Ronny Chieng Channels the Buddhism of Bill Belichick

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I think Bill Belichick might be the first Asian head coach.

We have a representative.

That's right.

It's Bill Belichick.

Right after this ad.

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I love how much you fucking hate podcasting.

I hate podcasting, man.

I hate this.

It's so stupid.

It's the death of media and civilization.

This is the death of media and civilization right here.

This desk, me and you talking to each other.

Everyone thinks they're a fing creator now.

Everyone's, oh, you just need two mics and you just need to talk and you can make $100 million.

And they do.

That is the rub.

Yeah.

What happened to production value?

What happened to writing a funny article?

What happened to work?

We're just going to Google stuff.

You don't work anymore.

We just do this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to ask one of my producers to Google some stuff as we go.

And by the end of it, I will have made nine figures

is what I told my parents.

Well, it's cool.

At least you opened your own shop.

Like this, I didn't, I, I didn't know you

have a physical space.

Yeah.

That is so as much as podcasts are ruining civilization.

Civilization, media ethics, all of it.

Yeah.

I built, I,

we built a physical studio.

Yeah.

And that feels almost a throwback after like the last several years.

Yes.

Because you've been doing this in your underwear at home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

For our podcast audience, we are naked.

We are nude.

Check the IG clips.

I was trying to explain, Ronnie, like how we know each other to one of my producers.

I can't remember, yeah.

And I think the assumption was that or Asian, exactly,

which is actually not wrong

okay so the assumption here just to spell it all out for you is that I obviously knew a stand-up comedian and big-time Hollywood actor and daily show correspondent Ronnie Cheng because we're both Asian and on cable television which you know again not totally wrong I think in terms of how we first reached out to each other over the internet but We got dinner eventually in person.

I watched his Netflix specials and I became immediately acquainted with his particular brand of holiday cheer.

Every nine months in this country, that's like a congressional gridlock.

Everyone always threatening a government shutdown.

Government shutdown?

Yo, there's no government shutdown with Asian people in charge.

We don't shut down for anything.

Yo, we don't shut down for Christmas.

You understand?

But as for why I mean anything at all to Ronnie, there is another reason, it turns out.

I actually know you from because I used to be even more obsessed with sports when I was living in Australia.

That's when I entered my peak sports phase.

And that was when, speaking on new media, that was when PTI first started.

Sorry, pardon the interruption for people, non-sports fans who are listening to this.

Yeah, around the horn, pardon the interruption.

Yeah, and no, but they were first putting podcasts out.

And so I was living in Australia at the time and I didn't have ESPN like most college kids or or overseas or, you know, we didn't grow up.

I didn't grow up with cable.

I couldn't afford it.

And so the fact that they were putting out this show on for free and I couldn't understand like, why are they doing this for free?

Just the audio.

But it was great because, you know, I would like pirate it.

I would like pirate it on tour.

I would torrent around the horn.

For real.

I was such a nerd, I would torrent around the horn just to watch it.

And then, you know, the Department of Justice better never listen to this podcast.

That's right.

The statue of limitations may not have been up here.

If anyone from a DOJ or the motion pictures listen to this.

We're just joking.

We don't know what torrents are.

I just love the idea of like outside this office in Manhattan, there is a van with an FBI agent being like, we got him.

We got him.

We got these idiots.

We've been hunting them who they willingly came on air and did this.

But yeah, I listened to you on PGI.

It was great.

And I was like, man, as an Asian dude on Round the Horn, this is the best.

I'm just imagining like, okay, young Rani Chang.

And at this point, you're where?

You're in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia.

At this this point, I was in Australia.

Okay.

I was in law school in Australia.

Man.

Okay.

So I imagine you just like listening on the podcast.

I love that whole format.

I love, you know, Tony.

It was like a game show.

Yeah, but it wasn't.

It wasn't.

It wasn't, right?

It was like a self-aware.

That format was genius.

When I first started this crusade.

Oh, that's.

I first started this crusade.

And that's the other part of this.

The first person there has been very prominent in all of this.

But what did it feel like, Pablo, after seeing your one seed that you picked to go down, Kansas, beat Penn but then seeing another one seed Virginia which you what you didn't have it but to see it go down what were you feeling you know Tony many great inventors don't live to see the

Tim Callis show when you saw Virginia how can we talk about sports in a way that hasn't been done with the point system and then you sometimes you'll win not often enough quite frankly thank you you know not representing I do have a class action lawsuit on this

you will win it yeah and then it will give you the spotlight for like 30 seconds yes and then you just have to talk.

FaceTime.

And you would always have these great, everyone always had, no one ever bombed FaceTime, which I always found pretty amazing.

Because as a professional,

I guess, public speaker, I don't know if I could hit every single FaceTime without writing it beforehand.

So I don't know what you guys were just off the top of your head.

You guys just going off about some stupid, you know, bullshit and sports.

It is my first FaceTime of 2022, which marks 10 years that I've been doing this show.

And I just wanted to share with all of you, all of America, really a major development in my life.

I got a Japanese toilet.

Just gas bagging, just

by the way, like I think something you appreciate as a guy who is now the senior correspondent of the Daily Show.

We get hired with that position.

That's a fake position, but sure, go ahead.

Then you should have made a better one.

Yeah, the exact president of the president of the Daily Show.

That's my new title.

America has a problem with food.

You guys want your food to be cheap and fast, but also to be fresh and healthy.

That's too many things, okay?

You can't have both.

It's like racial diversity at a ski lodge.

It doesn't exist.

As daily show president, something you appreciate is just the reps.

Truly, like these are daily shows we're talking about.

And when I talk about, when I think about show business, I'm like, you motherfers with your precious, like, we do something once a week or once a month.

Like,

no, I just sound like we're

soldiers.

We're in the trenches.

Yeah.

We're pumping out.

We're shoveling content.

You know, this useless content every day so Twitter can make some money from it.

That's right.

That's right.

So, tech companies can monetize us and we can never see the profits.

But truly, like the number of just sheer tonnage of shows, I would imagine that you actually do understand that in a way that few people

yeah.

Well, not just from the daily show, but that's that's how stand-up comedy works.

It's an iterative-based art form that you have to jump on every single night and you have to keep bombing until you get it right.

And then you have to keep trying jokes.

You know, not trying jokes that don't work, but like you have to keep working on jokes that you believe in.

If a line doesn't work, you, you know, you meaning you've performed it and something doesn't work and you still believe in a joke, you got to try something different to make the joke work or maybe abandon the joke.

But the point is, you got to keep jumping on.

It's iterative.

And you do the same stuff, you know, every night, four or five shows a night.

So that comes from stand-up, you know?

One of the things I wanted to ask you about was bombing.

Yeah.

There is a sports aspect to it in the sense of like public performance and a

live dimension to trying to

not be humiliated.

Like a high-pressure moment that goes wrong.

Yes.

How would you describe that for people who have not taken that degree of risk when it comes to speaking extemporaneously or even in a practiced way in public?

Yeah, wow.

You did go to Harvard.

That's a good question, actually, for once.

That's right.

That's right.

You know, I don't like to talk up

myself or the stand-up comedy or anything I do as though it's the greatest thing on the planet or whatever.

I don't think it's the hardest thing.

Of course, there's harder jobs,

but I do appreciate now with some perspective as well that, yeah, stand-up comedy does have some actual skill sets that have helped me out in real life, like in real life.

It's absurd, by the way, that we draw the line.

I know we draw the line between comedy and real life, but like the mental toughness of

overcoming

not just the fear of performing in the moment, which is the analogy of sports, but also not performing in the moment, as in failing to perform.

That's how you get better.

And then the more you see that that's how you get better, the less you're worried about it because you understand that's part of the process.

And I think in sports, there's this optimum level of failure that you want to reach when you're training.

In addition to that, is...

Like with comedy, the stakes are actually not that high.

You know, if you can overcome your own whatever insecurities, yeah, you didn't do well.

Wait, wait, wait, hold on.

I want to challenge you on that because you're sort of saying you're pointing to your head and saying, You can overcome this.

Yeah, that's the thing that most people cannot overcome is what's happening pointing to my own head here, right?

Yeah, but that I mean, that's why it's not for everybody, you know.

And it, so, yeah, there is a well, this is that's the sports analogy, not to interrupt you, but like

this, this job is not for everybody, it's meant to be hard, yeah, it's meant to risk genuine shame and humiliation.

And I'm just curious: do you remember, do you have like a almost physical visceral memory of bombing?

Is there something that sticks out to you?

I bomb all the time.

So, okay, so if you could describe just like

one of those moments, one of those memories,

what it feels like in your body as it's happening.

Like, and before you watch it.

Why are you trying to make me relive this?

So what's the,

like, you know, I've been booed off stage at music festivals in Australia.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

That's beyond bombing.

That's

being evicted.

So I'm doing my set, and someone starts shouting, like, boring,

boring.

And I'm just like powering through it, and he won't stop saying boring.

And so I just finally say, Hey, do you want to get thrown out of this festival?

Because we'll just throw you out.

And I pointed a security guard.

And the security guard was, there was no way he was listening to me at all.

I was just, I was just bluffing the whole time.

And I just powered through my set.

So I just.

So wait, so your decision as this is happening is,

I'm going to finish this.

Yeah, I'm just going to finish it.

And so, your decision there to do that,

how obvious was it that that was the move?

It just felt like I guess I was pissed off.

I was like, I'm just going to finish this set.

I'm going to make you listen to me talk and just, you know, just bombing at all the time.

I imagine, though, just I'm, I'm, I've never done stand-up.

I imagine that among all of the crowds to try to boo you off a stage, an Australian crowd in the caricature I have of Australia has to be like one of the worst ones to experience.

I don't know about that.

I started comedy in Australia.

I lived there for 10 years.

So to be honest, most people who come to shows are nice people.

You know, majority of society works because most people are nice people.

And then there's, you know, you get one or two of those kind of people who, I guess, I don't know, they were trolling.

I don't know what they were doing on the day, but context in comedy is so important.

And people don't understand how fragile it is

sometimes.

And I know it's not.

the consumer's job to care.

It's the comics job to, you know, be professional and put on a good show.

But that's why it's also up to the comics to sometimes say no to gigs that won't be very good.

So, for example, if you do comedy in a boardroom under fluorescent lights at 9 a.m.,

I don't care who you are.

That's not going to be a great gig.

And people, for some reason, a producer, whoever's making the decisions is not thinking about that.

They just think like, oh, throw it on and it'll be okay.

And what will happen, for example, music festivals is like they just offer enough money and all the comics are like, all right, we're just going gonna bomb for this for money.

We're just gonna bomb for money now.

Is everyone's gonna hate this?

And but people don't, it's not, it's not like music, you know, you can't just put it on and people in the background.

You have to kind of buy in as a crowd for comedy, right?

You have to want to be there, otherwise, comedy doesn't work, you know.

I know there are some comedians out there, some stand-ups who love crowd work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they will, it feels like in the social media economy, the Scopia we live in, like somebody sometimes I wonder, like, is that a plant?

Oh, because it's just like because there is such rich potential for like a fun, viral interaction.

Do you enjoy that opportunity or like get the I hate that?

I hate talking to them.

I didn't come here to talk to you guys.

I came here to say what I want to say.

I don't want to know what you people think.

Yeah, so I don't.

Actually, there's a bigger reason why I don't talk to the crowd that much is because I like talking to a crowd sometimes at my own shows.

Like if I'm doing a

if I'm on tour, which I'm going on tour next year, so it's the only reason why I'm here.

That's right.

Do this.

2024.

Ronniecheng.com.

Right.

Ronniechang.com.

Let's check it out.

Ronnie with a Y.

Yeah.

I already hate myself for people.

The reason why I don't like to do a ton of crowd work is not only do I want to do my own jokes, I don't want to talk to these people, but also because when I started doing comedy, I was doing comedy for a few years and I stopped watching comedy.

I was just performing it.

And then, after four or five years in, I think it was only four years in, I went back to watching comedy as an audience member, not performer.

As in, I would just go to shows and watch it now, like, you know, small comedy shows, whatever it was.

And I remember feeling this like,

you know, it's corny to say, but it's like this empathy for the audience.

Because I used to, my first four years of comedy, I was trying to figure out how to do it.

I would basically yell at the audience a lot, like attack the crowd a lot.

And that was great for like a five-minute set or 10-minute set.

But you couldn't really yell at a crowd for longer than 20 minutes before it got kind of.

it got kind of weird.

And I acknowledged that.

And I was just trying to transition away from like what was working in the short short term to having this as a long-term career, you know.

And watching comedy again kind of made me realize that in terms of empathy with the audience, was like, man, people had a long day, you know?

You don't know what they're going through in the crowd.

Like, you don't know what's happened in their life.

They're just trying to get away from their problems, or maybe they have some horrible thing happen to them or serious stress.

So they're there to like enjoy themselves, you know, and they're there to listen to the comic, you know?

And so absence any other evidence to the contrary of them being a dick,

man, you know, they're just trying to have a good time.

And in that sense, the mutual respect between the performer and audience is, oh, let me do the stuff I worked hard and prepare it and not like pick on you for the sake of picking on you.

You know, that's what drives a lot of my, you know, show performance, you know.

Well, I should point out for people who have not seen your stand-up, and by the way, like two specials on Netflix, both really funny.

Do you have any idea how meaningless the concept of Thanksgiving is to me?

me

turkey it's dry

yeah I'd rather fix healthcare than eat turkey how about that

is that someone you want in charge please vote for the Asians when you get a chance will work while you're eating I would say that your use of anger is still like a calling card for you, but

it's deployed in a way that is clearly like let's get on board on this, you know what I mean?

Let's all get angry at this together.

Yeah, and it's trying to galvanize as opposed to like direct it at someone in the building.

Yeah, yeah, it used to be very directed at the crowd, and that worked as a I would say that worked as a gimmick when you're when I was starting out in short, shorter sets, but then yeah, the name of the game for me was always what became like, oh, let's all get angry at this thing together instead of I'm angry at you guys.

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognak Veen Champain, afforded to alcohol by volume, reported by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in York, New York, 1738, Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

So I should point out as we talk about public performance and how fans, how audience members feel, and

what we are passionate about, should point out that you're wearing a sweater that has the NBA logo knit onto it.

Yeah, NBA.

I support the NBA.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't even have a team.

I just support the NBA.

That's what I want to know.

Okay, so we're back now to you torrenting around the Hornet PTI and falling in love with sports in a way that is confusing to me because I'm, and this is the part of like all Asian Americans know everything about each other or all Asians know anything about each other.

I don't know what it was like to grow up abroad learning about sports from across the world.

Yeah.

How did you fall in love with any part of sports from that distance?

Yeah, if you come from Singapore and Malaysia,

we watch a lot of English Premier League soccer and

I always found it also incredibly fing stupid.

Here's your clip for Singapore about how Singaporeans will for some reason pick an English Premier League team arbitrarily based on current success or the jersey color and then

get you know support it so support their stupid colonial team so passionately that they'll get angry, like genuinely angry at other Singaporeans who supported the rival team.

So I get the love.

I never got the hate of it, you know, that tribalism.

So for me, how I started joining was just to troll my friends.

I would pick the team everyone hated and I'm like, yeah, I support these guys.

And so at the time it was Chelsea because they got bought over and they had a ton of money.

Yes.

And they were winning.

And I was like, yeah, I support Chelsea.

So I go around, Singaporeans, Liverpool, everyone's a man use supporter because they grew up in the 90s.

In Singapore, everyone became a Manchester United.

Yeah, the equivalent of being like a Cowboys or a Bulls fan in the 90s.

Yeah, but this is worse because this is Manchester United supporters who've never been to England.

And if they went to Manchester, will get their ass kicked by Manchester people because that's how they roll there.

And also, I think this is an important point that I want to clarify.

Singapore,

British colony once upon a time.

There is also the backdrop of literally rooting for the empire that put its boot on on your throat.

Yeah, I never got that.

So I just watched Chelsea or troll people and then it became kind of like a genuine love of Chelsea.

I'm noticing a recurring theme here of your use of hatred transforming into love.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I liked it.

That's my transmutation.

I like to, that's my alchemy.

I turned hatred into love.

So yeah, I support Chelsea and

loved telling people I support Chelsea and seeing how angry they would get.

They'll be like, why the f do you support Chelsea?

I'm like, I support Chelsea for the same f ⁇ ing reason you support man you are liverpool whether it's stupid arsenal or whatever you by the way arsenal's not even a doesn't even it's not even a location in london there's nowhere called arsenal when you support arsenal as a singaporean what are you supporting that was your gateway drug was was trolling epl fans yeah

that's how i got and and then also uh

thank you you know michael jordan who that he would they would show michael jordan just pointed to the sky yeah thank michael jordan that's how he that's how high that tall he is when I stand next to him.

But by the way, like, so again, we're talking about what year roughly?

This is 94.

So you were rooting for Chelsea and the Bulls and Michael Jordan.

Well, I'm not from America.

Well, I used to live in Manchester, New Hampshire, but

I didn't have, like, I'm not, I couldn't claim a U.S.

team, you know, because I never really,

I felt it was like false tribalism.

to try to claim it.

So for that reason, I never supported NBA team.

I just love basketball.

So in fact, if anything, I always, whenever two teams played, I was always like, oh, who's the underdog?

So actually, I was following the Knicks a lot, 94, 95.

Yeah, as they lost a lot to Michael Jordan.

Brain Queen for the Chicago Bulls.

Michael Jordan, 55 points.

Yeah, they lost a lot of Michael Jordan.

They also won a lot, by the way.

They went to the finals twice, I think.

They played the Spurs in the finals, lost to the Spurs in the finals.

Yes.

That team was Chris Charles, Charlie Ward, who was a Heinzman winning quarterback and tennis prodigy and starting NBA point guard, underrated athlete, Charlie Ward.

And they lost to the Rockets just as well as Chiles.

But this team, by the way, Chris Childs punched Kobe Bryan in the neck.

Oh, yeah, great.

Another reason why he's a good guy.

And then

Marcus Cambie, who took on David Robinson and Tim Duncan by himself, because Patrick Ewing was injured.

And some of them break his spine.

Obviously, Spreewell, Alan Houston.

And that was like a fun team to root for.

I would use them in

NBA

96.

I was like a Knicks specialist.

Houston, yeah, it was great.

I was doing the same thing in New York City at this time, I'm realizing.

What do you mean?

I was born and raised in Manhattan.

I was rooting for the Knicks against Michael Jordan and the Bulls.

I was also playing as them in video games.

Yeah, yeah.

Trying to live a life that they would not deliver

winning a title.

Did you ever manage to get online and play online games with NBA?

I wasn't playing online.

Sorry, it wasn't 2K.

It was NBA Live.

Wait, so you were playing multiplayer online.

Yeah.

Okay, what is young Ronnie Chang like on a gamer headset in like 90s late night?

What are you talking about?

We didn't have headsets.

Oh, yeah.

This is like late 90s.

We used the dial-up modem.

So you, first of all, you would have to actually know the person in real life.

There was no lobby.

You would have to like join them.

Right, of course.

Yeah, you would have to go.

Oh, of course.

You would have to tell your friend in class, hey, let's play right now.

Are you ready to play?

Are you ready to play?

Okay, the hangout phone.

The modem would go through the phone.

Oh, I sound so old now.

Like, the mode.

Your modem would scream at you.

The modem would scream at you.

If you pick up the phone, modem be like, shut the f, put me back up.

And you had to hang up, and then you probably fed up your internet.

Yeah, if your mom picked up your phone,

your game was over.

Yeah, she would hear all the porn, and it'd be over.

Of course, I was gonna ask, were you on America Online?

But of course, you weren't.

No, because you were

you only heard about that in You've Got Mail, the movie, right?

We all like, what's the mail?

What is this?

Like, why is that internet so weird?

Why do you do everything so weird?

Why is it like feet instead of meters?

Why is it like Fahrenheit instead of Celsius?

Why is QBR ratings like an arbitrary?

What is the QBR rating?

91.5623.

It's like pie or something.

Like, make it a hundred.

I love how you're dancing around sports with me, but you don't want to ask me the hardcore sports thing, man.

Oh, I want an encyclopedia up here about sports, but we're not talking about sports at all.

You want me to test you?

Test me.

All right.

Yeah.

So let me clarify your expertise.

Sure.

So you know the

90s NBA.

Okay.

I've read every Patriot book.

What does that mean?

About the New England Patriots.

Really?

Yes, I've read every single one about Bill Belichick and Tom Bray.

Everyone, Patriot Reign.

Why?

Yeah, the one.

What do you mean?

I mean, of course, I find it interesting.

I find these books interesting.

Bill Simmons, I read all his books.

I read the books that Bill Simmons recommended.

The one that got Breaks of the Game, David Halberster.

About the Trailblazers.

Trailblazers, yeah.

Bill Walton, the better version of Jokic, probably.

Bill Walton, right?

But we don't have enough clips about his injury.

Well, his feet.

You gotta be injured.

First of all, but I'm just saying in the style, play style, point center.

Let me ask you an NBA nerd question about passing big men.

Sure.

Who is the passing big man not from America that everybody thinks would have been one of the great passing big men?

Oh, Sabonis.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

Sabonis, an excellent passer.

You got to really watch him.

Look at that.

Behind the back.

They feel they can make the shot.

He doesn't have a great passive

You are a genuine NBA.

I'm the guy, man.

I'm not wearing this for no reason.

I'm representing the NBA on this podcast.

It is a deeply Asian thing to come into a podcast studio being like, do you have a test for me?

Yeah.

Bring it.

I'm trying to establish my sports bona fides on this thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, uh, wait, so the patriots, though, okay.

Yeah,

what about that is intriguing to you as somebody who literally cannot claim to be an American patriot in that way.

I kind of was like, okay, well, I used to live in New Hampshire, so I guess that's.

You got to explain that.

Oh, okay.

My parents went to college very late in life.

They went to college in Manchester, New Hampshire.

And they went to college after they had two kids.

So I went to, I moved to America when I was three years old from Malaysia.

And then they did their undergrad and post-grad.

And then they went back to Malaysia.

So I left after that.

So I was in America from three to seven.

But we were good immigrants.

We didn't take any jobs.

We left.

And so that's how, that's my memory of America was 89 to 94,

Manchester, New Hampshire.

That was like my whole life was that.

So you actually do have some sort of affection for the region.

Yeah, I got huge affection.

Every time I go back there, I talk about,

every time I perform in Boston, Boston was our Chinatown.

I want to call you out on the hypocrisy of your love, though, because you said before you that you love underdogs.

You are fetishizing the New England Patriots.

Well, I'll tell you what, the only thing I love more than an underdog is a great system.

Wow.

And,

you know,

the idea, you know, that their philosophy of like, always on to the next game, just do your job.

Don't care about the hype.

Focus on what didn't go right versus what did go right.

I think Bill Belichick might be the first Asian head coach.

We have our representative.

That's right.

It's Bill Belichick.

That's right.

Well, on the sideline, he does have his son there, and it's very clear that he does not approve

how good he is at his son, Steve Belichick, at his job.

Yeah, but

yeah, I don't know if he doesn't.

I think he loves his family a lot, actually, based on the 2,000 hours of Patriot documentaries I've seen.

I think he actually loves his family a lot.

He loves his dad a lot.

That's right.

He loves his dad, so I'm sure he, you know, I don't pretend to know him, but I'm sure he passes that on to his son, that same relationship he wants to have.

Family being very important to Bill Belcher.

Family is very important to him.

Yeah, quite a bit.

But he's got, you know, I was just enamored by this, the whole idea of the team before yourself and ignore the noise.

Ignoring the noise is something that I think in comedy, you have to do that, you know, because you have to ignore the haters and just focus on your jokes, which is part of what we were talking about earlier, about bombing, overcoming adversity and bombing is like you got to ignore a lot of the noise.

And then also

you have to like focus on the present, which is very Buddhist.

He's very focused on the present.

It's always the present.

What do you think think having a 37-year-old?

We're on to Cincinnati.

It's nothing about the past, nothing about the future.

Right now, we're preparing for Cincinnati.

Okay,

do you feel like the talent you have here is good?

We're getting ready for Cincinnati.

He's the first Asian head coach, man.

I'm telling you, it's like, there's no tomorrow.

There's no next.

It's right now, this game.

And then after the game, it's like the past doesn't exist.

It's just now.

We only live in the now.

You know, and the success that they have at the time was like putting the team above the individual, which

don't you think that's a very un-American approach to anything?

Yeah, I mean, look, when the Patriots ran out at that Super Bowl at the same time as a team,

that was not a thing that we had seen before.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, choosing to be introduced as a team, here are the American Football Conference champions, the New England Patriots.

No, I remember that.

Yeah.

And so, but here's, here's, here's where it is now, though, right?

Is that Patriots are ass.

They're struggling.

Yeah, but it's, look at the, look at the data points.

Look at the overall picture.

You're picking one outlier data point.

And this NFL is always about overreacting.

Everyone is overreacting weekly, which is why ignore the noise is actually

more prescient than people understand.

Because how many times NFL, week one?

Or like, we're going to win the challenge.

Or we're gonna, well, it's over.

Blow it up.

After we blow it up, blow it up.

It's over.

And it's like, guys, everyone, just calm out.

If you watch Tom Brady, as I have for thousands of hours on Facebook watch, Tom, Tom versus Time,

he talks about like, it's like every year is different.

First of all, every season, every team is different.

That's what he says.

And that he says, like, you build.

You build like you have pre-season to figure out your hypothesis of what the team could be.

And then you test it, right?

And then you build from there.

So it's like, I did not anticipate that you would be this much of a New England Patriots fetishist.

I want to turn this a little bit because

the idea of being

the

star.

Yeah.

I am fascinated by how you have also, in your own career, grown into the role of a person who is in Marvel movies and in giant movies like Crazy Rich Asians and all of this stuff.

Like stardom for you.

And I know you're, again, in keeping with your Belichickian Buddhist philosophies.

You're naturally deflecting and self-deprecating.

But what is the biggest difference, just from a day-to-day perspective, when it comes to like

response from being in one of the biggest movie franchises like Shang Chi

in the Marvel cinematic universe versus being a stand-up how how much has that been a thing you've had to adjust to uh not that much again it's the Bill Belichick thing it's like well on to the next it's very Buddhist it's like okay you know you don't don't believe your own hype you know like you just do the work and I don't know.

I have a lot of gratitude when I do my work.

So I'm like, oh, I'm very lucky to be part of these things.

And then I don't take it as the be all and end all, and I don't think I'm, you know, the whatever.

Like, it because you gotta prove yourself the next show, by the way.

I have to do stand-up.

You're only as good as your next show, or your last show, sorry.

So, I got another stand-up gig.

So, who cares?

I was in Shangxi.

I'm about to bomb in front of this bar full of drunk people in lower Manhattan right now who

don't care about that.

You know what I mean?

So, there's always the next thing to do.

So,

it,

I don't know.

I guess I never your life has to have changed in some way though.

I think more people recognize me and I'm able to sell tickets to comedy shows, which I'm very grateful for.

So that's changed.

Yeah.

But other than that, I'm still like...

Yeah, you do martial arts in your stand-up now.

Everybody should know that you are now doing very sophisticated, like, almost CGI-worthy martial arts routines.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

That's what they want now.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

I'm doing, I have rings that fly off my arms in the show.

We got Taylor Swiss production designer to figure out how to

know your stand-up's just you and a microphone and then you have to bring it.

Who is the person who radicalizes you into wanting to do stand-up?

Who from afar across the world you were watching realizing like, oh, this is a thing that people like.

Yeah, there was a few.

I guess for me, Russell Peters was blowing up when I was in university.

And he was probably the one who got me thinking about,

because his special was one of the first to be on the internet, probably illegally, to be honest.

And it's funny when you watch white Canadian people talk, especially white Canadian guys, they have this funny ass way of talking.

They talk the way they speak, they make everything sound like it's the most matter-of-fact thing you've ever heard in your life.

And when they talk to you, it looks like they can't control their head.

It looks like they're part bobblehead when they say stuff to you because they'll come up to you and they'll go, Jesus Christ.

It was spreading around the internet like it was like wildfire.

His first special was going great.

Like, I remember walking to Melbourne Law School, into the lobby, and white people were quoting his routines, not to me, just among themselves.

And I was like, damn, this is really crossing boundaries here in a really cool way.

And so that was the first time I thought, like, oh, there could be a way to talk about a non-white experience in a way that could be mainstream, you know, that's not super niche.

And then I started getting into stand-up a bit more academically in terms of like look watching, you know, trying to find, just like a way you would try to find a band, like finding comics that maybe people didn't know about.

And then I got into, thanks to the Amazon, again, American tech coming through.

At that time, even, this was like mid-2000s, the Amazon algorithm was pretty strong with their recommendations, cultural recommendations.

So I would put in some comic.

I can't remember who I put in, but I managed to come across Bill Burr.

Why would you listen to another human being tell you where you're going to go when you die?

It's just like, dude, have you ever been dead?

No, great.

So wouldn't it be safe to assume that you wouldn't have the slightest idea what you're talking about?

It blew me away.

That first special blew me away.

I was instantly a fan.

And then years later, Bill Burr would contact me on Facebook out of nowhere.

And I couldn't believe it was him.

He saw one of my sets on Just for Last and

his Facebook is like his profile picture is a car.

So you don't know if it's him.

And he was like, I just want to say, I love your stuff, and hopefully, we can work together someday.

And I was like, Man, this is incredible.

Like, I was such a huge fan of his.

And I told him, like, well, I live in Australia, so I don't know if I ever see you, but if you do come here, it'll be great.

And he's like, oh, yeah, I'm doing to Australia next year.

We'll meet up.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

And then he asked me to open for him in Australia.

And until I walked into the green room and saw him, I still didn't, I thought I was being pranked.

Catfished.

Yeah, I thought I was being catfished.

And he's been a cool kind of mentor to me.

Well, he EP'd one of your specials.

He EP's all my specials, yeah.

Yeah, he's great, you know.

So he's kind of like my comedy hero in many ways.

And he's always been very supportive.

And at that time, he wasn't, he wasn't household name famous.

Right.

He was great, though.

And so that kind of

comics, comic

strap.

Right.

Well, in my brain, it's that young person's thing of like, oh, you.

Just because you're not world famous doesn't mean you're not one of the greatest of all time.

And so that led me to pursue comedy as a craft instead of fame.

I do love the idea of people who take giant risks in pursuit of what they are obsessed with, not just love, but are obsessed with.

And you just sort of like dropped in casually that you were at Melbourne Law School.

Yeah, yeah.

And it makes me think of one of my favorite.

I think, I don't know if this was a joke you put in one of your specials, but I remember you saying it.

One of the most common questions I get asked other than how do you stay so down to earth while being so famous?

The second most common question I get asked is, hey, Ronnie.

Hey, Ronnie, what do your parents think about this?

Hey, Ronnie, what do your parents think about what you do?

Are your parents okay with you doing stand-up comedy?

You'll only ask me that because I'm Asian.

You would never ask these other white comedians that question because you know their parents don't give a f ⁇ about them.

And I also, I should say, was planning to be a lawyer before I got into this bullshit.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You were gonna be a lawyer, and of course you stopped.

Yeah.

And I just wonder if you reflect on the alternate life that you might have lived if you had stuck with the thing that you would gone to school to actually do?

Yeah, I look at my friends and I hate all of them.

All my friends from law school, I'm like, yeah, this is terrible.

Like, I, you know, I'm so glad I managed to get out of this griff.

And if you want one inspiring thing to put in black and white, slow-mo, and then you put a subtitles over it, I think it's this: it's like, if you think about specifically comedy,

it seemed and it was extremely risky at the time compared to law school but in the long term

if you can make it in comedy you can't fire yourself

you can get fired from a law firm

very easily so in the long term it was actually less risky i hadn't thought about the creative whatever broadly speaking the creative uh pursuit as being more future-proofed man you should be talking to me about sports all your prepared questions were not sports related but you didn't do anything okay so what are your what are your takes at the end here what are your sports takes on sports takes

I love sports.

Great dude.

That's my hot take.

Sports is fun.

But by the way, when you say that, though, you do have...

All of your sports opinions have been so deeply genuine.

Yeah, but how else is supposed to be what?

You mean you guys don't mean what you say?

No, never that.

Never that.

Never that.

But a little bit.

A little bit that.

These hot takes.

Sometimes I see you sports guys talk about sports and I'm like, you guys are just pushing buttons right now.

Like, it's so daring,

so obvious when people are yelling at each other.

It's like, guys, okay, do you really care this much about this bouncing ball?

That, you know, I just, I'm sorry.

I didn't realize the daily show was the church of pure ideological confenturity.

Yeah, when we yell, but we're just doing yuck yucks.

We don't.

Oh, that's right.

By the way, that is my favorite.

As someone who reveres the institution of the daily show,

it is, you guys have it both ways in a way that's just beautiful.

beautiful both ways.

Yeah, it's like we are defending democracy, but also

yuck yucks.

Yeah, we're just doing jokes.

We're not supposed to.

Why are we, why are we if we're defending democracy?

Oh my god, then that means democracy is already over, you know.

R.I.P.

democracy.

If the daily show is the bulwark,

bulwark, sorry, no, it's a, yeah, we're just a

pointing fan.

Even Jon Stewart himself said, like, can the daily show change the world?

And he was like, no.

He said, all you can hope to do as a daily show is come in at the right moment after

thousands of people have done 99 of the work hard backbreaking organizing and advocating and actual doing something good the daily show can come in at to help out that last one percent even then there's no guarantee that will help out yeah yeah yeah oh that by the way i relate to that on the level of we just talked at length about the greatest uh coach maybe in all sports of all time bellichic yeah.

Phil Jackson's up there too.

Yeah, arguably, yeah, Lombardi, sure.

But I come in at the end.

I'm just like, that dude sucks now.

Who?

Belichick.

Does he suck now?

Oh, God.

Does he suck now?

I don't, I, I, again, I don't buy this overreaction to NFL.

First, you want to talk about Belichick.

Okay, well, first of all, who are you going to get to replace him?

These guys don't go on trees, on coaching trees.

No, his coaching tree specifically.

Yeah, they don't.

No one has replicated him.

Yeah.

And maybe

it's also, in some way like the asian immigrant nightmare what is both things right like that is is that belichek is embodies all these principles has tried to teach this yeah but no one is as good as as him i don't know if he tried to teach it you know i'm not sure if he tried to teach it like from his book he was just like

he he would give people the lower people tasks and the people who just did the task well he'd promote and then you get promoted so i don't know if he taught almost by iteration almost.

Like, like, for example, they would give this job where the lowest guy in the coaching staff would have to label.

I can't remember what he was labeling.

Oh, he was labeling illegally taped footage.

That's right.

That's overblown, by the way.

But let's go into the whatever.

Okay.

So, so, I mean, would you call, okay, is it, is it illegal to oh, no, no, no, no, sorry, I know what it was.

It was, it was the illegally deflated deflated football

we'll get into that I get the right to respond to that but some some kid would like label something in the locker room so he was assigned a job to label and because it was labeling he was like oh who cares he just wrote wrote on the tape and just taped it whatever and then the guy above him saw what he was doing and the guy would re-tape it neatly and write in good font and that was kind of like the lesson of like man if you can't even tape this you're not gonna learn the next thing so i don't know how much you like i don't think he's gathering people around be like, This is how you win at football.

I think he's just like, you know, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna come out here and

just do our jobs.

And we need to cover the seams.

If we don't cover these seams, we're gonna lose this game.

All right, make it happen.

I think that's what he's doing.

I don't think he's like teaching a Harvard course on how to.

I just need to remark upon how shockingly good that Bill Belichick impression from Rodney.

And I have a weird accent, and I can still manage to pull up a bellache so I don't know what that means but uh but like um uh back to the thing is okay is this is this illegal I'm genuinely asking is this is this is this bad ethics in football so one thing as a non-football watcher who I didn't grow up with it new to the sport of football when I watched it I was like how do you keep track there's so many rules in it make use of the confusion of rules but everyone else is like I guess it's like what baseball rules where there's all these unwritten rules like no you don't do that man

you don't do that but it's like why why not wait is that that evil to do that?

What you're saying is that what you like, and I appreciate this as a systems appreciator myself on some level.

Yeah.

You like the idea of trying to exploit and push every marginal advantage until someone else says, you actually need to stop this.

Yes.

Like, like they need to catch up with my creativity as opposed to you catering to the

dumber people in the sport.

Yeah, exactly.

That's exactly it.

You did go to Hobbit.

This is where I get your sports takes in a concentrated, dangerous way.

You are wearing a sweater with the NBA logo on it.

NBA for life.

If you are the commissioner of the NBA.

I don't care what anyone says.

I support the NBA.

There is a dangerous subtext there that is braver than anybody realizes for Ronnie Chang to support the NBA in this way.

International Asian celebrity.

What are you doing as commissioner of the NBA, Ronnie Chang?

What am I doing?

Yeah, what are you doing?

Adam Silver says, you you know what?

I'm done here.

I am appointing Ronnie Chang

and Ronnie Chang's first order of business.

I think they'll run very well.

I'm not just saying that because I support the NBA.

I cannot stress enough how much he is popping his sweater to show the business.

Yeah, I think I can't think of anything.

I think they're doing a great job.

I think they respond to.

Let me put it this way.

During the pandemic, during COVID, which

major American sport do you think you would attend a game and be least likely to get COVID?

It's so funny.

You could tell how likely you are going to get COVID by what sport you watch.

If you're an MMA fan, oh, you're definitely getting COVID.

If you're an NFL fan, COVID for sure.

Baseball fan, it's 50-50.

NBA, you're not getting COVID at the NBA thing.

Everyone's going to wear a mask.

It's run, the vibes are, that's how we run it, you know, at the NBA.

We.

Yeah, that's right.

But I can't think of anything that they're doing wrong.

I mean, they're trying new stuff, you know, like the in-season tournament, you know, criticize whatever, the court making you blind.

At least they're trying new stuff.

You know, they always mix up the all-star game.

I would say, okay, I want, Commissioner, I do the one-on-one.

All-star game, one-on-one games.

That would be killer.

That would be great.

One-on-one instead of the dunk tournament, probably.

I think you need to let that sit for a bit, even though it has historical value, but people get so angry at it.

Or do the dunking thing without the crowd?

Just why?

It just too much pressure.

It's just, you know, like, don't give them that much, you know.

What you want, you want a safe space for dunkers?

Yeah, just let them dunk in a safe space because we want to see a cool dunk, we don't want to see a failed dunk.

So let them do it multiple times until they get it.

It's what I'm trying to say.

You know, it's like you have 30 seconds to do this impossible feat of human flight without

jetpacks.

Let them do it like 10, 20 times.

So don't do it.

You know what I mean?

Like let them do it and film it and then we just release it, you know?

Because we look at dunks on Instagram.

We're like, these are killer.

Why didn't you do that?

And it's like, yeah, well, they did it 20 times before they posted on Instagram.

Like, let them, let, let the, let the superhumans have more than three tries at doing something that's physically impossible that breaks the laws of physics.

How about that?

Can we let the superhumans try more than three times to break the laws of physics?

I'm no psychotherapist, but it does seem to me like you'd like these superhuman performers who get on to this metaphorical stage to not be booed off of it by an Australian crowd.

Give them the time to work out their material.

I'm saying let them do it on their own time.

Let them do it on their own time.

And the one-on-one tournament, I think, will be cool.

Ronnie Chang,

thank you.

for coming here and thank you for uh

you know

your viewership albeit illegally from about 15 years ago.

You've been great.

It was great to watch you on ESPN Talking Sports, and I love all your takes and everything you do, very classy.

You bring this intellectualism to sports journalism that I really appreciate.

And

Asians.

That's right.

Asians.

Put that in giant letters on the screen at the end.

Asians.

Do it now.

Period.

Asians.

What I am about to tell you is something that I should have brought up in my conversation with Ronnie as he was declaring Bill Belichick the first Asian head coach in NFL history.

And I didn't bring it up then because I was distracted, I think.

I was distracted by how terrible Ronnie's Patriots are.

They've lost five in a row now.

They have scored one touchdown in three games.

They do not have a quarterback of any meaningful sort.

I am actually contemplating whether I should say it here at the end of the show, because the revelation I have been sitting on

is that there is an Asian head coach in the NFL right now,

Ron Rivera.

That's right.

Ron Rivera has Filipino ancestry.

He said this to the Washington Commanders' own team website, which I, of course,

filed away in my dossier of Filipinos across the world that I keep on my computer.

He said that his grandfather on his mother's side was born in the Philippines before migrating to the Salinas Valley in California.

That counts.

So Ron Rivera, I apologize for erasing you.

And I found out today that yes.

Potentially soon to be fired head coach of the Washington Commanders, Ron Rivera, who is atop various top five lists of coaches most likely to be fired soon.

Unfortunately, I've been Googling this.

That's true.

He is more Asian than Bill Balichek.

And now the world finally knows.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark Media media production, and I'll talk to you next time.