Marc Maron on Brainf*cked Trolls and Liberal Scolds

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Hey, everybody, welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Lovett.

Today on the show, I sat down with Mark Maron to talk about the end of his podcast, to talk about his comedy special, to talk about politics, Trump, Theo Vaughn, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher.

I think Janine Garoffilo came up very briefly.

We covered a lot of ground about the right, the left, life and death.

It was a great conversation.

Producer Austin said it was a funny conversation and one of the darkest conversations we've had.

And, you know, you'll decide how right that is.

But it was really great.

And here it is.

Hi, thanks for being here.

You're welcome.

Nice to be here.

I've admired your work from afar, my friend.

Oh, that's so nice to hear.

We all, yeah.

What about up close?

Well, I'm going to see how that goes.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

When we, you were on Love It or Leave It in 2017.

I went back and listened to it.

And my takeaway had nothing to do with you.

You were there, but I was mostly listening to how I sounded.

Sure.

And it's one of the first shows we did.

Yeah.

And it's one of the first times I've been doing a show on a stage.

And I'm still getting the hang of it.

And I remember when you came on, I really felt you not annoyed at me, but like, you're like,

yeah, okay.

Sure.

I felt like you needed to be won over.

Like you've been doing this a long time.

You think you're going to, we're going to talk.

I felt you like alpha dogging me a little bit.

Oh.

But but in a, but not in a bad way, but it was fine.

But in watching you do interviews, here's what I took from it, which is

when you're with somebody you genuinely like, you will not laugh as much, but you'll sometimes throw a pity laugh at someone who's trying their their best, who you don't care for.

And I wasn't getting that.

And I wasn't getting that.

With people in terms of pity laughs, you know, there's an old radio habit.

I don't know if people who started in podcasting, but it seems to have, there is a radio laugh that you do out of politeness, and it's instinctual.

And I think after a certain point, you may not know the difference between that and a real laugh.

But it is an acknowledgement.

It's not always pity.

It's just saying like, yeah, okay, yeah, you did it.

You gotta feel the same thing.

So get to the next level.

Well, I mean, if it's funny, it's funny, you know, but I think people know when I'm really laughing.

And I think that in terms of alpha dogging, I get a little

dickish.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but

it's not full power play.

It's just sort of a defiance.

I'm defying you to bring me down a notch.

But you're setting a bar for if you're going to want to have a conversation.

Sure.

You're going to have to bring something.

Yeah, I don't know what to do.

You have to show up empty-handed.

Sure.

I mean, yeah, because I can talk probably too much if I'm allowed to.

I don't mind it.

This is the first time I've done sort of a run of guesting in a long time over the last month or so.

Yeah, no, no.

I noticed I feel like you've done every podcast, and I assume what's left after this is maybe like

the Geico Caveman.

Is that what's after this?

Are you doing one?

Yeah, yeah.

I think you're going to hit that.

Well, I did a couple.

That Petco Dog.

Sure.

Yeah, I don't think I'll do that.

I was kind of strategic in what I wanted to do for reasons that I had.

Some of them were not the reasons that were sort of

interpreted.

I learned recently that people are going to

assume they know why you did things or frame why you did things in their particular context.

And I know why I did things.

And it's very odd to come up against these type of people where they're like, you did that because of this.

I'm like, I wasn't even thinking that.

What's an example of that?

Well, I mean, for instance, that there was this notion that, you know, I did a lot of the comedy podcasts, the more broish ones that, you know, I would do or get on, you know, specifically to take them to task.

And I, it really was the farthest thing from my mind.

I just wanted to make sure that people who were fans of comedy knew that I had a special out there.

You know, no matter what ilk they are.

That was really the intention.

Because I got into stuff that I've been talking about a long time about the political situation within comedy, that just happened.

It wasn't like that was my agenda.

I didn't want to talk that shit to Howie Mandel.

I barely wanted to be on Howie's show.

That does come across.

Sure, but I mean, but it was like, you know, I know how to have fun.

Yeah, you know, but he was, you know, spouting his mouth off in sort of a boomery, shallow, kind of insulated way that I I thought was, you know, way off the mark.

And so I didn't engage, you know, fun mark because it became not fun very quickly and it became serious.

And he didn't have much to say.

Yeah.

Let's talk about politics because

you have been going on already.

Well, yeah,

just what I put on the top of the card.

We can edit however.

No, no, no.

We don't have to follow this.

Just do what you got to do.

Oh, you're kidding?

Do what you got to do.

He's kidding.

So in your special, which is great.

Yeah, thank you.

Which is great.

You say it's your best.

I like your last two.

I think they're both your best.

End Times Fun, Bleak to Dark.

Yeah, yeah.

And this one, it's kind of a trilogy, panicked.

One of the things you'd say in the special is that liberals annoyed average Americans into fascism and that we have a buzzkill problem.

Now, a lot of the buzzkills listening to this are going to take issue with that.

But what is the buzzkill problem?

Like, what is it?

I think most of my specials, I speak to politics and culture

in a specific way because I think I should.

I think it's my responsibility.

And over time,

especially in this last episode, I figured out a way to what I felt was finessing it because the situation culturally and politically for this special was different than the other ones.

And some sort of strange empathy kind of evolved

in terms of my presentation.

So I'll explain to you.

I'll answer the question.

But in my last special, like Week to Dark, where I talked about Christian fascism, you know, it was sort of like

I had some swagger to it.

I was laying something down.

I wasn't really exploring it.

It was sort of a heads up in a fairly cocky way, in what you would say, probably what it looks like as alpha dogging.

In the special before that, I did a fairly operatic closing bit with Mike Pence Blowing Jesus, which is a specific sort of homage to a comic that had an impact on me.

In this special,

you gave him a blowjob.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you got to do what you got to do.

No, no, it was more like as I get older, I realize what my influences are and I realize what part they play in certain bits.

Like I can kind of identify it.

So I see it that way.

I see that like I would not have been inspired to navigate this joke without Hicks.

So that's that.

But in this special, because I started doing it after the election or maybe a little leading up to it,

I found that at the audiences, in the theater audiences,

that

there was a frightened, desperate, angry

vibe, which was justified and real and despairing.

And so over time of building the material, I realized that I was sort of doing some sort of community service in a real sense that, you know, these are, you know, liberals, Democrats, you know, Democrat, liberals, Democratic liberals, whatever to the left of center, that these people were showing up.

I don't know their lives.

I don't know how long they're sitting at home alone on the phone.

I don't know what they're doing.

But I did know they were scared and I knew I was in the same boat.

So I figured out a way, I made a decision this special to speak directly to them.

You know, not just posture as one of us,

but to say, look, I'll do this for you.

We're all in the same boat.

We all have flaws.

There's funny things about us.

I don't have any answers for you, but I can give you that kind of relief of being, of sort of taking pokes at who we are.

Yeah, yeah.

And that joke, and I think it's a problem now too, with comics and

comedy.

When I do comedy, when I say we annoyed the average American into fascism, that's a joke.

Yeah, it's a joke.

But it resonates and it resonates for a reason because I've also lately been exploring the difference between anger and hate.

That, you know, anger as a tone in all its spectrum is

not always entertaining.

And, you know, self-righteous anger is about the most intolerable anger.

And even if you believe what the person is is saying, you want them to shut the fuck up.

So that joke, and to answer your question, I think we know

what these things are.

And I don't know that there's a way around it.

I mean, that's going to take some sort of

amazing vulnerability and empathy in the face of a completely unsympathetic and terrifying force to make it not annoying.

But I mean, I think that's sort of what's at stake.

Yeah, it's funny because.

Did that make sense?

Yes, it does make sense.

Well,

even when I was thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about, I know when I say, you know, oh, you in the special joke about America having a buzzkill problem, annoying people into fascism, that people are going to say, well, that's not fair.

It's obviously more complicated with that.

But that's why it's a joke.

But see,

and I say it in the special that, you know, in terms of a real organized left, you know, when was the last time we had that?

And look, I did Air America.

I know what it's like to deal with different factions of the left, and even within, you know,

the Democrats trying to figure out how to platform the left, right?

And I know that there's very insulated, very committed groups of people to very specific things that are all part of this big umbrella idea.

But there is no unifying policy.

There is no unifying community.

There is no, you know,

it's not as simple in terms of what it's become as what Bernie preaches, you know, the original American left, right?

So when you have all that fragmentation,

what becomes annoying is people's commitment to their specific cause.

As righteous as it may be, it doesn't fit into the umbrella of the community necessarily.

It does not have that much significance on its own.

I mean, some issues do.

It almost becomes, you know, I don't want to use the word virtue signaling, but there is a sort of righteousness.

And I get the whole idea is like, pick an issue and you work it.

But bigger problems abound.

Yeah.

My take on it is we do have a problem of being buzzkills, that the Americans do have a very dim view of Democrats.

Americans do find Democrats annoying.

Why is that?

One reason, they're kind of annoying.

That's true.

Another is, yes, there's like a kind of a collective sense of loss and righteous anger and uncertainty around the fact that that's even more extreme this time because at least in 2017 you could say oh half the country didn't vote for this.

It's a fluke.

He won the electoral vote, not the popular vote.

But we lived through it and the country embraced it and he won a majority this time, which makes it even more kind of enraging and insecure poking kind of experience for the left.

But there's also a big right-wing apparatus that exists to take all these things and the most annoying liberal and make them famous.

There is.

Yeah, they turn it, they turn it around.

And then there's social social media that takes the most annoying bits of things.

Like, sure.

Like, you know, you make a joke in your special about Theo Vaughan.

It's very funny.

It's a great joke.

It is everywhere.

It is everywhere.

That gets pulled out, right?

And it gets spread because

it's great material.

It's very funny.

It's resonant.

But it's not surprising that the more thoughtful

and circumspect parts of the special.

It's not surprising that those parts aren't what's online.

What's online is the bit

about that sensational.

Yeah, the R-word and the Theo Vaughn thing.

A couple of the smaller ones did okay out there, but yeah, there's a lot in the special.

And, you know, I had to think about what that Theo Vaughan joke would do because there's this idea, there's a talking point

within the right-wing, you know, tribalized comedy community that any sort of criticism is some sort of jealousy, which it isn't.

And I had this issue years ago before this this type of stuff.

If you're going to be critical through humor of people in your own profession, there's always this sort of stigma to it.

But I believe that if somebody becomes a cultural phenomenon and they are part of the cultural apparatus, that they're fair game.

And I think the Theo joke

at its base is funny.

You know, what it implies, you can do whatever you want with that.

Sure, it's

an easy correlation to make to Trump or to humanizing fascism.

But in and of itself, the impression was good enough.

You know, the jokes that I put within him talking were funny.

I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to think that he didn't think it was funny.

It's really funny.

It's good.

But I'm just, my point is only that like

the apparatus is, it's impossible to fight against.

And, you know, that's a whole other problem that the left messaging is never going to be as efficient because we don't have an army of frustrated teenage boys who who have been taught over the last 20 years that this is all some sort of game and that trolling is a pastime.

And they were sort of turned out and radicalized by,

you know, Bannon and

it just, the apparatus, it feeds itself.

And people who are doing it are not ideological thinkers or deep guys.

They just are in it for the game.

Yeah, but that's what I mean about it being going further than just the left being annoying.

Of course.

But it's also,

you know, you look at in the past.

I'm talking on a human level.

On a human level.

But when countries have embraced right-wing, fascistic leaders, right?

Germany.

The economy is in shambles.

Millions of men were in World War I.

Their brains are all fucked up.

There's no word for it.

The only advice is for everyone to whisper, right?

Like there's nothing.

And they embrace this autocrat.

America had a lot of problems in 2016.

They had a lot of problems in 2024, more than we had before.

But we don't have let's try autocracy problems, but there's something about this era, whether it's social media or what's happened in the economy, that's led people to feel this loss of meaning, loss of purpose, loss of order.

And they're casting out.

And Donald Trump had purchased with a lot of those people.

A lot of people, turns out, were excited about someone like Donald Trump their whole lives.

We just didn't know it, which is very frightening.

But there was a lot of people that were just receptive to someone like Donald Trump in a way that I think was very surprising.

It was surprising to me.

I don't know if it was surprising to you.

I think that,

look, anger and the excitement of being validated and having your grievances honored

despite any sort of

human connection to them, I think it's appealing to angry people.

And the people that weren't angry were annoyed.

And they may be untethered.

They may not have any real sense of civic responsibility or even the structure of government.

They just knew that it felt good to be able to double down on hate and to double down on othering and to double down on bullying.

I think most people have an innate bully.

I think that empathy is a muscle that you have to work.

And at some point, the Democrats were okay at that.

But I don't think most people are naturally empathetic.

I used to think that.

But I also think that that a lot of this propaganda you're talking about and the sort of intensity of what we're taking in on a day-to-day level creates the mental relationship with the information creates a kind of mania.

I just watched a brilliant documentary this morning.

I've watched all this guy stuff.

It's a guy, he calls himself Elephant Graveyard on

YouTube.

And it specifically focuses on the alignment politics and comedy.

He did one called Comedy Jonestown, How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult.

And I think that that is a bigger conversation about what you're saying, that the propaganda and the existence of social media platforms and what they can do to the human brain and what they can do to foment a sort of mania.

Yeah, mania is a good word for it.

That enables it.

You hear it in people on these mics.

And I used to do it.

I used to do morning radio.

And I knew what it took to get it up to do that, you know, for three hours.

You know, you're up at three in the morning, you're crunching news.

We're doing comedy bits, you're live.

So

there was a mania to it.

And if that mania has a specific ideological thrust that's driven by talking points and, you know, basic debate exercises, it's rewarding and it lands and it makes you feel good.

Mania makes you feel good.

Yeah, and it's, and it has sort of left, you know, conservative radio, talk radio.

It was in your car, and a lot of people listened to it.

You know, a lot of salesmen and truck drivers listen to it all day, every day.

It was kind of this secret audience for it.

But you got out of your car and it stayed in the car and you lived your life.

And now that kind of frenetic pace follows us all the time.

And I do think, like, you're going to look back on this area and say, what happened?

And we're going to look at the way in which we all kind of, whatever direction it was, we were all radicalizing each other through

our phones.

And but radicalizing in

emotion.

Yeah.

That the information is fleeting and unfounded.

But if it fits your emotional

feeling, then just drive it.

Yeah.

And now it's everywhere.

People,

the guy in this new documentary, in the doomsday cult documentary, identifies something about

collaborators that may not have seen themselves as being willing collaborators at the beginning, but they go through something called, I I think he called it philosophy, which is where you don't kill yourself, but you kill yourself inside.

And if you look at somebody like Mark Rubio or anybody within that administration,

what happens in cult-like behavior is sometime, some point after another, in order to stay in the game, they kill whatever principles they might have had, even though they were a few.

Yeah, they surrender to it.

And there's also, I think, another part of that.

Killing it is probably better because that sort of supports the mania element that you have to you have to surrender, but you have to aggressively push it back.

Because you literally have to, your personality is in conflict with that until it's not.

Look, we're doing Germany, we're doing 1984, deal with it.

But like, you know, in 1984, it's about letting go.

You know, you're fighting against this tide.

You're fighting against this tide.

And all of a sudden, you're just like, you know what?

I'm just going to float.

But that's the rest of us.

That's not the operatives.

I mean, the operatives, you know, they, they make a deal.

They make a deal.

Like, I mean, I, you know, have had to, on some level,

believe and

accept, not in the way that I surrender to it, that we're currently in an authoritarian country.

I have to see it that way in order to exist

in my life.

I have to frame it like that.

I'm not saying that there's not hope, but I do think that what we're up against is something more than a two-party problem.

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One way we think people rationalize it is

around, well, you know, I don't like Trump, but I really hate the fucking Democrats, right?

Or like, I don't, I'm not totally on board with this, but both sides.

But that's a false equivalent.

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

But what I, what I, what I see,

there is a reason that Donald Trump gains gains purchase in this ecosystem of podcasts at the same time that a bunch of this anti-woke, anti-trans masculinity core takes hold at the same time.

And it has to do with some, there's some way in which a lot of men feel lost.

And there's order and meaning in what Trump offers, in what kind of the Rogan kind of way of learning about.

Daddies are pretty powerful.

And, you know, these docs that he talks a lot about the daddy hole in these guys, you know, from bad daddies, that void that needs to be filled.

And, you know, a lot of megalomaniacal people come from that.

Trump comes from that.

I mean, look, I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist, you know, but in order for someone to define themselves, especially if they're lost or they feel neutered or

diminished,

if you get the right words into those people, they're going to light up.

And if they feel like they have a leader, they're going to light up.

And as opposed to like, you know, well, I didn't like what the Democrats had to say or whatever, I think that is all part and parcel to the

demonization of Democrats as not having real policy or not being real men or not speaking to the working class.

Because there's a couple of guys out there, and I don't follow as much as I used to, but it seems like there's a couple of guys out there that are rational,

sort of level-headed,

very wonky, Democratic politicians that are totally inoffensive and and really bright and and are making it as simple as possible to understand what the real issues are but i don't know if that's what it takes to to get people on board and then you got newsom's approach which is

okay he's trying to get i everyone is struggling look i do think we can that that the collapse of society can be tied back to crowd work i think we can get it back to crowd comedians that are just doing doing crowd work.

And in the same way, we could talk about how what goes viral, what spreads, what gets people's attention is conflict, it's anger.

And so the

satisfying things.

Satisfying things.

Because cats do too, you know?

Right, sure.

Yeah.

Things that scratch some sort of a primitive itch in there.

Yeah, whether it's like sweet or sweet.

Yeah, cats too.

Yeah.

You know, a rescued puppy getting a growth removed will also get millions of.

Yeah, I can watch a pipe evacuate itself for a minute.

You ever see a video of someone pulling a tire through a pipe?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's the best.

I'll watch that all day.

I guess that's

kind of primal fecal thing.

Yeah.

Well, bringing it back to crowd work is that they're

with all this othering and with all this sort of idea, this is one of their big debate points when you come at them.

They accuse liberals of being closed-minded in terms of really embracing other people's point of view.

And for me, if that other point of view is shut the fuck up, it's what I'm saying.

I'm here.

Yeah, right, right.

Well, I just think what happens is once the othering is successful, and I covered in the special that, you know, real rights are denied and real lives are at stake because of, you know, what comics thought was an anti-woke just was just about their language issue.

And now they were used

under the sort of auspices of anti-woke.

You destroy all the policy that helps people who are vulnerable or marginalized or in trouble.

And I can't separate them i i will remain committed to the fact that they did that that comics helped that but i think it in the bigger picture with say crowd work or the the kind of

you know hackney tropes of tribalized comedy is what ultimately happens and i said this to to howie and with all the the proliferations of podcasts is that

Because the production values are shitty and everybody knows them now, and because crowd work is kind of established as this way of lighting, you know, kind of having an improvisational moment, what happens to all the stuff that is really good and truly creative and interesting is that the bar gets lowered to the point where regular people just adapt to the garbage and they don't seek out the other stuff.

And the sort of

outlets that make the other stuff are kind of marginalized.

Mainstream show business is kind of marginalized.

so all this stuff fits into that anti-elitism kind of frame of right-wing thinking yeah and it does it's a it's about taste too which is

that this stuff performs well it does well in the world for good and for ill all the gatekeepers are gone right you can kind of build your build an audience online that's good a lot of amazing people have started online but that but but we've lost there was there was curation

Human connection was a limited resource, whether it was through art or through having to go somewhere to meet a friend.

Like, you didn't know what happened to people in your lives, so you saw them at a party.

The party had real meaning because you connected there.

That's it.

And all of this took out

the availability of all this removed the meaning of liking a comic, discovering someone, going to a club and seeing someone's hilarious, telling your friends about it.

People with researched and respected opinions.

Right.

So, yeah, look, and I did a joke that was turned inside out by one particular kind of libertarian

thinker.

I don't even want to give him that.

He's a comic.

But I said it was better when everybody didn't have a voice.

It's a joke.

Yeah, it's a joke.

But it's the same thing as saying like everyone's got a podcast now.

But I just said it like that.

So I left myself open to like, that guy, see, the liberals are, you know,

they're totalitarian.

Well, it's everybody, you know they

cancel culture anti-woke anti-woke comedy was about

feeling like there's feedback that they didn't want to hear hear anymore but i i also like being a celebrity got worse too which is why i think it was able to spread so far right like

because

you know you were if you were famous in the 1950s you could drive your you could do coke get drunk drive your car through a plate glass window give 200 to the maitard at the hotel and it was gone now like james Corden gets into a fight pulling a suitcase down from the overhead, and it's news, and it follows him forever.

There's a way in which attention, celebrity, and feedback have made having the power of a platform less fun.

And I think that annoys very powerful people.

It's predatory.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, they have to insulate themselves.

But I do still think that outside of just

the kind of emaciated world of press and this chasing of clickbait,

I do think, in terms of the ideological

bend on it, is that it's anti-elitism, it's anti-intellectualism, it's anti-expert.

I think it's all part of that.

I think that Hollywood has been framed as elitists.

I think that, not unlike with the universities, and the intellectual thing was always part of fascism.

But I think that Hollywood represents elitism to the right.

And I don't believe that's true.

I mean, you know, movie stars and movie stars, but I really think that's where a lot of that comes from outside of just clickbaity stuff.

Yeah.

And then there's also just a big audience for it, right?

Like there is, it turns out, an audience for it.

Yeah, but that, but that doesn't make it right.

Of course not.

I think that.

What does that tell us about the people listening, that they wanted this?

But most people, like, so what do you got?

75 million vote for Kamala, 77.5

vote for Trump.

And there's 150 people who did what?

What are they doing?

Who are those people?

Are they just floating?

Are they the ones that's watching?

It's a lot of people.

What are they doing?

So,

and I think that in terms of how fascism or authoritarianism, like, you know, we've got a president who is a thug.

So, you know, his way of doing business is like, oh, you got a.

Got a pretty nice university here.

Hate for anything bad to happen to it.

You know, like, hey, it's a nice state.

I hate for anything bad to happen to it.

You know, maybe you kick into the charity.

Yeah, it's, it's straight up mob shit.

But the you know, but like people like

Russ.

Russ vote.

Yeah, Russ vote.

I mean, that's the guy that's doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, so like however you see Trump, you know, he's still a puppet to something that is bigger that he doesn't give a shit about as long as he can be the guy out front.

But those guys are the guys that are dismantling the federal government in the name of Christian nationalism.

But I think that the way that business, see what you're saying to me,

feels like that, you know, fascism is good for business.

Yeah.

Because if you

like Netflix, like Netflix will just, you know, co-opt anybody that can take that algorithm.

And I think you kind of, I used to do a joke about it.

I don't,

that

Netflix can become Reich flicks very quickly.

And I think the pivotal moment was when they had pushback from the trans community about Chappelle, they realized after several days that that community was not going to affect their bottom line at all.

Yeah.

And they cut them loose.

And, you know, that is how fascism works in business.

Right.

Well, right.

Their argument and response would be, well, we believe in being a home for everybody.

So there's Chappelle.

There's Ricky Gervais.

There's all these kinds of comics that do the same fucking joke.

And we have a bunch of gay movies and films and queer stuff.

And like, we're a home for everybody.

And and that's our answer.

Sure.

But ultimately, who's getting the big deals?

Which shows stay on the air?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, what do they keep repeating?

It's like the bigger audience.

Yeah, that's them saying like, we got this other stuff and we know there's a few of you, but we're throwing you a bone.

So shut up.

But the big money's on the ones that you're talking about that titillate in a certain way, that is not always right-minded.

And look, I, I, I'm, people can say whatever they want.

Yeah.

Like my belief is that eventually this stuff would have found its level.

That ultimately, in terms of

left-leaning or specific marginalized cultures, creating grassroots action by overwhelming Twitter and stuff, that when Trump was campaigning for the second time, that was ebbing, that it would have found a level where tolerance would have maybe reigned because like I believe that in order for democracy to work, if these guys are doubling down on intolerance and hate, that you've got nothing to work with.

I mean, it used to be like, you know, you'd get a guy who'd be like, yeah, gay marriage.

Now the gays, they want to get married.

It's ridiculous.

Fuck the gays.

And then it passes in his state.

And over time, he's like, I don't know.

I work with a guy.

They're nice.

And then it evolves.

in the way that democracy is supposed to work.

But I think it should always be said that what these guys are fighting for is not democracy.

and they're shameless about it they can say that you know democracy enabled us to vote for that guy but that was the end of it and that's the loophole in democracy is that you can freely elect a fascist and then who the hell knows what's going to happen right but i i do feel that they are shamelessly anti-american in their political ideology and i i imagine most of them would own it the hope right too is like This is hacky shit, right?

A lot of this like anti-woke comedy is like hacky shit.

And the way you beat that, you can scold people, not saying you're doing it, but people on social media can try to scold their way to the other side of it.

But the answer is to just be fucking funny.

And the answer is to have a bit about the Auvan that people really like

and sort of clicks

turns something on in their brain.

It's subjective.

Yeah, it makes it silly to them.

Sure.

Right.

But it's not going to make it silly to the guys that are brain fucked in that direction.

It's not going to make it silly to the believers.

And the problem with like comedy comedians as news influencers is that now anything any comic says is a representation of their personal ideology.

So the ability for them to be objective about humor is gone.

And they are subjective, which most humor is, to a specific ideological bent.

And sure, you can make it as funny as you want.

There's plenty of beautifully funny people doing amazing comedy all the time, but they're in the shadow of this momentum of the tribalized comedy, of the, of, of, you know,

Rogan, and again, those documentaries, which I highly recommend from Elephant Graveyard, you know, Rogan has positioned himself as the arbiter of what comedy is.

And

the way I framed it in my conversation with Howie was like,

how long can you kind of claim the victim mantle?

Right.

It's like, my question is, it's like, you guys, one, woke is dead.

What do you got to keep beating these people up for?

Some of them are losing their rights.

Some of them are being, you know, literally killed.

Some of them are being deported.

And these are all the big funnies for you guys who claim to be victims of this horrible policy.

So then

why not stop now?

Well, also, part of it is, yeah, but then also there's this sort of, well, we're just comedi, we're just comedians, just telling jokes here.

And then it's like, well, hold on a second.

You can't.

They're not.

Well, you can't have the president on

in the run-up to an election and give that person a forum, Trump,

and not push back.

You can't get behind him.

And then, when you don't like the consequences, say, Well,

I don't like any of this immigration stuff, but I'm just a comedian.

I just had him on.

He was a guest.

I literally heard it.

I can't forgive it.

I can't forgive it.

Yeah, no, don't think about it.

And it's like, in the sense that, like, well, you should have done your fucking homework

before you

come out and say, This is the guy to your army of

kind of

minions

who look to you for intellectual fortitude and the proper diet and what is real and what isn't real.

So

in a sense, it's like they're going to backpedal and they're going to backpedal in relation to what's kind of like moving through MAGA in general.

And I don't know that it matters.

I mean, this.

I think it does matter.

Oh, I think it does matter.

No, I mean, I don't know that it matters.

Oh, if MAGA buckles, they have to accommodate them.

I think we have to be practical.

And I can't go back in time and make people not endorse Trump, but people with big platforms realizing that they were.

Look, it is a decadent and depraved era in American politics and American society.

And part of that is a glibness with very serious things.

You have Zelensky in the Oval.

He's getting questions about putting on a suit.

His country is being murdered by Vladimir Putin.

He's getting jokey questions.

Donald Trump is showing him his fucking hat collection.

This is a depraved and decadent era.

And as part of that decadence, there are people being glib about life and death decisions, including endorsing a monster because it's good for the Graham.

And that happened.

How do we help?

Now, there's a good side to that, which is there's a shallowness to that support and that embrace, which means, yes, we can say that was stupid.

I don't forgive you.

Fine.

But we got to get those people to realize we got to make ourselves feel open to them because those people with those platforms are maybe gettable, as are the kind of soft Trump voters that maybe got on

because all their favorite hosts liked it.

I'll agree with you with that.

Okay.

But I think you're taking out of the picture, they're afraid.

They're in, man, and they're in over their head.

And there's real consequences when you push back against your authoritarian overlords.

And who in the hell knows what they are?

Because once you get above Rasvat, I mean, you've got the tech oligarchs, all right?

So they're the real ones, you know, whoever's pawned out, you know,

Vance is a stooge for those guys, for Elon and Theo and those guys.

So once you get above Project 2025 and you get above Trump, then you've got these guys who really seek to destroy the fabric of democratic society.

Okay.

So

if you're on the payroll of that shit and you know, and you want to soften up,

there's a lot at stake.

You know, so it's not, it's not just sort of, well, we've got to say the right thing to these people and change their minds because you don't think Rubio is shitting his pants every fucking day I mean you don't think like any judge that rules against him is getting like hundreds and hundreds of death threats I mean this is straight up you know terrorizing shit so I know we were heading towards hope somehow but and we don't need to let's turn around no but I think that in terms of voters and whatnot, if they are still capable of empathy, you know, underneath this mania of

grievance validation, then

in so much to say as if they're still human, that maybe something will speak to them.

Well, I think that's where there is genuine hope.

Yeah, Trump has many powers, talents.

One of them is he is very good at making what's the worst thing about you the truest thing about you.

He's very good at that.

He's very about kind of reaching into somebody and saying, this thing, this weakness you have, I'm going to make that more true, whether it's animus towards immigrants or embracing their ambition over their politics if it's a politician.

But

one reason I think Trump was able to get back is because

there was a big hole.

And everybody listening will be annoyed at my saying it, but whatever.

Again, but the bully pulpit, Joe Biden, he left it open.

And we didn't understand how big of a price we were paying for not having a vocal, aggressive, relentless advocate for democracy, for just empathy, which is something Joe Biden, I think, is very good at, but had lost his ability to communicate well.

And if we can start getting leaders and influencers, it matters now, it's the world we live in, to kind of reflect those values more, suddenly a lot of people that were open to Trump might remember some good parts of themselves.

Because I think people are complicated.

And you're right.

In every person, there's a bully, but in every person, there's always an empathetic part of them as well.

Donald Trump

does a crackdown on immigration.

terrible, terrible crackdown.

And what happens for the support for immigration, just itself as a good rises.

No,

anti-immigration.

Anti-immigration plummets.

Support for immigration itself, irrespective of the policy, rises to 80% highest it's been in decades.

There's something that you can turn on in people.

That's what leadership is.

And we need that.

I think it's possible.

No, I agree with that.

I mean, of course.

And like historically, it happens.

Yeah.

You know, you can push back

and you can

change people's minds if the sadness, the weight of it.

But like what happens to, like, I've, I've become sort of obsessed with this idea of these, you know, these angry white dudes that you were talking about that were untethered, and many of them, the whole sort of angle of, you know, Democrats used to be like, they're voting against their self-interest.

That used to be the big thing.

Yeah, yeah.

How does that happen?

You know, because it feels good to be angry.

And, well, you can't tell people what their interests are, is one thing.

Well, I guess, but I'm just economic.

Right.

So, but now, like, now it's like,

I don't want to get more grim.

I'll stick with, yes, maybe people.

You get all these angry dudes, I mean, and then you offer them, I mean, South Park covered it, the second one.

Offer them a job

in ICE

as

non-officer guys with guns for big money.

And again, then you get into that philosophy thing where

they kill part of themselves to serve this because of their self-interest.

And I guess that ties in to me with what you're saying about influencers and about that.

If you can get

them out from under their self-interest, which sometimes is just posturing for a particular

cause that determines their brand sort of appeal, but is rooted in almost nothing.

I mean, how do you make it?

Momentum becomes momentum almost.

Well, it just becomes like

you're using it as a marker to sort of determine your brand.

Everyone is stuck in

honoring the context of the social media platform, right?

So arguably, if you really want to do it, there's no free speech

because you're trying to get onto this platform and get traction with what you have to say in the bits and pieces that you can do it and make it appealing to enough people to get you some sort of recognition so you can get your grift going or move money into the right direction.

And subscribe to our YouTube.

There's one of those fake laughs.

But also there's a difference between this hyper-reality and just sort of like, you know, going swimming.

So

I just think that it's complicated without a unified message.

I think that's true.

Let's turn to life.

I think we've done enough politics.

No, no.

Am I the bleakest guy you've had on?

No, and it's going to edit beautifully.

It's going to edit.

Darker, but not bleaker.

We've had darker people,

right?

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All right, let's talk about life.

Sure.

You ever buy that $14,000 amp?

Yes, long time ago.

You got it.

You got the nice amp.

Yeah, I don't spend much money on things, but I did buy that.

Yeah, it's a tube amp.

It's a, yeah, Macintosh.

Some people don't love them.

But I've got a good stereo setup with some nice Wilson speakers and the Macintosh amp and the Macintosh Spree amp and a Riga 6 turntable and a Hama cartridge.

And, you know, I I kind of, it's waning a little bit.

That's the problem with getting obsessed and not being a fully committed nerd to a thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Fully committed nerds have one thing and they do their life with that.

My mind kind of becomes, it dabbles, but when I dabble hard, then when it starts to pass, you're like, I'm going to have to build another structure for these records.

Oh, yeah.

I get monomaniacal and then move on.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're left with a bunch of objects.

Sometimes they're great, and you can go back to them.

Like boots always seem to come back around.

Nice.

Well, I got, yeah, these ones I'm trying to figure out if I like them or not.

But what I was going to tell you before, sorry, is that

like I said before about playing to our audience

and having enough

skill to kind of take little shots and but have that

fun moment of like, we are kind of like that.

That entering the political part of this last special, I days before, I changed the tone of how I was going to do it.

Because like I said, with that, you know, alpha doggy or whatever

thing that, like, with the swagger, which is either genuine or just a means for me to confidently, a trick to, to deliver it, I decided in this one, just go under it, almost be passive about it.

Like, hey, everything's great, you know, everything.

And then move from that tone because I believed in the spirit of what you're doing here, that if I do it like that, you know, people who aren't necessarily like-minded will listen.

Yeah.

And I did some of these shows.

I had a guy come up to me in like

Skokie

or somewhere, and I did all that stuff.

And he came up to me and said, you know, I think I'm probably the only Trump supporter in here.

And I said, did I get it right?

And he said, yeah, man, he's crazy.

What do you even do with that?

Well, I think it gets at something important, which is

I feel like a lot of liberals, and it gets to the kind of buzzkill thing, a lot of liberals have kind of had convinced themselves that if only we can reach people with the truth, they just don't have the facts.

And once they have the facts, we got to get them the facts.

We got to make sure the New York Times headlines are accurate, that they capture things correctly.

Because if people had the facts, if they really knew who Trump was, then they wouldn't do it.

But no, a lot of people got behind Trump knowing who he was.

And that's a harder, deeper,

sadder problem.

And I think that is where we're at now.

I think the first term was, oh, we just have to reach people to make them understand.

Now it's, wait, wait, wait.

They did understand.

They did this anyway.

This is a bigger problem than we realized.

You have to, like you said, have a leader that believes in liberal democracy.

Yeah.

And can speak to why it's good.

You know, even with

creating policy that may undermine businesses, maybe creating policy for the benefit of all.

You have to somehow re-engage people with the idea that

they have a civic responsibility for those who don't have.

And it has to deliver.

It has to deliver for people.

Because I do think that people have come to believe that it just doesn't matter, that Democrats can't, they under promise, they overpromise and they under deliver if they deliver at all.

And really, the federal government just doesn't affect me.

And that's a wealth problem.

It's a wealth problem.

I think it's also a

this is a kind of cultural problem right now, which is

the assumption that

how things were is how they will be, that there are certain things you can count on, right?

Like you can just, yeah, Trump is crazy, but Social Security is going to function.

And yeah, Trump is crazy, but like he's not going to ruin the whole global economy by announcing tariffs for penguins.

Like there's that I think a lot of people

learn from the first term that things don't really get that bad.

Yeah, but that was before they had 2025 in place.

Exactly.

Of course, of course.

And all they had was Bannon and his mystical beliefs,

churning out executive orders.

But now you have guys that really know all the fucking weak spots of the government who are churning out executive orders.

And they had four years to prepare.

Totally.

And second-term presidents always know the job better than first-term presidents.

They rarely get four years to be outside so that the policy people, the wonks, can get their plan together.

But

that's what's so different.

Sure.

But also, how do you get the young people that identify with liberal, democratic, or leftist politics, you know, to focus on

getting involved in

being involved in the government.

Well, I think this is where it's like,

what brings all these disparate groups together, what makes people see themselves as part of one movement, leadership, and we didn't have it.

And

Democrats didn't have enough trust with non-Democrats to believe the threats, to believe what we were saying about what Trump posed.

And Democrats didn't have enough purchase with less engaged lefties to earn their vote and to believe that they could be trusted either to kind of get people excited.

And Como did a lot to try to fix the damage that Biden had

left, but there wasn't enough time.

So, Theo Von, Dak Shepard, you

is there something about being a recovered addict that makes you good at hosting a podcast and having a conversation?

Well,

I cited as a foundational thing the sort of idea of

the seed of

AA thought

is that one alcoholic talks to another alcoholic about their life and gets out of themselves.

So on that premise, maybe.

I just feel also that if you have some experience in recovery, you're very used to people being very candid about showing their emotions and vulnerabilities and telling their stories of the most horrible things.

It's just part of

the community and part of how it works.

So on that level, maybe.

You know, there's a lot of people that are miserable and hate their lives, and they're not brave enough to fix it.

And they're also not brave enough to do drugs.

You know, it takes a little bit of courage, I think, to ruin your life with drugs.

You've joked about that too in the past.

And like, you know, bravery is just a kind of recklessness that we like.

You know, it's recklessness with a good, good, a good, with a good direction.

I don't know if they see it as bravery.

I think they're out of control.

And if they survive, they can frame it.

You know, I don't, my joke was I don't trust anybody who hasn't lost complete control of their life for a few years.

There's a kind of

a willingness to say fuck it, right?

There's a fuck it quality.

And I think that like sometimes it's a it's a compulsion more than a willingness.

Maybe at some point it started as I'm just I'm I'm furious.

I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm whatever.

Oh, yeah, I'm going to throw this back and change my circumstances.

But there's a vulnerability to it, too.

I feel like in the addicts that the people that I know that have had an addiction.

Once they've gotten out of it, yeah.

Well, once they've opened the hole is open.

The hole is open, but also I do think that there's a kind of a vulnerability from before too, a kind of

a softness that made

a pain, right?

I think that comes from a vulnerability.

And that continues after you've beaten it.

But I think it's part of, I think, what makes you a good host, right?

You know, you, you are open, right?

Yeah.

And I'm pretty like, you know, my, my empathy has sort of expanded from doing it.

And also I'm kind of innately kind of codependent in that, you know, I assume that anyone I'm talking to has their shit together more than me.

And I kind of meld with them and I kind of pick up their vibe.

And there are certain times where I'll ask Brendan McDonald, my producer, I'm like, did I start talking like an old Jew when I was talking to Mel Brooks?

He'd be like, yeah.

And did I start talking a little bit like a black guy when I was talking to a black guy?

Happens.

But you mirror, you mirror.

Right.

Yeah.

But that's me.

Yeah.

I don't know how they do it.

I don't know how they do it either.

Yeah, there is something about that that you kind of like match somebody's energy.

Are we doing that?

I think so.

A little.

Yeah.

You're a little guarded.

You think?

A little bit.

It's okay.

I think I am.

Well, I can bring it down.

No, you don't have to.

It's your show.

You got to drive.

I don't even know how to be.

I don't even know what what's the, what's the guard?

What's, what should I take down?

What do you think it is?

I think you you know you have

purpose.

I think that we're all scared, but you have to sort of keep it together for the operation.

Yeah,

I think that's true locally and globally.

I think I want to make sure I know I know you as a performer, and I want to make sure we don't land in the fucking grave.

You know,

I want to be out of it by the end.

I think we're going to be.

But I also want to, I want people, I want to yeah so I think that's right well I think that if you watch the the special that I do you know I do walk a tightrope but it definitely it comes out funny and it took a lot of time to do that I remember you in the Conan days like I remember watching you on Conan

and

I wouldn't have known you were on drugs and drinking that like when you were in those in that I wasn't like sloppy you know and a lot of times I didn't do it the day of those shows.

You know, I don't think, a lot of people think I was on Coke for that HBO half hour at the Fillmore in 95.

I was just sweaty.

I don't think I was on Coke.

I do know on my first Comedy Central half hour, I had done Coke the night before and I didn't sleep well, but I wasn't getting jacked to work.

You weren't.

You weren't?

No.

Even now, I forget when I'm thinking about, like, I don't sort you into the category of, oh, guys that did a lot of drinking and Coke, because you strike me as a nerd.

You're like a nerdy guy, kind of contained, Jewish.

Like, I just, I think of you like that.

And even when I think of you from the Conan days i think of you as being like a like uh not a party guy i think of you being a like a record guy yeah i i think i was like i kind of wrote a line you know i grew up in you know towny culture in albuquerque but i was from jersey and i was very compelled towards you know uh higher pursuits i wanted to really be an intellectual and but i do have at some point you know a a rock and roll element I was never really a nerd.

I was more of an awkward person, unfocused.

I think nerds are awkward, focused people, and they can find community in that.

I was just an uncomfortable guy that knew how to be funny and sort of moved through all different clicks.

But I was never that focused.

And I kind of took to, and still do to, a kind of rock and roll sensibility.

So it's that combination of that with pretty, I think, I don't like using the word, but neurotic, anxious Jewishness.

So it's kind of a hybrid.

I think that Randy Newman once told Lauren Michaels many years ago, and Lauren told Jim Biederman, who was producing me on a show for Broadway Video.

It was a streaming show that was before streaming, though.

But Randy said I was a verbescent,

which is a sour puss.

Oh, yeah.

And I kind of, I'm okay with that.

I was a cranky guy, but I didn't know quite how to make it funny.

I don't think I have the,

you know, real cranky guys who are naturally funny.

It's a rare thing, you know, like Lewis Black is good at that.

I think, you know, Burr at some times, just this sort of put upon, you know, kind of anger that doesn't cross over into intense anger, which isn't fundamentally entertaining, which is where I would go.

I think over time I've become a little more cranky funny.

That's interesting.

Why is that?

And I think part of it is for whatever reason, like you, you're, there's a way in which with like Bill Burr, Lewis Black, that you're rooting for them, even when they're...

Populist crank.

Yeah, they're populist.

And

I'm a heady guy.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm more of a poet in terms of how my brain processes things.

They never rhyme, though.

That's a shame.

No, it's all free verse.

Occasionally there's a rhyme.

I'd take them right out.

Yeah, you gotta take them out.

Yeah, rhymes.

You do cheap.

Rhymes and puns.

No, can't do it.

Yeah, we do it.

That's okay.

We do it.

Sure.

It's cute.

There's a way in which now, I don't know,

you seem more like comfortable as a performer, as a stand-up, which is amazing how you've doing it for such a long time.

Was it, like, I know that like when I was in politics, I remember when I got a job as a speechwriter, like I have several chips on my shoulder.

A couple of them are still there.

But I've seen them fall off.

Like when I've had milestones.

And you say you can't get that outside, but validation can't really change how you feel.

I don't think that's true.

I think it absolutely can.

Totally.

Do you think for you, success

has was it financial success acclaim did those things matter in how you are on stage did it make you feel comfortable safer freer what

i think that

and i said it before that for a long time however long it takes you know your comics job is to pretend like they're not afraid you know and then eventually the the fear will leave you and that's sort of a big day and i think in terms of success just the fact that i was able to build an audience of

grown-up people, mostly, you know, mostly thinky, creative, you know, disgruntled, you know,

people that I kind of talk about in the special.

You know, I worry about alienating them, but there's also some part of me that wants to a little.

But I think that once I got an audience and I had a freedom of mind that I knew would be received, that it did, it did help my comedy.

And I guess that's success.

But ultimately, I have been working a long time at this.

And I think along with that fearlessness, you know, especially in this special, it was one of the only, it's the only special where beforehand I didn't let my brain undermine me for dumb shit.

There's some part of my brain that prepares that way.

I've got to find something to make me uncomfortable.

And it just didn't happen.

And I was more grounded in this special than I ever have been because

I had purpose.

Like I always kind of do, but I had a different purpose both to my audience, to the way I thought about culture and politics, and also to the risks I wanted to take around personal things.

Like a long time ago, I really set out to not talk about anything that wasn't from my point of view because I could own that and no one could take it.

And anytime that I'd see similar things, I'd have to sort of like go, well, is it that similar?

I'll just lose it.

You know, I don't, I want it to be mine.

So the risks I took in the last two bits around trauma and around grief were, it took a long time to work those out.

So I just feel like that I have a confidence in how I do what I do that is much more grounded than it, than it's ever been.

But yeah, validation is still too important to me.

Is it?

Yeah.

Who do you want it from?

I don't know.

My parents?

It's always about the parents.

Yeah.

I mean, because like if you don't have a voice in yourself that you've evolved because of being, you know, emotionally, you know, manipulated one way or the other in a negative way by, you know, your, your early experiences, it's hard to have a voice in your head that says, good job.

And you don't have that even now.

No, I do, you know, but I still like I know it.

But then when other people...

don't know it as much as I do, it makes me upset.

Yeah.

With this one, the stuff that like, I felt like it was really the best work that I've done in terms of from, like, the risks were different.

The last special was about grief and, you know, at least 20, 25 minutes.

Yeah.

And this one was back to sort of almost a three-act structure, you know, where, you know, I do the political, cultural stuff, then I tell them I want to just be entertaining and I do that.

And then I get into personal stuff.

But I do feel like

the stuff that I thought needed to get out there

in terms of not the stuff, like you said before, there's a lot of stuff in this special that goes undiscussed.

That's gnarly shit and deep shit.

But the stuff that landed, I'm okay with because I felt like it was not being said.

you know, in a way that was like no one can deny my skill set.

So as a comic, if I'm going to take on what's going on in comedy in relation to culture and I do it in a funny way, then I've achieved something because a lot of comics are scared to talk about it.

They're afraid of audiences.

And, you know, you just got to really get that ratio into your head.

It was

75 million to 77.5 million.

Not every room is full of monsters.

And certainly not in LA.

And that there has to be some, you have to have

the guts to be a stand-up stand-up and and say what you want to say.

Again, you know, it's dicey when you sort of take on people in your world, but when it reflects on the world at large in a negative way, I think it's ripe.

But to the point, like, I felt good about it.

I articulated it well, and going into it, I was 100% confident

in the set.

And I feel good about it.

And I'm fortunate in that it was received very well, which is not always the case.

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i think it's technically your cusp but i think of you as a quintessential gen x yeah i think so uh comic last year boomers so it's it's yeah you're you're you're right there you're right but but gen x energy all the way through sure right there with the kind of

in the sort of.

There's probably a little too much Led Zeppelin in me to be fully Gen X.

But yeah.

You can grunge it up a little, I suppose.

Sure, I did.

It was later, though.

Later, yeah.

The groundwork had been laid by acts from the 70s.

But why did

we have had a bunch of baby boomer presidents?

I'm not running.

And

first of all, thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's one less thing to fucking worry about.

Imagine that.

that that'd be annoying but uh

just you just you heckling democrats back at you just it'd be what a disaster i don't know gavin's doing that yeah yeah i think he's more suited to it honestly than you oh yeah he wants it pretty bad i can't like i look i know what it's i know what it's like to think you are speaking your truth and to be completely saturated in talking points that you don't know anymore i mean i did air america for a year every morning and you start to you realize like i didn't think this

I don't remember your show being that talking pointsy.

No, it's not, but it's the tone.

Yeah, yeah, the tone of the

rehonoring

narrative.

But

we seem to have skipped over Gen X in terms of presidents.

And there's a sort of a gap in terms of even our representation.

We went right from a lot of boomer members of Congress.

There's obviously Gen X was in there, but we went right from the boomers to the millennials as well.

Why is it that Gen X hasn't really shown up?

They've also moved to the right more than millennials have.

What was something about your generation that kind of had this sort of?

I think it was probably the beginning of that

sort of self-centered entitlement and need to define yourself in a unique way that was based on, you know, music, fashion, you know, bits and pieces of, you know, esoteric wisdom from old books and whatnot.

I think it was probably, you know, the boomers are selfish in a different way, you know, because they built the world and now, as they were looking down the tunnel of death, they kind of want to end it.

They want to be buried in their pyramids.

Well, they just, I think there's a part of narcissism that it's like, if the world ends at the same time they do, they don't miss anything.

And I think Gen X

is probably

guilty of a kind of the beginning of

a terminal uniqueness on an individual level and not so hip to

a real civic community.

Yeah.

Maybe.

I don't know.

I'm really spitballing.

I don't really think in terms of generations that much.

I do know that the boomers need to get out of the way.

There's the sort of the Gen X comics.

Jon Stewart's in there.

You're in there.

Bill Maher is in that group, I think.

He's a little older.

Is he a little older, buddy?

I think he's kind of solid boomer.

You think?

Is he a little older?

Yeah, he's got to be like, got to be close to 70.

Somebody.

Let's go to Bill Mario

work.

69.

69, yeah.

Nice.

Famously 69.

Oh, right.

We talked to him about it.

I had him on.

That's pretty solid boomer shit.

But Janine,

you know, John, sure.

You know, some of the other

Gen Xers, you know, Patton.

And then there's a bunch of other, you know, younger guys.

The alt comedy scene for whatever it did was mostly Gen Xers and some millennials, I guess.

Yeah.

It was an insulated community that was based a lot in kind of snark.

And, you know, snark doesn't age well because it doesn't run that deep.

Yeah.

And it's, well, it's, there's something about it, too, that's, that's, um,

snark, you have to be on the outside and you have to not want to be on the inside.

I think that's your answer right there.

Yeah, I think that's it.

There's something about, there's something about Gen X that was like, you know what?

We're just going to, we'll be, we'll be back here.

Yeah.

We'll be back here with our zines.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I think that's it.

I think it was a mistake.

I think you should have, guys, gotten in the ring with us.

I'm the last boomer.

Don't blame me.

Okay.

Okay.

You're right.

I take that back.

I take that back.

So you're a catastrophizer.

Because I was thinking about this because I went back and I watched parts of the special from

Bleak to Dark.

And, you know, I'm a catastrophizer as well.

So I'm on the phone call with my, I'm on the phone with my fiancé.

I'm engaged.

Second time is what it's going to take.

But the

how long you've been engaged?

Like six months.

Okay.

Six months.

You're planning the wedding?

Good.

Oh, good.

Yeah, we're planning the wedding.

It's not like a six-year-old.

No, no, no.

The last one, we didn't plan the wedding, and I think that that was a sign.

This is second marriage?

Second engagement.

Second engagement.

Okay.

There was no first marriage.

Okay.

Okay.

I made a lot of changes when I turned 40.

Uh-huh.

A lot of changes.

Yeah.

Like what?

I was no longer engaged

once I was 40.

Yeah.

I actually never was single in my 30s.

Yeah.

I was single when I was 29.

I met somebody.

And then the next time I was single, I was 40.

So I forgot to be single in my 30s.

And yet you did it again.

Well, if I did, I thought it was going to be like when I was in my 20s.

It is not.

When you're in your 40s.

A little more work.

Yes.

Yes.

You can't, you can't get

my dunk gone.

Yeah.

And I didn't have a dunk.

Yeah.

The game starts to fade.

And now I'm 40.

Yeah.

But you look good.

I'm okay.

I'm working on doing Pilates.

Do you Pilates?

No,

I do like kind of a full body flexibility workout.

And then I run a few days a week.

You run?

run this morning i did yeah where do you run

i do a hike out in glendale sometimes and then other times i just do intervals on the treadmill at uh equinox

okay i like equinox okay i'm an elitist you seem to be aging well i think comedians age well that is not true not physically they become ghouls but i'm saying that that mentally some of the great like you're gonna have to give me an example well i think i think uh uh comedians that have con that have tried to stay kind of sharp and curious about the world.

I think you're one of them.

There's got to be a couple more.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think it's a faulty premise, but you said it confidently.

I think that I,

well, like, look, I think Seinfeld is somebody that's keep trying to do new material.

And I don't do like you can like or dislike what Seinfeld does.

Oh, yeah.

But even if you can, but even the, great.

But even the other day, like, he, he gave some answer about woke stuff and it got some blowback.

And he actually came back and he said, you know what?

I was wrong about that.

And he actually gave a really good answer.

He thought about it.

He came back and he said, you know what?

What I said was stupid.

And actually,

if the goalposts move, I should hit the goalpost.

That's my job.

Sure.

And I thought that was cool.

I think that what happened with Jerry ultimately is that he was really a guy that didn't speak much publicly.

And then, you know, not just because of the advent of podcasting and the needs of the new publicity environment, all of a sudden Jerry was never shutting up.

So everybody saw Jerry for Jerry.

And you do with that what you will.

Okay.

I'll do with it what I will.

I'm glad he apologized.

And you feel good about that.

Well, let's see.

Let's do some more beefs.

What do you think about Bill Maher?

I can't, I can't do it.

You know, I can't, you know, I don't.

Tone, I always had a problem with this tone.

I think I did politically correct years ago.

Yeah, I'm sure you did.

A couple of times, maybe.

And I think I did real time maybe once or twice.

That's when you were dating Ann Coulter at the time.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That was a dark time.

I tried to help her.

There's nothing.

She's lost cause.

I couldn't do it.

There's nothing I could do

with all my years of experience in and out of bed that could help her.

So,

no, I don't know.

Like, I feel with Bill that there is this, and it happens with some of the other boomers, there's this desperate chasing of relevance that, you know, changes someone's mind in terms of how they approach what they do and also kind of makes the whole undertaking feel desperate.

And, you know, outside of

his

ideas about

primarily, I think, wokeness.

I don't know,

it's just not for me.

I know his joke writes, you know, he's got good joke writers who know how to write for for his tone.

And I've known a couple of those guys.

They were comics and they're good guys.

But

I can't see past

the desperation and what he's willing to do to stay in the conversation.

And what do you think about the death of like, you know, Late Show's gone, Conan Show's obviously gone.

Yeah.

It's coming undone.

This place that I know I'm sure for you was this pinnacle of where comics went, what comedy was, like,

from Carson to Letterman to Conan.

What do you think of that?

I think it's just the nature of what we talked about before is that if the bar has been lowered to consuming only clips,

which is dictated by media platforms, that this whole idea of like, you know, algorithms and what people's attention span can and can't do is it's sort of a, I don't know if it's a catch-22, but it's like even with any streamer you work on, it's like, well, our algorithm says people can't pay attention for this long.

And I'm like, but not my people.

And if you keep promoting that, they won't.

I mean, if something is good, they'll stay in it.

I guess the format and the nature of show business has just, again, shifted to entrepreneurs and,

you know, media bubbles that are self-driven by, you know,

individuals or tribal entities.

And that the whole...

the whole framing of show business being this, you know, it's the talk show.

Here come the celebrities.

It's just, people don't care anymore.

And they're all chasing quicks, you know, for clips of, you know, having interesting people do dumb shit.

And we're going to bring those pies in in a second.

Oh, God damn it.

I knew there was a big closer.

No, I want to end with this.

It's a serious question and it's where I was going to before.

But look, when I'm on the phone with

Ari and the phone cuts out, I think they're dead.

I just assume the building has collapsed.

Truly, like earthquake, a 9-11.

Truly, if they're in New York, I'll think a 9-11 has happened.

Like, I'd really go there.

You're a catastrophizer.

You've done it your whole life.

And, you know, you've been through a terrible loss.

Your plane hit the mountain.

Did it change how you view catastrophe?

Does it change how you allow your mind to create catastrophe all the time?

No, what it changed was my sense of mortality.

It did not.

change like it doesn't you know tragic loss of somebody you love that's not my go-to catastrophe i didn't see that coming at all i mean my parents are both still alive.

You know, it's not great, but

I didn't see what happened to Lynn.

There was no way I could have ever seen that coming.

So, you know, when somebody dies tragically, you know, all the other catastrophizing about me and cancer or, you know, what someone's going to say about me or the world or the fires or anything else.

When somebody dies, it does make me more scared in

relationship because it's happened.

But it also sort of makes you realize just how fragile it all is and how there is no real kind of universal order to it and you know there's no way to to answer the question why and that that's just life so i i don't it didn't diminish my catastrophizing but it did make me realize how fragile life is and i'm too heavy for an answer no i just think now we're ready to start let's record oh good let's keep the things going we got warmed up and now we're now in it.

Okay, good.

Mark Marin, good to have you.

Thank you.

Nice to be here.

That's all for this week.

Thank you to Mark Maron for Stop Bake By.

We'll be back in your podcast feeds on Tuesday with our usual episode with me, John, and Tommy.

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