#2290 - Michael Kosta

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Yes, sir, Michael.
Good to see you, my friend. Thanks for having me and really appreciate you showing me around.
Wow, what a space you've created, man. Thank you.
That's so cool. Keeps going.
I was excited to show you the picture of my sauna. And then you show me, you got an archery.
It's so cool keeps going i was excited to show you the picture of my sauna and then you show me you got an archery it's so cool man thank you that's so cool it's fun so we were just singing john stewart's praises uh before this started but i'm so happy he's back at the daily show and i'm so happy he makes fun of everything and i'm so happy he still makes dick jokes yeah you know it's fun it's like the daily show seems like the Daily Show again Like that guy's a very unique dude very unique person and one of the most important like pieces to like Unify everybody he's reasonable Like he gets the whole big picture like let's stop being so fucking ridiculously tribal in the morning meeting He'll come in and And we're all sitting there the writers and he just kind of shuts the door behind him and we start talking but it's it's like a it's like a conversation with a college professor but he's in charge and it's beautiful all sides this i disagree with that what about this and it's like oh wow it's it's really fun to be part of and then someone will yell out a dick joke joke will make it to the show, too. You know, it's like smart things and dumb things.
That's beautiful. Well, he's never abandoned being a real comic.
Correct. Which is what got him to the dance in the first place.
So he always has those instincts. And he's the very best at, like, holding a line and, like, making something, like, even more preposterous just with a facial expression and pointing out like these fucking unbelievably ridiculous in your face hypocrisies that we see every day from both sides.
Yeah, from both sides. Have you ever done stand up with him? Oh yeah, we've done stuff together like back in the day.
Yeah. I kind of can't remember the last time.
I was supposed to do something with him at one of Dave's

things that we that he was doing outside back in the day but I never wound up doing it but I definitely did stand up with him in the clubs back in New York and I knew him way way back in the day was he was on MTV yeah I remember that and I think I remember one of his books was called naked pictures of famous people,

which is great.

He's a solid guy.

He's a solid guy.

I don't know if he's agreed with him, but I don't even agree with me. Isn't that good? Isn't that the point of this? It's like you want a couple people to be mad sometimes.
I also think we all as human beings need to be divorced from our ideas. Okay.
Your ideas are not you. You are you.
And ideas are things that you should consider. Ideas are something that you should, I mean, if it's going to have some sort of a real physical impact on your life and your family and your family's other people you care about, I understand.
I understand why you get connected to things like that. But for the most part, most of these ideas don't affect you.
A lot of them don't.'t and yet we're so ideologically captured that we fight for these ideas as if it's our very nature right so you're talking about your essence as a human being and it's stupid this reminds me of a time i left my joke book on a train in new york and in the joke book i have this book is important to me call me if you get this you know and this guy texts me and he says I have this joke book and you know talk about your ideas yeah joke book is the most unfiltered dumb idea ever oh yeah that's the beauty of it yeah and I I said man I'm sure he's reading it why you know you're gonna. You're going to read a stranger's joke book.
And I connected with him. He was very kind.
He gave it to me, but he kind of looked at me like, are you a comedian type thing? And I said, yeah, but it's terrifying when that idea gets attached to you when it was just a fleeting idea. Right.
Yeah. The joke book idea is the best example of that, right? Because most of what you write is shit, which took me forever to figure out.
I was like, God, I've just write shit. Yeah.
And then every now and then a gem. Yeah.
Like, oh, and then you extract the gem. Yeah.
But I've realized afterwards, it's basically like gold mining. Most of the time you're not finding gold.
You're finding garbage. And you only get to gold by going through garbage.
Yeah. Sometimes I'll do a show and it's terrible.

New joke show.

But then the next day the thing happens. And I think, oh, that's because I was digging all day yesterday.
Yeah. It's the muse, right? You have to show up and request the muse's love.
I like that. Yeah.
I mean, do you ever read Pressfield's War of Art? No. It's really, we have a stack of them out there i'll give you a copy of it it's a small book easy read jay larson comedian in la recommended that book to me 10 years ago and i never tackled it it's really good i used to i used to have a stack of them in the studio where i'd give out to guests because so many comics i was like this is what you need what's the essence i will read it what's the also you know what keeps freaking me out there's a above my head.
Yeah, there is. Every now and then one will fly above your head.
What's the essence? The war of art that makes it sound like it's a struggle to create art. Yeah, it's the struggle against resistance, which is procrastination, which is this thing that we all do before we actually write, which is so weird because I love when I'm actually locked in and great ideas are coming.
It's one of the best feelings in the world. Like it's like somehow or another, you're pulling these ideas out of nowhere.
And then it's your job to take this seed and try to go plant it on stage and try to water it and try to out over the course of many months, it'll become a great bit. And they just only come if you sit there.
They only come if you sit there. And what he is saying is that you have to treat it like you're a professional.
And you have to decide at 8 a.m. I will show up and I will be there for three hours.
I will shut my phone off. I will lock in.
This is what I do because I am a professional. And you literally make a prayer to the muse.
You offer yourself to the muse. You say, I'm here to work.
I'm here to gather ideas. I'm here to be creative and be open.
And you treat it that way. Whether or not the muse is real or not.
You can get hung up on that. But if you treat it like it's real, works I love really crazy I love that and I don't

do that and early in my comedy career I would go to the coffee shop at this time and start typing

and I have all these but I remember Tommy at the comedy store he would say every time I see you

you have new bits and I would go yeah because I'm going and now it's crazy life has gotten crazier

I don't make time for myself to do that but I need to honor the muse man yeah I like that I my move

the And now it's crazy. Life has gotten crazier.
I don't make time for myself to do that.

But I need to honor the muse, man.

I like that.

My move is when everyone's asleep in my house. Okay.

Because I still, I get up pretty early for a comic.

Yeah.

I'm up by eight almost every day.

Comics are unreal with that.

Right.

But that means that I can go to bed at one and still get seven hours of sleep.

So that's what I do. So when everybody in my house kind of goes to bed early, my kids go to school, my wife goes to bed early.
So when everyone's asleep, it's just me and the dog, you know, and either we're watching YouTube or I'm writing. And I, that's when I get my best work done.
You write by hand or you type? No, I type. You type.
Yeah. I feel like I can't write fast enough by hand.
What I like about typing is that I don't have to look at the keys, I know how to type. So I can make a letter, I can make a word very quickly.
And I can like zone in to it. But what I really like is a keyboard that I can feel.
Like I need travel in keys yeah you know and these clickety clickety clickety little macbook yeah those are bullshit okay what you want is a keyboard that you don't have to look at because it's got like little divots where your finger sits so I use a think pad and think pads have the best keyboards they have travel each one has like a couple of millimeters of travel so it's a clickety clickety clickety so my fingers know exactly where to go and I can just get into the zone. You're zoning right now.
Yeah. But that's how I do it.
Like I have like a whole thing. Right.
Like the laptop that I write on, it's not connected. It has no apps.
It never goes anywhere. It doesn't get email.
Yeah. I only allow myself to use the Bing search engine to find out what the, because most of the time if I'm writing about something like, you know, when was this discovered? What happened here? Who figured that out? It's normal facts.
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That's a trap for me. Frequently, I'll start typing.
I was working on a bit recently that all of these amazing men, these explorers, these achievers, the idea was, because I found out that Sir Edmund Hillary, Mount Everest's first man to climb Everest, he had like nine kids or something. And the idea, the joke was, I don't even think he likes climbing mountains.
I don't even think he enjoys outdoors. It's that he's trying to get away from his family.
So then I looked up Roger Bannister, the guy who broke the four-minute mile. He had like seven kids.
I'm like, I don't even think he likes running. He's just trying to run away from his family.
But I remember writing that bit, and it's a funny bit. It's a great premise.
There might have been an Elon thing there. He has a lot of kids going to going to mars whatever there's other stuff um but i would keep getting sidetracked by these googles right start typing a bit now i'm on sermon hillary's wikipedia page now i'm clicking i'm gone and that's a trap that's tricky it's procrastination yeah it really is and you can get locked in so the discipline is to is to keep it stay on the bit yeah i would play this stupid game with with myself.
I'll just go on YouTube real quick and see if I get inspired by anything before I write. And I'm watching two hours of muscle car builds.
Right. Right.
Oh, dude, it's wild. Watching people turn their Land Cruiser into an off-road vehicle.
I would do motorcycle handlebars. I would find my motorcycle, and then there would be 20 different handlebar builds and stuff.
What kind of motorcycle did you drive? I have a Triumph Bonneville 2011. It's in storage in Pennsylvania now.
I take it out in the summer a lot. Where did you drive it? in L.A., that was what I used all the time.

You ride a motorcycle in L.A.? I did forever.

Holy shit, dude.

My wife doesn't really, you know, we have a family now.

But in P.A., I ride it a lot.

And there it's deer, man.

That's the scary thing there.

They get very close.

They're not afraid of cars or motor vehicles at this point.

Well, there's a time between, like, September-ish to,ish to December-ish where they're retarded because they're horny.

Once it starts getting warm out, they start getting goofy.

And then when you get cold around November, that's when it really kicks in.

If you're in Pennsylvania or Iowa, oh my God, I visited my friend John in Iowa,

and I'm driving down the road, and every 15 seconds you're slamming on your brakes

because something's darting near the road.

They're all over the place.

So the bucks are chasing the females, and the females are just running out into traffic. Right.
And the bucks are following them. Bang, bang.
I mean, this is like men at night. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Sixth Street.
Where my club is. Don't drive fast.
That's why the road is closed on the weekends. They don't want people driving down Sixth Street with all these horny idiots.
I love that they closed that, though. That's good.
I didn't know that. It is great.
But what scares me is what happened in New Orleans where they have these roads where only people walk down and everyone knows it, and this psycho decides to kill a bunch of people. It's crazy that you have to think that way, but, I mean, there should be some sort of retractable posts that they can pull up.
Wasn't there for that one, and it didn't... It wasn't up.
It wasn't up. Yeah.
In New York, you know, it's a big concrete slab. I was in France last year, and they had these huge flower pots with beautiful flowers in it.
And I said, you know, this is the New York version. It's a huge concrete slab that says NYPD on it.
And this is the French version, which was this enormous, beautiful flower pot. I go, that's serving a function and also beautiful.
Yeah. Well, the French know how to do things, right? They know how to do it.
Yeah. They party.
They know how to party. Yeah.
They drink a lot of wine. They stay thin somehow or another, which is odd.
Like, I hope RFK Jr. figures that out.
It seems to be full butter all the time. I go to Italy, and it's also like the standard cliche, but it is true.
You go there, you can eat the food, and it doesn't affect you the same way. And we we don't even think twice about it we come back here and still order pizza and still feel like shit if i eat a pizza here i feel so bloated i ate a pizza in italy last summer and i ate the whole pizza too the whole margarita pizza i ate the whole fucking thing and i was like i just would just resign myself to like the thud of it hitting my digestive tract and feeling like I'm on Dramamine.
I've resigned myself. I'm like, I'm eating pizza.
Fucking Italy. This is what's going to happen.
Let's just do it. Nothing.
Never came. Never came.
Ate a whole pizza. I was like this the rest of the day.
I was like, this is crazy. I'm not even sludgy.
Brisket crushes me. Terry Blacks put you down, son.
I was at Houston. Steve Byrne was at the other club.
He wanted to get lunch. Yeah, of course.
We go get brisket. I went back to it.
I slept for like three and a half hours. Did you have sides, though? I don't remember what we were doing.
I bet you had sides. You think it was the sides? Yeah, I think it's mostly the starches and the carbs.
It's mostly like macaron salad. It's fatty, delicious meat.
So good. Terry Black's in town is my favorite.
They have a beef rib that is the most preposterous thing. You pick the bone up and the rib slides off the bone.
And when you slice into it, it's just juicy, fatty, smoky. Why is the meat falling off the bone such an important so tender? It means it's been slow cooked perfectly They have a thing where you want your brisket to fold but not break So they take a slice of brisket and then put it over their hand and if it breaks off you fucked up You've made your mushy brisket, but you want it where it's just folding, you know, like a thick cloth.
There's a life metaphor there, too. Brisket, you want it right out, too.
You want it, like, right after they slice it. You don't want to wait on brisket.
You want to eat it while it's still warm. Look at that.
See the fold that guy's got on his finger? Yeah. That's a perfectly cooked brisket right there.
Dude, I learned. Every time I'm here, I learn.
I remember the last time, dude, we were talking Italian billiards. I didn't even realize it was a different billiards.
Oh, they have a bunch of different billiards. Yeah, but I mean, that's funny.
I never had any idea about that brisket. You know, it was all originally Germans? That they would do the brisket stuff? Germans who came over through Texas.
Like Fredericksburg is one of the hubs of it. It's all a bunch of Germans who came over here, and they made smoked sausages.
So they came over here, and the brisket became a thing because brisket was not a choice cut. It was a thing that they would throw away.
Like you wanted steaks. You wanted a T-bone.
So they would take the brisket, and they just figured just figured out like if you just slowly cook it you render it down and break down all the toughness of it and at the end you have this delicious tender smoked perfection that puts me to sleep but they know how to do it here man they make the best fucking brisket on earth right here uh terry black's franklin's la barbecue there's like a bunch of spots in town yeah what's it qb barbecues that's the egyptian joint that i went to with um with uh action bronson that place is oh man having a meal with him would be super fun kb kg kg barbecue so this gentleman came from egypt and uh he was uh like a finance guy i think in egypt just working a regular job. Came over here, fell in love with brisket, decided to just open up his own barbecue shop.
And so this guy makes these incredible recipes with like Egyptian and Middle Eastern spices, but with Texas barbecue. Oh my God, it was so good.
It was so good. Cool story.
He's blowing up now. And he's just super nice guy too yeah yeah just like I love when someone does that it's like fuck this job I'm doing I'm what well you know what I want to do I want to feed people I want to make brisket awesome brisket I want to make a food truck and this guy it becomes so popular so quickly that this guy has like a real business now and he's got a restaurant he's opening up a second one i believe that was my favorite part of living in los angeles it's easy to make fun of la for good reason but for the most part a lot of people were betting on themselves right and a talent they had yeah not everyone's but i do love that i always appreciated that yeah i like living in a place where people are definitely going for something yeah and taking Ch and taking chances.
The problem with LA is it also becomes attached with what is the engine that gets you to where you want to go and sometimes that engine is like pure narcissism. Yeah, or fame.
That's the goal. Most of the time it's fame.
Which fuels the narcissism. Yeah, but I think a more interesting question is how do we find the thing that we're meant to do?

That Egyptian finance man found that brisket is his calling.

That's fascinating.

In his 30s.

In his 30s. With a career.

Right, right, with a career.

Making money, having health care, still decided to give it up.

Living in Egypt, by the way.

It's not even close to Austin, Texas.

And he comes here, he doesn't just decide to make barbecue. He decides to make barbecue in the home of barbecue.
I mean, the place. Yeah.
He's like, fuck it. If you want to learn jujitsu, go to Brazil.
Yeah. He went right to the heart of it all.
I remember I was coaching tennis at University of Michigan. I was making $31,000 a year.
And I go, I think I can make this in comedy. If I'm going to get paid like shit, let me at least do what I want.
So of course the first year I left first year I did comedy, I made whatever, $6,000 or whatever. But I think often how much harder that would have been if I was making a hundred grand, you know, it's, it's because I was poor, let's be poor and pick the thing I want to be doing.
Oh, a hundred percent. But that's the thing about youth.
Youth is filled with, if you're 47 years old and you decide that you need to change careers, you're going to be a folk singer and you have a family. Like, what are you talking about? You have a Volvo.
You have a fucking mortgage, you idiot. Like, you have to go to work.
You have to go to work. If you're going to make folk songs, you're going to make them on the two hours you have for yourself on the weekend when everybody else is out of the house.
You don't have any time for that. Is it true that Rodney Dangerfield found comedy so late like that? Well, Rodney did comedy and then quit, but kept writing and was selling aluminum siding.
Right. That's what I remember, that story.
And then remade it when he was like 46. That's a fucking awesome story.
Yeah. How about Schimmel? Schimmel didn't even start until he was 36, which I thought was crazy.
I remember what I heard because I was a giant Schimmel fan. And then when I had heard that he started when he was 36, I was like, what? I didn't think you could do that.
I thought you had to start when you were like 21. Yeah.
Or you had no chance. I remember starting at 27 and wondering if it was too late.
Right. Isn't that that or maybe it was 25 i forget i wish i started this episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog we all want to do the best for our dogs but there's a lot of mixed messaging out there especially around dog food take kibble for example you'd have to do a lot of digging to learn that kibble is actually ultra processed they put the words like premium on their bag next to pictures of real ingredients, but food doesn't end up as burnt down pellets without extreme processing.
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27. Because when I was 21, I was such a moron.
I just had no opinions on anything. So all my jokes were basically about sex.
It was like sex and relationships. Where were you at age 21? Boston.
Boston. Okay, that's right.
You were in, I was going to gonna say because you were at least in a good comedy scene you could see good comedy yes yes yeah you've talked about that was the best comedy scene it was the best comedy scene because it was a comedy scene that had world-class comedians that the rest of the country didn't know about right so it was a cheat code it was like you're in a gym and you're sparring with world-class fighters like world championship caliber fighters That the rest of the world hasn't seen yet. Right and that emerges sometimes in fight gyms You have a bunch of like elite fighters and then all sudden there's three world champions in this gym like two years later Yeah, that's what it was like in Boston because there was these guys that were the Steve Sweeney's and the Don Gavins Who are as good as anybody that's ever done comedy.
And no one knew who they were outside of Boston. And you get to see them every night just murdering.
Was their drive to get out? No. It was to make money, stay there.
Do coke and play golf. Yeah.
Those guys are partying. They probably figured.
I mean, I remember the documentary about Boston comedy where they said they would pay comics and coke. It was a totally different kind of comedian.
There were these big football player looking men who were rowdy, who partied all the time. They were all heavy drinkers.
They all played golf. They were all animals.
And they would go on stage and obliterate. When I say obliterate, I mean, these guys would go on stage with a drink in their hand.

And they had a fucking act that was as hammered as a samurai sword.

Yeah.

It was polished.

And they would just fucking-

From the paws they would take to the eyebrow raise, all that.

Everything.

And a lot of it was like local references.

Yeah.

Like local Boston stuff.

And they would bury these out-of-town comedians.

I saw them bury Billy Crystal one night. Oh, my at his heels and dragging him down into the netherworld it was horrible he was in hell I feel like when I started comedy drinking was still big it was big now I meet all the young comics and everybody's sober or they're thinking more about all the different facets but when i started there wasn't youtube yet right comics talk shit in the green room a lot terrible yep uh i went and did yuck yucks in vancouver recently in the green room there's a sign up that says we don't harass people in the green room we and i'm like this is different this is different you? Well, Canada's just on another level with their wokeness.
Canada's on another level, but come back to us, Canada. I remember driving down the road in Vancouver and there's all these people just lining up.
And I go, what's going on? And I said, oh, well, they're lining up for the bus that's about to come. And I'm like, that's Canadian.
I mean, they're so polite. They're waiting.
They know where the bus will be and they're lining up. That is not how it works in Brooklyn.
And then before they get on the bus, they give their land acknowledgement. Before they step on the bus.
Do you think that comedy with the polish, the local, I mean, it feels like comedy is taking a different turn now. It's if a bit is kind of working we post it.
It's up. It's not polished well, and I miss some of that I miss some of that there's some of that but there's still guys, you know, like Louie who don't do that And a tell doesn't do that.
It's like I get for young guys coming up It's a very good way to develop an audience like there's guys that have a clip the clip goes viral on tik-tok all the sudden they're selling out shows everywhere Like a guy like Ralph Barboza. Yeah, it's funny guy.
Yeah gets a funny bit It gets put up bam all the sudden he's headlining all over the country and it happened to him like that He was opening for me in Dallas Before any of that and you know you always watch the opener and normally I watch the opener like this like oh this is just is this what i have to go up after why didn't i bring my own guy you know whatever right and i'm sitting in the green room and i'm going oh that's a good bit oh that's a fun oh crowd's going to and i'm going this this guy's got it yeah and then six months later i was like watching his special right or it wasn't maybe a year later. But yeah, I mean, that's a great example.

He's a funny dude.

Yeah, it's a great example of what can be done with social media today.

You know, and then there's these guys.

There's a lot of bad ones.

Like from Kill Tony, where they do one minute.

And a lot of these one minute clips get put into reels.

And then these guys are getting huge responses for this. And now they're doing doing the killers of kill tony where they're selling out these huge places so it's it's amazing what can be done but but they don't have an act they don't some of them do like ari maddie's 12 years in you know he was doing stand-up in australia i actually worked with him in australia in like 2016, I think okay somewhere around then 2015 somewhere around then so Ari's been at it for a long time so he's really good he's a really solid comic so he's like headlining now because of this and like right but there's guys that are in it four or five years and they don't really have an act yet but they have a couple of good jokes but they'll figure it out it out.
They'll figure it out. But you don't want to figure all of it out on video in front of the whole world.
That's what it is now. I'm so thankful that as soon as I could, I posted my first set on the internet, but that was seven years in.
You couldn't even do it. Right.
I would have done it too soon. I mean, it still was too soon, but...
But it's okay. Yeah.
You, you know look you go back and watch my first episodes of this podcast. They were fucking terrible, right?

I encourage everybody go back and watch them the dog

Where does one watch the first I bet they're on YouTube on somewhere there's somewhere it's everywhere

But like when we first started doing it, I mean there was no production value

It's I was boring, you know, and then you figure out how to do it. It's like stand-up.
It's everything else. Go back and watch someone's first amateur fight.
They look terrible. They make mistakes.
It is very beautiful to watch people get better at stuff. There's a female tennis player right now named Andreeva.
I forget how to pronounce her first name. But I just watched her at Indian Wells and I saw her four years ago at the French Open.
Everyone was saying, watching you want to watch Andreeva, I forget how to pronounce her first name, but I just watched her at Indian Wells. And I saw her four years ago at the French Open.
Everyone was saying, watching, you want to watch Andrieva. And I'm like, this is a child that doesn't know how to play the sport.
Why are we talking about her? I watched her last week in absolute nightmare of a beast, you know, hitting the ball, the movement, her shape. And it was like, oh, every day she got better.
And to see that was nuts. And I always go back and watch old, oh my God, Novak Djokovic's first Grand Slam when he's got like the worst haircut and the baggy shirt and the backhand was looking different.
Now it's just amazing to see how these athletes evolve. And I'm sure it's the same for fighters.
And you mentioned it was. Sure, yeah.
I love is like all things right it's you yes when you really do it then you can truly appreciate people who are great yes like there's there's so many things that are like like in martial arts it's a big like especially when things go to the ground a lot of times people don't understand how difficult a specific maneuver is like how he did that how he baited him with that and then you have to like well there's certain things i watch when i'm like oh my god does everybody appreciate this right that was insane that was a language it's a language and if you don't speak the i mean when right i don't speak mma language but that's where good commentators come in oh they're excited for a reason yeah that that was something that we don't see very often, and that helps me. I assume that's how it works for tennis people or for non-tennis people when they're watching tennis.
Oh, I'm sure, but I think only a person like you who is a professional could appreciate the technique involved and the changing of Djokovic's backstring. I mean, I pause it.
I make my wife come into the living room, and I say, watch this, and she'll watch it, and she'll go, that was good. And I go, are you even seeing what he did? He did a short slice to pull him in, and then he went.
But it's a language that I speak. And this is life, man.
Picking these little things we have that we get passionate about is just awesome. As I've gotten older, I used to shy away from tennis a little bit.
It's an elite sport. It's got its own history.
And now I'm just like, I fucking love it. I love that I'm good at it.
I love that I know it. The Wookiees pushed you away from tennis? No, the Wookiees pushed you away from tennis.
It sounds like it did. It sounds like it was a little too elite.
It was a little too country club. A little too segregated.
It definitely is those things. No, I think what happens.
It doesn't have to be.

It doesn't have to be. And that's why Serena and Venus were such a fun fuck up to the sport.
Do you know the Freeway Ricky Ross story? No. Freeway Ricky Ross was a guy who, you know, Rick Ross, the rapper? Yes.
He named himself after a famous cocaine dealer in Los Angeles called Freeway Ricky Ross. Okay, freeway Ricky Ross was selling cocaine unbeknownst to him for the CIA to fund the Contras versus the Sandinistas.
Okay, yeah, so this is the cocaine cowboy type stuff, isn't it? Type stuff, but this was about Oliver North. This was all about funneling money into the war.
He was a tennis player, like an elite tennis player, but couldn't even read couldn't read yes and was this really good tennis player right who that was like what he was his hope for a scholarship right gets involved start selling cocaine start selling a lot of cocaine I'm sure doesn't know how he's so successful because he's working with the CIA goes to jail learns how to read when he's in jail becomes a lawyer in jail gets himself off Because they tried him on three strikes, but I did it for one incident. So they did it incorrectly and so he gets out of jail So incarceration educated him to the point where he got himself out But is there origins or as a tennis tennis player? He's a tennis player like a really good tennis player You know Menendez brothers excellent tennis players.
One of them played at UCLA. Maybe not the best example.
I'm talking about a guy from South Central LA who can't read. Just to say it's not necessarily an elite sport.
It doesn't have to be. It's just a sport.
I agree. All you need is a court.
I mean, it seems pretty cheap. You need a flat surface, a tennis racket, and a ball.
Let's go.

The kids that were beating me when I was a pro played on a dirt court with a rope tied

between two sticks. These South American and Russian players, it was not a money sport.

It was not a sport of money. It was a sport of movement and competition.
And because there's

no clock, you can have as much time as you want to figure out and beat down your opponent so that gets a certain type of athlete you know i think it was jimmy connors who said i didn't lose i just i just ran out of time in that match i would have i would have figured it out right unfortunately he beat me um yeah what happened with me i was i was was trying to be a stand-up comic that i was trying to so badly that i was trying to remove the athletic stigma even now you sometimes say tennis and people kind of back up but as i got better at comedy and more confident in my abilities i said why am i shying away from the sport that I love and that is such a foundational part of me?

Isn't that weird that you felt like you had to move away from athletics in order to fit

in in comedy?

That's probably a more succinct way to say it.

And the new book that's out right now, Lucky Loser, is all about how I'm now embracing

this tennis because it gave me all the skills to actually be good in comedy.

Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Discipline, realizing like the tennis player that you were talking about, that if you do

Thank you. I'm now embracing this tennis because it gave me all the skills to actually be good in comedy.
Of course. Yeah.
Yeah. Discipline, realizing like the tennis player that you were talking about, that if you do put in the work over time, the results will pay off and you'll see it.
And you're alone. Yeah.
Figure that shit out by yourself. You're alone and you're going to have- No teammates.
Success and failure. When I was eight years old, I lost in the finals of the Ann Arbor Junior Open.
And I realized I was going to lose. And I started crying on the court.
And my older brother runs on the court and holds me like a child. I'm crying.
There's a picture of that in the book. Now as a parent, I'm going, who the fuck took that picture? Right? I'm just a kid crying and my brother's holding me as my parents taking that picture They did it for the gram But man as a comic holy shit.
We've all felt like that. Oh, man It's so personal when you when you fail as a comic Well, it's important to learn how to lose it things everything Yeah, if you marry your high school sweetheart, you guys never broke up and that's the no you probably missed out me Congratulations on achieving the most difficult thing humanly possible together that everybody admires Yes, yeah when you meet a couple and like I have two friends of mine that have actually been dating since they were like 16 years old And now they're married with kids in their 40s Congratulations, but I think there's some value in getting getting your ass kicked.
I think there's some value in a girl saying, no, I don't even like you. Like, no, you don't like me? You know, I think it's good getting dumped is good.
I think all that's valuable. I think you have to learn.
And I don't think you learn by winning all the time. And I don't think you learn if something's easy, which is why really handsome and really beautiful people are often ridiculous in the way they behave that's true because they have five aces right and you know and they didn't earn them they were just born with five aces so how do you instill grit toughness in a generation as a parent I see my five-year-old struggling.
I oftentimes pop in.

Let me get that for you.

You know, she's trying to do little things, trying to do the buttons on her shirt.

That's where we got to, you know, and I do it for her.

And I think I shouldn't do it for her.

She should be struggling to do this.

But this is a big issue right now, right?

The younger generation, you hear that word grit.

How do we instill that?

Well, sports is a great way to do it. It's a great way to do it.

It doesn't work with everybody because some people play sports and they come out even

cuntier.

Yeah, they come out more aggressive or more competitive or more psychotic in their pursuits and it just like alienates everything else in their life. Or it creates trauma for them.
Not real trauma, but... Or real trauma.
Fucking head trauma if you're playing football. Yeah, there's...
I think difficult things are important for kids. It doesn't necessarily have to be that.
It could be art. It could be music.
It could be something. But I think there's something when you put your attention to something and realize you can get better at this thing and you find yourself in that thing and you find your potential in that thing that you focus on.
It doesn't have to. It's not necessarily that it has to define you because oftentimes it does, unfortunately.
When people are really good at a thing, it becomes the whole essence of who they are as a person yeah but it's a valuable tool for elevating your human potential and it's also a way that you can quantify effort versus results and you can do that in sports and games and think chess and art and things that are difficult like you could say like i am so much better at playing guitar now because I've been playing three hours a day

for six months and look

what I can do now. So I know

that there's a thing. And it teaches

you that if there's a thing that you really

love and you focus on it,

that thing, if someone does it for

a living, why can't you?

Why can't you? Why do I have to be

in this fucking bullshit office in this

cubicle with these stupid papers

that I don't give a shit about that I have to fill out

I'm sorry. living why can't you yeah why can't you yeah why do i have to be in this fucking bullshit office in this cubicle with these stupid papers that i don't give a shit about that i have to fill out for this company that i don't give a fuck about this episode is brought to you by lifelock tax season is already stressful you shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else and trust me it's a big worry, especially since during tax season,

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I agree with you. Some things we will improve upon faster based on our natural abilities.
I loved the way DJs used to seamlessly transfer one song to the other, beat matching, whatever that was called. I asked for two turntables for Christmas.
I obsessed over it. I fucking sucked at it, dude.
I couldn't do it. I tried so hard.
And then I'm thinking, I pick up this tennis racket and it all kind of clicks very quickly. Well, you have a good frame for tennis, first of all.
Thank you. So you're tall and long, which really helps.
You can reach stuff that other people can't reach. You don't think I don't have a good frame for DJing? Yeah, you have like a foot more space.
Look how much wider you are. My arms are pretty long, and yours are like a foot more.
Dude, if Pete Sampras did this, the greatest server. Oh, yeah.
I mean, don't they say that this is the same height? I think so. I think they say that this is your height also.
Is that what it is? Yeah, it's not really. I mean, it's your wingspan.
Well, I always heard that from here to here is your foot. I saw that in a pretty woman.
From here to here is your foot. But, I Pete, Pete had like extra length.

Yes.

And people go, how did he get the pop on the serve?

It's like, you know, those torque like Tommy Hearns with his punches.

Yeah.

Tommy Hearns was so long and tall.

Like Deontay Wilder is another example.

Okay.

Those long, tall guys.

When you have this torque, like you ever see Deontay Wilder?

No.

He's arguably the greatest one punch knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight

division.

At one point in time he was like what is Deontay's record I think it's like 40 and he's had a few losses recently but at one point time he had like 39 knockouts out of 40 fights Jesus which is insane is insane. And these are professional fighters he's knocking out.
It's not me. And he's undersized for the heavyweight division.
When he fought Tyson Fury, Tyson Fury was like 260. He was 209.
209. He made it to 40 and 0.
40 and 0 and 39 of those 40 were knockouts. Were knockouts.
Look at everybody. Knockout, TKO, TKO, KO.
He knocked out everybody. Get the Luis Ortiz fight.
Show him the Luis Ortiz fight. Forgive this extremely ignorant question.
When you say knockout, that means the guy's done. That's not like the ref calls it.
TKO is the ref calls it. Knockout is like it it's over.
Like, you got flatlined. And these are guys that know how to take hits.
Elite guys. Well, this guy, Luis Ortiz, was on the Cuban Olympic team.
He's a fucking elite fighter, and he was really durable. And so Deontay, he's the one with his back to us.
He's long and tall, but he's not giant. He's not a big guy in comparison to a lot of these guys.
But he catches him with a right hand and flattens him. I think this is the first time they fought, Jamie.
Yeah, the second one is the KO with one punch. So he beat him up in the first fight, too.
But Ortiz is an elite boxer, and Deontay's not the best boxer. He's just a hitter.
And he's just waiting, waiting, waiting. Blam! And he hits guys, and they're like, what the fuck? Here it is.
Watch this. Wow, that...
Yeah, it just collapses. It didn't even seem like it was that hard of a hit.
And this is an elite heavyweight. Show it again.
Because it's so crazy. It's just one punch.
punch It's just black See Wilder just waits It's all waiting He's just waiting Waiting for his chance Look at that record Right here Unbelievable Unbelievable. When you got that kind of power, that is so crazy.
That's crazy. It's hard for me to even wrap my head around.
See if they show it in the replay because he hits him on the forehead, which is so crazy just before that. Watch this.
Right there. Just before it, Jamie.
Okay, here it is. Watch this.
He hits him on the forehead, man the forehead man Not punching. So he's just waiting.
He's just waiting. He's just pawing at him with his left hand and Oh my god look at that bro But it's all that torque and length and leverage and just God-given power like nobody has she's in the fucking slow motion That is so crazy.
The slow motion camera. That is so crazy.
And look at the torque. Look at the wide shoulders and the timing and the speed.
And watch, it just straightens out right on his fucking noggin. Boom! And the follow-through with the shoulder.
Oh, my goodness. sports, like mixed martial arts too, these sports aren't for me because one punch, it's done.
Oh, yeah. Meaning, I like watching that.
Meaning, I wouldn't have been a good athlete in that sport. Why do you think that? Well, like, in tennis, what I love is if you're just bombing aces, after the first set, clean slate.
We start all over again. And in boxing, you make one mistake like that, and it's done.
Well, against that guy. But that's very unusual.
Most guys can't do that. They can't do that.
Most guys can hit you pretty hard. You would take a hard hit, but you could recover.
That's crazy. That's crazy.
Deontay's in a world of his own. And he's also in a world of his own, again, because he's not big.
There's Daniel Dubois, who is the—I forget which division he's a champion of right now. But he's a giant heavyweight who knocks everybody out.
But he's 255, 260, built like a tank. Deontay's literally 40-plus pounds lighter than that.
And just one punch. Blah! I liked how we watched a lot of that, and he hadn't even thrown a punch.
He's a hitter. He's a hitter.
He's a hitter. He's there to kill you.
He's not going to outbox you and be slick. In fact, his movement is sometimes awkward.
He's criticized for having bad footwear. His legs look like sticks.
He has the skinniest legs you've ever seen in your life. Like, it's crazy.
Like, you look at his legs, like, how? How? But the power this guy generates is out of this world. So his software during a fight is just constantly trying to find the open for one of these huge punches.
That's the whole time he's doing. He's not boxing you.
Yeah. I mean, he's boxing kind of, but he's really looking for the big one.
And you know if that big one's lands, it's nighty night for everybody. The only buddy who's able to survive it is Tyson Fury because he's a fucking animal.
Right. And he rose from the dead in the 12th round of their fight where it looked like Deontay had knocked him out cold.
Deontay even went like that at the end of it because he hit him with a right hand and then a left hook as he was going down and he went flat out on his back and Tyson Fury rose like the undertaker and got right back and won the rest of the round. But that's just because he's a that's another very very rare human being Tyson Fury.
Just an animal. Jesus.
Just an animal. One of the greatest boxers of all time.
And one of the greatest heavyweights, without a doubt, of all time. When you get hit like that, there's got to be an enormous physical pain.
Duh. But then there also is like, don't you get scared then after a big hit? Well, you get super confused.
You get confused. Because I would get scared.
You know, you've got to kind of shake off the cobwebs. Your ears are ringing.
Your legs don't work right anymore. When you get knocked down, I only got TKO'd once in a kickboxing fight.
And ironically, it didn't hurt. The punch that hit me just twisted my jaw.
He hit me with a left hook and my legs just gave out. Like, weep.
Like, gone. It's the craziest feeling.
It's like, it's not like you got hurt. It's like your legs just shut off off right like he he clipped me with a left hook that I didn't see in an exchange and when you get hit on the jaw something happens in the jaw and I don't know what it is with the nerves behind your neck but it just shuts everything off right and you're conscious which is weird like so it was completely conscious but my legs just like disconnected and went down but they reconnected right away and I got up and I was like oh no I'm in trouble.
They weren't working good. Like everything wasn't working good.
And then I got dropped again. He hit me with an uppercut and dropped me and then the referee stopped the fight.
But totally conscious the whole time. But the feeling that you get when you get hit real hard is real weird.
It's like nothing works right anymore. And you got to get on your bike and try to move around and get everything working again.
And it might take 30 seconds before... And that's that 30 seconds when he's also trained to kill you.
Now in the UFC, it's way more accurate because when you get knocked down, they climb on top of you and beat your fucking brains in or strangle you. Which is really what's supposed to happen.
The whole thing of letting someone get up, what you're doing is giving them a chance to get more damage that's true because they can recover but not all the way you know sometimes right sometimes a guy gets rocked early in a fight and you can tell for the whole rest of the fight they're still fucked up and they're they're very defensive so it's safer in your opinion the way ufc does it where if you start wobbling I'm immediately on you trying to kill

you and then it's like as opposed to boxing where they would get you up and you maybe don't think either one is safe right I think it's an unsafe sport it's as safe as we can make it right we have laws when you can hit someone you can't hit them in the back of the head there's yep but not safe. It's a very dangerous, very scary sport.

But I think realistically,

when someone gets hurt

and someone finishes them off on the ground,

that's probably less damage

than they would have taken

if you gave them a standing eight count,

dusted their gloves off,

made them move forward,

and let them go back again

and get really mollywalled.

Because a lot of times, those are where the real bad KOs come from is when a guy's hurt and then he stands up. The only thing I can even closely compare this to is being in a car accident.
Yeah. Let me show you one of the greatest examples of that.
Alex Pereira, who was a two-division glory world champion, pull up Alex Pereira, KO's Jason Wilness. So he's like the most destructive kickboxer in the history of the sport.
And he went over to the UFC, became a two-division UFC champion, just lost his title last weekend in a really close fight, great fight. But he hits this guy with a head kick and drops him, and you can tell this guy's fucked.
But they give him the standing eight because he's in kickboxing, not in MMA. They give him the standing eight count, dust his gloves off.
You okay? Come forward. And then he gets hit with a flying knee on the chin and just sent into the shadow realm.
Right. And it didn't need to happen this way.
And this is what happens when you take a guy who's like really rocked and kind of fucked.

So watch this.

So he catches him with a head kick.

So he's, by the way, Jason Welles had beaten him twice before.

So he drops him with the left hand.

Is this the first fight?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Or is this the head kick?

I don't know.

I'm a full fight.

I don't know if this is the one.

I think this is the one when they went back and forth.

I don't think this is the one where he KOs him. I think this is one where he drops him.
Yeah, try to find the later one. This is it.
This is the one because I can tell by his haircut. So Pereira at this time was the champion and he was getting revenge on Willness who had beaten him before and stopped him with low kicks in one of their fights.
So he head kicks him. Boom! So right now, he's fucked.
In an MMA, he would follow up, beat him a couple times, that would be it. But Willness is like, they're giving him a chance to clear his head.
And you're coached to like get up immediately, show that you're okay. Yeah, and he's like, move forward, then watch this.
Boom! Oh my god! That's the kind of shit that happens when you're really already fucked. So he can hit you with this flying scissor knee right on the chin.
What the fuck is that, dude? And he's the most ferocious knockout artist literally in the history of the sport. Look at this.
On the chin. And that's like legal and everything.
Oh yeah. It's encouraged.
It's not just legal. It's celebrated.
That's one of the greatest techniques in the

history of the sport. And Alex Pereira, that's how he won his first UFC fight.
He won with that.

Want to see another nasty one? Pull up Pereira, Kaos, Michaelitis.

You want to see another nasty one?

So this is Pereira's first entrance into the UFC, and I'm a giant fan of kickboxing. So I watch

Muay Thai, I watch Dutch kickboxing, I watch Glory. I watch everything I can about kickboxing.
And I knew this guy was really special. So I was completely hyping him up in this first UFC fight.
I'm like, just watch. And he came through in flying colors.
And he came through with that flying knee. And it's so nuts the amount of power this guy can generate and with punches and with kicks but with a flying knee you have so much torque you're literally throwing your body weight up into the air so how do you avoid a flying knee just step out of the way? so it's in the second round Jamie so it's right after this like right at the beginning of the second round yeah so they start the second round and he's like fuck this dude I'm just gonna catch him coming in and flatline him this is watch this I mean this is nutty here it cheek Oh my god That is so fast He's such a fucking animal He's such a monster dude So how would you even You can't block that You just try to get out of the way of that You don't want to well, you certainly should block it rather than take it on the chin.
But once he's in the air like that, if that catches your arms, you can break your forearm. I mean, the amount of power that's involved in that particular technique is fucking extraordinary.
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Because it's a natural movement of your hips. It's a thing that you do your whole life running and jumping.
So you can explode very quickly. And you're hitting someone with your knee which is the most immobile part.
If you want to hit someone with a joint it's elbows and knees but the knees preferable. But aren't you putting yourself in a vulnerable position to throw a flying knee? Yeah you gotta wait till a guy's fucked.
And that's what he does. He waits till you're fucked.
Because you are jumping in the air and exposing yourself. So what I would do is I would move out of the way, Joe, and then I would pop him.
But some guys are just really good. Like John Jones, when he won the light heavyweight title, one of the craziest things that John did, he was 22 years old and he's fighting Mauricio Shogun Hua, who is a legend.
He was a a light heavyweight champion He was a legend of this organization called Pride in Japan

Where they sold out like 90,000 seat arenas

I mean he's like a real legend of the sport

And John opens with a flying knee

Opens, first move, flying knee

Catches him

And then just beats the shit out of him

And wins the title

And becomes the youngest ever UFC champion

That's a great name

Watch this, this is the beginning of the fight

Now Shogun is, like I said

He's a fucking legend

And a knockout artist

We'll be right away. Boom.
Bang. Flying knee to open up the fight.
And just put on a clinic. Put on a clinic and won the title at 22 years of age.
That's a ballsy move to start with that. He's a ballsy motherfucker.
Yeah. That's a big swing right out of the gate.
Yeah. The flying knee.
It's a crazy move. But some guys can pull it off, and it helps being tall.
Like Alex is very tall. John's tall, so it's hard to hit their chin.
But, you know, it doesn't always work. Like sometimes guys do it and they get knocked out cold.
How does your fucking kneecap not break too? It doesn't. No, your kneecap versus chin, I'll'll take kneecap all day long especially when your knees are bent and you're hitting them with this part right here you can hit that pretty hard on things you'd be surprised i have so much respect for these athletes and i'm also i can't be far enough away from it just see it go wrong i want to show you the flying knee go wrong pull up um uhor Emelianenko versus...
Oh, Andrei Arlovsky, I'm sorry. You want to see a flying knee go wrong? Yeah, Andrei Arlovsky, Fedor Emelianenko.
So this is... Andrei Arlovsky was actually winning this fight, and he actually was kind of tuning Fedor up, and he was hitting him with some big shots, and he got a little crazy.
And he leapt in with a flying knee and got flatlined. Well, that's what I'm...
This is what you would do. That's what I was thinking.
This is what I would do. No, but I was thinking this is a vulnerable position.
You don't want to be in the air. True.
So he's fighting the guy with the bald head. That's Fedor Milenenko, who's a legend.
So watch Arlovsky. He catches him with a kick.
He's feeling cocky. Tries the flying knee.
Boom. Oh, shit.
Flatlined. But he's fighting, and Fed.
That's literally the greatest heavyweight of all time. If not one of the greatest.
There's the argument that he's the greatest. So he catches him on the chin as he's leaping in.
Like perfect punch. So the guy with the beard thought.
He thought he was vulnerable. Yeah.
He was beating his ass a little bit. And he made a mistake.
And he tried to come in cocky with a flying knee. And he got clipped on jaw.
Oh my god. And as soon as he gets hit, you just see his flying knee knee just drop.
Also, you gotta think where Fedor threw that punch because Fedor knew he was going in the air. This is like the reads this guy's able to get.
He sees Arlovsky make a motion, like bend at the knees like he's gonna launch himself. So if you look at where he punches him, he punches him so high up in the air.

So he knew where his head was going to be.

Look at that.

Look how high he's – see it? He's ducked down and Orlowski's way up in the air and he catches him perfectly on the chin. Yeah.
Like that is just an understanding of positioning and where a guy's going to be and what the timing of your punches. This is reminding me of the way Roger Federer would notice his opponent would quarter of an inch open up his grip on the run, and Roger would know forehand slice is coming, I'll sneak in and pop.
And now it's a much different sport, obviously. Really? But it's reading.
Just the grip? Yeah, dude, if you just typically he does it like this, and this time he's doing it tiny, boom, they go up. Wow.
What's so different about tennis, tennis obviously is then you just volley the ball for a winner it's 15 love you don't get head kicked you don't get fucking knocked out i mean this is why this this shit fascinates me but well it's the consequences are so great consequences people look at it as a barbaric horrific thing yeah which is valid i understand why pacifists and who are very peaceful don't want to have anything to do with violence. I get it.
But what it is to me is the ultimate problem-solving. It's problem-solving.
You have a person in front of you that is doing all of these things to try to throw you off. They're feinting you.
They're moving. They're switching stances.
They're shooting in for takedowns that they don't want so they can catch you with a punch on the way in. There's so many variables you have to think about.
So it's just like high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences. I love sport because it teaches life lessons with very low stakes.
But in these sports, there's high stakes. yeah that's very interesting for me because i would much rather my kid play soccer or tennis learn some important lessons with low stakes but this type of thing that is serious stakes it is serious stakes i think kids especially boys should all learn how to fight so that they don't ever fight that's what i think i as a 45 old grown man.
I wish I would have learned how to fight Yeah, and I think it's probably not too late. It's not too late.
You got a gym over here I was telling you you can get into jiu-jitsu. You'd be great at it.
You have long limbs. You're athletic So that's that's what I should be doing.
Long limbs are huge in jiu-jitsu because there's certain things that you'll be able to catch that other people can't catch with shorter limbs like a darts choke so a darse choke is so say if you come to grab me and you have your head here and your arm wraps around me like this i can shove my arm under like this go off the side of your neck and clamp it like this and now i've got you in a wicked choke it's called a darse chokece choke. You will be way better at that than me because you have an extra six inches that you could seal this thing up.
Okay. So your hand will go further than mine.
You'll be able to grab it deeper than I can. Dude, I'm writing down Darce choke.
Yeah. And what I'll do tonight on my YouTube is I'll watch some Darce chokes.
Yes. And I...
And then you do it the other way. It's an anaconda.
go armpit this way it's a darts or you go head this way armpit that way it's an anaconda and with the anaconda you roll like an anaconda and you squeeze them deeper and I just squeeze until the referee says it's over and your long legs you could wrap around their body to secure them in place you could grab a hold of one of their legs so they can't turn away from you. You could turn into them and fucking keep the squeeze on.
Dude, you'd be wicked at it. And in a competition, that happens until the ref calls it? The person taps out most of the time.
They tap out. Most of the time you tap out.
Because you know it's over. You know it's over.
If you're a psycho, you go to sleep. And there are a lot of psychos who just let people choke them unconscious.
That happens all the time.

Guys just say, fuck it.

I'm going to get choked unconscious.

And they just go out.

And then the referee stops you.

Hopefully.

Hopefully.

Hopefully.

But sometimes the referees miss it.

And sometimes someone's out for like seconds while someone's still fucking squeezing the shit out of their neck.

And then the referee finally figures it out.

The person's like in the shadow realm.

I do absolutely love that in these sports, there's this extreme violence, high stakes,

but then also a simple tap is a mutual agreement.

100%.

That's fucking awesome.

And if you don't stop when someone taps, you will get kicked out of the sport.

There's a guy named Usamar Paul Harris who was one of the scariest motherfuckers to ever fight because he was a leg lock specialist. And what he would do is rip your knees apart.
And he wouldn't let go when you tapped. And he got kicked out of the UFC for it.
Because he did it to so many people. He was known for not letting go.
And he would, these guys would be screaming in agony and slapping and tapping. Saying I'm out.
And he would be still twisting. He was built like a human pit bull right he was like five seven 185 pounds of solid muscle and he would just dive on your legs and roll into these positions and rip your knees apart like with a heel hook a heel hook is so terrible because your knee has a lot of strength going forward and backwards, but it has almost none going side to side.

So they isolate the top of it with their legs.

They wrap the heel into the crook of their elbow, and then they wrench that motherfucker apart.

It's literally twisting your knee apart, and it's terrifying.

Oh, my God.

And it cripples people.

Like, you are fucked.

He'll tear your ACL, your MCL, your meniscus. You're going to go a whole year before you can fight again.
You're going to have to get surgery to reconstruct your knee. And then your knee's never going to be the same because your meniscus is shot now.
And maybe some of your cartilage. So this is him.
I don't know. I don't know.
Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
So this is a fight that he had against David Avalon. And this is fucked because they stopped the motion and they put him back into the same position.
And when they put him back into the same position, he doesn't let go. So he holds on to the heel hook and just wrenches the fucking shit out.
Like this right here. Ah! He let go there.
He let go there because I think they were like chastising him to make sure. Like, look at that.
Look at what he does. I don't want to look.
And And look at the build on this guy. Paul Harris was a fucking specimen.
And he's trying to turn the knee sideways. He's ripping this shit apart right here, man.
He's pulling it backwards. It's backwards and at a slight angle.
I mean, this is horrific. And look at the build on Paul Harris.
Imagine the fucking force. The size of this guy's legs.
The size of his torso, and perfect technique. And he's just ripping his fucking knee apart.
That's a nasty knee bar right there. That's so horrible to watch.
But in MMA, he wound up getting kicked out of the UFC. Because I think it was Mike Pierce.
See if you can find the Mike Pierce fight. It might not have been Pierce.
I love that the tap, generally speaking, it does. Of course.
in this case, the Mike Pierce fight. It might not have been Pierce.
One of these fights. I love that the tap...
Generally speaking, it does. But in this case, the Mike Pierce one, he's screaming and tapping, and Paul Harrods is still ripping it apart.
One of my favorite parts of tennis is how they'll battle for five and a half hours, and then they calmly walk. So here it is.
Look. He's tapping.
Watch. So he gets it, he's tapping, and he won't let go.
He's still, when the referee's's on him he's still yanked on it so that extra second will just rip your shit apart so he taps immediately see none of this has to happen he was tapping immediately I feel like the ref was on that I know but it's like Paul Harris doesn't give a fuck he's out for blood I mean he had like a childhood. He grew up on a farm with like no food.
Like it's really like he's, he's feral. He's feral.
And he's super technical. Which would serve you, I'm sure.
Oh yeah. Well, until you get kicked out of the sport, you know.
God, it's incredibly violent, but also systematic in its understanding of the human body. Oh, yeah.
We're going to know that the knee doesn't go this way. No, it's really, really technical.
All sports are like this, actually. Yeah, I think all sports at the highest levels, they have to be like that.
Because you only get so far with genetics and so far with natural speed and endurance. There's certain aspects of it that require a careful, considered study.
And wouldn't you, if you know your opponent is a guy that likes to do the, wouldn't you then in your training work on defending that and also like making sure your knee can withstand more of that than normal? You know, you're not going to be able to do that. There's only so much.
There's no special knee pill you can take. You got to tap when you get into those positions, and then you got to make sure that you don't get into those positions, which is the most important thing.
The tapping must be so humbling as a fighter because you've trained so hard. You want to win so badly, and yet you have to do this thing.
You have to press the eject button. Well, hopefully you will tap because guys haven't tapped, and they've gotten their arms broken in half.
I've seen quite a few of those including legends like frank mere one time he too much pride you mean to tap yeah yeah because he fought uh antonio noguera who was uh another legend who was former heavyweight champion of pride and he caught him in a camora and snapped his upper arm and we watched his arm crack and then go limp and you could see like where it was cracked up here like oh it was horrific that's terrible so hard to watch when you're commentating um are you present moment completely oh yeah yeah like you're just you're not you're not thinking like uh it's not like these baseball commentators were like i got a story i'll tell later in this no no because it is that yeah great no great especially not while the actual fight is going on the actual fight is life and death you know you you have to be locked in but daniel cormier my uh co so there's like two color commentators me and daniel cormier and there's john anick who's the play-by-play guy me and daniel fuck around a lot we joke around a lot about stuff during the because he's like a fun guy but when things are serious we're serious yeah you you have to be like you know this is like you're representing these people's hard work you're trying to like put words to i love that yeah yeah you have to be very serious about it because the stakes are so high and it's wild though that people might know you if they're just being introduced to you as the commentator for that and maybe don't know the other stuff and Well, it's confusing for sure, but it's also like it's one of the things that I'm most Impressed with by what you do is as someone that has this passion for tennis. I'm like It's so cool.
You dive into a completely different world. Yeah, and just can't apologize for it You can't wonder what other people think about it, right just have to be yourself.
And I grew up a martial artist. Martial arts is an enormous part of my life.
It's an enormous part of how I became who I am. So for me, commentating on martial arts is normal.
You're not a comedian who then switched over to martial arts because it served you. It's your foundation of who you are, and you also happen to be a comedian and podcast host.

Yeah, but I'm not interested in being funny.

Yeah.

You know, I'm just trying to do that.

Like, I've done commentary on professional pool, too.

Whoa.

Because I play pool.

Yeah.

And I play pretty good.

Yeah.

So I really understand the game, and I know what's going on.

So I've done commentary on that, too.

It's the same thing.

What's your favorite pool movie?

The Hustler.

The Hustler.

The only answer to that question is The Hustler. I thought The Color of Money had a run.
It's okay. It's okay.
It's okay. The Color of Money is good.
It's a good tournament movie. It's a good movie.
But it's, you know, there's some things in it. And because Paul Newman was in it, you know, it kind of gave it some validity.
Yeah. Because it was the same Walter Tevis novel as The Hustler.
The Color of Money. It was very different.
The book was very different the book was very different though okay but yeah the color money was great because it got a lot of people playing pool again but the hustler is just an amazing film okay like the the actual film itself is amazing it's like piper lori is incredible in it it's it's just it's george c scott is in it jackie gleason plays minnesota fats and he's who's by the way jackie gleason was a real pool player he's probably the only guy that's ever played a pool player in a movie that really could play my brother once got a book for christmas called uh how to hustle your friends a pool and it was in our it was in our basement we had a pool table but i just it was one of those things same that i worked at it I can never get it right and eventually the other things came more naturally to me but it is fun pool is something if you really want to play right you have to get coached okay yeah it's just like tennis I'm sure it's like you can develop some bad habits and bad fundamentals that you'll never you're never going pass a certain level. Yeah, yeah, you know

But I think it's like everything. I think it's like chess.
It's like tennis

It's like, you know Schultz was in here the other day and he's into the sport paddle. Have you have you seen paddle? Is this PADEL? Yes

Adele. Yeah, this is the Adele.
Well, I've heard Adele

Perfect, of course

Oh, did they say Paddle?

That's where it's from, yeah.

Oh, well, why don't we call it Paddle then?

That's because Schultz said.

He said paddle like he's from fucking,

like a New Yorker.

Yeah, so, you know,

tennis has had this great historical run

on elite racket sports,

and then pickleball has been this

counter response to tennis.

Silly ball, loud noise, don't really have to move much. And pickleball has been taking off.
I don't know if you've played or if you've seen it. Kim Rock plays every day.
Okay, perfect. He gets up at eight in the morning and plays pickleball with his trainer.
That is exactly my point, okay? I was in Scottsdale, Arizona recently. I did an hour of pickleball the community there had music going cracking beers costa come over play with us very very fun very fun i then go over to the other side and play tennis which is my sport and no joke this older couple says you're talking too loudly on the courts right it's this beautiful dichotomy of these two sports i don't know know if pickleball's a sport.
But Padell comes along and seems to be this middle ground. What I don't like about pickleball is you get to what they call the kitchen line, and you can't move anymore.
You're frozen. So you just stand there frozen, and you knock the ball around.
I like a sport. I want 360-degree movement.
I don't want the dimensions of the court to restrict my movement or the rules of the game.

Padel seems to be both.

It's tennis, but it's in this box,

and they sometimes run outside of the box.

Yeah, they run outside of the box.

I mean, it's fucking insane, and I've actually never played,

but the points never end because you're on this.

I just see people blowing their ACLs out. He's going outside the box.
I know, that's nuts. That is nuts.
So it almost seems gimmicky to me. That's funny that Andrew plays, but I would like to play this.
And look, also, one of the best things that happened for racquet sports is HDTV, dude. I don't know if you were a kid watching Jimmy Connors and John Mack, you never even see the fucking ball.
Right, right, right. It's the same color as the court.
Right. And this shit now is unbelievable to watch.
That's like what they've done with hockey where they highlight the puck. I love that shit.
That's a game changer. Now I know what's going on.
At first people made fun of it, and I was like, I need... And in hockey with the substitutions on the fly, I never know who the fuck's on the ice.

I love that, though.

I love that they do that.

That's so cool.

I've been watching professional lacrosse lately.

Once I realized they could beat the fuck out of each other.

I didn't know that they could fight like they do in hockey. I didn't know they could fight.

They fight and they wear shoes, which is crazy.

Because now you're bare knuckle boxing in the middle of a game.

What does the shoes have to do with it?

What do you mean?

You get grip.

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They're called Roka.

They're making a game. What does the shoes have to do with it? What do you mean? Get grip.
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I mean like a clean and shoot, right.

Well, the difference between running around on ice skates, you're sliding around. The fighting is like, yeah, they're fighting, but they're kind of compromised because they can't really like, you know, good skaters can kind of hold.
It's not like having grip with your shoes and being able to really, you can really hurt people. They're beating the shit out of each other.
I'm like, wow. Lacrosse always kind of had the douchey rich kid sport, but it is incredibly, yeah.
They stopped doing this in the 90s. Yeah, I was going to say, they stopped doing this.
I don't watch hockey. But I liked it.
My favorite, my favorite was. I thought they put a circle around it when it flies around.
It got lot of pushback but I always enjoyed it sorry sorry hockey people they might show it sometimes in a highlight that's funny I always avoided winter sports when I was a kid I didn't learn how to ski until I was in my 40s and I never learned how to ice skate because I was fighting all the time so I didn't want to do anything that would hurt myself doing it and everybody was like, we're going to go skiing. I was like, uh-uh.
Get the fuck out of here. I need these.
It was super important. This got everybody excited, though, a few weeks ago.
The beginning of the USA-Canada fight or game, there was nine fights and three times. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They just started squaring off. Yeah, why are we upset at Canada? This is stupid.
Is this over tariffs? Yes, 100%. They booed us over tariffs.
They were also trying of attention. Who's red and who's blue? Well, Canada's red.
There you go. Who's winning this exchange? Red, white, and blue is America.
One dude keeps his helmet on. That's ridiculous.
That helmet's a problem. I do love when you hear their microphones during a fight and they fight and then they go like, you ready to be done? Yeah, I'm ready to be done.
I love that. I was at the comic strip in Edmonton years ago when Canada played U.S.
in the gold medal game. Someone sent me the country's water usage during that game.
And at every period end, the water usage would go up because everyone would go to the bathroom.

And it was like the whole fucking country went to the bathroom at the same time.

And Canada won.

I think it was in overtime.

I was the only American there.

But man, do they love a good winter sport up there.

We've got to become friends with Canada again.

We have to like, you know.

I'm down.

This is so ridiculous.

I can't believe that there's like anti-American and anti-Canadian sentiment going on.

It's the dumbest fucking feud.

There it is.

That's nuts.

Look at the water consumption.

Is there.

That's crazy.

Right when the bathrooms go.

I love on this pod where if I say something, I got to be ready for you guys to fact check

my ass.

Jamie's ready.

Is there anti-Canadian sentiment?

Yeah.

There's a lot of idiots that now think that they're our fucking enemy. Okay.
Why are we subsidizing Canada? Right. Well, how come they don't have their own military? Well, they don't, so let's just deal with it as it is.
You know, Trudeau is out, right? He's already leaving. Yeah, they got a new guy who's just as bad.
Same thing. They got a new party.
150 people voted.

Now they have a new guy running the country.

But their whole election system is so different.

They don't have a specific time when they have elections.

They can call an election, and I think it happens within three weeks.

The whole thing is so crazy.

And so I don't know what's happening with their politics, but I just want America and Canada to get along.

I think it's ridiculous.

Yeah.

It's a good—as someone who's from Ann Arbor, Michigan, you know. And I don't really think they should be our 51st state.
There, I said it. You said it? It's on record.
It would be fun if it happened. It would be fun.
I think Greenland's more accessible. Yeah.
We could probably buy that. Yeah.
If you want a 51st state, it's Greenland. Plus, if global warming is real because of all the digging and oil and all that shit you know be good to have a cold spot to eventually warm up i i just read this crazy book called power metals by vince beiser possibly we had him on the show daily show and it's all about like minerals and metals and what we need for our batteries and cobalt mining in africa and i went down all this YouTube shit with like the child labor and all.
But I was very ignorant to how much we need and use metals. Nickel, copper, wild batteries, EVs, everything.
And so then when the news came out that Trump wanted Greenland, I was like, oh, this is starting to make more sense to me now. There's a lot of stuff up there.
There's also a lot of stuff in the sky. If they can mine asteroids, if they can successfully figure out how to mine asteroids, they can get a lot of precious minerals from asteroids.
Let's fucking do that. Yeah, well, that's a few decades away, but they'll figure it out eventually.
They've been able to get samples from asteroids and they know what the composites are. And there's asteroids out there that are filled with trillions of dollars in minerals that is fucking nuts i know it's nuts yeah and they can figure it out they will they'll they'll eventually figure it out but i had siddharth kara on okay who has done uh he's done some pretty brilliant and brave investigative work on the cobalt mines and you know he took video i'll have to check that what they call artisanal mines it's essentially yes slaves digging this stuff out of the ground with their babies on their back this is from sadar's book yeah i mean this is fucking crazy and they're digging the cobalt out of the ground with like literally with sticks everybody's breathing it in it's all toxic these on their back.
The babies are breathing it in. And then there's these pools, right, that you put the water, and it's toxic water, and the pools are different colors.
And we don't know where this goes, and the water seeps in. And is this also I can get the new iPhone 14 Max or whatever the fuck it is? 100%.
That's exactly what it is. It's terrible.
It's the only way we're getting that stuff. Right.
It's most of the cobalts coming from that area. And it's also then you go to the actual construction of the phone itself and you see those factories, those Foxconn factories where they have nets around them to keep people from jumping off the roofs.
And you realize these people are working in these horrific conditions so that you can get an iPhone that costs $13.99 instead of $15.99 or whatever the fuck it would be if it was made in America with people paid a working wage and health care and all the stuff you're supposed to get if you're going to be working. Especially if a company like Apple that's worth more than any corporation ever.
Like Apple's insanely profitable. so we we did this piece at the Daily Show once about the sugar cane agriculture in the central Florida.
They over fertilize it because it makes more sugar faster. All of the fertilization goes down to Lake Okeechobee, then goes out to the oceans where the algae blooms.
The manatees die. And I'm just going, I think most people would pay an extra 25 cents a year for this not to happen to spend more on sugar.
Why are we doing this? I would pay more to have my iPhone be made in America by American hands. Yeah, we've talked about that.
But the problem is the infrastructure that's required to be able to build phones here is a decade away. Right.
It takes a long time to build the kind of factories that can have the tolerances of these chips. They've been doing it in China forever.
It's fucking wild. I mean, I was loading my kids in the car, put my phone on top of my car because I didn't have an extra hand, forget it's driving through pennsylvania yeah and it's gone i hear it's bop bop bop all over the highway it's bouncing i stop i finally find my phone in the woods and 9-1-1 is on the phone well we we recognize that there was a crash are you okay doing and i'm like how the fuck what holy that that's in this thing's pretty wild.
It's wild. It's also watching everything you do and listening to all your conversations and recommending Google searches.
Why don't you buy this, Michael? Hey, Michael, maybe you'd be interested in buying this. It seems like you were interested.
You were talking about vacation homes in Hawaii. Look, Michael.
What about when you've already bought it? That is weird. Yeah, it's weird.
When it's like feeding me a thing, I'm in the algorithm. Yeah, you get sucked into the algorithm.
You know, it's an interesting world that we live in with all that stuff because it's like you're constantly getting inundated. That's one of the things that I really enjoy about podcasts.
It's the one time for three hours a day where I don't look at my phone. Yeah.
I don't have any text coming in. It's on do not disturb.
I don't care. I mean, that could arguably be why maybe you have this supernatural memory and brain power because you, more than anybody probably in the world, maybe United States, are actually away from this for four hours just talking.
That could be interesting. That's- Did I just crack something? That's something.
There may be something to that, but I think it's just the sheer volume of people that I've talked to. Yeah.
It's like you're getting information. But you're retaining a lot of that.
I've always been good at that for some reason. I mean, you just referenced the guest you had in the previous book.
Yeah. Are you retaining? Are you doing a trick or anything to retain that? No.

You're just locked in and engaged. Yeah.

Yeah.

I take supplements from memory too, though.

I take AlphaBrain, which is a-

I saw it.

It's called a nootropic.

I saw it out there.

You can grab some.

I didn't want to be too sharp for the pod.

No, get in there.

You have that thing, that vending machine.

You get free AlphaBrain.

You just press the button.

How many pods do you get free AlphaBrain on? That pretty sick. Anyone you want.
But that stuff's legit. It really works.
That was from my company Onnit. And when we first made it, a lot of people were saying, oh, this is snake oil, this is bullshit.
I had already had experience with nootropics because there's a company called Neuro One. And Bill Romanowski, the football player, developed it because he was having memory problems after all the hits.
And I was on a radio show in San Francisco. And one of the guys was working out with Bill Romanowski.
And he started taking this Neuro One. He's like, dude, I'm so much more focused.
It's really great. I'm like, okay, let me try this.
And I was like, oh, this is legit. Like, I feel like my mind feels clearer.
Like, I feel like I have more thought energy, if that makes any sense. Yeah.
So then we started experimenting with different ones. And there's a bunch I like.
One of them is this company, Neuro. These are mints, Neuro mints, but they make Neuro gum, which I'm a big fan of.
I chew it all the the time It's gum that has like a little bit of caffeine a little bit of theanine in it What's the the goal just to kind of keep the brain energy high? Yes Yeah, you want to provide your brain with the nutrients your brain needs to produce human neurotransmitters I'm gonna take this do you mean what maybe we'll do like a before after that you know, it's mine. I usually take two.
Okay. I want to take the mints, but they're legit.
This is, so this is one neuro gums. Another one.
Um, true brain is another one that I've tried. It's really good.
It's like little packets you drink. I've found, I just assumed it was like kids and age and getting older that I'll lose my train of thought more often than I ever have before.
Oh, yeah. And I hate it.
Writing a joke, it's not fun. And everything I read says, like, keep exercising, get blood flow in your body.
Maybe sauna helps. Sleep's a big one.
Sleep's a big one. Isn't it crazy how much an athlete, the best athletes, treat sleep? Oh, yeah.
I mean, Pete Sampras used to travel with duct tape. So when he'd get to the hotel, he would tape the curtain to the window so no excess light would get in because he wanted, like, a float tank situation.
And I'm like, you know, at that level, when you're playing for one in the world, like, all that little stuff. Yep.
And that's wild. Meanwhile, you get my give my house i lay down we shut off the

lights sonos has a light the wi-fi thing has a light the clock has it's so much extra excess light all around yeah it's not good maybe that's why i can't remember the joke i'm about to tell sleep is a big problem yeah you know you really need to get a solid seven eight hours of sleep every night and if you don't you're going to feel it one of the best supplements for mitigating the effects of sleep deprivation is actually creatine.

Creatine is actually...

My buddy just start taking it i don't know i take it every day i took it in college the strength team coach made me take it and it bothered my stomach well there's different forms of creatine um i take it in gummy form which doesn't seem to bother me at all i've had people that it like liquid, they pour it into water and they get diarrhea. I haven't had that happen, but it's also like there's different kinds of creatine.
You want a really good creatine, like you want a reputable company that makes creatine monohydrate. And then there's another thing called HMB that people mix with creatine.
But creatine, besides being a muscle builder, because it really does enhance your recovery and helps you build muscle it also is a nootropic it also helps brain function which makes sense because if your body works better your brain works better you know and it makes you retain more water you can't you have more water in your body which is obviously also a good thing and especially for an athlete and especially for someone who wants to think like one of the worst ways to think is if you're dehydrated. If you're dehydrated and tired, like you're fucked.
You're working on like 50% brain capacity. Well, you, I love watching sports.
You know, the end, you see these silly mistakes always. Why would they do that? That's, you know, why'd the ball go through his legs? Why did he choose to serve to that side? Why did he throw the fastball down the middle? Because they're fucking dehydrated and tired, and it's crazy how that affects brain function.
Oh, sure. And that's why I love the couch fan.
Oh, my God. Why did he throw that? With a beer in your hand.
Big belly. You're literally drinking a beer.
This guy's a pussy. This guy's a pussy.
If I was getting that money, I'd fight Mike Mike Tyson I'd come out swinging yeah the couch fan is their best yeah yeah like in fights you see it all the time when people are exhausted they make terrible decisions they shoot for takedowns they get caught in guillotine chokes because they're exposed they're just they're exhausted and they just take a chance and they don't have the energy to complete the technique correctly. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh dude I mean my parenting with a full night's sleep versus like had an early flight had to fly I mean it's crazy.
Yeah everything is. I mean I'm like I'd like to think a kind patient parent on a good night's sleep but like when I get home after a road gig or whatever even coming up this Sunday I have an early flight I'm going to get to Brooklyn I know it it's going to be 1 p.m.
and the wife's going to hand me the kids and go, your turn. Right.
And I'm going to be like, dude, the patience is going to be tough. Well, you're going to be exhausted from the flight.
Yep. You know what I found helps a lot from flights is if you can, work out immediately.
After? Right when you land. Okay.
Like right when you land. Just get into it.
Just get something going. Even if if it's 20 minutes do a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups just get get it going just reset the clock because when you exert yourself like hard you have a hard you know 20 minutes half hour of working out it resets you and you're like i'll get back i'm okay i'm very excited about this weekend because my former assistant coach at Illinois, where I play tennis, is the head coach here at Texas.
Oh, IUT? IUT. Nice.
So he's won an NCAA championship. His name is Bruce Burke.
He's an excellent coach. But he's like, dude, come hit with us.
Oh, wow. So I'm going to be training with the Texas team, and they're beasts.
These guys are, you know, so that's exciting for me. That's cool.
That's super fun to get to do that. And then perform a mothership, dude.
Never even stepped foot in this place. Oh, I'm excited for you to go.
And it's selling out so fast. I mean, you've created it.
Last time I was here, it was like still an idea. Yeah.
Adam Eget was around, but now, I mean, it's just amazing, man.

You've built something amazing.

Yeah, it's as good.

It's better than we have ever hoped.

We never hoped it was going to be what it is now.

It's perfect. Was the comedy store a foundational thought with this?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Because Mitzi's room is obviously a testament to her.

And I never met Mitzi.

I never fucking met her. That's crazy.
That's her's her that painting's her let me ask something that's crude okay was she was she a hot she was hot when she was young yeah when she looked like that she's hot because i see like i go to the la jolla comedy store and i see all the pictures of her and i'm like i think mitzi was hot yeah but i didn't ever she was hot when she was young um i didn't meet her then i met her her in 94. She was already quite a bit older.
And she started suffering the beginnings of her neurological condition. She would have a little bit of shakes.
But she was there. You could have conversations with her.
And she helped me a lot. And she also helped foster an environment of creativity and of collaboration.
and you know there was it was a home for a lot of you know road comics like there was this thing that you knew that you would go home and on Tuesday and Wednesday nights we would be at the store having the time of our lives on Tuesday and Wednesday nights we would be working on new jokes we'd be doing sets we'd be laughing together everybody's cracking jokes in the parking lot it was so much fun and it was that home environment that we wanted to recreate as much as possible that's awesome and to make it as comic friendly as public what if you ever wanted in a club they didn't have okay let's get that like what how do you want it this to be how do you want to get to the stage what do you think we do about and i asked everybody and louis ck gave me some of the best advice like louis told me to lower the ceilings yeah i shortened the stage in the smaller room he told me like to deaden the sound as much as possible everybody wants that echo because it makes it sound like people are killing more you want clear sound right dead right on everything wow because he has a production mind you know he doesn't just have a mind of a comic. He also has a mind of, like, what's the best way to set things up for a film or for us, you know, set the environment.
You feel and notice all that stuff on stage. I was performing recently.
Ceiling's tall. Crowd is full.
Yeah. But where's the laughs going? Am I killing? I feel like I'm doing well, but I'm not hearing it.
Yeah. Now I'm in my head a little bit, right? That's changed my order.
Now I'm doing the bit that I know is going to kill instead of just letting things realize. And it's like all of that matters.
Yeah. All of that matters.
High ceiling is a big thing. It's a problem.
You want to be locked in. I want everybody to be locked in.
The comedy store, the way you just described that, really became my clubhouse. Yeah.
And I was a little bit... I got past there when you were gone for a little while.
And I remember when you came back, it changed dramatically. But LA was really, really tough for me initially upon moving there.
And then all of a sudden you get into a place like that there's a place to drink there's a place to talk shit there's a place to oh my god even just parking yeah right park here and then just hang yeah you know it was it changed the game it changed the game for me so changed the game this episode is brought to you by intuit turbo tax one thing i've learned from doing this podcast is the value of having real experts around. Whether it's someone breaking down complex science, health, or even philosophy, having the right people makes all the difference.
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The moment we've been waiting for, Verdans is back on april 3rd yep you heard me right the iconic map the one that started it all is making its epic return i'm talking superstore chaos rooftop snipers at the hospital at the madness at prison all of it starting april 3rd you can drop back in relive thehem, and feel the adrenaline rush that you've been missing. Whether you're a war zone vet or a newbie, it's your chance to drop in to Verdansk.
New gameplay updates, Verdansk-era weaponry, all the classics, all the chaos. So call up the squad, load up, and get ready for those heart-racing moments that you've been missing verdansk returns on april 3rd don't miss it this is going to be wild download call of duty war zone for free and i'll see you in verdansk rated m for mature all of us yeah having uh like the improv was always a great club to perform at i always perform there laugh Actors fun, but there's something about the store was that was home base And so the idea of doing something like that in Texas Ron White was the first guy to open my eyes to it because Ron had moved here before the pandemic and Ron's like it's in the middle of country I don't have to fucking fly for six hours It's like the place are cool.
I'm like, fuck, can I live in Texas? Because I always wanted to get out of L.A. Because I felt like, especially when my kids were young, I was like, I've been through this with my older daughter.
I was like, I don't think L.A. is a good place for children.
I don't think it's a good place for young people. I think it's just filled with too many bizarre ambitions and creeps.
And it's just like people are devalued because there's so many of them. Yeah, it's too overwhelming Yeah So I'd always thought about getting out and then the pandemic hit and then Ron White was the one to talk me into Open up the club like we were doing local shows at the Vulcan And we had talked about maybe opening up a club like maybe we should buy a club here and then Ron White got off stage He hadn't been on stage in like seven or eight months and he murdered he got a standing ovation when he on stage and it turned out he he was playing it off he had practiced all day gone over his notes and he's just fucking professional right just murdered and then he grabs me by the shoulders he goes whatever the fuck we have to do we're gonna keep doing this you can open up that goddamn club was like okay yeah okay okay always a great hang hang.
I mean, at the comedy store, he didn't know me and he would just hang. He's the best.
He's the elder statesman of the Austin comedy scene. He's the best.
He's such a good guy and he's always around. With Ron, we had Ron, we had Tony Hinchcliffe, and then Tom Segura moved here, and Christina Pazitsky, and then the floodgates opened.
Tim Dillon. Everybody started coming.
It's a tidal wave, dude. And then Shane Gillis moved here, and he brought the whole Philly crew, and there's all these killers.
It's like Duncan moved here. It's like it just became so fun.
It became so fun. And all these things had to happen for it to take place like that.
Yeah. The comedy store had to lose guys like Adam.
They had to fire everybody. So these people were all unemployed.
So I hire them. And I brought them over here.
It wasn't even a club yet. I was like, I'll pay you now.
You can start getting paid now. You have health benefits, all the jazz.
Just enjoy the city. Just have a good time.
In a year or so, I'll call on you. And so then we started working.
I mean, I've been texting Adam for a long time, and I was like, yes, something is happening, but we don't know when. But not to come back and excited to walk through it.
Yeah, a lot of people dismissed it. It's not going to happen.
But it was going to happen. When you're an outsider looking at your plate, there's a lot on it.
Yeah, but this was important. It was also, if I'm not going to do it, who's do it You know, it's one of those things where if you have an opportunity to do something very unusual and you don't do it Well, then what does nobody ever do anything unusual? Yeah, fucking do everyone just always either goes to New York or LA and that's it For it was also we had so many people like Brian Simpson.
He moved out here early Derek Post and Hassan Ahmad They all moved out here early. We had so many killers that were already here.
We were already doing shows, sold out shows at the Vulcan, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights. Kill Tony was there on Mondays.
We were already doing weekend shows. It was a no-brainer.
We knew we could do it. That's sick.
But it was a little scary. It's a little scary.
Dump a bunch of money, buy a building, renovate the whole thing for a year and a half. The decisions alone? It's a lot of decisions.
A lot of decisions. Doorknobs, carpets, lights, ceiling, drywall.
We had a really good architect that helped, too. Shout out to Richard.
Richard Wise. But at the end of the day, really what it was all about was a lot of great timing.
Great opportunity and great timing. Yeah.
And then doing it the right way from the beginning yeah make it as comedy friendly as possible and just make an environment where people like like to be there yeah yeah nice friendly people everybody's having fun everybody's like real supportive and i love that yeah it's great and comics to their credit i think naturally are non-conformist and i love that they'll jump at a new opportunity. They're not like all tied.
So, you know, yeah, Joe's opening a club. We'll go.
Boom. Done.
And people moved here. It's like nuts to hear.
I can't believe how often. I was texting with Adam.
He said, who do you want to be opening for you this weekend? I said, send me some names. Send me all the names.
I'm like, this feels like all comedy store names. Yeah.
These are all in Austin. Holtzman's there all the time.
Holtzman lives here now. He's here all the time.
That's crazy. He was fucking killing the other night.
Now, Holtzman has a crowd here now. Yeah.
So instead of Holtzman going up at 2 o'clock in the morning in the main room when there was no one there and the comics sit in the back of the room and laugh, now he's got sold out shows and people come to see Holtzman yeah and he's doing different material like every night that's great it's amazing yeah he's got a crowd now and he can make money in town right which is huge he doesn't have to travel he doesn't have to do the road and he is doing the road a little bit too now which is unique for too. It's really funny because he puts up these videos of people getting offended.

He does? I haven't seen it. Yeah, on his Instagram, it's people getting offended and screaming at him and walking out of his show.
Because they don't get it. Yeah, yeah.
But once you see him a couple of times and you get what he's doing, then we have what we have in Austin now. Where people, you know, when Holtzman's there, it sells out.
They're coming to see Holtzman. It's fun.
There's nothing more beautiful than a person talking into a microphone causing a reaction to a group. Yeah.
It's beautiful. It's nuts.
It shows how powerful words and energy and communication can be. It's like you let that person make you that mad.
And this person didn't touch you or hit you yeah that's wild right that is wild to think that that that we have that ability especially with Holtzman because he lets you in on it every now and then right he's doing right he comes back right it's like you he's he does this very beautiful dance of like letting you in on it and then going right back to the fucking guy yeah yeah yeah well it's fucking great, it's fucking great. I'm looking forward to performing there.
So that's sweet. You're going to have a good time.
Did you bring people to open with you or you got local people? I think we got local. I'm not 100% sure, but I didn't bring people with me.
We have a lot of good local people. Well, that's the thing.
It's like you could bring somebody or you're in a community where there's great comedy. Yeah.
So I'd much rather do that. Yeah.
And you'll have a great hang. The green room is really great.
Okay. It's a great hang.
We have Mae West's couch in there that Peter Shore gave me. It's Mitzi's.
She had it in her house. And so we had it reupholstered.
Oh, that's hilarious. So in the green room, this beautiful pink couch, that's Mae West's couch.
Okay. Amazing.
Yeah. So the bones of it are Mae West's couch.
West right that's great yeah and so we have Rodney Dangerfield's handwritten notes on the wall from his last tonight show special so it's all the different bits that he wanted to hit and all the different things that he wanted to talk about and then Patrick bet David gave me one of Lenny Bruce's microphones holy sure we have Lenny Bruce's microphone framed on the wall above the monitors I feel like Lenny Bruce Not enough comics understand what the road he paid for everybody else, you know, it's like it's it's it's known that he did that but He's the oh he was the OG He's okay. That's that's that's what I'm trying to say.
He the first guy to go to jail. He was going to jail.
He fucking arrested him. A bunch of times.
That is insane. For stuff that is nothing.
Today, it wouldn't even get you kicked off TikTok. But we still had the First Amendment at that time.
So that's what's so interesting to me. Yeah.
The interpretation of or the enforcement of has. That's wild.
Well, this is the role. Same constitution.
Yeah. Same constitution.
wild well this is the role same constitution yeah same constitution well this is the role that comedy plays in free speech because we are really one of the only countries that has the kind of free speech that we have the declaration when we when we have the first amendment that's it's talks very specifically the very first one about our ability to express ourselves how important that is yeah but if you're a comedian and you can't do that like if someone's deciding what you get well that sets the boundaries for everything else if he didn't do that if he wasn't doing that in the 50s and the 60s yeah and getting arrested yeah like who knows where free speech would be today what was he arrested on profanity you could be arrested on profanity yeah he was arrested on profanity charges yeah they had profanity laws back then we're in public places you you couldn't have it and you know different places in different different districts had different regulations but well no I i'm sure in san francisco where he

started he probably could do whatever he wanted and then it you know as you travel and you start and then it became more and more popular obscenity obscenity this reminds me of profanity obscenity um so here it is uh we're in oh so he's he was arrested at the jazz workshop in san francisco which is even crazier, in 1961, where he used the word cocksucker and said that to is a preposition, come is a verb. That the sexual context of come was so common that it bore no weight, and that if someone hearing it became upset, he probably can't come.
Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under obscenity charges. Yeah, but Joe, see, although a jury acquitted him, I'm just wondering, like, was he actually breaking a law or were they just hassling him by arresting him? Because he can't...
Dude, they arrested him for saying schmuck. Go back to that real quick.
But I'm saying, what do you charge somebody with? Well, this was the obscenity charges. Like they said, if you go back to that Wikipedia page, look at that.
This is crazy. He said, Sherman Block later became the county sheriff.
The charge this time was that the community used the word schmuck, an insulting Yiddish word that was also considered a term for penis. Oh my my gosh the Hollywood charges were later dismissed right? So this was in Philadelphia and then Los Angeles and then West Hollywood in West Hollywood He was arrested imagine the place where the comedy store resides right now He was arrested just ten years before Richard Pryor was performing live in the Sunset Strip I mean what about the one in Philly is What's that, Jimmy? The gay drug possession.
Yeah, he did a lot of drugs. Yeah, well...
That's a fact. I would do a lot of drugs if I got arrested every time I said schmuck.
So Live in the Sunset Strip, I think, was 81 or 82. Is that correct? What year was Live in the Sunset Strip? Because I was in high school.
I remember that. 66.
I have that poster. That Lenny Bruce poster.
There's a lot of Lenny Bruce love out out night. Yeah, which is so cool.
Yeah, I have a lot of Lenny Bruce stuff out there I look he was the guy and it's hard when you listen to his stuff today because most of it Yeah, it's kind of trite like we've we've heard all the premises before it's because he's he broke the ground You have to remember people were so innocent in 1961 The culture was so different that what he was saying was groundbreaking. I fell into that trap.
You know, I was like, I'm not really digging it. I'm not enjoying it.
But it's like you have to really think about where we were then. Sure.
If you listen to Shakespeare talk, you're probably like, this guy's a retard. What the fuck? What, thou dost not? Like, shut up.
But it's like in the the context of 1961 what he was doing was it was akin to a lot of things that were to come like the anti-war movement the civil rights movement all these things were bubbling up about this freedom of exploring ideas and expressing yourself. But in comedy it had just been two Jews walking to a bar, you know, it'd been jokes set up punchline the Italian says the Polish guy, right?

It would been a lot of that stuff ideas and expressing yourself. But in comedy, it had just been two Jews walking to a bar.
It had

been jokes. It was set up punchline.
The Italian says to the Polish guy, it would have been a lot of that stuff. And so he came along and was like, why do we have these words that are forbidden? Why do we have this? Why is that? Why can't people be in love this way? Why can't that happen? And it was like, people were like, Jesus, why can't we? And he changed the way people thought about life, not just about comedy.
And then I think Richard Pryor came along and made it way better. Yeah, made it funnier.
But also what fascinates me so much about that with Lenny Bruce is it was this. It's the same First Amendment that we have right today.
Yeah. Yeah.
And those words have not changed. but society has or its interpretation has or its enforcement has.

That's wild.

Yeah.

That's wild.

The enforcement is the thing.

Right.

And then the concept of obscenity charges.

Obscenity charges are very subjective, right?

Who is to decide what's obscene?

To me, schmuck is not obscene.

It's kind of cute.

If someone calls you a schmuck, it's probably a friend of yours.

Right.

You know, hey, you fucking schmuck.

Right.

It's not a, I mean. No, I don't I don't arrested for schmuck.
That's crazy What is this Jamie? Law came from a court case. Well, this is 73 though.
This is what I typed in word of the obscenity laws and say no I understand but this is 73 because you know he was 61 So what does it say there the ruling go scroll up at the top a little bit?. It says a landmark decision of the U.S.
Supreme Court clarifying the legal definition of obscenity as material that lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. The ruling was the origin of three-part judicial tests for determining obscene media content that could be banned by government authorities, which is now known as the Miller test.
So here's the thing to think about this. Miller Test is actually quite relevant right now.
It's coming up a lot. Oh, is it? Miller Test, yes.
For what? First Amendment stuff. I just heard something about it.
That's interesting. Yeah, it is interesting.
Because the thing about this is, this is probably all in response to all the anti-war activists and all of the whole hippie, freedom of speech flower child movement i did a piece for the daily show after biden won and this woman in um new jersey had up 10 15 flags fuck biden fuck joe biden fuck joe biden flags was in a certain was on a path to a school. And a lot of parents said, take down the flag.
She said, it's my First Amendment right. Got all messy.
The city made her take it down. She refused.
NAACP popped in to defend her, saying it was her right as a Biden as a political figure. But then it became an obscenity.
It was a very interesting piece. And I spoke to her and she was very outspoken.
And my whole take was like, hey, just maybe let's say legally you can put those flags up, but it's just kind of shitty. Right.
And she was like, fuck you. I'm gonna put my flags up.
But interesting when obscenity mixes in with school kid what is that now right um right especially figure public figure if it says fuck tony or fuck michael that's different than fuck joe biden the sitting president united states right all fascinating yeah it is it's also it's like you know what do you want to see in your neighborhood like do you really i don't like people putting those fucking stupid signs on their lawns. My parents were diehard liberals.
They were living in Florida at the time. And this is during 2016.
And my mom was complaining, every time I put my Hillary Clinton sign, someone takes it down. I'm like, you're in Florida.
Why are you putting Hillary Clinton signs on your lawn? But to my mom, it might as well be like she was supporting the Miami Dolphins. You know, that was her team.
Her team was the Democrats. Well, I was just going to say, I don't like when a kid is wearing a Dolphins hat or a Yankees hat, because I'm like, we as adults have put that on the kid.
Well, maybe the kid is just a fan of the sport, though. It's possible, but Dad probably made him do it.
Maybe. Maybe the kid just likes us.
That doesn't bother me at all. There's nothing wrong with supporting teams.
But there's a real problem when it's how the whole country's run, and you're thinking about it like a team. That's kind of ridiculous.
And people that put those fucking signs in their lawn, like, settle down. Just, why? Why? It's just like you're like right in the yard right in the front of your house where's the point like those people that like science is settled this is this love is love black lives matter like okay who was the who was the supreme court justice with the flags got in the whole fucking neighborhood fight with the flags had the white flag with the green pine tree on it and that was Christian nationalism or had ties to it whatever but I'm saying the white flag with a green pine tree is Christian nationalism? Wasn't it? I don't know.
I don't know about this. Do you know what I'm talking about this? No.
What was this? Do you remember Jimmy? Jamie? I'm working it up. It's Jim Alito, I think.
Samuel Alito. It was, I thought it was maybe Roberts, but his wife, and then he's, and then, there it is.
An appeal to heaven. So that flag was flying, and you can see there the Boston Globe, that's his New Jersey, the one right underneath that, Jamie.
That's his New Jersey house, beach house.

And that got put up.

But this was all because neighbors started fighting about their signs.

What is that an appeal to heaven?

What does that mean?

I don't know.

What's that flag supposed to represent, Jamie?

Huh.

But interesting that our Supreme Court justice got involved in one of these sign fights. And they called him out on it and he said it's my wife uh it's just fucking hilarious right my wife my wife did it my wife's a christian nationalist yeah is that a christian nationalist thing what a call to heaven i don't know what that i we'll find out i i've never even heard of it until just now took it San Francisco City Hall.
Oh, really? Probably part of the same issue. Well, what does it mean? It has to do with the colonies, it said.
What? Revolutionary War. Okay.
The flag was originally used during the American Revolutionary War, flown by George Washington's cruisers, and is associated with the early quest for American independence. It's since been adopted by a different group, one that doesn doesn't represent the city's values So we made the decision to swap it with an American flag

Well, first of all, you probably should have the American flag there anyway. You shouldn't have to have swap it

How about have American flag everywhere you motherfuckers?

Yeah, but

January 6th 2022 videos and photos show the some supporters of former President Donald Trump waving the appeal to heaven flag. Oh, they ruined it.
Just like the Nazis ruined the swastika. The swastika, which was a Buddhist thing.
That's one flag on all those right there. Where is it? Oh, yeah, an appeal to heaven.
So what is it? So it's because it's Trump supporters now? Is that why? That's why? I don't know why Alito put it up, but I remember it being something to do with, homeowners associations all were mad at each other and they put the flag up. He threw his wife right under the bus.
Look at this. My wife is fond of flying flags.
I am not. Alito wrote, my wife was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the air.
How many Palestine flags you fly?

Wide variety? Got a lot of Ukraine flags flying in your house? What kind of flags you got? It just makes me laugh that, look, this is the petty shit that normal Americans get in. Supreme Court justice, just get out of it.
Yeah, I don't know about that flag. This is the first time I've ever seen that.
But it's just a thing that people do. They want to let you know what they support and what they don't.
Yeah. Yeah.
We love telling people what we believe. And it's very important that we feel like we have beliefs.
And it's when we start sharing them that. Well, you find out other people don't agree.
You find out other people might not agree with you. And this gets back to grit and toughness.

Well, this also gets back to the importance of your show, The Daily Show.

Because The Daily Show, especially under the tutelage of Jon Stewart when he's running the helm,

it's so balanced at pointing out ridiculous shit all over the place, which I think is so important.

That's the goal.

That's the aim.

So smart. And when we do it right, I love it.
And, you know, it is every day. So sometimes you do it right and you're thankful.
You pat yourself on the back. But guess what? There's a show tomorrow.
Yeah. And I think we benefit.
Man, so many. I'll take when I host so many questions.
I'll take questions from the audience. And so many so many people go like Michael how do you hold yourself to journalistic integrity when you and I go what I'm a fucking comedian this is on comedy central I'm not a journalist the fact that you just because you see us as informative which I'm thankful for and the fact that you come to us for information which I'm thankful for but I'm it's a little terrifying though right don't ever forget lady i'm not a journalist yeah i'm not in you know the war zone i'm a clown yes my job is to put all this shit into a comedy machine and crank out some type of sausage and feed it to you but it's nuts that comedy central daily show is considered journalism yeah or people will stop me on the subway and go, like, thank you for what you're doing.
And I'm going, I'm trying to just make you laugh. Is that what you mean? It's not what they mean, though.
They mean, like. Fighting the good fight.
Fighting the fight. Decompressing the.
Fascists. Right.
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Visit manscaped.com and use the code ROGAN for 20% off plus free shipping. That's 20% off plus free shipping worldwide with the code ROGAN at manscaped.com yeah and comedy also can make you consider something so like if you have an opinion and you go out there and state your opinion eloquently like i could be there well i disagree i have a different opinion yeah but if you go out there with that opinion you make me laugh with something i don't even necessarily agree with.
Dude, that's the best.

And then you go, oh, he's got a fucking point. He's got a fucking point.
I mean, that is the magic trick. Yes, that's the magic trick.
That's the magic trick of comedy, and The Daily Show does that great. But I remember one time sitting with my wife at the comedy store.
Tiger Woods had just like, you know, all of that shit came out, the cheating, the voicemails. I mean, he was like, you know, maybe arguably one of the more promiscuous husbands of all time.

And Burr goes up and he starts defending Tiger.

Right.

And I'm watching.

I'm feeling my wife's energy.

Like, I'm like, Bill, don't do this, dude. Like, you're defending this guy who is in the heat of all the hatred.
And as I watch the joke, I feel her relax. Now, at the end, she's laughing.
And I'm like, you just did the fucking magic trick. Yeah.
You did the trick. He's one of the best at it.
You took the level of difficulty at its highest. Yeah.
We were all of us were against you. You did it.
And that's that's the shit. That's as as there is yeah well it's a beautiful thing if you could turn a controversial subject into something hilarious yeah at least puts people's guard down for a second yeah i think they'll see through it if they feel like it's just you're truly trying to trick them into a message if your real goal is to entertain and laugh that yeah that's uh you know i i heard i was researching sauna stuff a lot because i was building this sauna last summer and i read that in finnish culture a lot of the politicians won't even start negotiating or talking until they're like fucking scorched in the sauna and i thought that was really interesting because comedy, you know,

I don't know how truthful it is,

but I know there is a lot of pictures of...

It's a good move.

I just...

You all suffer together.

Right.

And then you come back to being a human.

Comedy kind of does that too.

It's like if we're all laughing,

we at least have that in common.

If we're all sweating

and having a hard time with this moment,

we're human.

I love that.

I think that's pretty cool.

It's a human moment. It's a human moment.
I mean, you're literally dying. You're dying in there.
You can't stay there forever. You've got about 20 minutes, and then you've got to get the fuck out, and you're like, whoa.
Yeah. And now you can all be human together.
That's a good move. It's something really nuts to me about the dry heat of a sauna that I don't understand completely, but it really fixes a lot of shit in me.
know another good thing about the having the politicians go in the sauna what we can kill off a lot of the old Yeah Mitch McConnell ain't gonna make it. There's no fucking way There used to be a world sauna championships and then a guy died.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that kept pouring water on it If you can't the rocks Yeah, like they were pouring like a liter of water on every I I don't know what the time, but I heard that.
I was like, oh my God. And it was like 200 plus degrees.
What's your sauna, how would you advise me to get the most out of my sauna? 20 minutes? Yeah, 20 minutes is good. Cool off and come back in? You can if you like.
I don't necessarily do that all the time I'll do like one day a week I go cold plunge sauna cold plunge sauna I go back and forth yeah usually I start with sauna I always end with cold plunge if I do three cycles whatever it is you end with cold plunge because you want your body to fight to To warm it back up yeah, so you just shocking the shit out of your system but the Finnish studies that have showed the more people do it, the more effective it is in terms of what they studied was they found that when people over the course of 20 years use the sauna four times a week, they had a 40 percent decrease in all cause mortality. Traze everything strokes cancer heart attack everything because your body is becoming far more resilient and you're also developing all these heat shock proteins and eliminating inflammation

clearing Everything. Strokes, cancer, heart attack, everything.
Because your body is becoming far more resilient,

and you're also developing all these heat shock proteins

and eliminating inflammation, clearing out your system,

and then you're rehydrating afterwards.

Very, very good for you.

And you're also not on the phone.

Yes, you're also not on the phone,

although I do have a Bluetooth speaker in there.

You can get some Bluetooth speakers.

I got one called Not A Brick. It's a really good one.

It can take the heat of a sauna.

And so I listen to books on tape when when i'm stretching sweating my brains out i was in my sauna all by myself and it's very quiet i'm in the woods in pennsylvania and this fucking buck just walks right in front and it was just me and him i don't know if you saw her or smelt or whatever but it was like crazy oh that's cool just to watch you know what that's like um what's it called i'm not a hunter what's it called when you just kind of go to watch and see where they're gonna be is that called something yeah observation yeah sure nature it was like yeah just opening your eyes but that's it was wild to see that yeah it's cool isn Very, very cool. Wildlife is wild, and especially if you don't expect it.

Like you're sitting in the sauna and the deer's right there.

What's going on here?

I'm really thankful about the government doing it there.

They apparently drink alcohol in the sauna.

It's not a great idea.

They get drunk before they go in.

I like that, too.

I love a long drink, iconic Finnish gin mixed drink that's basically a Tom Collins in a a can but way better because it's being sipped in a sauna with newfound sauna friends that's cool that's cool that's a great move yeah like something that makes you more human you suffer together yeah you're and you you you also are yeah you're focusing on a thing that isn't this result that we need or want yeah this should probably take all the congress people and make them run a tough mudder together you know go through the mud fucking climb ropes and shit go over obstacle courses great i've actually found my wife and i when we do a sauna you know there's always stuff you got to talk about with the family logistics there's always things to argue about but we'll go in there and we just both start sweating and then it's kind of just like eases the tone eases the conversation yeah which is helpful yeah. Yeah, no one's real loud in the sauna.
Yeah. You just chill.
Yeah. We're both suffering together.
Yeah, just suffering. Yeah.
That's interesting. Yeah.
I think it should be a part of everybody's life. And there's, by the way, if you can't afford it, they make a sauna blanket that is one of our sponsors.
It's really good. I've used that thing before.
It's great. You just climb inside this fucking blanket and you can bring it on the road with you.
And you sweat it off. It doesn't weigh that much.
You carry it and it'll heat you the fuck up and it'll give you the heat shock proteins. I like a dry sauna better.
I like being in a sauna. But if you want to travel or if you don't have the resources or a place for it, those things are great.
Hot baths are great too. Hot baths after a workout

supposed to increase muscle.

It's tough to find sauna though

in a lot of American cities.

Yeah.

When I go on the road,

I'm always trying to find.

Cold tubs are more frequent now.

Really?

They're more frequent now.

But it's hard to-

You know the way to do the cold plunge

is you do it before you work out.

That's the real move. Oh, no shit.
Yeah, move that really increases testosterone too and also it increases your work output because your muscles are like pre-chilled I would think it would be easy to get injured no you just warm up so I go through a series of things that I do that are like pretty low intensity I do 20 kettlebell swings and then I do 20 pushups. Then I do 20 bodyweight squats and I do a cycle of five.
So I do a hundred swings, a hundred pushups, a hundred bodyweight squats. And by the time of that, that's like probably 15 minutes.
By the time that's over, I'm sweaty. I'm ready to go.
And then I go into everything else. Dude, I want to show you this picture.
I know that, know this lake house i have nice uh new year's eve i don't want to kill our time with this but when do you get to show joe rogan this pic so let me find it this is new year's eve dude cut a hole in the lake oh with an axe and i'm just in the lake to try to do three minutes. That's a safety rope, which I don't know if that could even help me if I fucking pass out.
That's nice. Doing a cold plunge in nature.
Yeah. Not just a tub.
Love the tub, too. But, man, I fucking love it.
I was in Utah. I feel amazing after that.
Utah. And they had a creek running through a glacier creek creek, freezing cold.
Yeah. I climbed in that bitch in my underwear and got up to my neck.
That's good stuff. It's nice.
It's like something about doing it in nature, too. It's like you're even more connected to everything.
Oh, totally. Yeah.
Yeah, very cool. Just get in that cold water and breathe.
I get like a weird high after, for sure. Oh, for sure.
It lasts for hours. It increases your dopamine by 200%.
And it lasts for hours. So why is it that healthier than doing a drug that increases your dopamine? Well, because it's natural.
Natural. Yeah, it's natural.
Also, it gives you something in terms of mental resilience. It gives you like an exercise.
That exercise is very difficult, especially for the first minute. It's hard.
First minute, your body's like, let's get the fuck out of here. And it keeps talking to you and you're like, shut up, bitch.
And then after a minute, that calms down and you can breathe clean. You start getting those rhythmic breaths in and out and just keep your shit together for three minutes.
And then when you get out, you're like, ah do typically three minutes so it's like one there's the feeling like i did it which feels great like i didn't bitch out i actually did the three minutes but then there's like this euphoric feeling as your body just your norepinephrine your dopamine everything elevates you just feel wonderful patience great my patience is killer yeah kids i'm smiling more oh that's fine you can draw on the wall yeah whatever it's like that part of your brain got exhausted the part of your brain that's dealing with like real adversity so like little kids adversity is nothing it's not you're not freezing to death they're just like yeah it's my crayon right come on guys right let's get along i i it's it's been a super benefit to. The problem living in New York is I don't get to cold plunge as much as I want to.
Well, they have stuff that you can do. You can do it in your tub if you can get ice.
Ice, do the ice thing. And they also have these coolers that you can plug in.
And you could do, like, if you have one of those big Yeti coolers, you can climb in that. And you'll put a hose there and a cooler and it'll bring that down to 40 degrees.
And you can just get in a Yeti cooler. I bet you could do it in a bathtub, too.
I bet they figured out how to attach an engine to that. Do they have one? Yeah, they do have one.
Jamie knows it. So how does it work? I'll show you, but there's just a little motor thing you attach.
So that's perfect. if you just have a bathtub you're golden and actually do you know if you live in an apartment that has a tub Yeah, you have a cold plunge now or if you don't have that get yourself a Yeti cooler Yeti makes some giant ass coolers like from people hunt caribou and shit.
I just typed in bathtub cold plungers. Yeah, there it is So you just have this thing.
It plugs in. It cools everything off.

And you climb it.

How cold does that motherfucker get?

39 degrees.

Perfect.

It's crazy that now-

Never buy ice again.

Two-year warranty.

We're such comfort zones as humans now that we have to pay $800 to cool our water to get into it.

Yeah, it's a bit of an issue.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're pussies.

We're pussies now.

We've made life very easy, which is wonderful. It's better than being hard.
I don't want to live in the fucking that's right your days what the point was is to make it easy yeah and sugar and fat readily available at all times you have to carry a sword with you everywhere dude i love going to the um natural history museum in new york and look going to the armor jesus christ It's like what these motherfuckers had to wear and use and carry.

Did you ever see that?

To defend themselves is nuts.

From, I think it's Waterloo.

One of the battles, one of the French soldiers got hit with a cannonball in the chest.

And they have the armor that has the hole in the chest like in the cannonball out the

back exploding outward look at that dude look at that yeah that's like the battle of waterloo that guy got hit with a cannonball in the chest and i bet you his armor salesman was like i'm gonna upsell this guy on and he's like no i don't want the upsell then that's he should he should have Monsieur, I'm telling you, this armor, no cannonball.

That is a great reminder of what society and life used to be like god damn man look at that one on the other one Jamie no but the one to the left where you see the exit right to the left of that yeah right there you see the exit hole Jesus Christ boom blew right through this guy's body his armor his chest out the back that's crazy size of a softball oh oh yeah it's pretty up super fucked that was life back then it's better and that's a guy that could have had armor it's probably a high high ranking person yeah. Yeah, right.
He got hit.

That's a wrap, son.

But you got to think that those people would have much rather lived today with all this comfort.

Oh, my God.

The problem is you just can't rely on it too much.

You can't live for comfort.

That's stupid.

You got to have voluntary discomfort.

That'll help you get through this life.

That's a good way to put it that those people would pick today for sure.

Thank you. have voluntary discomfort yeah that'll help you get through this life that's a good way to put it that those people would pick today for sure fuck you know i went you know i remember like i went to the museum of medical oddities in philadelphia and they were doing a whole thing on dysentery and it was like oh most people in the civil war died of that yeah they didn't die of like wounds and it was like wild that of course if you were a soldier today you don't you don't die of dysentery that's insane right but they would put the kitchen near the toilet and it was like and what kind of water you drinking water all that shit.
So no iodine tablets back then. Yeah.
No Stere pens to clean your water. What's the, what's the one I used? I did the Appalachian trail last year.
Not all, just a few days. And I forget the thing I would filter the water with.
It was great, man. There's such cool stuff like that.
Oh yeah. I mean, millions of those things.
Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that will filter'll filter water make it drinkable and there's all these cool appalachian trail communities that leave stuff for people along the trail so it's like i remember i was just like dying i'm like no more snacks blood sugar's dropping i have water but it's just like i'm in it i'm doing the difficult thing and then you get to this cooler and it's like from this appalachian joke up and it's just like gummy bears in there oh jesus christ nice that's cool that's cool they have that set up yeah but it's a weird thing to choose to do to go for a long walk that doesn't appeal to serial killers i mean there there are some famous murders that have happened on the appalachian Trail.
But I felt very safe.

Did you?

Yeah, I mean,

I loved the idea.

I was alone.

I loved the idea

of finding a place to sleep

that's in the middle of nowhere.

I love that shit.

Dude, I'd be super nervous.

Something about the woods.

Really?

The woods are dangerous at night.

Here's what's crazy

about the Appalachian Trail,

at least where I was in Jersey.

Most of the time,

I had cell service.

Oh, wow.

So I'm like in my tent answering texts. And I'm like...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Jordan Jonas won alone. He's been on the podcast.
Yeah, he's been on the podcast. Yeah, that's right.
One lost. Shot a moose with a bow and arrow.
I think he killed a wolverine with a hatchet. Yeah, with a hatchet.
Stealing his meat. So my wife bought me a week with the survival camp with him and a bunch of other people.
And it was just like, one of the things that one of the conclusions I and we came to while we were up in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho was at least once a year. We all need to be doing something where we are embedded with nature.
And this might sound silly to somebody who goes hunting or somebody who's already doing this. But if you're living a city life, going to the park is not really experiencing nature.
Well, it is a little. Tiny bit.
It's nature. I mean, it's contained nature, but it's real nature.
You see squirrels and birds. It's good for you.
It's good for you to sit under a tree. Hell yeah.
There's ticks. There are ticks.
There are ticks, man. Ticks are wild.
Fleas, ticks. Your dog's going to get fleas.
Yeah, ticks are a bitch, especially on the East Coast because of Lyme disease, which turns out was man-made. What? Turns out there's a lot of real evidence that Lyme disease, which turns out was man-made.

What? Turns out there's a lot of real evidence that Lyme disease was, it was weaponized and that it leaked out of a lab. And it came out of a lab called Plum Island, which was close to Lyme, Connecticut.
And RFK Jr. firmly believes that this was a weapons program.
And what they were going to do is develop these fleas and ticks with a disease that spreads rapidly, wipes out the medical system of a community. So you could dump them from a plane.
Everybody gets infected, overwhelms their medical system, and then they're more vulnerable if you want to attack them. That just doesn't seem very thought through, though.
Well, there's some less thought through ones. There's one that they were developing at one point in time.
I don't know where they got with it, but there was talk of them developing a bomb that they would detonate over cities that would blind everybody. Holy shit.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Imagine that.
Imagine you detonate that and then you have 300,000 blind people. Isn't it amazing what we can do in a positive light and also what we can do in a negative light? Oh, we're scary.
And we're scary in our ability to justify these things. You know, that's what's really crazy.
We're scary in our ability to decide that these people are the other, so we should bomb them into oblivion. And like, yeah, we're winning.
Like, oh my God. Like, what are you talking about? You don't even know those people are the other so we should bomb them into oblivion and like yeah We're winning like oh my god like what are you talking about? You don't even know those people the other is a is a Effective strategy well, it's it built in to our our tribe tribal brains is that right? Yeah We had Darryl Cooper on the podcast yesterday who's he runs a podcast called martyr made and one of the things he talked about was oxytocin.
And he was like, it's really interesting because oxytocin makes you really deeply love your family and your community. And this is what women get when they have children and men get when you're in love.
But it also makes you very hostile to outsiders. Crazy.
It's like it protects the people that you love and that are vulnerable. but it makes you very hostile to outsiders.
Crazy. It's like it protects the people that you love and that are vulnerable, but it makes you very protective of the outside.
So you are less likely to trust strangers, less likely to trust other people. And it probably served an enormously benefit.
It was probably very beneficial. In the caveman days, you had to have it.
Yeah. You had to have it.
There was no friendly people coming over with spears, you know, they found you and you had women and food like you're fucked. Right.
And that was most of our evolutionary existence. Most of the time from leaving the savannas and, you know, experimenting with different foods and becoming human beings.
We were fighting. And that's got to be undone as long as it took to make that which is a very long time yeah that's being undone yeah yeah well slowly but surely and with if we all give in to our god ai we'll be fine we all just need to submit to the chip and become a part of the hive mind and everyone's going to read each other's minds they know more secrets and there would be no more no more violence they really want us to do AI oh yeah I mean it is like it's inevitable man I know but even even I write an email now and it's like you want us to polish this thing and it's like I don't even want you anywhere near me right I know well you they're, they were the first to, uh, wheel out AI with their, uh, galaxy S 24 ultra.
I have two phones. I have an iPhone and I have a galaxy phone.
And I, what I really like about the galaxy phone is if I use Samsung's browser, I can go on websites and it gives me a summary. So instead of like reading this long winded, tell me what you figured out.
And then I can get a summary and then I get into, oh, they've realized that earth is actually blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.
Oh, okay, cool. It's like quicker.
Right. And then it also does a lot of things.
It transcribes things. It translates things in other languages, translates directly into your ear.
If you have the galaxy earbuds, pretty fucking crazy. That's crazy.
Yeah. It's wild shit, man.

And this is just the beginning of this stuff.

I mean, essentially, when you have chat GPT or Grok on your phone, you have access to

the most insane amount of answering power that a human being's ever experienced.

We could ask you questions about what was the reason why Columbus, and

then it'll give you a fucking historical detailed 5,000 word essay on what went down. You're

like, this is nuts.

But it's only as good as the food it's been fed, correct?

Right.

Right.

Well, that's why Google had abandoned theirs. Oh yeah, was that the show me a Nazi or whatever

and it was a beautiful black woman or something?

Yeah, Native American woman, Nazi. It was a Chinese lady, Nazi.

We're coming back. Oh, yeah.
Was that the show me a Nazi or whatever? And it was a beautiful black woman or something? Yeah, it was a Native American woman Nazi. It was a Chinese lady Nazi.
We covered that on the show. That was a trip.
That was just a good example of wokeness and ideology interfering with information. That's crazy.
Nazis look like German men. Make them look like German men, you fucking idiots.
This is dumb. But they won't't say bye-bye they'll just come back with a newer version that doesn't do that certainly they did i mean google gemini is uh one of the search engines i mean if you have an android phone you press that button and you ask google a question it's google gemini so they've fixed that they've fixed that but it's also like how much did you fix it did you get it out 100 is this objective information? If I want to ask a question about a controversial subject, will you give me the real data? Or will you give me some whitewashed bullshit version of it that's supposed to be acceptable today? I want to know what's going on.
My Wikipedia page has said that I'm Greek for as long as I'm alive. Greek women show up to my show.
These beautiful Greek women like they have dessert greek people uh it's never no one's ever fucking checked i'm not greek and but costas is such a i know exactly it makes perfect sense it's it's fits with the ideology or the idea that you know yeah and somebody wrote an article once that i was greek no you know it was like a blog this showed a picture of me. And no one checked.
And it's just kept spiraling. And it's really funny for me.
After the show, these beautiful Greek people come up and they say, we're so happy. And they say, where are your parents from and all this shit? And I go, we're fucking Ukrainian.
I don't want them to tell you. Thanks for the dessert.
Do they get a sourpuss? Do they get a sourpuss? You're not Greek? Or they'll You're not Greek. What's funny is they'll go like, no, he is.
You are one of us. But the internet isn't always right, everybody.
Lots of times it's wrong. Well, the internet is filled with purposeful misinformation today, too.
Especially if you get on social media. Holy shit, man.
So much of what social media is is bots. And I don't think people even really truly understand it.
We've covered it many times before. But there was an FBI, former FBI agent who examined Twitter interactions.
And he estimated as much as 80% of it is bots. It's fake bullshit.
This is like when Elon was buying it and they were trying to say it was 5%. Right.
Because there's no way it's 5%. because if you're an out-of-state actor, if you're a state actor from another country, you're from China, Russia, and you're involved in misinformation campaigns, you're going to be well-sourced.
You're going to be well-resourced. Yeah.
You're going to probably have thousands and millions of accounts. Who knows? You're going to carpet bomb any sort of controversial subject with all sorts of propaganda.
Of course they're going to do that. Of course.
And right now that's totally doable until you all submit to AI. Once you put the chip in your brain, then deception will be impossible.
We will eliminate one of the biggest problems in society. You just have to take the leap of faith.
And there'll be like an infomercial. The leap of faith.
And then you see the guy sitting there. Dude, it's always like the image of AI.
It's always like a door is opening and it's bright light. I know.
Come to Jesus. Yeah.
It's tricky because it's inevitable. They can't not do it because China's going to do it.
The power that AI is going to have over populations and with the distribution of information is going to be unprecedented. Also, you're never going to know what's real and what's not in terms of news stories, because they'll be able to concoct fake news stories that will be indistinguishable.
It'll look just like a real plane crash. It'll look like a real missile hit something.
It'll look like things, and it won't have ever happened, and you won't be able to know. And it's going to get weird.
It's going to get real weird weird we've already seen ai versions of obama talking saying things he never said there's ai versions of trump giving

speeches he never gave this ai versions of me having a podcast with steve jobs and this was

a while ago shit yeah those deep fakes i mean the the there's like the funny one of trump rubbing

elon's feet yeah but it's like those are like so obviously a joke but it's it's uh they're good they had the biden voice calling people and and well there's a lot of uh ai ladies now that are on instagram oh you look at the images you're like oh this isn't a real person right they have the same smile in every picture and they're all in different places and and people are are contacting them and DMing them. And they're probably responding and probably telling you about their grandma's sick and get some money.
Right, get some money. It's not as clear as like, oh, they have three breasts.
This is fake. Yeah, is this the AI? Oh, this is a guy.
The webcam. Wow, this is crazy.
Look at the eyes. You know, it kind of reminds me of like the, my kids watch these shows and the eyes are always so big because the kids pay attention to that.
That is weird. She is pretty.
She's beautiful. It's a dude.
It's a dude on OnlyFans. So that dude will have like beautiful tits and be able to show you the...
Which just sucks because then everybody's jerking off to that. And then...
Is that better than exploitation? I think it is. It's better than exploitation, yes.
So there you go. It's better than real women doing it.
He's not going to think his wife is as beautiful because he's been jerking. But yes, right.
Oh, yeah, there's those problems. Yes, but you're right.
That's better than exploitation. You both have to put the headgear on.
She's having sex with Brad Pitt. You're having sex with Angelina Jolie.
This account is that. It's 1.7 million followers.

And it's totally fake lady.

I think so.

Oh, look.

You see her feet?

She posts tweets that are talking shit, jokes, names, and stuff.

But then there's a bunch of pictures of this fake person.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's weird.

It is weird, man.

And it's going to get weirder.

And you're going to have AI presidential candidates.

AI is going to tell you that we can solve all the world's problems if we just eliminate human interaction. And just let this brilliant AI govern everything and do it in a much more equitable manner.
Yeah, I'm fearful that I don't even know the language to help my kids figure this shit out.

Right.

Because the language hasn't even really been spoken yet.

I mean, I love to advocate for media literacy, push for that, teaching all of us what a more reputable website is or a news source. but that just feels cute compared to what's coming,

what the language of,

of an AI president who offers all solutions. I don't know how to combat that.
Not just that, but an AI that's attached to quantum computing. So once they figure out a way to actually program quantum computing to run AI, you're going to have a god.
That's fucked up, dude. You are.
You're going to have a god. I mean, Mark Andreessen, and I've said this before, I apologize, but Mark Andreessen had a quote about an equation that quantum computing was able to solve, that if you took the entire universe, every molecule, every atom in the universe, and you converted that into a supercomputer, the entire universe would die of heat death before it could solve this problem.
And quantum computing solved it in minutes. Wow.
And the only thing that makes sense to them is that quantum computing is somehow or another tapping into the multiverse. And it's solving this equation using multiple universes and the information available in multiple universes simultaneously.
What? I know. It's hard to even, like, track.
Yeah. And this is just the version of it that we have in 2025.
That we have right now. And so this is an actual thing that's happened.
And so most people aren't even aware what quantum computing means. So once this becomes not just one of these, but hundreds of these, and then they're scalable and they're attached to nuclear reactors, which is what they're proposing, they're going to have their own nuclear reactors, multiple nuclear reactors as power sources, because these things require insane amounts of power to run Then the quantum computing once it becomes sentient is going to develop a much better version of itself Of course and that's gonna scale up and it's gonna like but you know what we're always gonna need plumbing carpentry That's why all this shit feels so intimidating because I can never never wrap my head around that.
But maybe we should be learning real skills and traits.

Well, that would be nice for people.

For people.

But people are going to be obsolete.

You know, that's really what's happening.

It's where we're giving birth to a digital life form that's far superior and doesn't have all the requirements that we have.

And also doesn't have all the flaws that we have.

Yeah.

Doesn't have greed and anger and all the stupid things that we have. Doesn't get tired.
Yeah. Doesn't get jealous.
Doesn't have lust. Doesn't have jealousy and envy.
Isn't, you know, depressed. I think we're far away from that.
Yeah, probably a couple weeks. Yeah, probably more.
The thing is, once it happens, it's going to be so fast. Yeah.
It's going to be so hard to track. If you think the Industrial Revolution, like comparatively, if you look at the history of the human race, you go from Stone Age people to Bronze Age, you go through all the different wars, all the different...
And then in the last 200 years, everything changes radically. Right.
Radically. And in the last 20 years, information changes radically.
This is going to be like 20 seconds. This is going to be like one day.
Right. It's all...
It's up and running, and it's completely in control of everything. It's completely in control of power, completely in control of information, completely in control of transportation.
Water distribution. Every car you have on the road today that's within the last 15, 20 years has computers in it.
Yeah. Our car got totally dismantled because a rat ate a wire.
Oh, yeah, that happens. That fed to the computer.
Everything mechanical was great. But it's like, oh, this shit can't even come close to running without the screen and the software.
It's like, I remember I almost bought a 1968 Dodge Dart and I lived in LA. I lifted up the hood as if i had any clue what i was looking at but there's just like an engine

and a hose yep it's so fucking radiator engine carburetor exactly carburetor it's crazy yeah

and now literally the mechanic goes let me show you the wire and he shows me the wire it's all

bitten with these little tiny rat teeth because they make the wire out of soy and then he takes

me to the back to this enormous dumpster and it's just

Thank you. He goes, let me show you the wire.
And he shows me the wire. It's all bitten with these little tiny rat teeth because they make the wire out of soy.
And then he takes me to the back to this enormous dumpster. And it's just filled with these little electronic wires of everybody in New York that had rats eating their shit.
Wow. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy.
They make them out of soy. I don't know why they would do that.
Maybe because we subsidize soy bean farmers? Probably. I don't know.
Probably. How weird that the rats know that it's food or that they figured it out that it's food or it doesn't isn't really food but it smells like food and they bite into it and they realize this shit sucks it's an electrical wire they can eat everything though they eat each other i had a rat problem in my house once when i lived in encino and i set a rat trap in my garage and I killed this big fat rat and I was tired.
I was like, I don't feel like cleaning this fucking rat right now. I'm going to go to sleep.
And I heard the snap and I went out there. He's a big fucker.
He was a big, big fucker. The rat traps are no joke.
So I got up in the morning and went out to clean the rat trap and he was gone. The only thing that was left was his tail.
had eaten everything it was like some skin and hair but his entire body the rats consumed they ate their buddy they ate their buddy that is fucked up it was fucked up and it made me realize like oh god like this is the reality of what this is these aren't just rodents these are fucking cannibals it's like that when that rugby team crashed in the mountains and they were like, should we start eating each other?

And their religion comes into play and they talk about it and they vote about it.

But the rats are just like, fucking eat it.

Yeah.

They just go right to it.

They didn't even wait a day.

Dude, the rats in New York City have just...

Oh, yeah.

COVID opened the door because everything was shut.

All the trash was out.

They were everywhere.

They went everywhere. And then they still are running.
they're still running shit. And it's not enjoyable.
Have you seen the documentary on Netflix? I don't know. Rats? No.
Oh, God. It talks about how many rats there are in New York City.
Yeah, like eight per person or some shit. Something crazy like that.
Like the biomass is similar. Like the humans and rats, like the amount of humans there are.
The weight of the humans is very similar to them, roughly, the amount of rats. There's fucking millions of them underground.
They live in these little tunnels and they just fucking feed off our garbage. I mean, I remember before COVID, I would stand on the subway platform at my train stop and I would watch the rats on the tracks.
And then the train would come and they would scurry because they'd feel the train coming now they just step off like an inch and the train goes right past them but they're close like they've just got like more confidence and more intelligence more bold more intelligence like they probably the food ran dry during covid so they had to get like a little hyper aggressive i don don't know what went, but it's, yeah, and they're eating your car. Such creeps.
I parked in New York once to get gas. This is in the 90s, before cell phones.
And I went to a payphone to make a phone call, and I was watching the rats while my car was filling up with gas, jumping on the wheel, climbing into the wheel wells. Just trying to figure shit out.
Just jumping all over the outside of my car. I was like, what the fuck? That's crazy.
And that's the 90s. That's the 90s.
It's like, wait, how many did they have then? And they've probably exponentially expanded. So are they just so good at reproducing? They're just that good at it, huh? Well, they're really clever, too.
One of the things they show in this documentary is when they put poison in these areas where these rats are, they send some young, stupid rat to go test it. And they sit back and watch.
That's fucked up. And this young, stupid rat eats it, and you watch.
And I go, yeah, all right. And then they go eat that rat that died.
Right. Yeah.
They're clever little fuckers. I remember.
I thought that's how coyotes hunted. Because we used to golf in Griffith Park in L.A.
and you would see one coyote. And I learned the pack would send out one.
Yeah. Go look.
Check it out. They do it to get dogs.
That's how they get dogs. And the dog will run and then a bunch of other ones will pile onto him.
Yeah. That's fucked up.
Horror a horror movie sorry what's that screen on accident before

rats night of terror 1984 oh yeah it was a goofy ass shit it looks hilarious it's a call rat's night of terror yeah they've always been a fucking terrifying animal man they've always Actually, roaches freak me out more, but rats I at least can sympathize with and understand that they're like living beings with families and shit. But roaches, though, I don't know, man.
That's just the way they fucking are so quiet you don't even know they're there. Well, that's the thing about cities.
They're just infested by all these parasites that live off of the city you know and essentially rats you know if the city didn't exist there was no way there would be that many rats in an area yeah they only exist in a place that doesn't have anything that eats them they don't you know they've tunneled under so they protect themselves from raptors so there's no birds that fly down and snatch them up there's no there are coyotes in new york city but there's not nearly enough to deal with the amount of fucking rats that are there it's gross did you ever see that movie dark days about the people that lived in the subway tunnels oh yeah that's a fucking wild it's like vegas right it was in new york i believe oh right right some of these motherfuckers, like, 500 feet. Yeah, they had, like, opened wires up and spliced into things.
And it's like, you know. Yeah, they have generators down there.
Watching TV and shit. Bizarre, man.
I mean, what a fuck? What keeps you going? You know, there's, like, wealthy people that are committing suicide. Yeah, exactly.
And these motherfuckers are, like, grinding. I mean, this is, like.
In the tunnels, man. This is deep in the tunnels.
And anyone who's lived in New York City, you look down those tunnels and you go, what's down there, man? Right. And every now and then kids go, let's go look.
That's the only part of the trailer of this show. That's fascinating.
There's good monster movies that take place in tunnels too. Yeah.
Because that's always like, you wonder what's down there. Yeah, it'd be a good, wasn't that like the strain?

Wasn't that part

of the vampire lore

that they lived

in the tunnels?

Oh,

I don't know.

But tunnels are creepy,

man.

Oh,

yeah.

When you cross into

complete darkness,

the cities are creepy.

You stack all those people

on top of each other

like that

and everybody's just

walking down the street

together and going down

alleyways and,

you know,

and then the cities today

are so much safer

than they ever were

in the past. Yeah.
You know, like who the fuck wanted to live in the cities in like 1700s dude and like the this they were just like a trough for sewage and then like people would die the plague and they would just throw them in the street i know it's i i never do you live in the city now i live in brooklyn now yeah so it's kind of like city well no it is the city but it's not like manhattan on top of each other do you live in hipster bro? I live in Brooklyn now. Yeah.
So it's kind of like city. Well, no, it is the city, but it's not like Manhattan on top of each other.
Do you live in hipster Brooklyn? I live in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, which is becoming hipster. Bed-Stuy, do or die.
Yeah, it's becoming hipster Brooklyn. That was Mike Tyson grew up.
That's right. They gentrified the shit out of that place, huh? Yeah.
I mean, it's on its way. It's on its way.
And it's not full hipster. Are hipsters anymore well i was just reading something like that about like the people that dress like you know they were like a like a postal employee from the 1700s i always my definition of a hipster was always like dad's money dressed like they don't have money oh okay there's that But what's a hipster? There's that too, but there's also the hipsters that would dress with like curly mustaches and bow ties.
Yeah, those guys. Yeah, so that's not Bed-Stuy yet.
That's Williamsburg. That's kind of died off though.
Hasn't that look kind of died off? Yeah. It has, right? It's died off.
I would say what's more common is the gender androgyny dressing. Oh, yeah.
That's a good move. You can get a lot of pussy that way.
That's a big Brooklyn move. Yeah.
Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's great for comedy.
Oh, yeah. Walking around Brooklyn, the shit you see.
You know, last January, our front door was broken. It didn't lock all the way.
It was broken for 18 hours. Okay? No one knows it's broken.
Just our building. It's only three apartments.
Somebody checks the door. It's not locked.
They go up to our hallway. They steal all my family's winter coats.
Including mine. Okay? This is the heart of January.
So we're as a family. We wake up.
Let's go to the park. Let's do locked.
They go up to our hallway. They steal all my family's winter coats, including mine.
This is the heart of January. So we're, as a family, we wake up.
Let's go to the park. Let's do whatever.
We open the door. This is where we kept our coats in the hallway.
Everything's gone. So it's like, holy shit, it's the middle of January.
All our shit's gone. I call the detective.
The cops come, whatever. He's like, these motherfuckers walk up and down the street every night checking for every door just to see if something is broken year and a half later i've been looking for this one coat that i love the scotch and soda multi uh um color pattern coat i love it i just look it online for my coat right someone's gotta sell my coat so i find it on poshmark the coat i don't know if it's my coat but it's the exact same coat, which you can't find at Scotch and Soda anymore.
I buy it. It comes from my neighborhood, from a woman.
She sends it to me. I put it on.
My wife is like, that is your coat. 100%, that's your coat.
So I fucking bought my coat back from the person that stole it, most likely. Do you know who the lady is? I don't.
I did a Google search and nothing really came up. And I was just like, how hard do I want to fight this?

At least you got your coat back.

I got my coat back.

That's just like the price you pay for living in Brooklyn.

Yeah.

And like it's winter.

And I feel part of me is like, holy shit, someone had to steal our coats.

Right.

That sucks.

Right.

I've never even like.

Right.

I've never even thought about not having a coat.

Having to steal coats.

I have a coat.

I have multiple coats. So there's a part of me that was just like, come ask, I'll give you a fucking coat.
And the part of you was like, oh, they're selling them online. Yeah, fuck you, that's my coat.
They're making a profit. That's the difference between the heartfelt, compassionate view, like, oh, these poor people, they have to steal coats.
Then you're like, oh, actually they're selling selling it so they get fucking heroin money yeah well if that that's the case that sucks yeah it does suck yeah it's a weird thing about living in large communities of people like that there's just too many variables yeah a lot of variables that are not good and like one person affects so many sure the one guy on my street that doesn't do a good job with the trash, it gets knocked over, the wind blows it, the rest of the street picks it up. That's the shit that as you get older, the city starts to fuck, fuck you up.
Yeah. I don't want to pick his trash up anymore.
Yeah. My time is all I have.
I'll pick up my family's trash and my trash. I don't want to pick up that guy's trash.
The one guy who doesn't clean his dog

poo. Right.
Yeah. Right.

And you know it. The little tiny poos.

You're like, motherfucker. I know that's your dog.

I see that little dog.

You sneaky bitch. Pick up the dog poo.

Pick up it up, bro. People don't like carrying around those bags

of turds. No, I mean, it's disgusting.

It's pretty gross, but

it's also like, come on.

You can't just leave shit. You know what's the weird thing to me is the smokers? Because smokers have no problem littering.
That's the weirdest thing. Somehow that got through the litter loophole.
Right. With people that are pretty conscientious.
Like, they would never throw a soda can on the ground. Yeah.
But they'll throw that cigarette on the ground and step on it. They're like, what are you doing? Oh, someone's going to clean that.
Like, what? I hope those are biodegradable, the filters. No.
Right? No. I doubt it.
I'm giving them too much credit. I mean, maybe in like 100,000 years.
How long does it take for a cigarette filter to biodegrade? Let's take a guess. I was thinking that they're not the best reason for it, but if you just throw it in the trash, you could start a fire if you didn't put it out right.
So that could be... No, you step on it, man.
And then you throw it in the trash. People don't step on it right all the time.

I'm just telling you.

If you just.

People are dumb.

So this is a dumb thing we're talking about.

Nah, they're doing it where there's no trash anywhere near them.

They're throwing it down alleyways.

They used to do it in a lot of the comedy store all the time.

Comics would do it.

I'm like, come on, man.

Come on, dudes.

Don't do that.

I bet you it's 200 years for a filter to validate.

Yeah, I would say at least.

If it's like styrofoam or some shit, it's like a thousand.

Yeah, it's a fucking fiberglass or some shit.

By the way, is that even better for you?

18 months to 10 years.

18 months to 10 years.

That's pretty vague.

Yeah.

Depends which one they're using.

That's AI.

You know what I mean?

Oh, it depends on which one.

I'm sure they don't all use the same thing.

Like American spirits probably have like hemp or something like that.

Yeah, those fucking.

Yeah, hippie smokes. Well, hold on.
Now, cellulose. Huh.
Wait, what? I don't know. This is where we're getting into this weird spot of AI.
I was going to bring that up. Google AI stuff fucks up all the time.
Look on the screen. Like it says 18 months to 10 years here.
Right. Oh, yeah.
I go right here. Are cigarettes biodegradable? No, they're not biodegradable.
They're made of plastic called cellulose acetate which can take up to 10 years to break down. Also leach toxic chemicals into the environment.
But it does break down. It's not biodegradable.
So it breaks down. Yeah, it's not It's poison.
It just breaks into smaller toxic pieces. Yeah, it breaks into poison.
Also, if you're smoking a filter and the filter's got toxic chemicals in it. Yeah, exactly.
And you're heating it up. Photodegradable.
That seems like a nice fun term they find. Photodegradable.
Oh, but not biodegradable. What does that mean? Trap residues from smoke, including arsenic, cadmium, and toluene.
Tolune? Oh, who knows? Tolulene? Tolulene? This is the issue with AI. I try not to even, but it's contradicting itself.
I was reading a thing where a professor was talking about the issues that he's having, grading papers and accusing people of using AI. And then it's like, it's just opened up this whole door that they don't know exactly how to deal with.
Because you could get AI and write something and then you could write something similar. You just kind of like twist it around a little bit like a joke thief would do.
And then you're basically using AI to write your papers. But I think AI will sell that professor AI detection software.
Yeah, but if you do a good job of spinning the words around, especially if you're dealing with like historical facts or something that's true, like AI is going to lay it out for you. You have to do zero research.
And if it's like, you just print it in that order slightly differently. I guess the bigger question is, does writing the term paper serve a value at this point if AI can just do it? Right.
You know, I spent a lot of time learning cursive. I mean, what the fuck is that? It's useless.
The thing is, it's like, if you're a student though, if you're really trying to get the most out of your education, it's like, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to get good grades? Are you really trying to get educated? If you're trying to get educated, don't cheat. Actually figure it out.
Actually absorb the information and learn. But if you're not really into that subject and that's not really your thing and you really want to get a degree in this, but you have to take a course in that.
Yeah. And you could like spend an hour working on something instead of 16 hours.
Yeah. Or if you want to be a skateboarder and you got a half pipe outside, have AI do the term paper and go fucking crazy.
Yeah. You don't have to read that fucking giant 1400 page book.
Well, this is good. This is also a bigger question about like our education and public schools and like you're gonna be in the matrix you don't need education they're gonna plaque it in press a button you're gonna be like i know kung fu that's what it's gonna be yeah yeah i mean i i really firmly believe that i also believe it's genetic engineering, so people are going to be unrecognizable.

I think whatever we have coming over the next 100 years is going to make the last 100 years look like a joke. Right.
The change of 1925 to 2025 is pretty extraordinary. It's going to be nothing compared to the change that we experienced by 2125.
Do you think humans will always elevate themselves and speak to a crowd for laughs? That might be the only thing we have left. Because they've always said it's prostitution and comedy.
We're the court jester and the prostitute. I'm curious if we think in the future that'll remain as well.
I hope so. I hope so.
Yeah, it would suck. Well, definitely memes.
Memes will probably get better. That's a good form of comedy.
That's true. There'll be some kind of comedy.
There's always going to be human folly, as long as there's humans. And I don't know how long that's going to last.
That's the real concern. We might be obsolete.
And we might be giving birth to this obsolete thing willingly, signing up for AI if we become obsolete then that means the machines will have to also Figure out how to provide energy to itself But that'll be easy they'll learn they'll just plug this into this They'll do it way better than us just mind the thing and burn the thing and then right Yeah, they'll probably harness some shit. We didn't even think about right it'll be far more efficient.
No carbon footprint. Enough to worry about things breaking down anymore.
And then we'll just slowly die off or whatever. Then they'll put up a shield system to protect us from asteroids.
They'll figure that out. What's that movie where Sylvester Stallone lives in the basement of the Earth or whatever? Judge Dredd? Yeah, maybe it's Judge Dredd.
I am the law. but i feel like it's all these people who refuse the advancement of technology right there's gonna be some of that yeah there'll be a lot of people living in the amazon yeah still eating monkeys yeah the rest the rest of the electrified world is going to be very strange yeah yeah but hopefully we'll still crack jokes, Michael.
That would be great.

Hopefully.

All right, should we wrap this up?

Your book, tell everybody.

My book is called-

Do you have a copy?

Dude, there it is.

Thank you.

Lucky loser.

The publisher's going to kill me.

I said I was going to present it to you on the show.

Whoopsies.

We got a photo of it.

Doesn't matter.

Adventures in tennis and comedy.

Lucky loser.

Get me a copy and I'll put it out there in the bookshelf. We've got a lot of uh we should have sent you one if you don't i'll get you one um yeah so the book starts when my brother gave me a tennis racket for christmas when i was four and my dream was to be professional tennis player and we did it but only to 864 in the world that's that's my highest world ranking turned into a chick you could have dominated that's that's the point of the book uh but it it's uh the story is how i went from pro tennis to comedy and it's fascinating and silly and a lot of failure talking a lot about the struggles of being alone in both of those professions tennis you're, you're alone, problem solving.
In comedy, you're alone in problem solving. Well, you're a great comic.
You're a very funny guy. Thank you, Joe.
And you've always been very cool to hang out with. Thanks.
And I'm really excited that you're at the club this weekend. Are there any tickets available? I got an email yesterday from my management that all shows are sold out.
So if anybody wants to go, the best case thing is you go and wait at the front.

And sometimes people don't show up, which does happen, especially the South by Southwest.

It's crazy parking.

But I'm psyched.

I'm psyched to see you at the club.

I'm coming this weekend.

I'll come hang out.

Dude, thank you.

That would be awesome.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

And congrats on the club and all that's happening.

Thank you.

And congrats on everything. Thank you.
And congrats on everything.

Thank you.

Congrats on the daily show.

It was awesome.

All right.

Bye, everybody.