national taekwondo champion Who was uh in preparation for the world cup? Which was this huge event that he was taking the international event that he was about to travel to go to And uh, he was in the peak of his training and so I walked up to the top of the stairs and I heard this crazy sound of this what it turned out to be this man kicking this bag and slamming his heel into this bag and having the chain snap and and rattle and the the thud of his heel slamming into this leather bag And I got up there and I watched this guy work out I couldn’t believe a person could do that. I’d never seen anybody kick something so hard in real life anybody that had such incredible martial arts skill like this guy did john lee who became a mentor of mine and and taught me quite a bit but uh That changed everything. I was there the next day. I talked to them. They gave me a brochure and a pamphlet And I was there the next day and I was probably there every day of my life um Give or take a few days here or there if I was injured or something came up until I was uh, 22 years old So how many hours a day were you spending there? All day. I had keys pretty quickly Um, they gave me keys. Uh, they wanted me well right away My instructor recognized that I was pretty obsessed and I was uh, physically pretty talented so he uh Had me teaching classes Uh instead of paying he was like like if it’s difficult for you to pay I’d like to have you teach and there was some wisdom to that too because one of the best ways for someone to get good at martial arts is actually to teach Um, he actually refines your technique you think about it more You’re explaining it to people that don’t necessarily understand all the mechanics of it So I started teaching I would teach private lessons to beginners I would teach group classes and then eventually I went on to teach at boston university I taught at boston university and when I was 19, I was teaching a credited class there, but you actually it counted towards your gpa and so uh I did that and that was I was already us open champion by then And how long did it take so you went in there when you were 13 and you were Kid that was had moved around a bunch and got pushed I was fortunate 15 by the time I got to that school Okay, uh, and then I had my black belt by the time I was 17 and I was uh, Competing in the adult division by then before I was ever 18. I was competing as an adult Uh, I mean he might have even put me in when I was 16 if I don’t remember correctly Uh, and then I won the state championship when I was 18 and I won it every year Um from then until I stopped Right. So you had a pretty good one at four years and a run at it there How long did it take before like were you were you still were you a thin like you were you a skinny kid when you started? When did you start to bulk up and get big? When did you start tough enough so that you know the problems with aggression stop You know with other people’s aggression stop being a being a trouble for you Well, luckily with high school kids heard about it right away You know, it was one of those things where you know, you find out that there’s some One of the kids you go to school with is flying all over the country kicking people in the head Right. They just avoided me. Yeah, right. I became it wasn’t like You know, I mean, I certainly never sought out trouble but People avoided me like, you know junior and senior year. I’d already become this weird kid That was obsessed with martial arts, you know, and I spent you know, most of my life From the time I was 15 until I was 21 Training and competing I probably fought over a hundred times. I traveled all over the country I fought in california. I fought in ohio. I fought I fought all over the place And a lot of local tournaments in connecticut and massachusetts and new hampshire is where I won the u.s open and I’ve you know, just fought everywhere and that was that was most of my life Yeah, it was most of my life until I got into stand-up comedy Right. So that was so you had a very singular life like that’s yeah 100 singular. Yeah uniquely singular But I avoided most of the pitfalls of high school partying and all that stuff I didn’t do that because I was scared of getting hurt I was scared that if I showed up for training hung over that I’d get beat up And that it would somehow I was scared of anything that would take even a tiny bit away from my performance as a fighter Because I was obsessed with it that scared scared of was that actually fear of? Of being hurt because you made a mistake or fear of losing the competition or fear of not being hurt fear of losing competition Fear of hurt and being hurt in training training alone was as scary as any competition. I just just complete Completely by luck wandered into one of the best schools in the world for taekwondo that it it hit it they had produced multiple national champions and You know real Top of the food chain athletes in terms of taekwondo and it was just just dumb luck that I walked into that school And you know, I could have walked into another school that was a few blocks away. That was terrible Right. I just got lucky. I got really really really lucky So how useful? How useful are the technical martial arts like taekwondo and like in an actual street fight? Not that useful. I mean more useful than knowing nothing but um not as useful as brazilian jiu-jitsu or Now A lot of people now are just learning mixed martial arts, right? Which is essentially what you see in the ufc where they’re a jack of all trades master of none And the argument there’s two arguments like there’s there’s an argument that that is a good thing to learn And then there’s other arguments that being a specialist first is the best thing And then learning the other things later in life is the best way to go about it like a specialist Particularly a striker or a grappler like being an elite wrestler or an elite jiu-jitsu artist and then Learning all the other stuff later in life because you have such a significant advantage if you can bring the fight into your realm of expertise So if you are a striker every fight starts standing up and if you’re an elite striker and you know How to avoid takedowns and you know how to wrestle enough to keep a guy off you You’ll have such a significant advantage striking that you can dominate the competition And we’ve seen that in the ufc we’ve seen that with both grappling and with uh with striking that it seems that if you become a specialist in one particular area and Then learn those other things you’ll be better off But you can’t really just be a specialist whether it’s in muay thai or tai kwon do or jiu-jitsu You really kind of have to understand If you’re a grappler, you really have kind of have to understand striking And if you’re a striker you really kind of have to understand grappling in order to at least avoid it So and so during this time too, I mean you got to be a pretty big guy So when did that start happening? Were you working out like mad while you were training as well? Like yeah, but I was much thinner. I was much thinner back then I didn’t do much weightlifting because I was trying to compete in certain weight classes like when I was 17 Was one it was the I was cutting weight when I was 17 and 18 I was trying to make the 140 pound weight class But I was really probably about 10 pounds plus heavier than that and I would dehydrate myself and it was really affecting my performance And then when I was 18, I moved up to the next weight class That was 154. I believe it was and when I moved up to that weight class, I got way better That was when I really excelled. That’s when I became Like a real national class athlete was when I moved up and But I still wasn’t lifting weights much. I was just doing taekwondo training It was just a lot of heavy bag work some calisthenics But mostly it was martial arts work then when I started getting into jujitsu was long after I stopped competing That’s when I started really getting into weightlifting because jujitsu involves And I think the the advantage to being strong and grappling is pretty significant, right? It’s gigantic And so that’s when you know, I was like 29 or so like that. That’s when I really started heavily weightlifting and and How long did your initial martial arts career last I fought from the time I was 15 and I think I had my last fight It was either I was 21 or 22 I don’t really remember those but the last three fights were kickboxing fights and I had those while I was doing stand-up comedy So I was I was I was spreading myself too thin. I was working A bunch of different jobs. I was working delivering newspapers. I was working as a private investigators assistant I did some construction. I did a bunch of different odd jobs to make a living And uh, I decided somewhere along newspaper. Yeah Boy construction agent jujitsu fighter stand-up comedian, you know, that’s kind of your 19 year old situation. Yeah. Well jujitsu came later jujitsu didn’t come until I was I think I was 28 or 29 when I first started training jujitsu um those that was mostly just taekwondo and kickboxing I really got into kickboxing and I was Entered I had three kickboxing fights and I was entertaining the idea of fighting professionally But I was also starting to get really worried about brain damage Uh, I started to see some signs from kickboxing specifically Yeah, specifically because it was I was getting hit a lot more Oh, yeah The the kickboxing sparring that I did I did that over the course of about two years where I really got heavily into kickboxing I did a lot of boxing sparring and a lot of what you would call gym wars Where guys would just we would beat the shit out of each other and you’d get hurt and you’d come home with headaches and You basically were fighting in the gym. I mean, it’s not a wise way to do it The smart gyms now and the best martial artists. They very rarely spar hard They most of the time they spar technically so they’re they’re hitting each other but they hit each other like this They don’t they don’t blast each other full blast. They sort of touch each other They’re working on timing and occasionally you go hard just to make sure that you you can survive With these techniques in a firefight that you know how to deal with it once you get hit But um, we didn’t is the lower combat intensity still in still useful for training for the real thing Yes, it’s it’s but you have to have some high intensity and some people that that high intensity They actually have drills that they use to to sort of To simulate actual Exchanges that you would have there’s a lot of science to it now that didn’t exist back then The the gyms that I came up in were real hard nose Really? You know tough gyms and if you if you weren’t tough you did not survive and they weren’t interested in anybody That couldn’t take a shot or anybody that wasn’t willing to go to war So you would put on a mouthpiece you put on a cup you put your shin pads on and you beat the fuck out of each other and that was a big part of Learning how to fight it was these sparring sessions were brutal. They were nerve-racking. You’d be scared You’d be scared going into them. They’d be uh, you know I’d be anxious the night before if I knew how to spar a particular guy the next day Because I knew it was dangerous. You basically were having fights all the time So I’d have fights several days a week you would fight, you know, it wasn’t really sparring you would hit I’d hit guys as hard as I could covering a lot too man all the time. I think from that So, okay, yeah, you just big hole in this story too. So like you’re doing great at taekwondo You go your national level athlete And you switch to kickboxing you’re worried about getting hurt and that seems reasonable because like how about not being brain damaged by the time you’re 30, but then You know I guess kind of what i’ve wondered was like how many shots in the head did you have to take before you thought being a Stand-up comedian was a good idea Well um, one of my dear friends to this day is a guy named steve graham and uh Steve was uh when I met him I was 15 and he was probably 30 and he was going through his residency as an ophthalmologist and um He had been a flight surgeon in the u.s Air force and just uh, he would he had been on the u.s ski team Who’s a national skiing champion just a wild man just a guy who took chances and lived life to the fullest and was uh, just one of the most hard working people I ever met in my life and uh I would make him laugh And I would make some of the people laugh and train him because we were always nervous Every when we would go to tournaments we were nervous Because you know i’d seen many of my friends get knocked unconscious at these tournaments get kicked in the head Take it to hospitals and you know, i’d seen it in the gym too a lot of guys getting beat up and knocked down in the gym It was constant and you know, and you know, it had happened to me a couple times i’ve been hurt and So we had this gallows humor where um, we would go to these events We traveled to these tournaments and everybody would be the tension be so thick Everybody would just take taking deep breaths and trying to relax and just stay loose before you fight and I would be The I would be the class clown in that environment And had you ever seen that when you were in high school or junior high like would you know, I didn’t have that So what I did those circumstances Yes, I did have a sense of humor, but it would manifest itself in cartoons. I would draw like cartoons of the teacher You know, I would like draw cartoons of like certain kids that were kissed the teacher’s ass I would draw them like kissing the teacher’s ass and saying ridiculous things And if the teacher was late to a class and you know I knew I had enough time I would put something on the chalkboard and then pull down the screen So that when they would go to use the chalkboard the chalkboard they would pull the screen back up and see this Ridiculous cartoon that I had drawn the whole class would laugh and then the teacher would ask who did this and luckily nobody ratted me out but uh, so that I enjoyed making people laugh but uh that was Wasn’t it wasn’t most it mostly wasn’t things I said was mostly cartoons, right? But then it’s very different. Yeah yeah, but with comedy was with the The fighting when we were getting ready to compete I was just trying to add some levity I was just trying to lighten up the mood because everybody was And it was also it was a charged environment So anything that I said that was actually funny would get a giant reaction and that became addictive And I was pretty good at doing impressions. So I do impressions of our friends do impressions of our instructor all these in ridiculous situations and my friend Steve graham and my other friend ed shorter was another one encouraged me who I lost touch with unfortunately, um, he He said you should be a comedian And my take on it was You think i’m funny because you’re my friend But other people are gonna think i’m an asshole like the things that I think are funny are fucked up Right. I have a fucked up sense of humor. I mean here I am Devoting most of my time to trying to get really good at knocking people unconscious. I mean, that’s what I was those That’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to separate people from their consciousness That was I was doing my best every day to get good at that So my like a really perverse psychedelic drug Yeah, it was the worst. Yeah, but it was I was trying to hurt people That’s what I was trying to get good at. I was trying to get good at hurting human bodies And I just didn’t think I thought that I was such an such a weirdo and such an outlier in terms of like how society viewed uh combat physical hand-to-hand combat and interactions with each other that no one would think that the things that I was making fun of were funny and This guy convinced me to go to an open mic night. He’s like you should go to an open mic night Just go there’s a lot of comedy clubs in boston go and watch and I went and watched and I realized wow one of the things about going to open mic night is Most open mic comedians are so terrible That it encourages you to try it because you’re like, well, I can’t be that bad like I I might have something that’s better than some of these people and then you know You’d see a real professional go up and it would be so discouraging because you’d say like god my god I’ll never be that funny that that guy’s impossibly funny uh, but I knew From martial arts that if I worked really hard at something I could get good at it And I had this thought that maybe I could do that with comedy because I didn’t want to fight anymore I was already I was already on my way kind of out the door. I was really worried about the brain I was on my way out the door From the time I was like 19 from the time I was 19. I was starting to worry about brain damage and then so you’re How like you’re 53? I’m 51 51 51 and so much how much damage did you actually sustain? You know like lots of people? I don’t know I don’t know I mean, I see okay. How about physically muscularly and that sort of thing? Oh, no, I’m fine. I had a bunch of surgeries I’ve had my nose repaired. My nose was destroyed I I had no nose like the inside of my nose was just didn’t work until I was 40 And then I had a deviated septum operation. They had a cut out giant calcified chunks of Scar tissue and all sorts of I literally my nose was useless until I was 40 years old Um, so that must be kind of a relief to have your nose. Oh my god. I tell everybody get it done If you have a deviated septum, you can’t breathe out of your nose my god this I couldn’t do that until I was 40. Yeah, it was just all bro. I broke my nose Who knows how many times at least a dozen? And it would just was always bloody. I was always getting punched or kicked in the nose Yeah, it doesn’t seem designed as a sense organ to be at the in the middle of your face where you get punched Well, it has this little tiny piece of cartilage too On the top of your head, you know A lot safer up there. Yeah It also makes your eyes swell shut It makes your eyes water makes it difficult to see when you get hit in the nose The end of hitting the nose is really annoying Um, but other than that, I had both my knees reconstructed. I had acl tears in both knees. I had to get them Them reconstructed and you know a bunch of other stuff. Oh, yeah, so you took your bunch of other broken things Yeah, you’re pretty good beat Yeah broken knuckles and I broke a lot of stuff but uh But everything works great now I mean after surgery and I mean for a person who’s been through what I do What i’ve done with my body my body works remarkably. Well, yeah, it’s amazing actually, you know, that’s a lot Yeah, you think you’d be arthritic at least in some of your joints and that sort of thing No, i’m pretty good. I mean, I also Very proactive. I do a lot of yoga I’ve had a bunch of stem cell therapies to deal with some significant tears and injuries that I’ve had But all that, you know knock on wood everything works pretty good, but the brain damage thing is I don’t know I really don’t know. I really sit back and think about some of those wars that I was in Yeah, gym wars in particular and some fights and my last fight. I got tko’d I got stopped I got hit with a left hook and dropped And my legs went out from under me and then I got up and I got hit again fell down again they stopped the fight and uh, that was when I decided I’m gonna stop I was like i’m not giving this the same amount of dedication I gave when I was at my best I was spreading myself way too thin with comedy and I I just didn’t I didn’t have this same hunger for it that I had when I was young Or younger and I was also very aware of the consequences at that point in my life I was like this I know where this is going. I I I saw guys at the gym that were punch drop You know that were slurring their words and they would forget things and and I had seen some people progress towards that And it was very very disturbing to me, you know I’d be lying in bed at night after a hard sparring session. My head would be pounding I would think what am I doing to my fucking brain? Like what am I doing myself? and um I got real lucky that I found stand-up comedy. I mean if the ufc was around back then I most certainly would have started fighting and you know and To not be training intelligently because I wasn’t training intelligently I was training like a meathead and that was just all we knew back then I probably would have sustained some pretty significant damage before I ever even got into the octagon I probably would have already had massive brain damage before I ever had a fight Right, right so you so well that’s good So you you stepped out at an intelligent time and so then you started your comedy career and you started at open mics and so Yeah, tell me about how that developed Well open mic nights are very interesting you sign up on a list and you may or may not get on They they pick people out of a hat like say if there’s 50 people sign up 30 people get on and uh, you know you each do five minutes and You know the the host is generally a professional comedian that brings people up and you know You have this weird culture of people that are Struggling to try to figure out how to make a living in this sort of uh, undefined art form There’s no classes you can take in it that are really worth anything There’s no books that you can buy that are going to teach you anything It’s something that you kind of have to the only thing that I liken to is rap music Because rap music seems to be very similar in the fact that you have to learn from other practitioners You don’t really learn from books. You don’t there’s no like I mean, maybe there is now I don’t know of any like real legitimate university courses on stand-up comedy Um, I don’t think they could teach it to you anyway because everyone does it differently But I think that’s the case with rap music as well I think you kind of have to learn from the people that are already doing it and one good thing about stand-up comedy particularly today Uh today it’s much more open and inviting and um Comedians have a lot more camaraderie than they did in the beginning because they’re not fighting over scraps anymore Now there’s so many venues so many different places to work and then there’s youtube and the internet and um Comedians there’s much more of a supportive community of people trying to help people and I I try to really concentrate on that I spend a lot of time trying to help young comics Uh, I put a lot of young comics on my shows. I have them host Um, you know, uh, i’ve got a show tonight and a young comics only been doing it for a few years Her name is uh, alley mccroskey. She’s the host of it. She’s really funny and I try to encourage them I try to help them. I try to give them advice. I try to give them pointers I tried to when they have great sets I try to you know, really thank them and say that was excellent and you got this just keep keep doing what you’re doing and you can really make a career doing this because it’s such a Insecure business. It’s just so it’s such a weird undefined path that you have to take and It’s and I love the art form. I love it as a consumer. I love it as a person who’s an audience member I really still to this day enjoy watching stand-up But back then it wasn’t that supportive. There was you know, we would just support each other But the the professionals weren’t that supportive not like they are today a few people There’s a guy named lennie clark that i’m still good friends with to this day And I opened up for he was a boston legend and I was super Fortunate to open up for him when I had been uh doing comedy for about a year And he gave me some great advice and that meant the world to me and he was actually on my podcast just last month I love that guy and you know, he helped me out when I was Really really I was 21. I was really really young in my comedy career And so you started putting the same amount of dedication into that that you had been putting into the martial arts Exactly. Yeah, I just became obsessed with it and I just traveled all over the place doing doing open mic nights I mean me and my good friend greg fitzsimmons. We started out together. We’re good friends to this day we started out within a week of each other and um We we used to travel all the way to roisland. We would drive You know It was an hour plus drive to go down there just to do five minutes and then we Had an open mic night for free and then we’d drive all the way home and just dream about one day being a professional That was the dream the dream was to pay your bills by doing comedy Imagine if that that you could do comedy for a living like that was the dream I would never imagine that i’m doing what i’m doing now or i’m doing the sold out arenas like that That wasn’t even A hope and not it wasn’t even like maybe if it goes well, I could do this Maybe I could do that that was never on the menu And you know, it’s gotten to this really crazy astronomical place now that it’s very hard for me to even imagine that that came out of those strange days in boston just traveling around all these different weird comedy clubs and Writing constantly not knowing how to write not knowing how to formulate a joke having like many more misses than hits You know a lot of bombing I bombed all the time. I I You know You know, you got to have that ability to To bomb and come back from it. I mean because yeah, you’re you’re gonna have a lot more Misses than hits. That’s for sure. That’s a lot more. Yeah What do you think what do you think accounts for that obsessiveness that you described And that’s a negative way of putting it I mean, obviously you said that you know when you were in school if you weren’t interested you weren’t listening at all but if you were Interested in something you were like laser focused and that really came up in the martial arts But it obviously manifested itself in the stand-up comedy too. So what is it about you that that that enables you? What do you think it is about you that enables you to? Zero in on something like that to the exclusion of everything else I don’t know. I mean, I think some of it has to be attributed to the unhappiness in my childhood Um that when I would find something that I did get some joy out of I would just concentrate all in on that Um, I think some of it also was like I wasn’t really raised with a lot of discipline and I wasn’t really raised with a Pat me my parents were both my stepdad and my mom were both working all the time So they they didn’t they weren’t really around to sort of tell me what to do or how to live And they weren’t really around to let me know that everything was going to be okay They were always working so they would come home from work at like six o’clock or something like that and You know, i’d been On my own all day me and my sister had been on our own all day You know, we’d come home. We had a key we got into the house and It was uh when I There was a lot of real bad feelings, you know like And when I found something that made me feel good, I just did that exclusively. That’s all I did And I I still have that problem to this day When I get obsessed with something if I find something that means something to me I uh I think of it All day long if I get obsessed with something it becomes it becomes uh, like a mantra that’s in the back of my head and I I I have to Shut it off Like I have to do my best to shut it off. Otherwise, I can’t listen to people I don’t like I like when people are talking to me. I don’t want to talk to them I want to go do that thing that I want to do right, you know, it becomes like a compulsion And it could be socially negative, you know, it could be detrimental to relationships and friendships Yeah, um, yeah, but it seems like that sort of thing is also absolutely necessary if you’re going to Develop high level skill at something Difficult and unlikely because yeah, unless you’re obsessive about it practice it like all the time The the people you’re competing with are gonna they’re gonna take you out So well funny thing I would always be terrified that I would run into someone like me Well, I cannot But that’s that was the fear that I would run into someone who is 100 all in and when I was Fighting and when I lost my last kickboxing fight, I wasn’t all in and I knew I wasn’t all And I knew I knew I wasn’t the same person. I was when I was like 18 19. I was a Psychopath. I mean I was 100 committed to doing nothing but that and then um as I was examining my future prospects in my life And I started to become more aware of the problems of what I was doing. I became less and less I I had one fight that I had in California in anaheim and the u.s. Nationals in 1980 it must have been my It seems like it had to been 86 86 or 87 Somewhere around there 87 somewhere around 87 I Knocked this guy out with a head kick and I did in front of his pants and it was it was Everybody was people were crying and he was unconscious for a long time he was unconscious for a solid half hour who and they dragged him they dragged him off of the The mat they put him in a stretcher. They took him to the hospital. I never saw him regain consciousness and I remember thinking that could have easily been me Like I didn’t have any illusions of me being some impervious Invulnerable person and I was really thinking about how I I hit him so hard my heel was hurting the next day I was walking with a limp from his head Because I wheel kicked him in the head. It’s a particularly brutal move where you spin and your your whole leg comes around You’re hitting someone in the head with your heel and he felt like he had gotten shot to spell face first Out cold snoring It wasn’t the first time that I’d done that to someone but it was One of the most brutal because he kind of ran into it, too He was trying to kick me as I was kicking him So it was the force of his body coming towards me and me hitting him And I was thinking that guy’s probably never going to be the same again Like he’s never going to get over it psychologically or if he does it’s going to be very hard for him But he might he might be damaged for the rest of his life That’s a real possibility and then I started thinking am I willing to have that happen to me at 19? I was 19 years old. I was like is this is this what you want to do? Do you want to get hit in the head like that and never be the same again at 19 because it easily can happen You know, yeah, that’s we were at 60 years to live like that Yeah, we were at a this was a national championship tournament So he was a state championship, I think from illinois and I was a state champion from massachusetts And um, you know wasn’t like he was he was a black belt and it wasn’t like he was a unskilled guy So the fact that I was able to do that to him and I was able to do that to a bunch of other guys I knew that someone out there could do that to me, right? I knew that I knew that I wasn’t the best in the world and I knew that even though I was a top I was you know, I was a real national level competitor. I wasn’t world class. I wasn’t the best especially at 19 um, and so that doubt That doubt stuck with me um for the next couple of years and it was it was probably the first seed Of uh, my new future was me hurting that guy and thinking about what that was going to be like if that happened to me Yeah, well, that’s a hell of a right turn you took there to go into comedy So, okay, so how now you became successful as a comedian? so You started playing in little clubs like stand-up comedians did and like yeah, how’d you get your breaks? How’d your career develop? how well, um It took a few years for me to get competent, you know took like two or three years for me to get competent and then Three years in I got extremely fortunate again where I met my manager My manager who’s my manager to this day He basically picked me up when I was an open mic comedian I mean I was I was getting a few paid gigs here and there but I was really an amateur um And he found me he was looking for new talent. He came up from new york He is he was a like, you know, really well respected and well recognized manager still is Of course, his name is jeff susman and we’ve been together for uh, shit now. It must be 28 years Yeah, we’ve been together since really since I was an amateur and he uh, That’s a successful collaboration to to span that amount of time not many changes Yeah, um, yeah, we’ve been together forever we’ve been together forever we don’t even have a contract anymore Hmm We haven’t had a contract I think for like 10 years. So during all this time This is just like a bit of a side side question here Side question here, but you ever have any time at all to pursue relationships with women No, yeah. Well you do comedy, you know, you’re in clubs at night Yeah, you have most of your day to do whatever you want You know to just when I was just a stand-up comedian. I had a lot of free time You know, I mean you’re writing jokes, but you can only do that a couple hours a day or you get bored And then it’s not effective and then you just kind of living your life and hanging out and sometimes the best way To develop your comedy is to have good social interactions It’s actually kind of important when you’re an aspiring comedian to be in a lot of social situations Because you are around people you hear people say things And then you think what they say is silly or what they say is, you know You disagree or you agree you you see perspectives and points of view And you kind of you develop You know an understanding of how human beings behave it’s kind of very important so yeah, I I was around a lot of different girls and a lot of guys and just being out and And you’re always at comedy clubs and nightclubs, but I didn’t I didn’t go out other than that You know if I wasn’t at a comedy club at night, I probably wasn’t out you know, it was always the same thing with like My obsession with fighting and fighting came way easier for me than stand-up did stand-up was way harder For me, it was way harder. It was way harder to achieve confidence. What was harder about it? Well, you said it took you two or three years to get competent So that was a lot of falling flat on your face. I presume yeah And even then even like three years in I still could bomb at any moment I mean I could have a bad set. I didn’t know how to do it. But also I was socially awkward I think it took me a while to uh to not be Not be so socially awkward, you know, that was that was an issue and you know It was a lot of it was from my upbringing But a lot of it was also I kind of cultivated that when I was fighting Yeah, I didn’t want people to like me. I didn’t care Like I didn’t need them to like me all I needed them to do I mean I kind of wanted them to be scared of me, you know So when I was fighting I wasn’t trying to make friends out there at all I was uh, I was just trying to fuck people up I mean so when you were fighting when you were fighting did you have any relationships with women? Or was it or were you pretty not good ones? Not good No, I didn’t I wouldn’t allow them to do I wouldn’t allow them to have much of my time you know, I didn’t I didn’t uh I didn’t I think to have a successful relationship you have to spend a lot of time together You have to communicate you have to you the person has to almost be first place in your life Yeah, and that was never that was never happening And so that was that would come up very often like I was a girl that I was dating in high school Uh, and you know, I I used to teach at the school so I had keys to the school So, um one time I took her up there because uh, I needed to get a workout in and she wanted to have sex At the gym and I was like, there’s no way I wouldn’t do it I was like this place is sacred like there’s no chance like she was trying to fool around And I was and I was adamant. I was like this is never happening. Like this is my it might as well be a church to me I was like it’s not happening. And you know, I was so horny when I was 17 years old To me at 17 or 18 to say no to sex was crazy Right, right. That’s a crazy story I think we’re gonna we’re gonna clip that and put it in a little clip that says joe rogan tells a story that no sane man would believe Well, you know, I was that was the first refuge that I had from my life of despair So for me, I wasn’t gonna screw that up right right, right, right? I felt like disrespecting the the the academy like that Well, you think it’d be like an adult not something. Yes, that’s something when you’re a teenager, you know Like to actually be treated that way. It’s a good thing not to mess with if you’re fortunate enough to have it Well, I wouldn’t even walk onto the training floor by myself with no one around without bowing Uh-huh I mean there was no one there, but I would never Leave the the common area and step on the training floor without bowing first, right? Never never Never okay. So when you’re in comedy now You said you said you were all in as a fighter and you figure you went all in as a comedian, too And did you do that right from the beginning? Yeah, yeah pretty much Yeah right away as soon as I realized that I could actually do this And as soon as I realized I decided I mean my first set that I ever did I had a bunch of my friends come down and watch me and I wasn’t good The first time I ever got on stage, but I got a couple of little chuckles and laughs And then I realized this might be possible I might be able to do this and then I became obsessed with figuring out how to do it because it was I I saw it as a path like okay This is a thing like this is a thing you could do that you actually love like I was a huge fan Of the art form. I loved watching it Um ever since my parents took me to the movies when I was like 14 or 15 We saw live on the sunset strip. It was a richard prier movie In in the theater where he did stand up and I’d never seen that before And I remember thinking how crazy is it that this guy can just talk? And it’s so funny. I was falling out of my chair laughing and I was looking around I remember looking around while the movie was playing at all these people in their chairs just rocking back and forth and laughing so hard Yeah, it’s really something amazing I saw especially when you’re a young teenager like 16 I know you should really talk about bill cosby, but I saw him live and like I saw him live too when I was a security guard Oh, yeah, I saw him live. Yeah, I was a security guard at great woods Uh, I saw kennis in there when I was a security guard saw rodney dangerfield there Yeah, saw quite a few people there. Yeah Well, it was something to see him sit on his stool with his cigar and get the whole audience like literally hysterical I mean the guy in front of me was Rocking back and forth so hard he could hardly breathe his wife kept elbowing him to get him to kind of Turn back into something vaguely resembling a human being But it was it’s really amazing to see someone with that much command of the audience and and so consistently unbelievably funny He’s the most tragic story in all of show business man. I had Asterix Next to michael jackson and oj simpson. I mean those are the three most tragic stories in show business in my mind Yeah, and and you know, he’s a monster and it’s crazy. Yeah What the hell, you know the thing that’s so strange about cosby you’d think well like was this really necessary like Man, the guy was famous in 15 different directions and really well respected You wouldn’t have think he would have had to date rape his women. You know, it’s just well Yeah, I mean if he just he could have just had prostitutes I mean if he really just needed sex, I don’t think that’s what it was. I think there was a sick perversion And I think he liked to do that to people he liked to trick them. I mean i’m just guessing right It has to be something like that because it’s something it’s so counterproductive and so Psychotic it’s psychotic. I mean, I don’t understand it, you know, i’ve tried to I’ve tried to sort of imagine what it must have been like to be around in the 50s and the 60s I think people did that to each other way more often than we’d like to admit And I think that it was more casual than we would think of today where people would slip someone a mickey Or you know, I mean he even had a bit that he did back in way back in the day about giving someone spanish fly That you’d give someone something that would make them horny Right, I think he I think he was probably a guy that had an incredibly inflated opinion of himself Didn’t want anybody to ever reject him Experienced that a few times again. This is pure speculation and just decided that he was better than people that he could just drug them It’s so strange though because his comedy was basically so like it was generally family oriented It was yes, you know And he put himself forward as a role model and he was credible like he was credible as an actor as a role model And he seemed credible as a spokesperson is kind of kind of makes me think, you know, there’s this Idea that the psychoanalysts had this guy named eric neumann Who is a student of carl jung’s and one of the things that neumann said it wrote a book called depth psychology and the new Ethic right after world war two and it’s a it’s a great book a little thin book, but it’s a great book one of the things he says in that book is Don’t be better than you are And what he meant was he didn’t mean don’t improve like that would be foolish he meant beware of Adopting a persona that makes you a far better person than you actually are because all of that part Of you that you’re not admitting to that’s going to go off and have its own life Because you’re not integrating it, you know, you’re suppressing it in some way and you know what it and and so It’s a living thing. You know that well like the aggression you had when you were a fighter That’s a big deep part of you, you know You can’t just push something like that aside and pretend that it’s not there and think that it’s not going to go off and have Some fun when you’re not paying attention Yeah, to me like something like that must have got him is that he was he was split between this really good guy that he was trying to be which was like too good and And this this like more monstrous side of his personality that he Obviously never integrated or perhaps never even admitted to it’s really a hell of a story man. It’s like and it really is a catastrophe I think it was an absolute bloody catastrophe for his victims obviously and but just as a general Cultural phenomenon is so awful Yeah, I couldn’t agree more and it you you know, they say you should separate The man from the art But in his case, it’s almost impossible to do because his art was his perception of life So like when you’re watching him, it’s not like a painter or even someone who makes a movie It’s like when you’re watching him you’re watching him now and all you can think of As he’s talking about these different things and about I told my children What he’s like he’s doing this lovable dad. Yeah Yeah, all you can think of that guy rapes people yeah drugs them and rapes them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t enjoy it anymore. Yeah, and he’s Unquestionably as far as like his skill. He was one of the greatest of all time Yeah, yeah. All right. So you got you got a manager and you got a good one and what happened? Yeah I moved to new york and then once I moved to new york. I started Doing a little bit of a career Started doing a ton of stand-up comedy Uh, I was traveling all over the place and I got better and better and I kept working on it working on it and just Doing a lot of gigs and just going all over the place and and then um a few years later How old were you by the time you were like paying your bills because that was your first marker for success probably like 26 25 26 was when it all started coming together So that’s not too bad. Let’s start. Yeah. I mean I wasn’t old enough. Yes a lot of money I was making enough money to eat and pay my rent um, and then um Somewhere around then I did a thing called the mtv half-hour comedy hour. That was a uh, uh It was a television show they had on mtv And each comedian I mean, I don’t know how much time I did on the show I think you do like seven to ten minutes or something like that wasn’t a lot of time And I had a set and I did on television it went really well and then uh, next thing you know, I got all these offers to do television shows, I got development deal offers and then Before you know it i’m living in california. It was like that. I mean within a year I was living in california and I was on a sitcom and uh, And then that sitcom got cancelled and uh, I thought I was gonna move back to new york. It was called a hardball It was a baseball show on fox was a sitcom about a baseball team um That show got cancelled and then uh, I got a development deal with nbc. I was gonna move back to new york, but I had signed a lease For my apartment. I hated la I hated actors. I didn’t like it I didn’t it was so it was so disingenuous the worlds that I had come from were the worlds of stand-up comedy Which is about as real as you can get either. You’re funny or you’re not And then the world of fighting which was even more real than that um, and then all of a sudden I was around all these people that were just full of shit and weird and It was that they were put on these personas and they wanted the casting agents to like them and the producers to like them And everything was fake and everybody knew it was fake But they all accepted it and they talked fake and they and it was it was very very strange Very hard for me to deal with I really didn’t like actors I didn’t like being and the only place that I sought refuge It’s a funny thing that there’d be an automatic assumption that because you were a good stand-up comedian that somehow you’d be an actor Yeah To be the same thing No, they’re not but The thing is that a lot of comedians had gone on to be super successful in the world of sitcoms Like roseanne barr jerry seinfeld tim allen those type of people they had these huge careers brett butler So because of that all that was happening at the same time. This is like a 94 ish when I got on tv for the first time um, and they That was what they’re pushing and then agents and managers who pushed that too because obviously you can make a tremendous amount of money So, uh that show got cancelled, but I had a lease for this apartment. So I was kind of stuck in la So I was like, all right, let me just stay out here And uh, see what happens for a year. That was my thought And then um, I got a development deal with NBC They wanted to do a sitcom with me and then I wound up auditioning for a show that they had already had called news radio and that was with dave foley and phil hartman and mora tierney and candy alexander and steven rood and andy dick and Vicki lewis and we did that show for five years and then You know by that time Uh, I had done a lot of stand-up at the comedy store when that show was cancelled Fear factor came along and I was touring as a comedian and now that’s still there. Okay, so now You go from sitcoms to fear factor So how the hell did that happen? And why well it happened? NBC came up to me with the idea because I was on NBC previously and they they liked me And then part of the thing was that I didn’t want to work with actors anymore I was I was happy that fear factor was no actors and I was like, oh good. This is easier to do um, it’s just me talking to people and Since I had a background in coaching because I had coached a lot of people at tournaments Uh in competition and I taught a lot at boston university. I taught at my own school Um, I you know with taekwondo I was used to teaching people and I was used to encouraging people and and getting people motivated and I knew how to Get fired up for competition. I understood you were actually and you’re actually one of the rare people in the world who was actually trained To be the right host for fear factor Yeah in a lot of ways Luckily fortuitously because I I like I would when someone was nervous and they’re about to do something I I could grab them and go look at me you could do this This is going to define you With you if you back off right now and you get scared and you give into your fears your anxieties This is going to define you or if you just press forward and realize you can do this and succeed It will define you in a positive way and you’ll build momentum in that direction You can do this and I would I was really good at giving people pep talks I was really good at firing people up and it was part of the gig that it was like it was uh, completely unexpected Because I thought the gig was just going to be these people do these crazy things and You know, I make fun of it, which is part of my job and I you know We all cheer and and it would all play itself out because it was a reality show It was sort of a game show slash reality show. It was like a hybrid But somewhere along the line, especially when they became really nervous Uh, it it was very intense and there was moments where I really I wanted these people to win and I wanted these people to do their best. I wanted these people to succeed You know and to be able to encourage someone trading man, and you know from yeah, that’s the basis of psychotherapy so You know, it’s really something to get people to Face their fears. I mean you were doing it in a very Idiocentric way very a very Uh, what unique way but yeah imagine it was psychologically compelling very often Got any particular got any particular stories from that time? You got a good story from fear factor Well, there was one time Where there was this couple, uh, not couple a family It was a father and a son competing against a mother and the daughter And the father and the son were kind of jerks Which was part of the competition there was a lot of trash talking But they were really cocky and they thought that they were going to win, you know, and it was you know, they this parent and child teams had gotten down to two and it was the man and his son versus the woman and her daughter and Everybody thought These jerks were going to win and we’re kind of bummed out about it but The the women the woman and her child You know, they just rose to the occasion And I mean, I remember Talking to them and firing them up, but I still I didn’t know if they could do it. What was the challenge? it was some crazy thing that they had to climb and do this thing and The the I I don’t really remember all of it like they had to gather flags it was all for time But the son the kind of jerky son the jerky dad they kept screwing up And they they they fucked up because you know, they they’d kind of taken it For granted that they were going to win And when the pressure hit them and they knew it was all on the line a lot of times jerks Are just insecure and when they’re under pressure when they’re really faced with real pressure like this is the real moment Who are you really fuck all that talk? Who are you really they fall apart? and The mother and the daughter won And you’re talking about a hardened crew of people that watch people eat Animal dicks and jump out of helicopters for season after season episode after episode, you know, we did A hundred and something shows a hundred and I don’t even remember how many shows I got probably 140 episodes of that show everybody cried Hmm The camera people like i’ll cry now if i’m thinking about it. Hmm What the mother and the daughter was so affecting I mean there’s a justice component to it, right There’s a comeuppance It was a comeuppance. It was an underdog it was Just seeing their spirit You know when when they were figuring out a way to win Watching them win to this day I’ll tell you one of the things that makes me really happy about this interview So far is that like I have a tendency to tear up in interviews? As you may have noticed, but this time it was you so i’m i’m quite pleased about that Yeah, it’s a touching story though, man You do, eh Yeah. Yeah, but particularly like that. I don’t tear up for sad things I tear up for happy things You know, yeah That’s an interesting thing to to think about too because it’s not exactly happy, right? It’s Because you know when these people come up to me and they tell me their stories That often makes me tear up because it’s like it’s like this blast of dead bloody seriousness with a happy ending You know, so yeah, it’s a comedy Because it’s a happy ending but it’s yeah rough and affecting and it it it that makes me tear up And I think my proclivity i’ve always kind of had that ever since I was a kid But it seems to have come back to with you too. Hey, yeah. Yeah, always always but it’s always been happy things It’s never been sad things. It’s very hard to get me to cry with sad things Sad I sort of just yeah triumph success. Yeah People pulling through like post fight interviews when i’m when I work for the ufc when someone has like a particularly incredible performance I have the fight off tearing up I feel so happy for them Isn’t it strange that it’s that same response? to sorrow It’s the same response to sorrow and triumph Yeah, you know like what the hell’s up with that? I don’t I don’t understand that at all I mean, I guess it’s also kind of a sign of empathy Yes, it is definitely a sign of empathy. But it’s what’s also odd is that with sad things I can I can I can objectively analyze them And I I could not get sad I can understand that this is just life and it is what it is. And I mean, I won’t feel good, but I won’t start weeping I don’t weep for like sad things the way I weep for happy things. So you that’s interesting So so in some sense you’ve you’ve trained yourself to detach yourself from that kind of sorrow but not to detach yourself from triumph I can rationalize And understand sorrow I can internalize it. I get it. I know I know what it is and uh, you know I just get so happy for people sometimes When things go well, yeah, one of my guilty pleasures is I I really like uh, America’s got talent and the bbc equivalent what the hell’s the bbc equivalent? Is it the x factor? Something like that. Yeah And it does the same thing to me to see somebody come slub out there Slub themselves out there on the stage looking pretty pretty damn dreadful in about four different dimensions and then like knock it out At the park it really yeah it’s it’s really something to Yeah, it’s something amazing. Well, because I think we as a human being you realize how hard it is to overcome Competition or these difficult moments? So these these moments when you’re tested and you know There’s fears and insecurities of these people have to battle as well as the actual physical task in front of them There’s so much going on and there’s so much anticipation and nerves and anxiety Involved in that that to see someone triumph, I mean it’s I am a student of human will I I love Stories of discipline and success. I don’t like bad stuff. I don’t even like going to movies where they’re sad But people tell me about sad movies. I’m like stop. I’m not going that movie. I don’t like it I don’t want to see it. I’m not interested. I know what sadness is. I’ve been sad. I get it I’m not interested in getting that in a form of entertainment. I like success. I like I like seeing people triumph I like I like seeing the human spirit manifest itself in spectacular ways. Yeah, that’s why I like my lectures That’s why it’s so fun to do them, you know because i’m out there trying to tell people that they have the opportunity to do that and To point out to them too that if they watch themselves they notice they love that because you know, that’s one of the things you go to a basketball game or a hockey game or something like that and somebody makes a spectacular play and it’s a little celebration of the human spirit Ability to do something impossible in the moment and everybody’s up on their feet like in one second go man go Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s that’s uh The more of that the better as far as i’m concerned. There’s so much. Yep concentration on our on our you know the destruction we wreak on the planet and our original sin and our weakness and That you know the terrible things we do to each other. It’s really nice to see those situations where People are celebrating the triumph of an individual in a group like that and really says something wonderful about Human beings deep in their core for all of our problems. It’s really something to be part of that Yeah, I couldn’t agree more and I think we concentrate way too often and way too much On the negative aspects of people, you know It’s almost like sports is about the only place that doesn’t happen You know, it’s kind of strange because you do concentrate on the positive in sports you celebrate the winners, you know The cameramen don’t go over and interview the losers, you know, I mean all that but and It’s it. I don’t know why it is that in sports. It’s okay to To to celebrate the triumphant and the victorious but it is okay and no one questions it It’s it’s oh well, that’s not true because now they have like non-competitive games for kids and you know That’s part of the politically correct curriculum, but most of the time most sane people will Celebrate along with a victorious athlete and that’s really something All right, so fear factor how many years did that last six years were they good years It’s good financially Yeah, well that’s something I made I made a ton of money and it Alleviated financial pressure But I enjoyed doing it some somewhat but it was not like the way I enjoy the other things that I do It’s not like I enjoyed stand-up comedy. It’s not like I enjoy working for the ufc It’s not like I enjoy doing podcasts all those things that I just talked about those three things Those things are labors of love. I they’re passions or things that i’m really Genuinely fascinated by and interested in like this conversation I would have this conversation with you if it was just you and me and there was no cameras I would love to have this conversation. I love having conversations with interesting people Um, I love stand-up comedy. I love all those things I didn’t love being there for fear factor, but it was a great job and I knew it was a great job And I knew I was really lucky to have it. So it was great in that respect But when it was over, I kind of decided I was done with television When it was over, I was like, okay, I think i’m done with this no more of this from like from here on out I’m just going to concentrate on my own stuff And so uh from then on out I just really focused on stand-up comedy and that’s when my comedy Career really took off was post fear factor. I mean I had a comedy career during fear factor But it really took off post fear factor because I really gave it all of my attention And so what was what what happened after fear factor that boosted you on the comedies on the comedy circuit? um Well, I did a special for comedy central and spike tv Called talking monkeys in space in 2009. That was like probably my best work up until then And then um, you know from then i’ve been on a pretty steady pace of doing specials Every two years or so ever since then right right right and that’s been successful non-stop. Are you getting better? Yeah, and it’s Yeah, I think I am. I think i’m getting better I think it’s one of those things as long as you keep concentrating on it and as long as you keep focusing on it You’re getting better I think my hour that i’m doing now is as good as anything i’ve ever done and it’s not even done yet It’s only you know, six months into this hour But uh, I think it’s some of my best work ever and i’m really excited to see where it comes Well, I mean probably there’s no rush because it’s only six months since my last one. I probably will work on this for another year Before I even think about recording it Oh, yeah, so if it’s good Good by then Yeah, it’s a it’s like a samurai sword You’re you’re folding the metal and hammering the blade folding the metal and hammering the blade And you got to know when it’s ready and i’ll start to get a sense of where it’s ready in about a year In about one year then i’ll start going. All right, this seems pretty solid Maybe it’s time to rock and roll and then uh, i’ll contact netflix and i’ll say, uh, hey, let’s do it You know, let’s uh set it up and whatever just whatever city I decide I’ll just i’ll pick a city i’ll pick it i’ll just run it over in my head. I’ll pick a name for it you know Well, maybe i’ll try to stay posted on what you’re doing and come down and see it. That’d be fun. Yeah I missed the last time you were here in toronto, but i’d like to come and see one of your shows live I think that’d be a blast So yeah, okay. So the next was the ufc, eh? Yeah, that was tv. You know, she kind of ufc happened while I was on news radio actually While I was on news radio, I started working for the ufc way back in 1997 But it was the ufc was more of a sideshow back then it was uh banned from cable You could only get it on satellite tv Right, and it was it was a freak show people didn’t know about it I mean I loved it because as a lifelong martial artist to me was fascinating to watch all these different styles compete against each other but um It didn’t pay much money And even though it was enjoyable for me it got in the way of other aspects of my life and so I quit around 1998 and then um Somewhere along the line in around 2001 The ufc was purchased by this new company and when they purchased this my earphones are dying I’m gonna have to take these off and unplug this here Can you hear me still is that good? Yeah It’s good. Okay. Um Once it started, uh once the new company took over they were trying to get people to uh to go to their events and They asked me to go to the event, you know, it’s when I was doing fear factor And so I went and watched it live and uh when I was watching it live um I was talking to dana white who is the president of the ufc and just Talking to him about the sport and all these different things I think about and Are you interested in this guy? I was asking about various obscure fighters that were competing in japan Maybe he didn’t know about you should try to get these guys And then somewhere along the line he said hey you want to do commentary? And I I can’t I was like, I don’t want to work man. I’m just here I just want to enjoy this so he and I became friends and he talked me into doing it And uh, I first did it for free. I did like 12 Events or so for free Just for fun. I was like just get tickets for my friends and i’ll go and i’ll do commentary for you But I didn’t take it that seriously. I just I didn’t everything was going to be you know a career right, I would be this uh You know Well-known commentator in mixed martial arts. I just thought I was doing it as a favor for them and for fun for me And uh, you know lo and behold here we are 18 years later I’m still doing it I presume they’re paying you now What’s up? I presume they’re paying you now. Oh, yeah, they pay me a lot. That’s good. That’s good That that’s better bargaining position. I would say yeah Yeah, it’s they’re very generous okay, so so that that’s kind of an understandable transition in some sense because you know You got you you got your social skills highly developed and you got your ability to be witty on demand Highly developed and to pay attention to an audience and you had the martial arts background and so UFC commentator that that makes sense. It’s that all right. So now Where does the podcast come in? How the hell does that happen next? I guess it’s next isn’t it? Yeah, the podcast was 2009. I guess when I first started and the podcast was basically Um, it was just for fun it was like something to do with my friends me and my friend brian We just decided to set up a laptop and uh people would ask questions and we would just start Just talking about things and then it became a weekly thing and then we started uploading it to itunes and then um, You know, I started getting guests and then as the Then I mean it took years before it was profitable. I mean I just it was just for fun forever Like a lot of things that i’ve done It was originally just for fun. Well, that’s pretty early podcast too though a 2009. So very early. I mean podcasts were I mean for lots of people there’s still not a thing. Although that’s really changed in the last Three or four years. I mean, yeah, there are definitely a mainstream Uh media phenomenon now, but 2009 being That was that was fringe stuff fundamentally Yes. Yeah, it was very fringe There was uh, just a few advertising market at that point. I wouldn’t have thought not much one. No, no There was no ads we didn’t have ads for years um, and then um slowly ads started trickling in the first ad was the fleshlight which is a device It was so it was a funny story about sam harris sam harris who was a guest really early on When the fleshlight was the only sponsor? Requested that we not have the fleshlight as a sponsor on the episode that he was on And so I was like, okay So I I took that week off. I just decided no, uh, no sponsor that week And uh, that is that’s funny for for very many reasons. It’s funny that that was your first Well, you know pornography leads the way right? Yeah, well get on the internet Yeah, yeah, it is kind of funny. Yeah, and you know was even also funnier is that the guy who was Um, I guess he was the ceo of the fleshlight or marketing something or another the fleshlight He went on To form on it with me so on it, which is my fitness and supplement company He and I are partners in this and it came out of our Uh the thing with the fleshlight our business agreement because it was really profitable for the fleshlight And he realized early on like wow like having a podcast sponsor something could be incredibly lucrative If the podcast is well respected and well received like this is sort of an untapped advertising market Hey, let’s start a business and just use the podcast as A method of launching this business and let’s see how it goes right, so the podcast that’s and that became very successful too, but the podcast sort of um Took on a life of its own It went from being just me hanging out with comedians talking to me interviewing people like you or having conversations, I should say more than interviewing people like you and You know scientists and archaeologists and doctors and I mean everyone the world Yeah, all right you started talking you started talking to everyone Yeah, everyone really everyone and it was mostly mostly comedians to begin with Yes, it was almost all comedians in the beginning and the everyone part is interesting because that’s something that people Resist or resent more than anything now like uh the thing about this that you see now you see this this This expression giving someone a platform Why would you give some someone a platform with those ideas it’s like it really comes down to this concept of silencing opinions that you don’t agree with and my thought on it was has always been I want to talk to all kinds of different people And even if I don’t agree with them, I want to find out why they think the way they do Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s also an element of useful disagreeableness there It’s like i’m going to talk to whoever the hell I want to Yeah, I don’t care what you think about it I interviewed Milo speaking of people that you’re not supposed to be talking to recently Yeah, like a week ago. Yeah So a lot of heat from that I hasn’t been broadcast yet I don’t think i’m gonna I don’t think i’m going to take a lot of heat for it, you know, because It was we didn’t have a political discussion What did I talk about discussion? Well, that’s interesting. I was really curious about How he got taken down, you know when he was talking about his his his sexual abuse when he was a kid and some sense like I watched that that interview and I knew he was in trouble as soon as he Completed it. I figured no you’re you said things that you’re not allowed to say And I think a part of it was that See, I was split in two parts watching it part because I was also watching it as a clinician I thought That it was admirable of Milo to refuse to take the victim’s stance because he had been such a anti-victim What would you call it agitator or advocate right and so he said well I was a full participant in this But then the clinical side of me thought no Man, you haven’t updated your memory since you were 14 like you’re still thinking of Adult Milo as 14 year old Milo and you’re not thinking about 14 year old Milo as a kid and so that was sad for me to see that because Often when people are traumatized In some sense around the area of trauma They don’t mature Like it’s like they get stuck. Well, look, yeah, imagine that you’re on a path and you you you come towards an obstacle that’s impenetrable But you really need to get through it To fully develop like it’s part of what you need to grow up, but you can’t so you walk around it You know But you leave the part of yourself that could have matured behind there and because it didn’t deal with the challenge like this is sort of what you were experiencing maybe on fear factor, maybe why you’re such a What you’re so emotionally affected by triumph. It’s like you get defeated by something like that. You can’t overcome it There’s part of you that gets stuck there in a sense and something freud observed like 100 Madam near must be 120 years ago that people would fixate at a certain age because something had happened to them or at least part Of their personality would I could see that happening with Milo and I thought that he was in a really tough spot because he’d been molested He didn’t want to play the victim. He Yet he actually was a victim which was the perverse goddamn thing and that You know the way he spoke about it could easily have been Twisted misinterpreted partly because of his own doing into a quasi Justification for pedophilia and then he also said well, you know This was relatively common practice in the gay community and I figured he’d be cut to ribbons for for for bringing that up But he said in the interview it was really weird, you know He said that it wasn’t the left wingers that took him out It was the conservatives No, because he he was slated to talk speak at cpac And uh, and the straight republican types not the trump types, you know, but the but the more Classically conservative republicans didn’t think that milo. You know opulis was the right kind of guy to have speaking at cpac and so his sense is that it was actually the The moderate right that wiped him out and so that was wow that was interesting and I didn’t expect that and he I we also talked a fair bit about um, I can’t tell you all of it because then nobody has to watch the damn podcast but Or listen to it. But you know, he’s he’s also shifted his viewpoint quite substantially on what happened to him when he was 14 and he he describes the process he went through to Kind of rethink that not least the controversy it caused so you know, I think Well, that was our conversation. It lasted a couple hours. It was you know, I asked him how he was doing and what he was planning on doing and and that and so that was kind of interesting to find out too, but We never got into anything that was remotely political. And so I was happy to have had the conversation You know the thing about people like milo is I don’t give a damn what you say about Alex jones is the same sort of person. I think the same thing about tommy robinson for that matter. It’s like These people are interesting like they’re strange people and they have they have an effect on the world and like What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to what are you not supposed to be curious about that? It’s like yeah Yeah It’s the deplatforming thing like they did they have this idea that you should not have a differing opinion If you have a differing opinion, it should never get a platform And yeah, well, it’s also more perverse than that even it’s the idea that if you give someone like that quote a platform So now you’re willing to talk to them that you must agree with them merely because you’re conversing with them and it’s like yes That and that’s a that’s a that’s a Well that guilt by association Assumption is it’s a terrible assumption What does it mean? You’re only going to talk to people who hold exactly the same ethical views that you hold on anything on everything Yeah, it’s it’s not sense It’s like that data in society thing that came out connecting everybody as alt-right gateways because they’ve talked to people that are On the right, you know, I I tweeted that lady when she wrote that I said That barbara walters interviewed castro does that make her a communist? And so it’s basically how I my take on all this stuff is there’s nothing wrong with talking to people and I feel like milo In a sense well milo, you know almost has been his own worst enemy because he’s such a provocateur and now they’ve turned a lot Of that stuff that he was saying as a provocateur and they’ve turned it against him but I think that You and him have this one thing in common in that you get categorized by lazy people Who are are not good at nuance and they put you in this box that other people have created And this box is oh, this is an alt-right this this is a conservative that this guy’s a nazi This guy’s a white supremacist this guy’s a that whatever it is. They put you in that box and then socially You have to in order to fit into the ideology in order to fit into this group think You have to sort of Accept these definitions that this person’s bad, you know that that person gavin mcginnis is a nazi Milo unopolis is a nazi that these people are this these are the problem without any real understanding of who those people really are Without any real grab. Well that happened to sargon of the cad, right? Yeah, benjamin. Hey, by the way We’re launching our alternative social media platform soon That’s what it’s going. Yeah, it’s going to be well. We we tried out the first of the technology I just they’ve debated slavoj zizek on friday and last friday and he was hypothetically the world’s foremost marxist philosopher Although it turned out that he wasn’t really a marxist at all He called himself a hegelian which is actually way different than being a marxist And so it wasn’t really much of a debate It was more me attacking the communist manifesto for half an hour, which I found rather rather straightforward thing to do and then us having a rather peculiar and productive discussion for about an hour and a half, but anyways think spot tested their technology so Livestream technology and we’ve got some cool features that no other platform has So it’ll be a subscription service and so that’s partly what makes it a replacement for patreon to some degree You know because we want to be able to monetize creators But we’ve got new different terms of service. And so the essential issue with the terms of service will be that once You’re on our platform We won’t take you down unless we’re ordered to by a u.s court of law That’s basically the idea so we’re trying to make an anti-censorship platform and then we’ve got there’s other features too That are quite cool and unique. So for example It’s you might be interested in this with regards to your podcast. So If you listen to your podcast on our platform people will be able to like pick a time in the podcast Like maybe a 30 second clip and just mark it out and then they’ll be able to Either make a written comment about it or an auditory comment and then send that to a friend or post it so that they can be running continual running conversations in audio in written form on podcast content Constantly we want to do the same thing for youtube videos so that people can append Their own video to any part of a video and then distribute that to their network or also post it so that people can watch You know so that We’re hoping we can get a real dialogue We can really add dialogue to the to the podcast and a youtube world We’re also going to do the same thing with books. So if you buy an ebook on the platform You’ll be able to annotate publicly and so what that should mean is that every book that’s Sold on our platform that many people purchase will become the center of multiple conversations And we can do that with books that are in the public domain So for example, one of the books we’re going to post right away is beyond good and evil by nicha and i’m going to start annotating it You know, and so what what that should mean, you know, if you look at the bible It’s a good example people have been annotating it for like 5000 years, right? Every verse has God books written on it. So it’s just this incredibly expanded document that’s pulled in Thousands and thousands of people to this collective conversation and this platform should be able to allow people to do that with with great works of art and well and then with also with current current affairs and events and such as Well youtube videos and podcasts and so It’s nice looking too. It it it’s got a fairly professional feel we’re hoping that we’ll be able to pull People who are interested in intelligent conversation Specifically into this platform, you know and maybe start to pull them away from youtube and some of the less specialized channels hoping it’s a that that plus, you know our anti-censorship stance and it’d be invitation only to begin with so that we can Well so that we can beta test it make sure the damn thing works and that we’re not fooling ourselves about its appeal So that’s come a long ways and hopefully I think we’ve got Four five six people who are interested who are lined up rubin is gonna use it. I’m gonna use it james altucher uh jockel willink michael schermer, I think those are oh and and uh Carl carl benjamins are gone of the cad It’ll be our first Beta testers fundamentally we will that sounds awesome. Yeah, i’m looking forward to it man If if the bloody thing works, i’d like to have a conversation with you about it at some point because So for sure i’d love to try it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, i’ll let i’ll let the developer know and But I think that I think the annotation feature could be really cool and we’re also Setting it up so that if you do comment Here all the comments will be up and down voted And if your ratio of down votes to up votes falls below 50 50 50 50 then your comments will be hidden People will still be able to see them if they click but you’ll disappear, you know from from the mainstream We don’t know if 50 50 is right. We’re gonna have to play with that because we’re also trying to control stupid trolling And I think we’re going to put a minimum length requirement on for written comments So that you can’t just say four words like this guy’s a fucking idiot, you know like no Right, you don’t need that so that you know minimum comment length is 50 words you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it. Even if you’re being a troll, hopefully you’ll be a quasi witty troll so Anyways, yeah, that’s the ultimate battle right is trying to combat the trolls in some sort of a way or mitigate their their impact Yeah, well, it’s it’s the ultimate battle is to do that without being censorious, right? Because yeah To express their opinion, but there’s a difference between it’s subtle but there’s a difference between productive dialogue and Provocation without wit For the purpose of causing trouble There’s so many people out there that are just bored and that’s what they use the internet for they’re at work They’re in a cubicle all day and they get their jollies out of just fucking with people online Um in my producer Jamie, he has a friend who does that? I mean this is what this friend does he has a bunch of accounts and he just trolls people He tries to troll celebrities and he tries to get them to respond to him He says mean things to them and you know, that’s how he that’s how he entertains himself I hate it worse same dark side that that was manifesting up to a much greater degree and bill cosby You know now right guy the guy is also depressed He’s also a depressed guy is a failure in life and you know, he’s everything you would expect Yeah, someone who uses that kind of time for recreation, right? So, you know the issue with him is like he should take some of that. So if he would admit to himself his aggression He’d come to terms with it He could take that damn aggression and he could integrate it into his personality And that would make him able to focus on his life You know, like you said when you you know, you started your your martial arts fighting That you were obsessed hey And you were also sick of being pushed around and all of that and you were like willing to do something about it But obviously and it’s obvious just talking to you that The aggressive part of your character is like deeply integrated inside of you It’s not hiding out in some corner doing stupid things that you know, you’re not paying attention to it’s right there at hand And you get a guy like the one you’re talking about He’s split into meek and depressed and ineffectual on the one hand and cruel and resentful and bitter On the other if those two things would marry You know, he’d get half his personality back and and maybe some of his dynamism And so it’s a real waste of time I think a lot of people just feel Just totally powerless and they feel like this is the only way they can affect others Is by reaching out and trolling or saying mean things and I think that Many people take these terrible paths and lives in their lives, which are not productive and they don’t they don’t feel good about it They don’t they don’t respond well to whatever they’re doing with their life and they have this constant state of anxiety It’s like the rose quote most men live lives of quiet desperation So one of my favorite trolls live lives of noisy desperation Yeah, very that’s what the internet that’s what the internet has allowed Yes, jordan. I gotta wrap this up. I gotta get out of here. Unfortunately. This is a long and wonderful conversation though Like we always have hey, well we damn good got caught up. You got 30 seconds Yes, yeah, okay. Well, let’s send it off. I want to know what okay what What are you up to next man? Like what do you want to have happen? You’ve got this crazy reach. You’ve got this crazy platform What’s what what’s what’s on your horizon? What’s on your horizon? And I just what you’re doing No No, I just enjoy what i’m doing. I’d like to continue doing what i’m doing. I’m very happy that people enjoy the show I’m very very happy that it’s affecting people in a positive way That they’re getting inspiration out of it and they’re getting information and entertainment and education And uh, it means the world to me. I love it. I love doing the podcast. I love doing stand-up I love everything that i’m doing. I mean, i’m very very happy with my My career and family life. I couldn’t be happier. So I just like to keep doing what i’m doing I don’t have any crazy aspirations other than Continuing to get better at everything that I try to work at Yeah, well, that’s that’s a crazy aspiration man because you well you got a lot of things going for you You know that are very very unlikely, you know and to and to hope I don’t mean to hope that they’ll get better but to continue to work to get those better That seems like sufficient aspiration from my perspective So look if you work at anything if you work at anything you’re trying to improve and if you there’s there’s You know, there’s always room there’s always room for improvement and everything and their own personality And your work and everything and that’s what I strive for. I strive for improvement Yeah, well that edge of improvement is a good place to be Look, I wanted also to thank you Just just so you know what, you know your especially that first interview you did with me That was really helpful to me and I mean i’ve enjoyed all the talks that we’ve had and and they’ve been really productive and they they’ve had a Well, very big impact on my life, but lots of people have watched them And so they seem to be seems to me that we’ve had a pretty productive Series of interactions, but uh, I do you’ll do all you some some thanks and also thanks for coming on this podcast, man It was really my pleasure my pleasure And I will definitely talk to you about thinkspot if once we get it going and see that it works because It’s look I didn’t have any hope for its success when it first, you know, it was a little ugly baby thing because You know, it’s too impossible, but it’s looking pretty damn good and it’s got some cool features So it’d be nice to have a censorship free platform if we could figure out how to do that That sounds very exciting. I’m very interested. I can’t wait to try it All right, man Thank you jordan. Hey, thanks a lot My pleasure. Hey, good luck with your improvement and i’m looking for you comedy special Thank you. My brother. Take care. Ciao, joe