Marc Maron on Brainf*cked Trolls and Liberal Scolds

Speaker 1 Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. We talk a lot about transparency and fighting against shady deals.
That's us. That's right.
That's what we like about SimplySafe.

Speaker 1 No hidden fees, no long-term contracts, just highly effective, award-winning home security at a fair price.

Speaker 1 John Lovett installed the Simply Safe years ago, and we've been talking about it ever since.

Speaker 3 Can't stop talking about it. It's a really great product.
It works really well. Easy to set up.
Once you set it up, the app is reliable and easy to use. The customer support is reliable.

Speaker 3 It's just a great security system you can count on. Highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 Most security systems only take action after someone breaks in. That's too late.
SimplySafe's new active guard outdoor protection helps stop break-ins before they happen.

Speaker 1 If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights, and can call the police, proactively deter crime before it starts.

Speaker 1 Named Best Home Security System of 2025 by CNET: 4 million plus Americans trust Simply Safe. Ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today.

Speaker 1 Monitoring plans start around a dollar a day, 60-day money-back guarantee, no contracts, no hidden fees.

Speaker 1 Visit simplysafe.com/slash crooked to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com slash crooked.

Speaker 1 There's no safe like simply safe.

Speaker 4 This podcast is presented by the Netflix film A House of Dynamite from Academy Award-winning director Catherine Bigelow, starring Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson.

Speaker 4 Not only are critics raving about the film with Deadline calling a house of dynamite exceptionally powerful and brilliantly directed, but policymakers, experts, and scientists alike are weighing in proclaiming that the film is required viewing, a powerful and thought-provoking movie, and a movie of our time worth watching, mulling, and debating.

Speaker 4 A House of Dynamite, now playing on Netflix, for your awards consideration.

Speaker 3 Hey, everybody, welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett.

Speaker 3 Today on the show, I sat down 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Hi, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 You're welcome. Nice to be here.

Speaker 2 I've admired your work from afar, my friend.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's so nice to hear. We all, yeah.
What about up close?

Speaker 2 Well, I'm going to see how that goes. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I remember when you came on, I really felt you

Speaker 3 not annoyed at me, but like, you're like,

Speaker 2 okay. Sure.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 3 But, but in a, but not in a bad way, but it was fine. But in watching you do interviews, I, here's what I took from it, which is

Speaker 3 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 best who you don't care for. And I wasn't getting that.

Speaker 3 And I wasn't getting that.

Speaker 2 With people in terms of pity laughs, you know, there's an old radio habit.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's just saying, like, yeah, okay, yeah, you did it.

Speaker 3 You got to feel the same thing to get to the next level.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 dickish. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but it's not, it's not full power play. It's just sort of a defiance.
You know, I'm defying you to bring me down a notch.

Speaker 3 But you're setting a bar for if you're going to want to have a conversation,

Speaker 3 you're going to have to bring something. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 You have to show up empty-handed. Sure.
I mean, yeah, because I can talk probably too much if I'm allowed to.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, no. I noticed I feel like you've done every podcast, and I assume what's left after this is maybe like

Speaker 3 the Geico Caveman. Is that what's after this? Are you doing one? Yeah, yeah.
I think you're going to hit that.

Speaker 2 Well, I did a couple.

Speaker 3 That Petco Dog. Sure.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Some of them were not the reasons that were sort of

Speaker 2 interpreted.

Speaker 2 I learned recently that people are going to

Speaker 2 assume they know why you did things or frame why you did things in their particular context. And I know why I did things.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 What's an example of that?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And 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.

Speaker 2 You know, no matter what ilk they are. That was really the intention.

Speaker 2 Because 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.

Speaker 2 I didn't want to talk that shit to Howie Mandel. I barely wanted to be on Howie's show.

Speaker 3 And that does come across.

Speaker 2 Sure, but I mean, but it was like, you know, I know how to have fun. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, but he was, you know, spouting his mouth off in sort of a boomery, shallow, kind of insulated way that I thought was, you know, way off the mark.

Speaker 2 And so I didn't engage fun mark because it became not fun very quickly and it became serious. And he didn't have much to say.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Let's talk about politics because

Speaker 3 you have been going off. Already?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 this is what I put on the top of the card. We can edit however.
No, no, no. We don't have to follow this.

Speaker 2 Just do what you got to do. No, you're kidding?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I like your last two. I think they're both your best.

Speaker 2 End Times Fun, Bleak to Dark. Yeah, yeah.
And this one. It's kind of a trilogy.

Speaker 2 Panicked.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Now, a lot of the buzzkills listening to this are going to take issue with that.

Speaker 3 But what is the buzzkill problem? Like, what is it?

Speaker 2 I think most of my specials, I speak to politics and culture

Speaker 2 in a specific way because I think I should. I think it's my responsibility.
And over time,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And some sort of strange empathy kind of evolved

Speaker 2 in terms of my presentation. So I'll explain to you.
I will answer the question.

Speaker 2 But in my last special, like Week to Dark, where I talked about Christian fascism, you know, it was sort of like

Speaker 2 I had some swagger to it. I was laying something down.
I wasn't really exploring it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 In this special,

Speaker 3 you gave him a blowjob.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But in this special, because I started doing it after the election or maybe a little leading up to it,

Speaker 2 I found that at the audiences and the theater audiences,

Speaker 2 that there was a, you know, there was a frightened, desperate, angry

Speaker 2 vibe, which was, you know, justified and real and despairing.

Speaker 2 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 liberals, Democrats, you know, Democrat liberals, Democratic liberals, whatever to the left of center, that these people were showing up.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I figured out a way, I made a decision this special to speak directly directly to them. You know, not just posture as one of us,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And that joke, and I think it's a problem now, too, with comics and

Speaker 2 comedy. When I do comedy, when I say we annoyed the the average American into fascism, that's a joke.
Yeah, it's a joke.

Speaker 2 But it resonates,

Speaker 2 and it resonates for a reason, because I've also lately been exploring the difference between anger and hate. That, you know, anger

Speaker 2 as a tone in all its spectrum is not always entertaining. And, you know, self-righteous anger is about the most intolerable anger.

Speaker 2 And even if you believe what the person is saying, you want them to shut the fuck up.

Speaker 2 So that joke, and to answer your question, I think we know

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's funny because...

Speaker 3 Did that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. Well,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's obviously more complicated with that.

Speaker 3 But that's why it's a joke.

Speaker 2 But see,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I know what it's like to deal with different factions of the left, and even within, you know,

Speaker 2 the Democrats trying to figure out how to platform the left, right?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 There is no unifying community. There is no, you know,

Speaker 2 it's not as simple in terms of what it's become as what Bernie preaches, you know, the original American left, right?

Speaker 2 So when you have all that fragmentation,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It does not have that much significance on its own. I mean, some issues do.

Speaker 2 So 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.

Speaker 2 But bigger problems abound. Yeah.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 One reason, they're kind of annoying. That's true.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's a fluke. He won the electoral vote, not the popular vote.
But we lived through it and the country embraced it.

Speaker 3 And he won a majority this time, which makes it even more kind of enraging and insecure poking kind of experience for the left.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 There is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they turn it, they turn it around.

Speaker 3 And then there's social media that takes the most annoying bits of things. Like sure.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, you make a joke in your special about Theo Vaughn. 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

Speaker 3 it's great material. It's very funny.

Speaker 3 It's resonant.

Speaker 3 But it's not surprising that the more thoughtful

Speaker 3 and circumspect parts of the special are the it's not surprising that those parts aren't what's online. What's online is the bit there's

Speaker 3 that sensational.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 within the right-wing, you know, tribalized comedy community that any sort of criticism is some sort of jealousy, which it isn't.

Speaker 2 And I had this issue years ago before this type of stuff.

Speaker 2 If you're going to be critical through humor of people in your own profession, there's always this sort of stigma to it.

Speaker 2 But I believe that if somebody becomes a cultural phenomenon and they are part of the cultural apparatus, that they're fair game.

Speaker 2 And I think the Theo joke

Speaker 2 at its base is funny. You know, what it implies, you can do whatever you want with that.
Sure, it's

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to think that he didn't think it was funny. It's really funny.

Speaker 3 It's good. But I'm just, my point is only that like.

Speaker 2 Sure, the apparatus is, it's impossible to fight against. And, you know, that's a whole other problem that.

Speaker 2 The left messaging is never going to be as efficient because we don't have an army of frustrated teenage boys who have been taught over the last 20 years that this is all some sort of game and that trolling is a pastime.

Speaker 2 And they were sort of turned out and radicalized by,

Speaker 2 you know, Bannon.

Speaker 2 And it just, the apparatus,

Speaker 2 it feeds itself. And people who are doing it are not ideological thinkers or deep guys.

Speaker 2 They just are in it for the game.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but that's what I mean about it being going further than just the left being annoying.

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 3 But it's also that

Speaker 3 you look at in the past.

Speaker 2 I'm talking on a human level.

Speaker 3 On a human level.

Speaker 3 But when countries have embraced right-wing fascistic leaders, right? Germany.

Speaker 3 The economy is in shambles. Millions of men were in World War I.
Their brains are all fucked up.

Speaker 3 There's no word for it.

Speaker 3 The only advice is for everyone to whisper, right? Like there's nothing. And they embrace this autocrat.
America had a lot of of problems in 2016.

Speaker 3 We had a lot of problems 2024, more than we had before.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It was surprising to me. I don't know if it was surprising to you.

Speaker 2 I think that, look, anger and the excitement of being validated and having your grievances honored

Speaker 2 despite any sort of

Speaker 2 you know, 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.

Speaker 2 They may not have any real sense of civic responsibility or even the structure of government.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But I I also think 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.

Speaker 2 I just watched a brilliant documentary this morning. I've watched all this guy stuff.

Speaker 2 It's a guy, he calls himself Elephant Graveyard on YouTube. And

Speaker 2 it specifically focuses on the alignment of politics and comedy. He did one called Comedy Jonestown, How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 a sort of mania.

Speaker 3 Yeah, mania is a good word for it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, you're up at three in the morning, you're crunching news, we're doing comedy bits, you're live.

Speaker 2 So there is, there was a mania to it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Mania makes you feel good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it's, and it has sort of left, left, you know, conservative radio, talk radio. It was in your car, and a lot of people listened to it.

Speaker 3 You know, a lot of salesmen and truck drivers listen to it all day, every day. It was like kind of this secret audience for it.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I do think, like, you're going to look back on this area and say, what happened?

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 2 our phones. And but radicalizing in

Speaker 2 emotion. Yeah.
That the information is fleeting and unfounded, but if it fits your emotional

Speaker 2 feeling, then just drive it. Yeah.
And now it's everywhere. People, it's in the guy in this new documentary, in the doomsday cult documentary, identifies something about

Speaker 2 collaborators that may not have seen themselves as being willing collaborators at the beginning, but they go through something called, I think he called it philosophy, which is where you don't kill yourself, but you kill yourself inside.

Speaker 2 And if you look at somebody like Mark Rubio or anybody within that administration,

Speaker 2 what happens in cult-like behavior is sometimes, 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they surrender to it. And there's also, I think, another part of it.

Speaker 2 Killing it is probably better because that sort of supports the mania element that you have to surrender, but you have to aggressively push it back. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because you literally have to, your personality is in conflict with that until it's not.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And all of a sudden, you're just like, you know what? I'm just going to float.

Speaker 2 But that's the rest of us. That's not the operatives.
I mean, the operatives, you know, they make a deal.

Speaker 3 They make a deal.

Speaker 2 Like, I mean, I, you know, have had to, on some level,

Speaker 2 believe and

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Pod Save America is brought to you by Tommy John. Keeping your cool can be difficult with everything you're hearing on the news.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Thankfully, Tommy John can provide cooling relief with underwear that feels like on-body AC thanks to lightweight, breathable, moisture-wicking fabrics that stop you from getting heated.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 1 You can deal with the news by getting better underwear.

Speaker 3 That's for sure. It doesn't hurt.

Speaker 1 Tommy John's proprietary fabrics are silky, soft, and luxurious. I know it's a good day when I have my Tommy Johns on.

Speaker 1 Feel confident all day long in underwear that are breathable, lightweight, and comfortable. Get the support you've been looking for with underwear that won't ride up.

Speaker 1 Tommy Johns are up to four times more stretch than competing brands, but they won't stretch out. Best of all, you can buy them risk-free with their money-back guarantee.

Speaker 1 Elevate your essentials with Tommy John today.

Speaker 1 What's one special thing about Tommy John?

Speaker 1 That we all wear the the same underwear.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we do. They're very comfortable.
They're really well made. They're very breathable.
I truly wear them every single day without exception.

Speaker 1 Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it.

Speaker 3 You know, treat yourself right around that area. You know, it's every day.
It's every day.

Speaker 1 Try to make sure that your big balls get a medal of freedom.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know what? Yeah, yeah. If you don't want your balls getting jacked, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Grab 25% off your first order now at tommyjohn.com slash crooked. Save 25% for a limited time.
At TommyJohn.com slash crooked. TommyJohn.com slash crooked seasite for details.

Speaker 5 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.
At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all. Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 5 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 5 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and More. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 5 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 3 One way we think people rationalize it is

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 But that's a false equivalent.

Speaker 3 Of course it is. Of course it is.
But what I, what I, what I see,

Speaker 3 there is a reason that Donald Trump 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.

Speaker 3 And it has to do with some, there's some way in which a lot of men feel lost.

Speaker 3 And there's order and meaning in what Trump offers, in what kind of the Rogan kind of way of learning about.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And a lot of megalomaniacal people come from that. Trump comes from that.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 diminished,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 demonization of Democrats as not having real policy or not being real men or not speaking to the working class.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 sort of level-headed,

Speaker 2 very wonky, Democratic politicians that are totally inoffensive and

Speaker 2 really bright 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 get people on board.

Speaker 2 And then you got Newsom's approach, which is.

Speaker 3 Okay. He's trying to get,

Speaker 3 everyone is struggling. Look, I do think that the collapse of society can be tied back to crowd work.
I think we can get it back to

Speaker 3 comedians that are just doing crowd work.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 satisfying things. Satisfying things.

Speaker 2 Because cats do too, you know.

Speaker 3 Right, sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Things that scratch some sort of a primitive itch in there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, whether it's like sweet or sweet. Yeah, cats too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. You know, a rescued puppy getting a growth removed will also get millions of.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can watch a pipe evacuate itself for a minute.

Speaker 3 You ever see a video of someone pulling a tire through a pipe? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's the best. I'll watch that all day.
I guess that's

Speaker 2 kind of primal, fecal thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, bringing it back to crowd work is that they're

Speaker 2 with all this othering and with all this sort of idea, this is one of their big debate points.

Speaker 2 When you come at them, they accuse liberals of being closed-minded in terms of really embracing other people's point of view.

Speaker 2 And for me, if that other point of view is shut the fuck up, I don't want to hear it. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And now they were used

Speaker 2 under

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I will remain committed to the fact that they did that, that comics helped that. But I think in the bigger picture with, say, crowd work or the kind of

Speaker 2 hackney tropes of tribalized comedy is what ultimately happens, and I said this to

Speaker 2 Howie, and with all the proliferations of podcasts, is that

Speaker 2 Because the production values are shitty and everybody knows them now, and because crowd work is kind of established as this way of lighting a you know kind of having an improvisational moment what happens to all the stuff that is really good and and truly creative and interesting is that the bar gets lowered to the point where regular people just adapt to the garbage and and they don't seek out the other stuff and the the sort of uh

Speaker 2 outlets that make the other stuff are kind of marginalized. Mainstream show business is kind of marginalized.
So all all this stuff fits into that anti-elitism kind of frame of right-wing thinking.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it does,

Speaker 3 it's about taste too, which is

Speaker 3 that this stuff performs well. It does well in the world.

Speaker 3 For good and for ill, all the gatekeepers are gone, right?

Speaker 2 You can kind of

Speaker 3 build an audience online. That's good.
A lot of amazing people have started online.

Speaker 3 But we've lost,

Speaker 3 there was curation.

Speaker 3 Human connection was a limited resource, whether it was through art or through having to go somewhere to meet a friend.

Speaker 3 Like you didn't know what happened to people in your lives until you saw them at a party. The party had real meaning because you connected there.
That's it. And all of this took out

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 People with researched and respected opinions. Right.
So, yeah, look, and I did a joke that was, you know, turned inside out by one particular kind of libertarian

Speaker 2 thinker.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 It's a joke. Yeah, it's a joke.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 they're totalitarian.

Speaker 3 Well, it's everybody, you know, they,

Speaker 3 cancel culture,

Speaker 3 anti-woke comedy, it was about

Speaker 3 feeling like there's feedback that they didn't want to hear anymore. But I also, like, being a celebrity got worse too, which is why I think it was able to spread so far, right? Like,

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 having the power of a platform less fun. And I think that annoys very powerful people.

Speaker 2 It's predatory. Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, they have to insulate themselves. But I do still think that outside of just

Speaker 2 the kind of emaciated world of press and this chasing of clickbait,

Speaker 2 I do think in terms of the ideological

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think that Hollywood has been framed as elitists.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But, and then there's also just a big audience for it, right? Like there is, it turns out, an audience for yeah, but that, but that doesn't make it right.

Speaker 2 Like, of course not.

Speaker 3 I think that what does that tell us about the people listening, that they, they wanted this.

Speaker 2 Well, but most people, like, so what do you got? 75 million vote for Kamala, 77.5, you know, vote for Trump. And there's 150 people who did what?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 What are they doing? So,

Speaker 2 and I think that in terms of how fascism or authoritarianism, like, you know, we've got a president who is a thug.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 Russ.

Speaker 3 Russ vote.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Russ vote. I mean, that's the guy that's doing it.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 feels like that, you know, fascism is good for business. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because if you

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 Netflix can become Reich flicks very quickly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And they cut them loose.

Speaker 2 And, you know, that is how fascism works in business.

Speaker 3 Right. Well, right.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And we have a bunch of gay movies and films and queer stuff. And like, we're a home for everybody.
And that's our answer.

Speaker 2 Sure. But ultimately who's getting the big deals? Which shows stay on the air? Yeah, yeah.
You know, what do they keep repeating?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 people can say whatever they want.

Speaker 2 Like, my belief is that eventually this stuff would have found its level.

Speaker 2 That ultimately, in terms of

Speaker 2 left-leaning or specific marginalized cultures, you know, creating grassroots action, you know, 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, you've got nothing to work with.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But I think it should always be said that what these guys are fighting for is not democracy. And they're shameless about it.

Speaker 2 They can say that, you know, democracy enabled us to vote for that guy, but that was the fucking end of it. And that's the loophole in democracy is that you can freely elect a fascist.

Speaker 2 And then who the hell knows what's going to happen, right? But I do feel that they are shamelessly anti-American in their political ideology. And I imagine most of them would own it.

Speaker 3 The hope, right, too, is like, This is hacky shit, right? A lot of this like anti-woke comedy is like hacky shit.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And the answer is to have a bit about the Auvan that people really like and

Speaker 3 sort of clicks some turns something on in their brain. It's subjective.
Yeah, it makes it silly to them. Sure.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And the problem with like comedy comedians as news influencers is that now anything any comic says is a representation of their personal ideology.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And sure, you can make it as funny as you want.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 the way I framed it in my conversation with Howie was like,

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Some of them are losing their rights. Some of them are being, you know, literally killed.
Some of them are being deported.

Speaker 2 And these were all the big funnies for you guys who claim to be victims of this horrible policy. So then

Speaker 2 why not stop now?

Speaker 3 Well, also part of it is,

Speaker 3 but then also, there's this sort of, well,

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 in the run-up to an election and give that person a forum, Trump,

Speaker 3 and not push back.

Speaker 3 You can't get behind him. And then, when you don't like the consequences, say, like, well, I didn't, I don't, I don't like any of this immigration stuff, but I'm just a comedian.
I just had him on.

Speaker 3 He was a guest.

Speaker 2 I literally was like, I can't forgive it. I can't forgive it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, don't think about it.

Speaker 2 And it's like, in the sense that, like, well, you should have done your fucking homework

Speaker 2 before you, you,

Speaker 2 you, you, you come out and say, this is the guy to your army of

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 2 minions

Speaker 2 who who look to you for intellectual fortitude and the proper diet and what is real and what isn't real.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I don't know that it matters. I mean, this- I think it does matter.

Speaker 3 Oh, I think it does matter.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, I don't know that it matters. Oh, if MAGA buckles, they have to accommodate them.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump is showing him his fucking hat collection. This is a depraved and decadent era.

Speaker 3 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, and that, and that happened.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 board.

Speaker 3 Or because all their favorite hosts liked it.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 there's real consequences when you push back against your authoritarian overlords. And who the hell knows what they are?

Speaker 2 Because once you get above Rasvaught, I mean, you've got the tech oligarchs, all right? So they're the real ones, you know, whoever's pawned out, you know,

Speaker 2 Vance is a stooge for those guys, for Elon and Theo and those guys.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 if you're on the payroll of that shit

Speaker 2 and you want to soften up,

Speaker 2 there's a lot at stake.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 grievance validation, then

Speaker 2 and so much to say as if they're still human,

Speaker 2 that maybe something will speak to them.

Speaker 3 Well, I think that's where there is genuine hope. Yeah, Trump has many powers, talents.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 politics if it's a politician.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Again, but the bully pulpit, Joe Biden, he left it open.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 does a crackdown on immigration. Terrible, terrible crackdown.
And what happens for the support for immigration, just itself as a good, rises. No,

Speaker 2 anti-immigration.

Speaker 3 Anti-immigration plummets. Support of 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.

Speaker 3 That's what leadership is. And we kind of, and we need that.

Speaker 3 I think it's possible.

Speaker 2 No, I agree with that. I mean, of course.
And like historically, it happens. Yeah.
You know, you can push back

Speaker 2 and you can

Speaker 2 change people's minds if the sadness, the weight of it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 You know, because it feels good to be angry.

Speaker 3 And well, you can't tell people what their interests are is one thing.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess. But I'm just economic.

Speaker 2 Right. So, but now, like, now it's like,

Speaker 2 I don't, I don't want to get more grim.

Speaker 2 I'll stick with, yes, maybe people.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 in ICE

Speaker 2 as

Speaker 2 non-officer guys with guns for big money. And again, then you get into that philosophicide thing where

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 you know, them out from under their self-interest, which sometimes is just posturing for a particular

Speaker 2 cause that determines their brand sort of appeal that, but is rooted in almost nothing, I mean, how do you make it?

Speaker 3 Momentum becomes momentum almost. Well, it just becomes like

Speaker 2 you're using it as a marker to sort of determine your brand. Everyone is stuck in

Speaker 2 honoring the context of the social media platform.

Speaker 2 So arguably, if you really want to do it, there's no free speech

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 And subscribe to our YouTube.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 also there's a difference between this hyper-reality and just sort of like, you know, going swimming. So

Speaker 2 I just think that it's complicated without a unified message.

Speaker 3 I think that's true. Let's turn to life.
I think we've done enough politics. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Am I the bleakest guy you've had on?

Speaker 3 No, and it's going to edit beautifully. It's going to edit.
Darker, but not bleaker. We've had darker people,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 1 Potate America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans? Getting burned by your old wireless bill.

Speaker 1 While you're planning beach trips, barbecues, and three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. That's why so many people are making the switch to Mint Mobile.

Speaker 1 So many. So many.
With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money.

Speaker 1 And for a limited time, Mint Mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 So while your friends are sweating over data overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling literally and financially, but not literally.

Speaker 1 Say bye to your overpriced wireless plans, dropping monthly bills, and unexpected overages. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you.

Speaker 1 All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.

Speaker 1 Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.

Speaker 1 Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of unlimited service from Mint Mobile for $15 a month. Crooked Media's own Nina switched to Mint Mobile last year.

Speaker 1 She says she can get crystal clear service and the data speeds are excellent. Best of all, she's paying a fraction of what she was paying on her old plan with one of the big wireless companies.
Poof.

Speaker 1 Is Nina happy? She is just, she can't stop talking about it. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank.

Speaker 1 Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash crooked. That's mintmobile.com slash crooked.

Speaker 1 Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only.
Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 1 See Mint Mobile for details.

Speaker 6 There's a reason pork is the world's favorite meat. Pork brings the flavor.
Don't believe me? Where would breakfast be without sizzly crispy bacon?

Speaker 6 Why have pizza without the subtle spice of a pepperoni? Can you even say you barbecued without making ribs? If pork is on the menu, now you're cooking with flavor.

Speaker 6 So sear chops, shred shoulder, bake tenderloin, and discover all the incredible flavors in every bite of pork.

Speaker 1 What are you waiting for?

Speaker 6 Taste what pork can do. This message was brought to you by America's Pig Farmers.

Speaker 3 All right, let's talk about life. Sure.
You ever buy that $14,000 amp?

Speaker 2 Yes, long time ago.

Speaker 3 You got it. You got the nice amp.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't spend much money on things, but I did buy that. Yeah, it's a tube amp.
It's a Macintosh. Some people don't love them.

Speaker 2 But I've got a good stereo setup with some nice Wilson speakers and the Macintosh amp and the Macintosh Pre-AMP and a Riga 6 turntable and a Hama cartridge.

Speaker 2 And, you know, 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.

Speaker 2 Fully committed nerds have one thing and they do their life with that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 I get monomaniacal and then move on. Yeah, yeah.
And you're left with a bunch of objects.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Sometimes they're great and you can go back to them.
Like boots always seem to come back around.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 like I said before, about playing to our audience

Speaker 2 and having enough, you know, skill to kind of take little shots and but have that fun moment of like, we are kind of like that.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, hey, everything's great, you know, everything.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I did some of these shows. I had a guy come up to me in like Skokie

Speaker 2 or somewhere, and I did all that stuff.

Speaker 2 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.
Like, what do you even do with that?

Speaker 3 Well, I think it gets to something important, which is

Speaker 3 I feel like a lot of liberals, and it gets to the kind of buzzkill thing.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But no, a lot of people got behind Trump knowing who he was. And that's a harder, deeper,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They did this anyway. This is a bigger problem than we realized.

Speaker 2 You have to, like you said, have a leader that believes in liberal democracy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And can speak to why it's good. You know, even with

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 they have a civic responsibility for those who don't have.

Speaker 3 And it has to deliver. It has to deliver for people.
Because I do think

Speaker 3 that people have come to believe that it just doesn't matter, that Democrats can't. They underpromise.
They overpromise and they under deliver if they deliver at all.

Speaker 3 And really, the federal government just doesn't affect me.

Speaker 2 And that's a wealth problem.

Speaker 3 It's a wealth problem. I think it's also a

Speaker 3 this is a kind of cultural problem right now, which is

Speaker 3 the assumption that

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And yeah, Trump is crazy, but like he's not going to ruin the whole global economy with it by announcing tariffs for penguins. Like the, there's, that I think a lot of people

Speaker 3 learn from the first term that things don't really get that bad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that was before they had 2025 in place.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Of course, of course.

Speaker 2 And they, you know, all they had was Bannon and his mystical beliefs

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 And they had four years to prepare. Totally.
And second-term presidents always know the job better than first-term presidents.

Speaker 3 They rarely get four years to be outside so that the policy people, the wonks, can get their plan together. So

Speaker 3 that's what's so different.

Speaker 2 Sure. But also, how do you get the young people that identify with liberal democratic or leftist politics, you know, to focus on

Speaker 2 getting involved in

Speaker 2 being involved in the government?

Speaker 3 Well, I think this is where it's like,

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 Democrats didn't have enough trust with non-Democrats to believe the threats, to believe what we were saying about what Trump posed.

Speaker 3 And Democrats didn't have have enough purchase with less engaged lefties

Speaker 3 to earn their vote and to believe that they could be trusted either to kind of get people excited. And Kamlo did a lot to try to fix the damage that Biden had

Speaker 3 left, but there wasn't enough time.

Speaker 3 So, Theo Von, Dak Shepard, you

Speaker 3 is there something about being

Speaker 3 a recovered addict that makes you good at hosting a podcast and having a conversation?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I cited as a foundational thing the sort of idea of

Speaker 2 the seed of

Speaker 2 AA thought

Speaker 2 is that one alcoholic talks to another alcoholic about their life and gets out of themselves. So on that premise, maybe.

Speaker 2 I just feel also that if you have some experience in recovery, you're very used to people being very candid candid about showing their emotions and vulnerabilities and telling their stories

Speaker 2 of the most horrible things.

Speaker 2 It's just part of the community and part of how it works. So on that level, maybe.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And like, you know, bravery is just a kind of recklessness that we like. You know, it's recklessness with

Speaker 3 a good direction.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 There's a kind of

Speaker 3 a willingness to say fuck it. right? There's a fuck it quality.

Speaker 2 And I think that like sometimes it's a it's a compulsion more than a willingness.

Speaker 3 Well, 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Once they've gotten out of it, yeah. Well, once they've got it.
Because the hole is open.

Speaker 3 The hole is open, but also I do think that there's a kind of a vulnerability from before too, a kind of

Speaker 3 a softness that made

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 You are open, right? Yeah. And I'm pretty like, you know, my empathy has sort of expanded from doing it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I kind of meld with them and I kind of pick up their vibe.

Speaker 2 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, like, yeah.

Speaker 2 And did I start talking a little bit like a black guy when I was talking to a black guy? Happens.

Speaker 2 You mirror, you mirror. Right.
Yeah. But that's me.

Speaker 2 I don't know how they do it.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 I think so. A little.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're a little guarded. You think? A little bit.

Speaker 3 It's okay. I think I am.

Speaker 3 Well, I can bring it down.

Speaker 2 No, you don't have to. It's your show.
You got to drive.

Speaker 3 I don't even know how to be. I don't even know what what's the, what's the guard? What should I take down? What do you think it is?

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 you have

Speaker 2 purpose. I think that we're all scared, but you have to sort of keep it together for the operation.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I think that's true locally and globally. I think I want to make sure, I know you as a performer, and I want to make sure we don't land in the fucking grave.

Speaker 3 I want to be out of it by the end.

Speaker 3 But I also want to, I want people, I want to, yeah, so I think that's right.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that if you watch the special, that I do, you know, I do walk a tightrope, but it definitely comes out funny. And it took a lot of time to do that.

Speaker 3 I remember you in the Conan days. Like I remember watching you on Conan.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I wouldn't have known you were on drugs and drinking that, like when you were in those, in that area.

Speaker 2 I wasn't like sloppy, you know, and a lot of times I didn't do it the day of those shows.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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, not a party guy.

Speaker 3 I think of you being a, like a record guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I was like, I kind of rode 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, higher pursuits.

Speaker 2 I wanted to really be an intellectual. But I do have, at some point, you know, a rock and roll element.
I was never really a nerd. I was more of an awkward person, unfocused.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But I was never that focused. And I kind of took to, and still do to, a kind of rock and roll sensibility.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It was a streaming show that it was before streaming, though.

Speaker 2 But Randy said I was a verbescent,

Speaker 2 which is a sourpus. 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,

Speaker 2 you know, real cranky guys who are naturally funny, it's a rare thing, you know, like Lewis Black is good at that.

Speaker 2 I think, you know, Burr at sometimes, just this sort of put upon, you know, kind of anger that, that doesn't cross over into intense anger, which isn't fundamentally entertaining, which is where I would go.

Speaker 2 I think over time I've become a little more cranky funny. That's interesting.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they're populist and

Speaker 2 I'm a heady guy.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, you gotta be.

Speaker 2 I'm more of a poet in terms of how my brain processes things.

Speaker 3 They never rhyme, though. That's a shame.

Speaker 2 No, it's all free verse. Occasionally, there's a rhyme, but

Speaker 2 I'd take them right out.

Speaker 3 You do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you gotta take them out. Yeah, rhymes.
You do cheap.

Speaker 2 Rhymes and puns. No, can't do it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we do it.

Speaker 2 That's okay.

Speaker 3 We do it.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 2 It's cute.

Speaker 3 There's a way in which now, I don't know,

Speaker 3 you seem more like comfortable as a performer, as a stand-up, which is amazing how you've been doing it for such a long time.

Speaker 3 Was it like, I know that 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,

Speaker 3 but I've seen them fall off. Like when I've had milestones.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Totally.

Speaker 3 Do you think for you, success

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 I think that,

Speaker 2 and I said it before, that for a long time, however long it takes, you know, your comic's job is to pretend like they're not afraid. You know, and then eventually the fear will leave you.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 grown-up people mostly, you know, mostly thinky, creative, you know, disgruntled, you know, people,

Speaker 2 you know, 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, I have been working a long time at this.

Speaker 2 And I think along with that fearlessness, 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I was more grounded in this special than I ever have been because

Speaker 2 I had purpose.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Who do you want it from?

Speaker 2 I don't know. My parents? It's always about the parents.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 early experiences, it's hard to have a voice in your head that says, good job.

Speaker 3 And you don't have that even now.

Speaker 2 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's, it makes me upset.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The last special was about grief, and you know, at least 20, 25 minutes ago.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then I get into personal stuff.

Speaker 2 But I do feel like

Speaker 2 the stuff that I thought needed to get out there

Speaker 2 in terms of not the stuff, like you said before, there's a lot of stuff in this special that goes, you know, undiscussed. That's gnarly shit and deep shit.

Speaker 2 But the stuff that landed, I'm okay with because I felt like there was not being said.

Speaker 2 you know, in a way that was like no one can deny my skill set.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They're afraid of audiences. And, you know, you just got to really get that ratio into your head.
It was, you know, 75 million to 77.5 million. Not every room is full of monsters.

Speaker 2 And certainly not in L.A.

Speaker 2 and that there has to be some, you have to have the

Speaker 2 guts to be a stand-up stand-up and say what you want to say.

Speaker 2 Again, 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 and think it's ripe. But

Speaker 2 to the point,

Speaker 2 I felt good about it. I articulated it well, and going into it, I was 100% confident

Speaker 2 in the set.

Speaker 2 And I feel good about it. And I'm fortunate in that it was received very well, which is not always the case.

Speaker 1 Pod Save America is brought to you by Acorns. Acorns makes it easy to start investing like an expert, even if you're an expert at something else.

Speaker 1 Acorns is the financial wellness app that helps you invest for your future, save for tomorrow, and spend smarter today. Acorns makes it easy to start doing more with your money.

Speaker 1 In fact, you can start automatically investing with just your spare change. You don't need to be a finance whiz.

Speaker 1 Acorns puts your money into an expert-built portfolio to make sure you're investing wisely, not wildly.

Speaker 1 Plus, Acorns can support your money goals in life: a new car, first home, investing for your kids, saving up for retirement, and so much more.

Speaker 1 Acorns even has a checking account that automatically invests for you, and an emergency fund that grows your money. And it's all in one easy-to-use app.

Speaker 1 The app is great, it's super important to invest. You don't have to have like a ton of money to invest.
In fact,

Speaker 1 Acorns, you know, encourage you to just sort of, you know, put a little bit away here and there, and then basically it does the investing for you, and you can watch your money grow over time.

Speaker 1 It's a really cool app, and it's really helpful. Sign up now, and Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment.

Speaker 1 Join the over 14 million all-time customers who've already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com/slash crooked or download the Acorns app to get started.

Speaker 1 Paid on-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns.

Speaker 1 Tier 2 compensation provided investment involves risk, Acorns Advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. If you have important disclosures, Acorns.com/slash Crooked.

Speaker 6 Where would breakfast be without bacon? And why even have pizza without the spice of pepperoni or the flavor of sausage? It's pork that brings the flavor every time.

Speaker 6 So see your chops, bake tenderloin, and taste what pork can do. This message was brought to you by America's Pig Farmers.

Speaker 3 I think it's technically your cusp, but I think of you as a quintessential Gen X

Speaker 2 comic, last year of Boomers. So it's

Speaker 3 right there. You're right.
But Gen X energy all the way through.

Speaker 3 right there with the kind of in the in the

Speaker 2 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 I did. Yeah, it was later, though.

Speaker 2 Later, yeah, you went through your groundwork.

Speaker 2 The groundwork had been laid by acts from the 70s.

Speaker 3 But why did we have had a bunch of baby boomer presidents?

Speaker 2 I'm not running.

Speaker 3 No, and

Speaker 3 first of all, thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's one less thing to fucking worry about. Imagine that.
Ugh, that would be annoying. But

Speaker 3 just you, just you heckling Democrats back at you.

Speaker 3 What a disaster. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Gavin's doing that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think he's more suited to it, honestly, than you.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, he wants it pretty bad. I can't, like, look,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, I did Air America for a year every morning, and you start to, you realize, like, I didn't think this.

Speaker 3 I don't remember your show being that talking pointsy.

Speaker 2 No, it's, it's not, but it's the tone. Yeah, yeah.
The tone of the

Speaker 2 rehonoring

Speaker 2 narrative.

Speaker 3 But, but we're, we're, we, 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.

Speaker 3 We went right from a lot of boomer members of Congress.

Speaker 3 There's obviously Gen Xers 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?

Speaker 3 They've also moved to the right more than millennials have. What was something about your generation that kind of had this sort of thing?

Speaker 2 I think it was probably the beginning of that sort of

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think it was probably, you know, the boomers are selfish in a different way,

Speaker 2 you know, because they built the world and now, as they were looking down the tunnel at death, they kind of want to end it.

Speaker 3 They want to be buried in their pyramids.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I think Gen X

Speaker 2 is probably

Speaker 2 guilty of a kind of the beginning of

Speaker 2 a terminal uniqueness on an individual level and not so hip to

Speaker 2 a real civic community.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 There's

Speaker 3 sort of the Gen X comics.

Speaker 3 Jon Stewart's in there. You're in there.
Bill Maher is in that group, I think. He's a little older.

Speaker 2 Is he a little older, buddy? I think he's kind of a solid boomer. You think? Is he a little older? Yeah, he's got to be like, got got to be close to 70.

Speaker 3 Somebody Bill Mario

Speaker 2 work.

Speaker 2 69.

Speaker 3 69, yeah.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 3 Famously 69. Oh, right.
We talked to him about it.

Speaker 2 I had him on.

Speaker 2 That's pretty solid boomer shit. But Janine,

Speaker 2 you know, John, sure.

Speaker 2 You know, some of the other

Speaker 2 Gen Xers, you know, Patton, and then there's a bunch of other, you know, younger guys.

Speaker 2 The alt comedy scene for whatever it did was mostly Gen Xers and and some millennials, I guess. Yeah.
It was an insulated community that was based a lot in kind of snark.

Speaker 2 And, you know, snark doesn't age well because it doesn't run that deep.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And it's, well, it's, there's something about it, too, that's, that's

Speaker 3 snark, you have to be on the outside and you have to not want to be on the inside.

Speaker 2 I think that's your answer right there.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We'll be back here with our zines.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 i think that's it i think that was a mistake i think you should have guys got it gotten in the ring with us i'm i'm the last boomer don't don't blame

Speaker 3 okay okay you're right i take that back i take that back so you're a catastrophizer i i i was because i was thinking about this because i did i went back and i watched uh parts of the special from uh um

Speaker 3 bleak to dark and you know i'm a catastrophizer as well so if 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 uh uh how long you been engaged

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 the last one we didn't plan the wedding and I think that that was a sign this is second marriage second engagement second okay there was no first marriage okay

Speaker 2 okay

Speaker 3 I made a lot of changes when I turned 40

Speaker 3 a lot of changes yeah like what I was no longer engaged

Speaker 3 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 I forgot to be single in my 30s.

Speaker 2 And yet you did it again.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You can't get

Speaker 3 my dunk gone. And I didn't have a dunk.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The game starts to fade.

Speaker 3 And now I'm 40. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you look good.

Speaker 2 I'm okay. I'm working on doing Pilates.

Speaker 3 Do you Pilates?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 I do like kind of a full body flexibility workout, and then I run a few days a week. You run? This morning I did, yeah.
Where do you run?

Speaker 2 I do a hike out in Glendale sometimes, and then other times I just do intervals on the treadmill at Equinox.

Speaker 2 Okay. I like Equinox.
Okay. I'm an elitist.

Speaker 3 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 mentally, some of the great, like...

Speaker 2 You're going to have to give me an example.

Speaker 3 Well, I think

Speaker 3 comedians 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a faulty premise, but you said it confidently.

Speaker 3 I think that I

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 But even 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?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 What I said was stupid. And actually,

Speaker 3 if the goalposts move, I should hit the goalpost. That's my job.
Sure. And I thought that was cool.

Speaker 2 I think that what happened with Jerry ultimately is that he was really a guy that didn't speak much publicly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And you do with that what you will.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'll do with it what I will.

Speaker 2 I'm glad he apologized. And you feel good about that.

Speaker 3 Well, let's see. Let's do some more beefs.
What do you think about Bill Maher?

Speaker 2 I can't, I can't do it.

Speaker 2 You know, I can't, you know, I don't.

Speaker 2 Tone, I always had a problem with his 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.

Speaker 3 That's when you were dating Ann Coulter at the time.

Speaker 2 Oh yeah. Yeah.
That was a dark time. I tried to help her.

Speaker 2 There's nothing. She's lost cause.
I couldn't do it. There's nothing I could do

Speaker 2 with all my years of experience in and out of bed that could help her.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 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 of relevance that

Speaker 2 changes someone's mind in terms of how they approach what they do and also kind of makes the whole undertaking feel desperate.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 outside of

Speaker 2 his

Speaker 2 ideas about

Speaker 2 primarily, I think, wokeness.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 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 his tone.
And I've known a couple of those guys. They were comics and they're good guys.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I can't see past

Speaker 2 the desperation and what he's willing to do to stay in the conversation.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 This place that I know I'm sure for you was this pinnacle of where comics went, what comedy was, like it was from Carson to Letterman to Conan.

Speaker 3 What do you think of that?

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, but not not my people. And if you keep promoting that, they won't.
I mean, if something is good, they'll stay in it.

Speaker 2 I guess the format and the nature of show business has just, again, shifted to entrepreneurs and,

Speaker 2 you know, media bubbles that are self-driven by, you know,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And they're all chasing clicks, you know, for quips of, you know, having interesting people do dumb shit.

Speaker 3 And we're going to bring those pies in in a second. But that.

Speaker 2 Oh, God damn it. I knew there was a big closer.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Like, I'd really go there.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Did it change how you view catastrophe? Does it change how you allow your mind to create catastrophe all the time?

Speaker 2 No, what it changed was my sense of mortality.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, it's not great. But,

Speaker 2 but I didn't see what happened to Lynn. There was no way I could have ever seen that coming.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 When somebody dies, it does make me more scared in

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there's no way to answer the question why, and that's just life. So I don't, it didn't diminish my catastrophizing, but it did make me realize how fragile life is.

Speaker 3 And I think.

Speaker 2 Too heavy for an answer.

Speaker 3 No, I just think now we're ready to start. Let's record.
Oh, good.

Speaker 2 Let's keep the things going. We got warmed up.
And now we're now in it. Okay, good.

Speaker 3 Mark Marin, good to have you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Nice to be here.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

Speaker 1 Also, please consider leaving us a review to help boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 1 Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Sherlin is our executive editor.

Speaker 1 Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavieve, David Tolles, and Ryan Young.

Speaker 1 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Speaker 5 October brings it all: Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights. At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.
Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 5 Total Wine and Moore is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 5 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 5 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 7 Within Mustache, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice.

Speaker 7 Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card.

Speaker 7 From takeout to ride shares, entertainment, and more, pick a bundle with your go-to's and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash.

Speaker 7 Venmo Stash Terms and Exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month.
See terms at venmo.me/slash stash terms.