A Change Is Gonna Come

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Speaker 3 I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad.
It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job.

Speaker 3 The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust.
Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.

Speaker 3 Punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

Speaker 3 We know the air is unfit to breathe, and our food is unfit to eat.

Speaker 3 We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad, worse than bad.

Speaker 3 They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore.

Speaker 3 We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, please, at least, leave us alone in our living rooms.

Speaker 3 Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radios, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad.

Speaker 3 I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to ride.
I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.

Speaker 3 I don't know what to do about the depression, the inflation, and the Russians, and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.
You've got to say, I'm a human being.

Speaker 3 God damn it. My life has value.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 I want you to get up now.

Speaker 3 I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.

Speaker 3 I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.

Speaker 2 I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.

Speaker 2 On this episode of the Commercial Break, YouTube, Restream.io, Kik, Twitch, go to one of those platforms watch us do this live get involved engage with the content we would love love love to have you that is ultimately our end goal is that none of this means anything if you're not engaged with the content none of it means anything if you're not engaged with the content we used to do the show just for ourselves but after 880 episodes we've decided we want to get you involved

Speaker 2 Brian got a little less selfish, just a little less selfish and decided, well, what about them? What do they want?

Speaker 2 The next episode of the commercial break starts now.

Speaker 2 All right, all right, a little slow on the buttons, but it's been, you know, like four weeks since we've recorded.

Speaker 2 Really am. Yeah, so you have to excuse me.
I'm a little slow on the buttons today. Yeah, just give me a break.
I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Hello, welcome to the commercial break.

Speaker 2 I'm Brian Green. This is my dear friend and the co-host of the aforementioned commercial break, Chris and Joy Holy.
Best to you, Chris. And best to you, Brian.

Speaker 2 And best to you out there in the podcast universe. How the hell are you? Thank you for joining us.
We really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 as the title will mention on our live stream currently, a change is going to come. So let's get right into it.
Oh, first of all, how are you? I haven't seen you in months.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, the last time we recorded it was before Thanksgiving. It was way before Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 And we knew we were going to take the week of Thanksgiving off. We had that.
We had that one. We had that planned.
Yeah. But then

Speaker 2 it just didn't work out the way we had intended. The virus struck and possibly as well like Mercury's and retrograde and lunar landing.
I don't know. Something.
Something was in the air last week.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Something was in the air.
So I'm good. I think the question is, are you? How are you?

Speaker 2 I'm good. I'm good.
I'm feeling better. There you go.
Now that I'm not mirroring the camera and we're backwards, that feels much better. We're live, by the way.
Twitch, YouTube, Kick.

Speaker 2 Go to our Instagram at the commercial break. Follow us.
We'll let you know when we're going live, live, except for this one. We didn't let anybody know because we're doing this on the sly right now.

Speaker 2 And thank God, because it's already been a hot mess. And we're just two minutes into the show.

Speaker 2 I'm good. I did have my traditional Thanksgiving

Speaker 2 vomit fest, which

Speaker 2 I always say. Three years in a row.
Three years and four years in a row. Four years?

Speaker 2 Every year we've been doing this commercial break except for one, the first one. I have had some kind of illness directly after Thanksgiving.
One year it was salmonella. One year it was norovirus.

Speaker 2 One year I think I had COVID and again, norovirus again this year. And it hit me like a train.
Hit my head and my stomach like a train. It was terrible.

Speaker 2 Anybody who's gone through this this year, and I know a number of people, I know a number of people who have because I'm sure I gave it to a number of people.

Speaker 2 I've been reading about how the cases are way up. Yeah, it's nasty this year.
It really is. Norovirus is that nasty virus that sticks around forever on everything.
You can't get rid of it.

Speaker 2 And we have it, had it in the house. So we had Thanksgiving.
It was just fine. Everyone was perfectly lovely.
And then late in Friday, most of the day was okay. I ate something on Friday night.

Speaker 2 And then I went to bed and my stomach was really bothering me, like really bothering me. I was like, God damn, Brian, like, you know, you got like something's going on there.

Speaker 2 It was burbling and gurgling. Yeah, 3.30 in the morning.
I woke up. I went to the bathroom.
I won't get into it, but

Speaker 2 it was terrible. but I just went to the bathroom and then I went back.
I managed to lay down. I managed to close my eyes.

Speaker 2 4:30, I woke up, my eyes opened, and the only thing that I could hear myself talking to myself: yeah, run, get up, run, cocoa, yeah, run.

Speaker 2 I knew how nauseous I was, and I knew it was coming, and I needed to get to the toilet. And I did.
Astrid came in, all the commotion woke everybody up because I throw up like a two-year-old.

Speaker 2 It's so awful. I hate it.
I hate it. I am not a quiet thrower-upper either.
And I don't do a lot of vomiting. Like you're an adult.
You don't, you don't get that's for kids. Kids vomit.

Speaker 2 Adults don't every once in a while. But this has just hit us a couple years now.
And it's like, it's really terrible. And then it absolutely knocked me out.

Speaker 2 I managed to go back to bed at like 5:36 in the morning. The vomiting stopped.
I managed to go to bed. And I did not wake up till like 2:30 the next afternoon.

Speaker 2 Astrid had to come in and check on me. She's like, honey, it's 2:30.
And I'm like, 2:30 in the fucking afternoon? Wow. And that went on for a couple of days.
It wipes you out. You're dehydrated.

Speaker 2 You just can't eat anything. So then you don't have any energy either.
It's just a whole cycle. Well, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 2 A friend of ours who is a pediatrician, I mean, not a pediatrician, a friend of ours who is the doctor sent in some medication for me, some anti-vomiting medication, Ulstram or something along those.

Speaker 2 I don't know the exact name of it, but he sent it in. I was feeling nauseous for days afterwards.

Speaker 2 And I couldn't eat anything because my stomach was so bad. I didn't want to eat anything.
It was like super crackers, maybe. Sprite.
Soda crackers. Yeah, the soda crackers are.

Speaker 2 I don't know what God's gift to sick people

Speaker 2 is saltines. Yeah, I swear to God, it is.
You never eat them. I mean, sometimes I eat them on occasion if I eat like a quick snack.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Something like that.

Speaker 2 But when you're sick, that's the only thing. It's the only thing that you can eat is like ginger ale, sprite, and soda crackers.

Speaker 2 Those three things seem to, I don't know, they bypass the vomit section of your stomach or something. They have some magic that they work.

Speaker 2 Then they allow the food to sit in your stomach for more than three minutes. But anyway, this guy calls in this prescription and

Speaker 2 he called it in on Saturday night. I didn't manage to get it till Sunday.
So now I'm sick all day, all, all late night on Friday, all day on Saturday.

Speaker 2 The pharmacy closes without filling the prescription. I get it on Sunday morning.
I'm still feeling so nauseous. That medicine worked like fucking magic.
Really?

Speaker 2 I put it under my tongue, one of them, and within 30 minutes, I was feeling 90% better. And he said, take up to two.
That's incredible. I took the second one, and I was no longer nauseous.

Speaker 2 Now, I still felt sick, but I didn't feel nauseous, which was amazing. So anyway, it was not a good week around here.
Then everybody else got it. Then everybody else got it.
It went through the house.

Speaker 2 We all thought we were in the clear. And then on Tuesday, Astrid started throwing up.
So

Speaker 2 it was a whole thing. And then the kids started throwing, you know, it goes through that.
It was a whole thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So anyway, so we're back and we're better. And that meant we have to take, we had to take off time and we had to kind of, you know, do the commercial break on the fly when I felt up to it.

Speaker 2 And actually, for the first time in six years of the commercial break, we missed a scheduled episode on Friday. I don't know if you noticed that, but

Speaker 2 and we missed it not because I was still sick. I was not, but because

Speaker 2 Decisions have been made. People have been talking.
Things have been changing. We've been chewing the fat, so to speak.
Synergies are happening. We're focusing in.

Speaker 2 We're getting holistic views. We're looking at the data.
We're parsing all the information and the analytics. Looking at our third eye.

Speaker 2 Looking at our Enus chakras.

Speaker 2 And big decisions have been made. And here it is.
There's just no other way to say this. And I know to some people, this will be disappointing.
To other people, it'll be quite a relief.

Speaker 2 I think to most people, it actually would be quite a relief. The commercial break, there's too much commercial break.
And I think we can all agree.

Speaker 2 We've oversaturated the market.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's done two things.

Speaker 2 It has made us, first of all, creatively feeling a little stuck.

Speaker 2 But then also, I think if I'm taking the temperature of the audience, because I can look at certain data and parse it and give it a good whirl and spin it around my head and chat. Chat TCB.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Even chat thinks there's too much commercial break, and that's its job.

Speaker 2 And I think what has happened is it's just too much information, too much commercial break coming at an audience, and therefore it dilutes.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we might do five hours of the commercial break a week.

Speaker 2 Maybe an hour of it is good. Maybe an hour of it.
Maybe an hour of it should exist. The other hours we are doing because we have pigeonsholed ourselves into this so many episodes a week.

Speaker 2 We've loved it. It's been a good run.
But I think now we need to think about being

Speaker 2 more,

Speaker 2 I think we need to think about quality over quantity. strategery strategery

Speaker 2 that was the funniest thing in the world when george bush said that and then will farrell did it on saturday night live that weekend i remember watching that live and i just pissed my if i had i had tivo or streaming i would have gone right back it is too much too fast and it is

Speaker 2 we are leaning into content just for the sake of creating content and i don't think that that is serving us well uh here at the end of 2025 Yeah, it's been five years.

Speaker 2 We need to switch it up. We did one episode a week for the first year of this show, one episode a week.
And we were new little baby podcasters. We didn't know what we were doing.

Speaker 2 So we struggled to get that one episode out. But then we thought it was wise to do two.
I thought probably that was a sweet spot at the time.

Speaker 2 But then changing market conditions and requests from networks and all this other stuff, we started to do more and more content.

Speaker 2 But I'm not sure that anybody who's listening to the show ever asked us to do more than three episodes a week. I think it was just people who wanted to sell advertising into the show that did that.

Speaker 2 And so we did it. And it was our job.
But I want to be more,

Speaker 2 I want to, here's what I really want. Here's what Chrissy and I really want.
We want more engagement, less content. How's that? Like we want more engagement on content that we create and less.

Speaker 2 just creating content for the sake of it. Yeah, that's diluting everything.
And I have a feeling that if you're listening to this podcast episode right now, you've said the same thing to yourself.

Speaker 2 There's too much commercial break. I can't possibly listen to every episode.

Speaker 2 And, you know, maybe one or two episodes would suffice. And so that's where we are going to head with it.
It starts immediately. There is no downtime here.
We are going to start next week.

Speaker 2 We have some TCB infomercials that we have. So you may get a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday episode.
But from now on, the schedule is as follows, Chrissy. It has been deemed from on high.

Speaker 2 Tuesday and Thursday, we will stream the recordings of these episodes live on YouTube. You can follow us at the commercial break on Instagram.
You will be notified before we go live.

Speaker 2 Let's assume it's going to be around one o'clock on those two days, Tuesdays and Thursdays. There will be no time limits on the commercial break if we decide.

Speaker 2 Usually we try and cut at an hour to get out, but now since we have less content and we might have more to say, we might go a little longer. We might go a little shorter.
We don't know.

Speaker 2 We're going to figure out. We were going longer even like, what, two weeks ago when we we were recording? Yeah, when we were streaming, we tend to go longer.
I think because I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't know. That was an interesting phenomenon.
More to say.

Speaker 2 But I also think because of the weird schedule we've had for the last couple of months, really, since you went to Mempho, that maybe we just had more to say because we were recording less, you know?

Speaker 2 So Tuesdays and Thursdays, we will record.

Speaker 2 We will broadcast live. We will stream live.
Let's call it youtube.com slash the commercial break. Follow us, subscribe, hit the notification bells.
We will let you know when we're going live.

Speaker 2 We will do that on Instagram also. Call at one o'clock each Tuesday and Thursday.
We will not be doing interviews every week moving forward. We will be doing strategically, strategies.

Speaker 2 We will take strategery and we will place guests where we think we need them, but we will not be doing them obligatorily every week moving forward.

Speaker 2 Additionally, we will release those episodes that we record on Tuesday, on Wednesday,

Speaker 2 the ones that we stream on Thursday, we will release on Friday. So if you're listening on the podcast version, we will do Wednesday and Friday.
We will do those on video.

Speaker 2 You will be able to see them all on Spotify moving forward. So if you have the video enabled Spotify application on your phone, welcome to the 21st century.

Speaker 2 Chrissy and I will use chat TCB and we will ask it how we exactly we put those videos on Spotify and we will do it. Actually, I was doing it for a while, but I stopped

Speaker 2 at the request, again, of other people that were not me or the listeners. But so that's how it's going to go.
And that starts immediately. And we love you to death.

Speaker 2 All of the people who have been listening to the commercial break, so many of you for a long time

Speaker 2 interacting with us. If we've been a little quiet on the phones lately, it's because we've kind of been stewing in our own world over here.
Swirling. It's time for a change.

Speaker 2 Six years of the commercial break. It's time for a change.
Yes, it is. That's the only thing that's constant.
That's the only thing that ever stays the same is that nothing ever stays the same.

Speaker 2 And we have done a lot of content and we have done a lot of content very similar to other content that we've done.

Speaker 2 And so it's time to just change it up a little bit, grow up a little bit, change up a little bit, slick it up a little bit. Fresh coat of paint.
Yeah, amen. And streamline the show just a little bit.

Speaker 2 Make it, you know, less about volume. And I think that's really the, like the...
The underline here is that the commercial break will be Chrissy and I. It will continue to be Chrissy and I.

Speaker 2 We're going to be the little Tritoria down the street instead of the Cheesecake back. Instead of

Speaker 2 super Walmart with a McDonald's in each corner of it. Yes, that's exactly right.
It's just,

Speaker 2 I don't want to belabor the point or beat it up, but

Speaker 2 it's a lot. And we know it's a lot.
And we've known it's a lot for a long time.

Speaker 2 We just felt, I guess I felt obligated.

Speaker 2 I felt like, oh, we said we would do it. So now we can do it.
But guess who said we would do it? We did.

Speaker 2 No one asked for it. No one asked for it.
True. And there are so many people that are on, that communicate with us and they love the show and they get, they get involved in every episode.

Speaker 2 And I love you to death. You don't know how much that means to us.
Oh, for sure. It's gasoline in our tank.
It's refreshing our batteries. It's recharging the system.

Speaker 2 But even with all of that, it'll be okay with just two episodes. I promise you.
Everyone will get used to the new vibe. Everyone will get used to the new way of doing things.

Speaker 2 Just like when we added episodes, we got used to it.

Speaker 2 We'll get used to it by doing less episodes and what i really want to encourage chrissy and i what we really want to encourage is you to get involved in the streaming version of the show engage with us talk with us content ideas you can even join the show by putting your camera on going on one of these platforms going on restream.io and asking to join the stream and occasionally we'll take people in and we'll have conversations with them this is going to be a positive thing in the end i know it is i think so I feel like I just gave a pep talk to a team that's lost a game.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm giving a eulogy.

Speaker 2 It's going to be okay. We're all going to be okay.
The Falcons. The Falcons are fucking busy.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 However, the Bears are fantastic. Let's look at the silver one.
Okay, good. The Bears are fantastic.
I don't know. Did they win? Da Bears.
Da Bears. I think they won against Green Bay.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 I was watching the first half of it, but then I have children, so I can't do anything.

Speaker 2 You know what they did last night? They did, Disney took Monday night football and they put it into Monday night football, meaning monsters, M-O-N-D-A-Y, monsters. You know the Pixar movie, Monsters?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. So Disney has done this with a couple of different sports.
What they have done is they... They take the actual live game that's happening.
I've seen that with hockey.

Speaker 2 Yes, they did it with hockey with Big City Greens. Big City Greens.
Yeah, we talked to, what's her name about that?

Speaker 2 I can't remember what her name was, but we've had some Big City Greens people on here and we've talked to them about that. Such a cute show.
Yeah, it is a cute show.

Speaker 2 And they took the hockey games and they put it in cartoon version.

Speaker 2 So what they did is they took the actual live game that was going on and they superimposed the characters, the cartoon characters, onto the actual game.

Speaker 2 So you're watching the actual game, but it's the cartoon characters that are, you know, passing the ball and tackling each other. So last night it was monsters doing Monday night football.

Speaker 2 My son was so excited about this.

Speaker 2 He stayed up way too late. We watched a lot of it.
Oh, I mean,

Speaker 2 he just like got the biggest kick out of it. And I thought it was pretty fun too.
I thought it was pretty funny.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I wasn't really watching the game, but it was fun to watch the characters do the game. It's a little janky, too.
It looks like a kind of a weird video game.

Speaker 2 And sometimes the heads will like, you know, they're gone, like, there's no head on a player. And you're like, what's that all about?

Speaker 2 Where did his head go? But at the end of the day, it's a cool thing that Disney is doing. And they're trying to pull the kids.

Speaker 2 Of course, it's the NFL trying to pull in the youngest possible demographic. Of course, get him looked young.
Yeah. And I appreciate that the NHL is doing it.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, MLB and basketball will do it soon, too, if they haven't already. I haven't seen it, but if they haven't already.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 this is the new dictate here at the commercial break. And hear ye.
Hear ye, hear ye. We will no longer be in your ear so much.
Hear ye, hear ye. We heard ye, and we know it's too much.

Speaker 2 It's the right move. It is.
I think it's the right move. I think so, too.
I think it's definitely the right move. Well, I mean, we want it to be where people actually are excited for the next episode.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like the next week.
Yes.

Speaker 2 We want it to be like, hey, oh my gosh, the commercial break comes out tomorrow. I can't wait.
Yeah. Not, oh my God, another episode I have to fucking listen to.

Speaker 2 Because the truth is, I don't think you do listen to it. And that's the reality for us.
It's not, that's not, I'm not knocking you. I'm knocking us.

Speaker 2 Like, I think when there's so much coming at you and you have so many other choices of great podcasts and content and videos and Instagram, all of it in this

Speaker 2 saturated environment of media content. How could you possibly want to be willing to or able to keep up with five hours of the commercial break every week?

Speaker 2 It's hard for us and like we said, it's hard for us to do

Speaker 2 because it's a lot of content to create. If we were a news program, it would be easier because we would talk about whatever was in the news.

Speaker 2 If we were a sports program, we would talk about the baseball game, the football game, whatever. I get how those talk shows can do that because they constantly have stuff to chew on.

Speaker 2 We don't know the first fucking thing about sports, and we tend to stay away from the news. So it's just the way that it is.
So

Speaker 2 hate me now. Thank me later.
I promise this will be the right move for everybody. And you will enjoy the new commercial break.
We should put like commercial break on our sign 2.0. 2.0.

Speaker 2 Actually, 6.0 because we're going into our 60s year. It's fucking crazy.
Our seven seasons. I do not believe it.
It's insane. Wow.

Speaker 2 And after seven seasons, it's time for

Speaker 2 let's rearrange the furniture. Yes.
Put some new colors,

Speaker 2 new drapes, new paint. Let's rearrange the room.
Your lips to God's ears. Look at Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan season one is not Joe Rogan season 22 or whatever he's on.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a totally different show than it was. At first, it was just him and a bunch of guys on their webcams bantering, right? And then it evolved over the years.

Speaker 2 I don't want to put Joe out as an example, but it's evolved over the years into now this weird socio-political commentary for four hours.

Speaker 2 But credit to him, he has always been changing, always been evolving into the next thing, like it or don't like it. Same with a lot of other podcasts that have been around for a long time.

Speaker 2 I think about my friend Mike Pesco, who's been doing the gist for a long time. It's not the same show it was two years ago, it's not the same show it was a year ago.
Everybody changes over time.

Speaker 2 It's a necessity for survival, and so that we can keep going without feeling like we're stuck in this kind of like history. Yeah, like it's a ball and chain.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed, but if I don't mention it three times an episode, what a pain in the ass it is to do four episodes a week.

Speaker 2 That should have been the first indication is when I was complaining every five minutes. And Chrissy doesn't complain, but she was complaining silently to herself and to Jeff and to her friends.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 She was in some group chat somewhere going, fuck, I got to do another episode.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that is the state of the state with the commercial break. Stay with us.
We welcome your advice, your thoughts, your input. Go to the chat.
Go to the chat on one of the platforms, YouTube,

Speaker 2 Restream.io, Kik, Twitch. Go to one of those platforms.
Watch us do this live. Get involved.
Engage with the content. We would love, love, love to have you.

Speaker 2 That is ultimately our end goal is that none of this means anything if you're not engaged with the content. None of it means anything if you're not engaged with the content.

Speaker 2 We used to do the show just for ourselves. But after 880 episodes, we've decided we want to get you involved.

Speaker 2 Brian got a little less selfish, just a little less selfish and decided, well, what about them? What do they want? Yeah, I'm interested to hear from people. I think it'll be fun when we do.

Speaker 2 Yes, I think it'll be fun when we do. Okay, let's take a short two or three minute break and we'll be back.
We got a pause for,

Speaker 2 I hope, sponsors. I don't know.
Maybe they're there. Maybe they're not.
I'm not really sure.

Speaker 2 It's all a big experience. It's all a big experience.
Welcome to content creation in 2025. Exactly.

Speaker 2 Okay. We'll be back.

Speaker 4 Okay, you're probably wondering why I, Rachel, have taken over the voice duties at TCB. It's pretty simple.
Astrid asked me to shut Brian up, even for a minute.

Speaker 4 Well, lovely Astrid, your wish is my command. Do you want to help Astrid too?

Speaker 2 You know you do.

Speaker 4 Leave a message for her or me or Chrissy at 212-433-3 TCB. That's 212-433-3822.
You can be on the show too.

Speaker 4 Just call and say something. Anything.
Or text us and we'll text you right back. Promise.
Then head over to tcbpodcast.com and get your free sticker.

Speaker 4 It's your constitutional right to a sticker and we must abide. You get the point.

Speaker 4 Follow us on Instagram at thecommercial break and watch all the episodes on video at youtube.com slash thecommercial break best to you and astrid especially astrid

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Speaker 2 Okay, we're back. Sorry.

Speaker 2 I had to do stuff. I'm important.
I have to do stuff.

Speaker 2 Okay, so here's what I want to talk about.

Speaker 2 And I don't think because we really haven't publicized this yet, but I mean, we haven't publicized that we're live right now. But some of you may take note.

Speaker 2 If you have been paying attention at all to the Instagram scene that Chrissy and I have created, millions of followers,

Speaker 2 then you will know that the...

Speaker 2 Commercial Break Instagram feed remains clips of the commercial break largely, but some of those now I've been tagging the commercial break in posts that I have been creating about my multicultural marriage, multiculturalism, and and Venezuela, something we talk a lot about here on the show.

Speaker 2 And I have just decided to kind of condense what we talk about here on the show and put it out as real. Stuff that I observe, things that I find are funny, you know, little

Speaker 2 observations, I think is the best way to put it. And it is causing quite the stir on social media right now and amongst the larger Dyspora of Venezuela, I would say.

Speaker 2 It's interesting, to say the least, that I've had that account since SimCol FM.

Speaker 2 So I've had that account since 2012 or 13, which I think is the year that Instagram started, actually, that Instagram came out, 2011, 12. That's right.
It did come out around that time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've had that account forever and ever. I have rarely posted on it.
I think before I started the commercial break, I had seven posts.

Speaker 2 And they were largely stupid shit, like, you know, a picture of some funny dude in a wig or something, you know,

Speaker 2 snow day, you know, me drinking a beer, whatever. I think I averaged one like per post.

Speaker 2 And then we started doing the commercial break, and it gained a little bit of steam, but the commercial break was a slow burn. We had 500 followers on January 1st of this year.

Speaker 2 And then we talked a little bit about Venezuela on the show, as we have been doing since the show started, because my wife is Venezuelan and I have Venezuelan friends, and Chrissy knows Venezuelan people, and we all are into all Venezuelan things.

Speaker 2 And we love it. Love it.

Speaker 2 And we put a reel out after we did the 12 days of TCB. I mentioned, I was talking about how Venezuelans celebrate

Speaker 2 New Year's Eve. Chrissy asked, do they have a ball drop? And I said, no, I think they have democracy drop, which became quite the hot reel amongst the Venezuelan community.
And that was viewed over

Speaker 2 three-quarters of a million times. It was shared, I think, 100,000 times.
Running around Astrid's birthday party in the new year, going, oh my gosh,

Speaker 2 what is going on? It's nuts.

Speaker 2 And we gained like 4,000 000 followers in two weeks just just on that reel alone but we you know the commercial break is not all about venezuela so we are we were careful not to dip our toe in that water too much but on my own personal instagram i had largely still not done anything with it i would put together a goofy reel here and there aster was begging me begging me telling me you got to do content outside of the commercial break it can't always be just you tagged in the commercial break people follow the personalities not the shows like you have to she's you know, younger than I am.

Speaker 2 So she understands this more than I do. But I was always very reluctant to do it because I really didn't know what to do about it.
I'm talking 17,000 hours a week on this show.

Speaker 2 I don't want to create yet more show-related content. So Astrid said,

Speaker 2 okay, if you can't think of anything funny to say, think about some stuff about, you know, like you talk about Venezuela, think about like a multicultural thing that you find is funny.

Speaker 2 And so I did that in October of this year. We're talking two months ago.
And it's gone wild.

Speaker 2 And I continued to put my foot on the gas, taking things I've talked about here on the show and condensing them into

Speaker 2 two minute or less bites and putting them out pretty frequently, like every third day, every other day. And my Instagram has gone wild.
And I say wild, wild for me, not wild in general.

Speaker 2 Like I got 12,000, 13,000 followers. It's not like things went internationally global, but for us, it went wild.
Why do I talk about this? Well, I talk about this because

Speaker 2 you're starting a class. I'm starting a class on how to be Venezuelan as a gringo.

Speaker 2 And for $19.99 a month, you can join my class.

Speaker 2 So we're only doing the commercial break Wednesdays and Fridays now, but every other day of the week, I'll be teaching Spanglish to all my gringo friends.

Speaker 2 You want to learn how to eat a tiqueño? I got you covered. You need to learn which empanada you like best.
Don't eat that one. You don't want that one.

Speaker 2 You want to know which dance? Yeah, you want to know which dances are safe to do with someone else's wife and which ones are not?

Speaker 2 I got all that stuff. How about Ora de Loca? You want to learn a little bit more? Perfectly normal.
I got you covered, Brian. The Gringo Greens.

Speaker 2 The funny, here's a, I'm going to stop for just one second because I want to say this. I'm putting together these reels that I'm putting together on Edits, Instagram's editing platform app.

Speaker 2 And they have a closed captioning part.

Speaker 2 The closed captioning closed captioning can be in in English but then they will translate it into Spanish for people who have their settings on Spanish on Instagram yeah when it

Speaker 2 my tagline is Gringo married to a Venezuelan whenever it does the Gringo married to a Venezuelan at the very beginning of the reel it spells gringo not g-r-i-n-g-o g-r-e-e-n-g-o

Speaker 2 green go

Speaker 2 which i thought was so cute it kept doing it it did it on every single reel that I've put out. And I had to correct it.
And I'm like, Astrid, this is like, look at this.

Speaker 2 This is so, I'll just call myself Green Go. And she's like, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 You're an idiot. Don't do that.
What are you talking about? She's like, you're such an old man.

Speaker 2 Oh, thank God for Astrid. I talk about this for two reasons.

Speaker 2 Number one is that, you know, I think I would like to, in the future, talk a little bit more about multiculturalism because it's a big part of my life. And I think I can share that.
But number two

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 it's very interesting to watch on Instagram how engagement can take on a life of its own, right?

Speaker 2 On social media, on any platform, how engagement takes on a life of its own when it's real and it's there, like when it's real and it's there and people are talking and they're sharing and they're DMing you and it's authentic and I absolutely love it.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that I find to be most fascinating about the last couple of months in this little, you know, zoomy ride I'm taking here on Instagram, as Instagram is shining the algorithm light on me for a minute.

Speaker 2 I'm sure it'll go away anyway. It's my luck.
Tomorrow I'll be at 2,000 followers.

Speaker 2 I'll say something and they'll all go away.

Speaker 2 I'll put out a Teresa Caputo video and they'll all be like, I like Teresa Caputo.

Speaker 2 One of the things that is most interesting

Speaker 2 is that I have gringos, guys that are American men that are married to Venezuelans. There's in some cases Spanish.
There's a guy from Spain. There's a dude from Canada.

Speaker 2 American or gringo men that are DMing me, asking me for advice

Speaker 2 about their own relationships with their Venezuelan partners. Even a gay guy who said, I'm with a Venezuelan, and there's some stuff that I don't understand.
I need some help with. Navigate.

Speaker 2 And I was like, wow. Fascinating.
Like, I live my life. I've been around Venezuelans for 30 years almost.

Speaker 2 They took me in the moment that they saw that I was a long-lost puppy. They needed some help.
They took me in. You and Ronfa had slept in the same bed.
We slept in the same bed.

Speaker 2 Well, not the first one, but we have sense. Not sex, just in the same bed.
It's a Venezuelan thing. You wouldn't understand.

Speaker 2 But one of the things that,

Speaker 2 but I never really thought about how many other people might be in a very similar position that

Speaker 2 might not have the context or the pretext of 20 years of Venezuelan culture and knowledge, like being around the culture previous to meeting their loved one and getting married.

Speaker 2 I was lucky because I already was in it. I already knew it.
It's not all of it, but and I certainly understand it much more.

Speaker 2 I was familiar with a lot of the customs and cultures and things that were said. And

Speaker 2 I know what it's like to be in a room full of people speaking Spanish mostly about you while you don't understand.

Speaker 2 I know what it's like to have

Speaker 2 other men dance with the person you brought to the party. You know, it's not a sexual sexual thing, it's just a thing that they, you know, it's just about love and having fun or whatever.

Speaker 2 I knew about all that. And what's interesting is the guys that are reaching out and asking me

Speaker 2 about their own relationships and their own. Can you share any of any of the

Speaker 2 well, without without talking about them specifically?

Speaker 2 So obviously we would leave names out, and I'll try my best to make it as generic as possible because I didn't ask them if I could talk about their DM.

Speaker 2 But one man in particularly, in particular, reached out and he said, I really,

Speaker 2 not only is my wife Venezuelan and I'm new to the culture, but then she's new to the country. So we're, we're having a little bit, you know, it's, it's that time.
Like it's difficult.

Speaker 2 It's, there are, there are moments that are great. There are moments that are difficult.
We found a little community, 20 or 30 Venezuelans. I remember when you guys were going through this.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Still going through it to this day. Listen, assimilating to a new culture is not a thing you do overnight.
It takes a long time to do.

Speaker 2 And it's very heart-heavy for the person who's dropped in a strange land amongst strange people.

Speaker 2 And even though Astrid speaks perfect English and she's been to America, had been to America many, many, many, many times. She knew the lay of the land.
It's different when you live there.

Speaker 2 When you live, that's your everyday.

Speaker 2 So I told this guy, I said, listen, you know, you're right now, you're the true north. You're the rock.
You're the stability in an ocean of instability. And in a hurricane, you need to be

Speaker 2 as calm, cool, and collected about all this as possible.

Speaker 2 There's going to be outbursts and there's going to be upheavals and there's going to be bad days and there's going to be good days and there's going to be things that she doesn't understand and things that you don't understand about her culture.

Speaker 2 You need to make the best effort to keep your eyes open, your ears open, and be willing to understand that a little bit of her culture could make her feel so much better about her day. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. I can say that.
That they're not always, that she's not always going to get used to everything you're doing, places you're bringing her, American customs, culture things.

Speaker 2 She's not going to get used to that overnight. So if she goes somewhere and it looks like maybe she's not having fun, she's not tuned in, she doesn't understand whatever, you're her guide, number one.

Speaker 2 But number two, that's okay. Like, maybe that's it's just going to take a couple times or whatever.
And they said, you just need to

Speaker 2 bring her to a fish concert, which is what I did.

Speaker 2 I brought asked her to do a fish concert within three weeks of being a new

Speaker 2 American

Speaker 2 green card holder. Yeah.
Here, honey, fish. Check out this culture.
And to which she replied, what's that smell?

Speaker 2 I said, which one?

Speaker 2 Because it's pot, patchouli, body odor,

Speaker 2 probably a yeast infection. I'm not sure what it is.
It's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 But I just kind of told him, like, you know, you are her true North. So if you're unstable in these conditions, then she's not going to feel stable at all.

Speaker 2 That's good advice. yeah, and I would say that it's not about him being the man, I would say that to anybody, like if it was a woman about a man or whatever.

Speaker 2 Um, and then he also talked about, I had put a reel out about how don't be afraid if they dance with your women, right?

Speaker 2 And what I meant was if they dance with anybody, but if you dance with your ladies, they're gonna dance with your ladies.

Speaker 2 And he said, That's so funny because that's one thing that actually happened to me. And I got, I got a little bit frazzled.

Speaker 2 Like we're out on the dance floor, we're at a party, and my wife went and danced with another guy who was in this group. Yeah.
But it wasn't like, you know, super,

Speaker 2 this wasn't dirty dancing,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 2 They were just doing a little salsa together or whatever. A little two-stepping.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he said, but I didn't know how to handle it. And I said, you handle it the only way you can handle it.
You smile and you appreciate that she's having a good time. Sit this one out.

Speaker 2 And then you seethe deep down inside about all the jealousy you have.

Speaker 2 I said, hey, dude, you did the right thing. You got to sit it out.
You got to just sit back, enjoy the show. That's the only, that's the only way to handle this.

Speaker 2 But anyway, the larger point that I wanted to make is if you're following me on Instagram and you're wondering why all the sudden, all the Venezuelan content is really not all the sudden.

Speaker 2 It's just that I decided to put my foot on the gas a little bit.

Speaker 2 I do enjoy talking about it. I love it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Maybe I can open it. Can I learn from it too? Yeah.
I was thinking to myself, maybe in this new 2.0 version of the commercial break, we could do a couple of things. These are just ideas.

Speaker 2 We could have like an ask the gringo day, right?

Speaker 2 Dos Gringos en vivos, where Chrissy and I go live and we can invite some of the Venezuelans into the conversation and they can ask a gringo or we can ask them, right?

Speaker 2 And then maybe even Latinas in general, Latinos, the larger,

Speaker 2 the larger community. But then also, maybe I introduce you to some of the customs and cultures that I have enjoyed over the years.
Like I want you to try an ayaka.

Speaker 2 Let's see if you know, let's see if you like an ayaka. I would love to try.
And you know, I've been telling you this for years. The Venezuelans sound like my kind of people.

Speaker 2 They are your kind of people.

Speaker 2 They love to eat, dance, drink, party all night. That's it.
Family. They love their family so close.
I mean, I just, I love everything about it. So it is, they are so lovely.

Speaker 2 And I mean, listen, it sounds like I'm blowing smoke up their ass, and maybe I am a little bit because I am so

Speaker 2 kind of enamored with the culture, right? But I think I largely wouldn't understand what true family was if it wasn't for Venezuelans.

Speaker 2 Like that it takes on a deeper meaning and they're caring and they're loving and they're, they're accommodating. And it doesn't matter what you do.
We'll figure it all out. Right.

Speaker 2 And I tell this story. I think this is like the most shining example of how Venezuelans treat each other.
I know a lady who got divorced from her husband and got remarried to a new man.

Speaker 2 The man that she divorced fell on hard times after she got remarried. He fell on hard times.
And for three years,

Speaker 2 the ex-husband lived in the basement of the house with the new husband. Oh, wow.
Three years. Three fucking years.
I mean, that is some

Speaker 2 high level of maturity to do that. Right.
But I don't think this story is not unique.

Speaker 2 There are so many situations where someone did someone wrong song, but they, you know, they bring them back into the fold. It's just like it's a community of love and forgiveness.

Speaker 2 And I wish that upon everybody. I mean, quite frankly, I think I need a lot more of it, not less of it.

Speaker 2 And that's why it drives me crazy when I hear all this shit talking going on about Venezuela, right? Venezuela right now. It's like it's largely not true.
Of course, there are bad people.

Speaker 2 Of course, there are bad people. This should be news to nobody.
Yeah, in every culture and every country. Yes, but

Speaker 2 it's.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Anyway, okay, so I have some ideas about how we might invite that conversation into the commercial break and make it more focused and less scattered.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like if you listen to a week of commercial break, Brian's talking about Venezuela four times in a week, but it's just not concentrated conversation.

Speaker 2 It's just like, you know, me kind of making an off-the-cuff remark. So maybe we concentrate in a little bit more on that.

Speaker 2 And then also maybe

Speaker 2 having nothing to do with Venezuela, maybe we invite our listeners in. to ask for our advice on a particular situation, romantically or otherwise.
I love those two.

Speaker 2 We don't do enough of it mainly because we don't have enough of that type of engagement. We don't ask for it.
So people don't engage with us in that way.

Speaker 2 I also think that's why maybe some people don't engage with us at all is because we don't ask them to.

Speaker 2 We say text us, but what does text us mean? You know, hey, loved your last episode. Which one?

Speaker 2 Number 622. Yeah, number 898.
Oh, you mean 1,000 episodes ago? I forgot what I even talked about. That's the other thing.
Well, Well, that's true. That's terrible about creating so much content.

Speaker 2 I honestly,

Speaker 2 it goes in one ear and out the other. I have no fucking clue what we talked about.
I'll have people say, yeah, I listened to that latest episode and it was so funny. And I'm like, what did we say?

Speaker 2 What did we say?

Speaker 2 Which one was that?

Speaker 2 What's that?

Speaker 2 What did we talk about?

Speaker 2 Was it fun? Was it funny?

Speaker 2 Good. Yeah, because that was a long time ago.
That was many episodes ago. That was back when we knew what the fuck we were doing because we're only doing two episodes instead of five episodes a week.

Speaker 2 Man, I know this guy. Mike Pesca does six episodes a week.
Six. Well, he does five live and then they do like a recap show on Saturdays, but that is a fuck ton of content.

Speaker 2 But he's a news and political

Speaker 2 commentary

Speaker 2 show. And I think it's.
It's a lot to talk about. Yeah, but it's probably makes more sense for him to do a daily show because, and he, he puts the show together at like 6 p.m.

Speaker 2 So he'll he'll record it and then he'll put it out at 6 p.m. So that people get the daily news that day.
So he records it in the morning, puts it out at 6 p.m. That was a thought that I had, too.

Speaker 2 It's like, what if we recorded the show, put it out later on that night?

Speaker 2 But that's just, there's too much pressure.

Speaker 2 That's too much pressure.

Speaker 2 I have children. I can't do it.
A day is fine. It'll be out the next day.
Okay. If you want to hear it in the moment, then

Speaker 2 tune into the stream. That's it.
All right. So let me remind you.

Speaker 2 Tuesdays and Thursdays, we're streaming live.

Speaker 2 Wednesdays and Fridays, we're putting out the episodes that we just recorded on that stream. So if you want to get involved,

Speaker 2 and then the recorded version will still have the bits and all that other stuff. So you can still tune in and get all your goofs there.
How's that?

Speaker 2 Get your laughs off. Get your laughs off.
We have a hundred and I have 150 some odd bits.

Speaker 2 I looked in chat the other day. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we can, so I'm going to reuse a lot of them.

Speaker 2 Don't expect any new ones soon. I got problems over here.

Speaker 2 All right, let's take a two, three-minute break and then we'll be back. Oh, I forgot to open up the chat.
I'm asking people to get involved in the show, and I forgot to open up the fucking chat.

Speaker 2 I appreciate your gameplay and your content. It's fun to watch, and would love to be a friend and fan to support your stream.
If you're cool with it, feel free to add me on Discord. Thanks, dickhead.

Speaker 2 Best viewers and streamers ever are available here. Thanks, dickhead.
So far, we've gotten two spam comments. So now you can see how it's important that we start to get some engagement.
Yes.

Speaker 2 That's not the dudes.

Speaker 2 We're not buying any views. So you can fuck off right now.
Okay. That doesn't work.
We'll be back.

Speaker 4 Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB. And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.

Speaker 4 Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears, and I'll rejoice that my check is in the mail.

Speaker 4 Speaking of mail, get your free TCB sticker in the mail by going to tcbpodcast.com and visiting the Contact Us page.

Speaker 4 You can also find the entire commercial break library, audio and video, just in case you want to look at Chrissy, at tcbpodcast.com. Want your voice to be on an episode of the show?

Speaker 4 Leave us a message at 212-433-3TCB. That's 212-433-3822.
Tell us how much you love us, and we'll be sure to let the world know on a future episode. Or you can make fun of us.
That'd be fine, too.

Speaker 4 We might not air that, but maybe. Oh, and if you're shy, that's okay.
Just send a text. We'll respond.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm going to go check the mailbox for payment while you check out our sponsors, and then we'll return to this episode of the commercial break.

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Speaker 2 Let's talk about

Speaker 2 the sphere and what happened over the weekend. Did you see or you plugged into the sphere and what's going on over there at the sphere? Oh, the sphere, no.

Speaker 2 The sphere in Las Vegas, this monstrosity, this, you know, the most, yeah, you've been, the most technologically advanced theater in the world.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe the most technologically advanced thing besides AI or robots, but, you know, like entertainment thing ever. Oh, yeah, it's huge.
It's huge.

Speaker 2 There's a couple of things going on with the sphere, but let's talk about what happened over the weekend. Zach Brown, the Zach Brown band

Speaker 2 uh of chicken fame chicken fried from atlanta

Speaker 2 chicken fried georgia

Speaker 2 yeah zach brown i saw something just a little like pretext on zach brown he's got a couple of songs i know that you've heard them into the mystic free into the mystic uh chicken fried there's a couple other songs he also has a wine

Speaker 2 he does it's like a boon's farm kind of wine yeah and he sells it at like Costco or something like that.

Speaker 2 But good on him. Okay.
You know, he's got a diversified, that band is largely a touring band, just like the jam bands, just like Kenny Chesney.

Speaker 2 You know, oh, Kenny Chesney's had a lot more hits, but you get it. They have that very much, they have that margaritaville vibe.
That's the thing. It's a matter of fact.

Speaker 2 Have fun.

Speaker 2 Jimmy Buffett said, I'm passing the torch on to you, to Zach Brown.

Speaker 2 And there's a very famous live at Austin City Limits, I think, where Zach Brown and Jimmy Buffett, the Zach Brown band and Jimmy Buffett do it together.

Speaker 2 And they do their song free and then into the mystic, back into their song free. It is beautiful.
I have it on my playlist. I think it's wonderful.
I don't need to listen to it.

Speaker 2 I have seen Zach Brown, the Zach Brown band, here in Atlanta at

Speaker 2 many a bar,

Speaker 2 mainly one bar here in Atlanta, Dixie Tavern,

Speaker 2 where he would come and play on a Wednesday night, and the place would be incredibly packed.

Speaker 2 He built an audience, one person by one person, and he said to him, He said on a reel that I recently saw that it was 10 years of them going around the southeast and going into sports bars mainly.

Speaker 2 A whole bar circuit. And saying, you know,

Speaker 2 they would be like, oh yeah, you play on a Friday night. We'll give you $100 plus, you know, free beer.
And he'd be like, no, I want your Wednesday night and I want it every Wednesday night.

Speaker 2 And if I can pack the place out, then I want the door. Just give me a tab.
I just want a tab. Give me, you know, $300 worth of free food and booze.

Speaker 2 And if I can build it out, then you'll give me the door. That's what I want.

Speaker 2 And that's what they did for 10 years until they had all of these weekdays and weeknights they were playing at these bars around the southeast.

Speaker 2 And a lot in here in Atlanta, they became famous for playing the Dixie Tavern every week. And they would pack the fucking place out, mainly playing covers.

Speaker 2 And then they started doing original tunes, like a lot of bands, like a lot of musicians do. You start off with the covers.
So Zach Brown, they're a touring band, largely.

Speaker 2 That's how they make their money. But they also put out albums and they do pretty well for themselves.
They're known as a country, country artist, but I would not consider them purely country.

Speaker 2 I think they're, you know,

Speaker 2 pop country rock, maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's kind of the vibe.

Speaker 2 So they got their shot at the sphere over the weekend. They're going to do a residency there.
They did two shows this weekend. They're doing two shows next weekend.

Speaker 2 They're doing a couple shows in January, like four shows in January. And the visuals were stunning, as they always are at Sphere.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 but, and there's a big but. Well, I was going to say, what were they? I'm always curious as to like what.
It was a lot of that Jimmy Buffett type.

Speaker 2 Okay, like, but but here, here's what I have to share with you, and I'll, I'll show this. I can't show this on the stream, but I will show it to Chrissy, and you can Google this, okay? Um, do Zach

Speaker 2 Brown

Speaker 2 Sphere intro. That's what I want you to do.
Intro, okay?

Speaker 2 And now, watch this. Oh, I wanted, I want to show you from the beginning all these Yahoos talking about this.
Let me explain it to you, and then I can show it to you afterwards. Okay.

Speaker 2 The sphere's dark.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, a little red door comes at you. There's a boy standing at the red door, and you start hearing knocking.

Speaker 2 And then a Pink Floyd, the wall song, starts playing.

Speaker 2 And it is goodbye. Oh.

Speaker 2 Did you hear the frightened ones? Did did, it? Did you hear the shooting guns? Did did did did you ever wonder why the van and the

Speaker 2 cold blue night? It's a song about war. It's a song about being scared.
It's a song about waking up to nightmares, right? It's the beginning of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Speaker 2 But the imagery that went along with it was highly,

Speaker 2 highly focused on nightmare fuel.

Speaker 2 Big skeletons on fire, demons crawling everywhere. The boy eventually is sitting in a bed.
He sits up, he's got a knife in his hand.

Speaker 2 It's bloody, it's fiery, it's weird. Wow.

Speaker 2 And when this, and then when Zach Brown band comes on and starts popping, starts singing the songs, he has a crown on, a red crown that looks like the same crown that the skeleton, aka Satan, in some people's

Speaker 2 opinion, was wearing. This huge glass crown, red, fiery, on top of Zach Brown.

Speaker 2 Had it on.

Speaker 2 And this continues for the first few minutes.

Speaker 2 Now, out of context, it's easy to see why some people who are inclined to get upset about this type of stuff, Satanism and worshiping Satan and devil worship and all that, would be able to take that first three minutes and totally take it out of context.

Speaker 2 And man, have they? Really? They have gone wild on social media.

Speaker 2 You know, Zach Brown sold his soul to the devil. This is a portal to sphere is a portal to hell.
Everyone there has been indoctrinated. Now they're all Satanists.
You know, you need to leave now.

Speaker 2 You know, don't go. I can't believe Zach Brown.
He sold his soul to the devil.

Speaker 2 While other people who stayed and actually watched the fucking show said this is a journey that he takes you on from his troubled childhood through to redemption. And it's, that's like the whole.

Speaker 2 The whole show. Storyline.
Right. The storyline.
And then it gets much brighter and better and clearer as you go on.

Speaker 2 But you'd have to be there and watch the whole two and a half hours, whatever it was. Listen, I watched the imagery and I thought, what the fuck does this have to do with Zach Brown band? What?

Speaker 2 Chicken fried? Is this chicken fried? We're doing chicken fried with the devil. What is this? It does, it is pretty fucking intense for Zach Brown level music.

Speaker 2 But if he's telling a story, if he's going like all in on the storytelling, then okay, he just got some imagery that was really intense to show in that part of the story.

Speaker 2 He has notably talked about his very troubled childhood.

Speaker 2 So maybe that is, you know,

Speaker 2 maybe that's,

Speaker 2 I don't know. Maybe this was meant to represent the troubled childhood.
And then comes to the other side. And then he comes through on the other side.
It's a story of redemption. It's a journey.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, things are bright and happy after you have whatever.

Speaker 2 I think people are too quick. Like when that whole thing happened with

Speaker 2 Travis Scott,

Speaker 2 and people quickly took to the internet to talk about how the devil had

Speaker 2 shown up and taken people's lives. And they show the imagery behind Travis Scott and the music that was playing and the things that he had done in the past.

Speaker 2 It is easy to get convinced, in my opinion, that something nefarious is afoot if you just live in that bubble. But Travis Scott is,

Speaker 2 you know, he's always kind of been a troublemaker. Like, not troublemaker, but he's always kind of been rowdy.
That's his whole vibe. That's his whole thing.

Speaker 2 And by the way, this has been going on in music and movies forever. There's good boys, there's bad boys, there's devils, there's angels.
Ozzy Osborne.

Speaker 2 And then we all loved him when the Osborns came out, right? Coolest show ever. Cutest family.
Love those people.

Speaker 2 It's just, it's just part of being an artist. It's a tortured artist point of view.
And yes, the imagery is intense. I agree.
The imagery was intense.

Speaker 2 When I saw the first videos coming out on Friday night, Saturday night, whatever it was, I was like, wow. That for the Zach fucking Brown band.
Yeah, you don't associate that with that band.

Speaker 2 You do not. But I will share with you that now, having read through and seen some other videos from the night, it looks like this was just a really intense part of the show.

Speaker 2 Like it was meant to kick off like that. And God bless, if you were on any kind of hallucination,

Speaker 2 it was not a good night for you. If your night started like that, it was not a good night.
You went in expecting Jimmy Buffett's, you know, cheeseburger in paradise, and you got the wall.

Speaker 2 It's like, those are two totally different things. Listen, the wall also has some fucked up imagery in it, too.
The actual movie is intense. The movie, the stage play, all of it.

Speaker 2 It's all very intense.

Speaker 2 Zach is just following in the footsteps of a long line of artists who put on these big productions that take this type of imagery and, you know, kind of bend it to their will, so to speak.

Speaker 2 Well, and that's the sphere's thing

Speaker 2 to have this crazy,

Speaker 2 mind-blowing visual. Yes.
The sphere itself, apparently, is not doing very well financially.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I mean, it took a lot of money to do all that. It took a lot of money, and apparently the upkeep is very expensive.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Apparently, they have like 100 engineers or people work, technical people working 24 hours a day at the sphere. Well, Vegas in general is suffering right now, too.
Well, and I'll tell you why.

Speaker 2 This would be a good thing to get into on Thursday.

Speaker 2 And I think I understand a little bit why, because I follow some people that are like

Speaker 2 Vegas. Insiders, people on their Instagram account, they talk about Vegas.
They're in the business of Vegas. And I think I understand why.
And it has to do with hedge funds.

Speaker 2 And the hedge funds are ruining fucking everything. And they're ruining Vegas.
Why? Because they're making it prohibitively expensive for people and family.

Speaker 2 You know, it used to be a place where you take your family and, you know, the adults would go out gambling and we'll go to the show and we'll do this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they did have a lot of family stuff for a while. Also international.
That's right. Canadians are not coming to the United States right now because they fear they won't get out of the country.

Speaker 2 And that is a legitimate. fear.
It is not like there's some made-up thing that their grandmothers are telling them. It's a legitimate fear.

Speaker 2 You could go to the, the come to the united states and end up on a plane in honduras or something like that yeah it's just weird so we'll talk about vegas and then we'll also talk about the fire fest billy put on the phoenix fest this weekend his long-awaited triumphant return

Speaker 2 he put on a really okay party for 150 people

Speaker 2 and it was I mean, listen. So he started a new thing now.
Let's start with the

Speaker 2 Phoenix. The Phoenix.

Speaker 2 Out of the ashes. And I have some imagery and some stuff to show you.
You will not believe it. Listen, I give credit where credit is due.
Billy has been through a fucking lot of bullshit.

Speaker 2 He's not stopping. And he did not stop.
And he managed to put together a festival.

Speaker 2 Okay. All right.
So you got to give him credit, right? Gathering.

Speaker 2 He put together a gathering safely.

Speaker 2 I understand there were no deaths or injuries. That's good.
But it was literally a tiny little island off the coast of Honduras that had no infrastructure whatsoever.

Speaker 2 And Billy got somebody to give him some money to build a stage in two weeks and put together a piña colada stand and some porta potties. And they had, I forgot who they had.

Speaker 2 Who was it?

Speaker 2 I don't know. A couple of rap stars and a couple of DJs

Speaker 2 and about 150 people, 200 people showed up. And they had to boat them in because Billy, because there is no infrastructure.
There's no roads there. So Billy had to boat them in.

Speaker 2 And he wasn't allowed to hire any hotels. So people had to get their own hotels and he got a sponsor last minute for the main stage and it was like some shitty Bitcoin company.

Speaker 2 I mean honestly like I do give credit where credit is Yeah, he's not going away. You know character is built through adversity and he has

Speaker 2 had a lot of self-inflicted adversity and he managed to put it all together. So I'll give Billy, he's come a long way for since asking Brian Green for $500 to show up at his festival in New York.

Speaker 2 We were asking people to pay $1 million

Speaker 2 to come to a festival that never happened. He had like the Phoenix ticket that he sold for like, you know, naming rights to the whatever, the boat, the launch, right? The whatever.

Speaker 2 It was like the highest priced ticket. And I think he sold it for about $71,000, which is a lot of money.
I mean, right? Wow.

Speaker 2 But there are some people that just have way too much time and money on their hands. And they probably bought it just to go hang out in Honduras for a weekend.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 So, and apparently Honduras is the new hotspot. That's what I've heard this for like two decades, but now I'm hearing more and more people are going to Honduras.
Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I'm just telling, I'm just giving you the 411, Chrissy. I don't know if it is or if it isn't.

Speaker 2 But if anybody wants to send us to Honduras to the next Phoenix festival, then Chrissy and I will report back. Is that the president that

Speaker 2 Trump just pardoned? Yes.

Speaker 2 The actual narco-trafficker.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.
That was on the run. Uh-huh.
Yeah. Well, he.
Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Well, the reason the Bitcoin, all of those people really like him is because he let the, there, there's some kind of, he let the creation of these different like independent things happen there.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of, like, in Honduras.

Speaker 2 You can go with your money there, basically. Yeah.
A lot of people are getting rich. A lot of locals, a lot of natives, they are getting rich because they were taught by

Speaker 2 a couple of groups of people went down there. They set up shop.
They have mining operations there. And they were teaching the locals.

Speaker 2 They were setting up infrastructure to actually use Bitcoin to buy shit. And then they were putting mining machines in the middle of town, and people could go and they could help.

Speaker 2 They actually did something fucking good with Bitcoin besides, you know, sucking up all the energy and being

Speaker 2 unable to buy anything with it. Honduras actually set up some infrastructure.
Some Americans and some other people went down there and did that.

Speaker 2 And the Honduran president kind of let it all, he let it fly. He was like, okay,

Speaker 2 you know, good on him, but then bad on him because he used all that Bitcoin to buy cocaine and send it to Canada.

Speaker 2 And he got busted. And he got busted.
And he was on the run. Yeah, so we're really concerned about drugs up at the top of our government.
I'm sure of it.

Speaker 2 And all those DEA agents that are now arresting, you know, people who, you know, missed a court appointment for their immigration status. And this is not.
what we should be.

Speaker 2 If you really care about drugs, why are you taking DEA and FBI agents and putting them on the case of non-criminal immigrants, like civic, like civic immigration immigration matters.

Speaker 2 It just civil immigration matters. It just doesn't make a lick of sense.
But then again, you know, poor Trump. He's just trying to keep his eyes awake.

Speaker 2 He's just trying to keep his eyes open during the day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's sleeping during most meetings. I know.
Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. I don't know.
So am I, to be fair. So there you go.
I was going to say, I probably would be falling asleep, too.

Speaker 2 I would, too.

Speaker 2 I've seen some of those meetings he has to show up to, and I'm like, oh,

Speaker 2 when do I get to fly on the plane? Right. Get me back to the plane.
Where's there a state dinner when I can have some good wine and talk to some internationals? That's what I would like to do. So,

Speaker 2 all right.

Speaker 2 Okay, there's all the news that's fit to print.

Speaker 2 Remember, starting next week, we will have an infomercial on Tuesday.

Speaker 2 But then Wednesday and Friday will be the days that we release the episodes we stream on Tuesday and Thursday.

Speaker 2 So if you want to catch the episode early, get involved, be a part of it, go to youtube.com the commercial break.

Speaker 2 Follow us, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification button, because then you'll be notified when we go live on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Speaker 2 You can get involved, you can chat with us, we'll have a big conversation. It'll be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Someone just die? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then on Wednesdays and Fridays, you can listen to those episodes on the RSS feed. It's been a good run with four episodes per week, but it is officially over.
Yeah. Starting today, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm honestly starting today.

Speaker 2 I love you. This is the Wednesday episode.
You'll get the Friday episode also.

Speaker 2 And then we'll just go from there. We'll see how it all works out.
Two things you want to do. Follow us, youtube.com/slash the commercial break.
Follow us at the commercial break on Instagram.

Speaker 2 Chrissy's personal

Speaker 2 TCB Chrissy, which is TCB Chrissy.

Speaker 2 Even you're getting followers. Did you notice that? No.
You're up to like a thousand.

Speaker 2 Brian W. Green on Instagram.
That's me. You can go to our website, tcbpodcast.com.
All the audio, all the video.

Speaker 2 If you want to dig into the 850 episodes we've got, you feel free to do that on our website.

Speaker 2 And yeah, that's that.

Speaker 2 If you want to get a hold of us, DM us at the commercial break on Instagram. The phone, we're going to phase out a little bit here.
It's becoming a little bit much.

Speaker 2 If you've got the number, keep the number. You can text me.
If you don't have the number, don't worry about it. We can use it for call-ins, like while we're doing live shows.

Speaker 2 Yes, if you're texting currently, text. Go ahead.
Feel free.

Speaker 2 But if you want to get a hold of us moving forward at the commercial break on Instagram, that would be the best place for you to get a hold of us. Okay.

Speaker 2 What else?

Speaker 2 I think that's all for now. TCB 2.0

Speaker 2 coming at you effective immediately. Yeah.
Bing!

Speaker 2 Chrissy and I will be here, just not as often. Okay, Christy.
More concentrated. More concentrated.
It's like OJ.

Speaker 2 I'm concentrated.

Speaker 2 That's all I can do for now. I think so.
I love you. I love you.
Best of you.

Speaker 2 Best of you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time, Chrissy and I will say.
We do say and we must say. Good.
Bye.

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