Ari Shaffir: Growing Up Orthodox, How Joe Rogan Saved Comedy, and the Infamous Kobe Bryant Joke

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Call 1-844-4OTESLA or visit Otesla.com for prescribing info info about cost and more don't you also think though that at least i feel this way you can feel whether someone's speaking from affection or dislike like it's just like non-verbally i'd know if you hate me yeah you know what i mean yeah that word jew is a great one it's jew or hard j jew then it's like so that the special was called jew uh-huh yeah did you get any complaints about that no it came right after all that kanye stuff too so i was a little worried they were going to be like hard line on anti-semitism and just pull everything down so you didn't worry about... I worried about a little bit.

A special called Jew? Yeah, I worried

about a little bit, but I tested it.

I tested it everywhere.

I tested it. It was a

five-year process of going

to places where there's lots of Jews, going to places with

Perth. They were like, I don't even know what you're

talking about. Iceland,

they're like, what? I've heard of a Jew.

Was the Jewish community in Iceland outragedged both of them yeah um yeah welcome to tucker carlson show it's become pretty clear that the mainstream media are dying they can't die quickly enough and there's a reason they're dying because they lie. They lied so much.
It killed them. We're not doing that.
Tucker Carlson.com. We promised to bring you the most honest content, the most honest interviews we can without fear or favor.
Here's the latest. Somebody told me yesterday that you're, you lead the field among standups for death threats yeah i was the first one to get them why um i had this uh when i was yeah i don't know what do you mean you don't know i mean i don't know exactly so i had this uh when i was starting in and uh national impoons was doing this like fake fake um reality show pitches it was like a the idea was they went up it was all faked but they all found a box of pitches for a reality show up in like the offices of nbc or something but the craziest pitches possible one was like i can throw up on command another was like i'd watch that yeah yeah it was this guy who drank apicac and just like barfed everywhere.
And mine was called The Amazing Racist off The Amazing Race. It was just like a super overboard race.
They came to me with the idea and I was like, that's funny, but let's like really go for it if we're going to go for it. No, but that was the thing.
I've seen that. Oh, you have? You're Amazing Racist? Yeah.
Going to the black convenience store in a Klan outfit? Yeah. So either you get it or you don't.
If you mad i can see why you get mad but also like why i mean that's so over the top that of course you're joking if i'm throwing oranges wait at a mexican yelling go back to africa that you can't see maybe or like wait but you're jewish i'm like right so if i'm wearing a clan outfit and i'm a comedian as a jew wearing a clan outfit probably not in the clan probably not I'm glad you see Jewish. I'm like, right.
So if I'm wearing a clan outfit and I'm a comedian as a Jew,

wearing a clan outfit,

probably not in the clan,

probably not in the clan.

You see,

it's ridiculous.

Anyway.

So my buddy,

Duncan Trussell,

who's a great comic and hilarious and weird.

He,

um,

early websites,

he built a website saying,

if you prank my friend,

Ari Shafir,

um,

send him a prank call,

um,

record it,

I'll give you 20 bucks for the best one.

This was before all that stuff came out.

So the National Lampoon's DVD came out

and then somebody ripped it to the internet.

So pretty early YouTube was like this,

without context of National Lampoon's,

just me going,

hi, I'm Ari Shafir,

not the amazing racist,

let me do this horrible thing right now.

Anyway, so people like saw it,

Googled my name.

The first thing that came up was Duncan, before you even click on the you know the google search it just says r.i.sapir phone number so that was it your actual phone yeah yeah so the but it was pre-doxing it was before any of that you know before america got dangerous yeah so i would just start getting phone calls it was great like what i'll fucking kill you you think you're so funny one of them

was i picked up a bunch of uh latinos mexicans saying i want you to fix my deck and then drove

them to the ins building um and started yelling la migra and they ran out whatever whatever it

was funny nobody was hurt in the making of it but people took it seriously people took it seriously

with my favorite one was i'll build a deck in your ass homes

i would just get calls all the time i had to put my ringer on mute do you think i mean

Thank you. Seriously.
People took it seriously. My favorite one was, I'll build a deck in your ass, Holmes.
I would just get calls all the time. I had to put my ringer on mute.
But do you think, I mean. They weren't serious though.
None of them were real. So when now, when people go, I've been threatened.
I'm like, shut up. This isn't a real thing.
I've been getting it for 20 years. But do you think anybody was actually offended? It's instructive because I got, I would get a few few like messages facebook back then or myspace even and it was like um fuck you you're a piece of shit i'm mexican how dare you and then i'd like right back like you know it's just a joke i actually paid all those guys 50 bucks and took them back to where they were working um like nothing actually happened um and i drove into a library wasn't even like even like, you know, it just looked like the INS building.
And then they would respond like, oh, okay. I actually did think it was funny.
I laughed when I saw it. I'm like, so we went from laughing when you saw it to threatening me because you're supposed to.
And that is what it is, right? People feel this like moral obligation to be mad about certain things. Yeah, but your real reaction is you were laughing.
So do you ever get people walking out of your shows yeah all the time all the time why do you think they do that number of reasons too dirty is the main yeah i don't want to hear about sex you know so that's that's an okay one yeah it used to be the dirty comics were like it's cheap you're dirty all you talk about blowjobs and it was like okay fine and so then the clean comics were like i'm a well-written comedian i can do you know whatever um and they would just look down on us but it wasn't a moral thing right now it's a moral thing they put them on a moral high ground they put these people on moral low ground so like you're kind of evil for doing it not just like cheap or easy you're you're wrong you are wrong you're immoral yeah and it's like but it's the same thing so sex is one sex is one i mean i remember i had a i had a at the comedy cellar i'll have people walk out all the time the door guys laugh about it they're like every time somebody leaves crying it's you they walk out past me literally crying and it's always a drunk white woman. I mean, it percent.
It is honored. That's who yells at me.
What is that? They, well, one, they suck. Why do you think? They've never had any problems.
So they have the slightest problem. Like, this is the worst.
You ever seen rich people that were like, they're like, my flight was delayed. And you're like, shut up.
You sat in first class and your flight was delayed an hour and you're bitching. Shut up.

So you think it's just like any inconvenience?

They've never, right.

So this is the worst case scenario is a slight inconvenience.

I had to hear something I didn't like to hear.

But in a functioning society, you like, you have a man at home to calm you down.

Maybe that's part of the problem.

Yeah.

So you see it at the shows, the man that's with them sometimes is either like quiet or

they're just like, like you can see them resigned to like, you deal with it bro i'm not gonna fuck i gotta live with it so if i tell her to shut up i gotta this is a month of do they heckle you yeah they'll be mad so i had a lady walking outside like maybe a year ago and i remember like oh this lady got really mad i didn't notice it but she was really mad um and i was like which joke was it holocaust stuff was it down syndrome stuff was it the war in gaza stuff like it could have been any one thing and and it's not all of them it's the only thing that you feel personally like this is the line is the one that walk out on and i i didn't think anything of it and then i was hanging out had a drink up there and then i left like 30 minutes later this is always the fun they want to tell you that they were right and i'm walking out and i pass by some woman she goes you're a piece of shit which i've gotten that what did you say lady i just started laughing in her face and walked away i'm not gonna give her an argument so she stayed to tell you that yeah yeah yeah it's. It's funny when they leave and then stay.
It used to be just write a shitty Yelp review if you didn't get the service you wanted. And how did she respond when you laughed at her? They can't understand it.
They're like, no, you should be mad. I'm like, I'm not combating you.
I was just making jokes. Everybody else was laughing.
I'm just doing this for everyone for the joy, but it's also funny when you walk out angry. We're all laughing at you for not getting it.
And you never rise to the bait. I have before.
Yeah. But it's never a good idea.
No, it's not a good idea. Yeah.
And it's also, it's just fun to toy with them. You know? To be like, I think you're right, and I will learn from this.
It's just fun to fuck with them sometimes. Has it gotten better or worse? It feels like people are freer to say what they think all of a sudden.
Yeah, you know, internet, everyone feels they have their 40 followers. So like they're a celebrity.
No, but I mean, it feels like the strike zone is wider than it was two years ago. What do you mean strike zone? I mean, you're allowed to say more things or there are fewer umpires or they're just...
We're allowed to say more things? Are there angry people allowed to say more things? Everybody's allowed to say more things. It felt like there for a while, there are only like four things you were allowed to say.
And now I hear people giving opinions. Gen Z is way better than millennials.
Why? Gen Z... Okay, so you ski or snowboard? Yeah.
ski nice well obviously don't snowboard i mean come on now yeah so i was a skier in what late 80s snowboard started mid 80s yeah yeah and everyone's like i'm not skiing that's my fucking dad i'm a snowboarder it's cool and then a generation passed and now the kids are like, I'm not snowboarding. That's my father.
Yeah. So they go the opposite way.
I just, I stayed true to skiing and it never changed. Yeah.
Always. You still ski? Yeah.
Yeah. All mountains should be no snowboard mountains.
I completely agree. I think there's only one in the United States.
They're jumping out of the fucking Alta. Deer Valley too.
Deer Valley. Yeah.
Yeah. Icon's got it right.
And they wreck the snow. They wreck the snow.
They slide down. It's a mobile city after they get done with it.
And they take out old people, which I will be soon. They jump out of the trees.
Oh, I know. Have a spotter! Just have a fucking spotter! And they're too high, actually.
Little high is fine, but they're way too high. I mean, I've seen snowboard.
I fell off a lift. You fell off a lift? I was too high and drunk.
I was trying to get on. You know the thing where you put your skis under you? So I was like, I saw some cool people do it.
I was like, let me do that. I was trying to do it, but then I started getting pushed.
And I'm like trying to do it. And then I was just down.
That hurts. It does hurt.
Yeah, your bindings don't release when you fall off a ski lift. Yeah.
It was on the floor, though. So I was pumping my head up.
So I'm like, oh, man, just shoved my head back down because it was going to chop it off. So you think people in their 20s are better than people in their 30s or 40s? Yeah.
So anyway, these people, the Gen Zers, looked at the millennials, their aunts and their fucking whatever, and they're like, you guys are angry. And we don't want to be like you.
And they understand, at least for stand-up comedy, we know they're not serious. You guys didn't know they weren't serious we know they're not serious so when they say

I don't know let's bring slavery back

let's give it another chance we know you're being

ridiculous we know it's Jonathan Swift

it's fine

so then they're like well now we can laugh

you don't mean that

are you ever offended by anything

I mean do you have a red line

well I wouldn't like

try to silence it but some stuff is like I just mean, is anything personally offensive to you? Have you ever heard a joke where you're like, ah, I'm not into it? Yeah, there's certain times like if I just heard my dad speak about the Holocaust and I hear a Holocaust joke, I'm just not in the mood. Yeah, but there are other times you're...
But also, I'll just quietly leave or if it's like political jokes i'm like i don't i don't get the references here right i just don't follow it yeah i noticed that at breakfast this morning you're not covering following politics like is that a good guy but how are you going to deal with i mean there are some political stories are sort of unavoidable like the current one with biden like how are you like what do you make of that

like the like his physical condition his mental condition i just hear people talking oh you haven't seen any of it a little like from from people referencing on stand-up comedy clips like shane had one where he's like talking about how he left the stage real slow and he was talking about like i've done that drunk having to like sidestep oh but you haven't seen any video uninteresting

do you live in this country

yeah

how do you avoid that

I do not. For six years, I haven't read or watched the news.
Really? If it's on, I'll avoid, I'll leave the room. Why? It's hatred.
It's terrible. It's put you in a terrible mental state for something you don't affect.
Everyone thinks they're making a difference. They're not.
I mean, you had a popular show on a major network. Yeah.
You also didn't make a difference. Rogan doesn't make a difference.
Well, I got fired. Yeah.
But this idea that I'm going to change everything. The high-level guys who had to reach, maybe you could because you reach a lot of people.
I don't think I did. I agree with you.
But you being upset about Biden or Trump, it's like, what is it doing? It's going to happen regardless. It's like being upset about the rain.
You really think so? So it sounds like you don't buy the premise of democracy. Listen, how should I say this? The black vote matters.
Right. One black vote doesn't matter.
Right. That's correct.
Yeah. So it's just like, why get involved? In Romania and Slovenia, they just had, well, or you just got back from Australia.
Yeah. So like, I always loved how they felt about it.
Our government's crooked. We can't do anything.
Let's get drunk and do the worst coke in the world. And that's what they, you didn't really participate in Australian culture, but.
No, I didn't participate. It's mostly baby powder.
Is that true? And it's the most overpriced in the world too. Cigarettes are $60 a pack.
It was wild. Yeah.
I left, I bought a pouch and I was like, and then I was I didn't think about the price. I was just like, bring it up.
A pouch of tobacco? Yeah. And then I bought another one where it was in Gold Coast and I was like $63.
I'm like, no. That's crazy.
For tobacco. Yeah.
And he goes, that's how much it Coast. And I was like $63.

I'm like, no, that's crazy.

Yeah, and he goes, that's how much it is.

And I thought it was like a tourist spot.

And I was like, fuck up.

Dude, I just bought it for $40.

And he goes, no, you didn't.

Did you like the lung cancer pictures on the package?

I did have to trade a pack because I'm like, this one's too gross.

It's too gross.

You almost don't want to smoke.

Get me a dead baby.

I don't want to see the missing tail.

The dead baby doesn't hurt me.

Well, it wasn't caused by smoking.

Yeah.

It was caused by the ozone.

So.

Yeah, I just don't pay attention.

It's going to happen regardless.

Why lose sleep over it?

But what about the idea that if you don't do anything about it, then it just gets worse and worse and worse?

If society doesn't do anything about it, it gets worse and worse. If I don't do anything about it, it's not going to change what we think.
But it's your moral obligation to vote. If you don't vote, you're not allowed to complain.
Can I tell you something that no one seems to get on my side on? If you think the system is corrupt, participation in the system is you co-signing the system.

It doesn't matter which

side you're voting on. This corrupt, they both

lie to you, two-party-only possibilities,

which is what they're revolting in in Hong Kong.

Here's your two possible choices only.

Just saying, okay, well, I'll take this

one, is you saying, yeah, the system, I

agree with it. I don't agree with the system

at all. I'm sympathetic

to what you're saying. I'm actually not dismissing you out of hand because I think you're making a pretty solid point.
The problem, though, is it could get to a point where they show up at your house and start hassling you directly. Who? The government.
To vote? No, no, no. I mean, the government gets in the wrong hands.
It can be pretty intrusive. Yeah, I guess.
So, yeah., here's two problems with that. One, it's a worst case scenario way of living.
Right. I mean, I've heard the Holocaust is coming back my entire life.
This can lead to the Holocaust. George Bush, it could be Hitler.
Trump was Hitler. Trump was definitely Hitler.
Everybody's Hitler. And I'm like, where?

Where is this happening?

So it's like you hear these worst case scenarios all the time.

They don't come to fruition.

And also it's like you still won't have any effect on it.

When they were talking about going to war with Iran,

they're like, this is a nuclear holocaust.

And everyone was bitching about it.

And I was skiing.

And I'm like, you guys can lose your last days.

If there's a nuclear holocaust coming,

these are your last days.

And I spent it skiing, and you spent it arguing online with a stranger. Like, who's God going to say did it right? You know? That's actually completely defensible.
Like you're not actually affecting it. And if enough people- There's a whole book in the Jewish Bible called Ecclesiastes.
It basically makes this point. Really? Yeah.
Interesting. You should.

Ecclesiastes.

What's that in Hebrew?

Do you know?

I don't.

Yeah. Some of them were like Genesis.

I'm like, I don't know that word.

I know the Hebrew word.

Oh, is that?

You went to Yeshiva?

Yeah.

They didn't call it Genesis?

No.

So I had to like Deuteronomy.

I was like, oh, which one is that again?

How long did you spend in Yeshiva?

Two years after high school,

but my entire, all high school.

Did you think you were going to be a rabbi?

It was a possibility. Really? Yeah.
It was like possibility. What was that like? It was like in pre-law.
What do you do in yeshiva, by the way? Study. Pardon my ignorance.
Like what's the, what's the schedule? Like you wake up when and do what? That's part of your culture just to be ignorant. Yeah.
I'm not a chosen person. You wake up you uh do a little learning um that's like choose your own adventure that's so it might be like prophets um one of the side books or something um and then you pray then you go have breakfast um that's like breakfast ends at like nine so nine to one you learn Talmud then one to two is this just independent study or just reading it by yourself? there's classes and then there's also like and then also independent but there's classes we're a rabbi dude we had a rabbi who was like teaching us one of the one of the books of the Gemara, the Talmud.
He's so smart.

I forget his name.

Oh, it's embarrassing.

That's embarrassing.

Who is it?

I don't know.

You can check it.

No, it's all right.

No.

No, tell me who called.

It's your mom.

Hold on.

Hey, he's busy right now.

I'll get back to you later.

All right.

Bye, Miss Tucker.

That's what she went by, too. Mrs.
Tucker.

Anyway, he was teaching us and then doing it really well and then somebody went to the bathroom and they came by I forget his name let's call him Rabbi Jew and they're like Rabbi Jew this isn't the right book and he goes oh yeah I forgot I forgot the I took the wrong one you've been teaching us from it the whole class and he goes oh yeah I forgot the I forgot the you've been teaching us from it the whole class

and he goes yeah he just knows it by heart

it was actually like a John Irving novel

it was just a different track date it was like the encyclopedia

you're doing the E's and he's reading from F's

but he's still word for word on the E's

it was crazy

so he'd memorized it

which is it was an oral tradition it was passed down

orally for a long time

was it interesting

the Talmud

Thank you. memorized it yeah which is it was an oral tradition it was passed down orally for a long time was it interesting the talmud yeah oh yeah so many fun so not fun but like yeah like i was telling you at breakfast by the way guys tucker carlson feeds his guest breakfast of course i do yeah what's your podcast do um yeah it was like, if you accidentally kill someone, you have to replace their wife.
You have to pay their wife. This is what I was talking about.
And a doctor's wife, you pay more than a garbage man's wife. And then it's all arguing, is a garbage man worth less? Does he have less value than a doctor? And then it's like the arguing, arguing, arguing.
It's like, no, you're just trying to like, you have a responsibility to keep her way of life, keep her like richness there. So you have to pay her based on her income.
It's kind of like divorce now. Do you debate this in class? Yeah, so you debate it, you talk about it, then there's secondary rabbis who all weighed in.
No, but do you debate it at Yeshiva? Do the students say, you know what? I just don't agree with this at all. Are you allowed to debate? Yeah.
Yeah. A hundred percent.
It's all based in like, say what you think is not right here. There's a Philip Roth book, Conversion to the Jews.
It's a short story. Yeah.
I never read it. It's about, it's pretty good.
And, and yeah, Philip Roth. And, um, Portnoy's complaint guy.
Yeah. Um, And it was just about this kid in yeshiva in Brooklyn who was like, I don't understand.
If God couldn't create everything, the animals and light out of darkness, he goes, that one always got me. There was darkness and he made light for the first time.
That always got me. And he goes, why couldn't he make a sun? Like, no, God can't have a son.
I was like, but why? He did all this other stuff.

How come he can't?

You're supposed to ask these questions.

So there's no penalty for- There's no penalty.

It's based in for 100% you should be asking questions.

We should have answers.

If we don't, then your question is correct.

It sounds like a great education.

It's great.

Ask everything.

If it doesn't make sense, you got to ask,

and we should have an explanation. You shouldn't be like, don't ask this stuff how many is shiva students become stand-ups not many not many there's a couple but not many it seems kind of like a natural training ground for it it's it was so helpful that the logic basis of it that between that and an english major where you're also just same thing, kind of analyzing novels.
Of course, textual analysis, yeah.

What does this mean?

It's just a great way of looking at

humanity and then like writing

a joke about it. What do your rabbis

and classmates think of what you do?

Well, so it's

the religion part and it's also the culture

part. Right.
So the culture part was like,

what are you doing? You're not making a living. This is ridiculous.
This is embarrassing. They didn't think you were making a living? I wasn't for 10 years.
Temp jobs and whatever. Really? Yeah.
What kind of temp jobs? I worked for the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. I just did like data entry in different places.
Moving boxes. Did some commercial.
I got started booking commercials for a while. I had a weird look that helped, but that was like five, six years in.
It was just poverty, but it was also great training because now you seem pretty immune to finances, to the dangers. To the dangers? Yeah.
you have money but you seem kind of uh i don't know you well enough but you seem like you're resistant to letting it i was talking to you about jake hanrahan i won't take he won't take uh advertising money so he doesn't want anybody pressuring him to cover yeah i don't think you should worship money i yeah i'm opposed to that yeah i don't think it makes you happy debt makes you unhappy right money does not make severe lack of money makes 100 that is real but i was broke for long enough where i don't need these things anymore good i'm happy with like oh i got an aisle seat you know i don't need to fly private or first class it's it's nice but like not i don't i sleep in hostels you know i love that yeah it's yeah so i'm free of it and it frees me up to do fun things so you took that experience and did a special on judaism yeah you gotta watch it why'd you do that i mean i've been looking at the stuff for forever i just wasn't good enough to do it but it was always on my mind if you're wondering how big tech got powerful enough to void the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, how did it get big enough to nullify the founding documents of the most powerful company in the world? Well, simple. They got really rich.
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the non-jews have seven laws of noah that's all you got to do and you get into heaven and they're pretty easy they're great they're pretty easy don't eat an animal while it's still living exactly should be a no-brainer doniner. Don't kill.
Don't kill. Harder for some people, but not others.
Don't rape. Even harder for some people, but most are still on the right side of it.
I forget what the other ones are. Adultery.
Yeah. It's not that hard.
And you get to go to heaven, and you'll be right alongside a rabbi. Well, not only that, they're very reasonable.
Yeah, they're not hard ones to do. No, they're all kind of rooted in natural law.
No, i read that and i yeah when you convert they're like what are you doing this for you're just gonna make it harder on yourself you're going to heaven already that's interesting okay you don't feel there's any contempt at all in that there becomes contempt you know at the end where it's like well you're not in our group so kind of fuck you but that's not in the law i mean even jesus is like accept everyone take them in right but people don't really do that, you're not in our group, so kind of fuck you. But that's not in the law.
I mean, even Jesus is like, accept everyone, take them in. Right.
But people don't really do that. No.
You know? Not at all. Yeah.
So, but I do think that the Sabbath laws are, you know, like if you're using somebody else to do something that you're not allowed to do. Yeah.
Well, I talk about the loopholes in that special where it's like, you're actually not allowed to fully ask them, can you turn this light on? Because then that's like, you're doing it. So it's by implication.
It sure is dark in here. You know, I'm not allowed to turn the lights on.
Nages are allowed. But I can't do it.
It does suck. I want to read.
It's so loophole-yhole it's great um but what was the moment where you decided so you can't use electricity i was in a dorm room in a in a yeshiva that's closed now in baih vagon jerusalem and there was a light a reading light above my bed and you could use that to like read talmud before you go to sleep or whatever left it on onabbos. And what I was going to do was take a hand washing cup.
There's like a ritual hand washing you do in the mornings and before bread. And I was going to put that over the light.
It was like a little ball. And I was going to put it over like drown out the light.
So the light's still on. It's just drowned out.
The cup kept falling. Kept putting it on there.
It kept, because it's round, the bait, it just kept falling off. It wouldn't stay on.
and the light was with light still on it's just drowned out the cup kept falling kept putting it on there it kept because it's round the bait it just kept falling off it wouldn't stay on and the light was in my eye and it was frustrating you want to sleep and you can't and at some point i was like i'm just gonna turn it off it's friday night i'm not allowed but then my so the the entrance to the yeshiva was like right here my window is right right here. So anyone coming in or out would see my light go off.

And they'd be like,

we're all these super Orthodox Jews.

No light can go on or off.

We'll,

we'll notice that on a Friday night.

And I was like,

ah,

fuck,

I'll get caught.

I'll get in trouble if I do this.

So I didn't do it.

I didn't even do it.

Didn't break any law,

but I thought about it for like a couple of years. The fact that i was more worried about a man getting me in trouble than god when it's god's law it's not man's law um jaywalking sure i'll make look for a cop right do that you know but but the sabbath stuff that's all just god i shouldn't give a about jews seeing me um there's i've in the tour there's like a a worse punishment for someone who steals in secrecy than it steals brazenly.
Because at least stealing brazenly, you're not worried about man catching you. Exactly.
And you're like, well, fuck God either way, but I don't give a shit about man. So the fact that I was more worried about people getting me in trouble than God, and I was talking about, I was like, I don't think I believe in them, or I wouldn't have done it.
If I believe there was this like, you know, old man in heaven saying, don't do this. It'll be bad for your mortal soul.
I just wouldn't do it. I'll compare it to like, if your dad's in the room, you don't masturbate because you believe he's real and his reaction is pretty obvious what it would be.
But you're not just going to start likeking, like, oh, the fuck, I didn't know you were real, Dad.

You're 100% sure he's real.

And I wasn't sure God was real.

And then I just looked more and more,

and I was like, I think I'm out.

Maybe the lesson is you care too much

what other people think.

Maybe.

No, I mean, that's another way to look at it.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, so my friends got mad.

They're like, they can't leave religion. They're like, well, if you don't't believe in god take the torah the holy sacred scroll and like throw it in the floor which is like if you see it fall you have to fast for like i don't know how long um and i'm like no i still respect you guys i'm not gonna like it's so rude but you told your friends your fellows you of them some were angry some were like disappointed nobody was like cool nobody what'd your parents say pretty mad yeah they were like well you're gonna lose the culture they're all fine now so in hindsight it's fine but they're totally fine now so just like but at the time they're like what the fuck they were really mad it was like uh yeah they were like even a dog believes in god that's true you're lower than a dog did they say him yeah yeah but i was like show me that research what are you talking about who's done a study on that um but totally fine now so how did you decide you want to go into stand-up from there i always kind of liked being the joker uh and then my friend ami butler was uh he was like you should try it you should try stand-up so you moved back from israel moved back from israel went to university of maryland a couple years no first went to yeshiva university in new york that's where i kind of like fully lost the religion and i'm like what's the point of paying for a split curriculum yeah of course college so i switched to state school um got laid for the first time ever yeah it was fucking it's nice if you haven't tried it you should fuck i haven't it's great it's great you're busy destroying democrats jewish girl uh no no i have oh so you went all the way out then? You look too much like me.
It's like fucking a mirror. It's not the best.
You're like, I'm legally not allowed to join in on this. Yeah, I went...
Yeah, I just had... It was nuts.
It was so great. Got a blowjob.
Did you call your friends back in the achieve and tell them? No, I did not. I did not.
I'm friends with a couple of them still, but not many. It's just a different world now.
Plus they all have kids. It's like, ugh.
How many of them got married? All of them. All of them.
Yeah. So everybody gets married? Everybody gets married.
At what age? And have kids.

Sister got married at 20.

Wasn't that like crazy.

It was just like a touch early, but not really.

But all those marriages seem to survive.

They really do, right?

It's interesting.

I've noticed that.

Yeah.

What's the divorce rate among Orthodox Jews?

So low. We had one divorced couple growing up in my neighborhood and was like, whoa, can you believe

it?

They're divorced?

We thought it was so nuts.

And then when I got to University of Maryland and everybody's parents were split and I was

like, what?

So what works better?

I don't know.

I guess it's what you're looking for in your marriage when it's just a union to like be

a family unit and raise kids is the most important thing.

So like this is fine.

This works for that.

Or it's like, do I want fulfillment? And like, yeah i want fulfillment and like yeah i don't think they're fulfilled i think if you're all you want is family then yeah you're fulfilled you've got a great family you know you're part of the community but if you're like yeah they say it's like it's like misogynist judaism because the women just stay at home but i'm like no they're there to raise the family raise the family. It's not like you're not allowed to work.
It's like this is your part. This is his part.
He's raising money for the family. Do you think a lot of Orthodox mothers secretly want to work at banks? No.
Right. This isn't fun.
And it's voluntary. You don't have to join this lifestyle, right? Yeah, right.
Well, if you're raising it, you kind of do. It's not legally, but you know.
Do you ever have any regrets you didn't become a rabbi? No. No.
Uh-uh. No, I'm having a great time.
Some of them will look down on me and be like, there'll be a demeaning like, you'll be back. And like talk down to me and it's like, oh, you guys fucking suck.
You don't think you will be back? No.

What to what?

I don't know.

I didn't.

If you're getting your dick sucked, that's totally illegal in that religion.

Is it really?

Yeah, it's wasting seed.

Oral sex is illegal.

Yeah.

I didn't know that. It's wasting seed.

Condoms are illegal.

But the sheet thing is not real.

Sheet thing's not real.

This is all an Ari Shaffir Jew on YouTube now.

So you got to the bottom of the sheet rumor.

I was fooled.

That's how strong a rumor it was. I was fooled.
Did you ever talk about that in Yeshiva? No, but I thought I had a rabbi who definitely did it. And my friend was like, that's a false memory.
No way. Really? Because it doesn't exist.
Who spread that rumor? That's a pretty... I think it comes from Tzitzit.
It's like this... So the 613 commandments.
God, I lived in this for fucking five years. I forgot about all of it, and then I lived in it for five years trying to go over the stuff again, and then I just put it behind me again.
When you mentioned Talmud, and I brought up Steinsaltz out of like... I don't know where that came from.
I was very impressed. Yeah.
I didn't know what the Talmud was until pretty recently. I'm reading it.

I actually think it's really interesting.

It's very interesting.

But there's this, so one of the commandments, you try to do as many as you can.

Some of them are big temple based, so you just can't anymore because you don't have

a temple.

That's in 70 AD.

Boom.

They're going to have another one, the Messiah, they say.

So those laws will be back. But you try to do as many as you can.
They're good deeds and they're bad deeds, but they're all like commandments. 613 of them.
One of them is if you have a four-cornered garment, a poncho, you have to tie these tassels to the end of them. So sometimes you'll see strings coming out from the post-shirts.
Okay, so they make themselves a four-cornered garment so that they can do that commandment. You know, and it looks like a t-shirt underneath, underneath their shirt.
It's like, you don't even need it, but you're like, here's our chance to wear it. Have you ever worn one? Oh, yeah, all the time.
Is it comfortable? It's neither here nor there. It goes in between a t-shirt and your overshirt.
So you barely even notice it. Oh, so you're wearing three layers.
Yeah. That's a lot.
That's why they smell. They don't fucking wash their shit.
How does that? They don't, do they, is that? They do smell. What is that? It's just like soap is expensive.
So I always thought that was, that was bigotry from, from secular Jews are always saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, they do smell a lot. It's also like you're wearing, you're fucking dressed like Johnny Cash in the summertime.
It's going to fucking, it's going to stink after a while. You got to watch that all the time.
So Jerusalem in August is. Oh, oh, it's disgusting.
It's like fucking Yangon. That's actually true? Yeah, yeah.
The Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, they're more shower centric. Amazing.
It's nuts. When you get up the road from Tel Aviv, it's a windy road from, and as soon as you get over that hill, it's fucking, it's a costume party.
It's Fiddler on the Road. It's the best.
It's nuts. When you get up the road from Tel Aviv, it's a windy road and as soon as you get over that hill, it's fuck it.
It's a costume party. It's Fiddler on the Road.
It's the best. It's so weird.
It's like you're living in an ancient time. It's the most interesting place on the planet.
Yeah. Three religions, three and a half coming together on one little small area of an old city.
Three and a half? It's like two different kinds of Christian. No, I'd heard that, but they're pretty similar.
The Armenians and the, and the, and the Greek. Well, the Ethiopians, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant.
But in the old city, it's like, yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, whatever. I don't know enough about them.
Do you still have your outfits? Anyway, so here's where it came from. No, I don't have any of that.
But like, so you wear that four-color garment. I think they were hanging up to dry, and it's a sheet with a neck hole in it.
Yes. And I think just some racists were like, they probably fucked through that.
That's what that is. And it just caught on.
Interesting. Yeah.
And the hole is so big that the Jews are like, let them run with that rumor. It took you five years to write that special? Yeah.
Yeah. And some of the jokes are even older.
What's your process for writing it? This one was way different because I had to, I never have to fact check my jokes. I can be an idiot in my jokes.
I can, normally I'm allowed to say David Trump and people are like, it's Donald Trump. I'm like, oh, I don't know.
It's fine if I don't get the facts wrong. I can be a moron.
It's actually, sometimes I try to misspeak so that they're like, don't trust me on this. I'm not an expert.
I'm just making fun of it. So I'll try to throw in wrong details.
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Not available in all states but like how do you write it do you write it out by hand do you pay no no and say it out loud? So I started, this one was I would go to the cellar.

The comedy cellar had a small room and I would do an hour

and I would do like, I had like 20 show minutes,

something on Noah and the flood.

That's what it started with.

It just became my closer in the end.

And then a couple other bits.

And then I said, okay, I've already set up now

that I can make jokes about this stuff.

You guys see, I'm not serious about it. Do you have any questions about Jews that you wanted to know? Like anything, I will answer.
And I'll try to riff and make it funny. Something I used to do with this guy, Don Barris, a long time ago.
We'd do Ask a Jew. We call her Jew in A.
Late Night at the Comedy Store. And it started with like, hey, you know, yeah, I could be a resource.
And then all the comedians would sit around the room and they'd ask questions.

So first it was like, how many commandments are there?

I'm like, oh, good question.

613.

I'm like, oh, okay.

Someone else is like, yes, question.

Like, if Jesus is supposed to be such good writers, why is his diary on Frank so fucking boring?

I'm like, okay, well, it's a bestseller for fucking uneducated girl for 30 years or 50 years.

So you're wrong about that.

Hey, what goes in the place of your soul?

Like, all right, well, Pablo Neruda would say that there is no such thing as a soul but uh diamonds diamonds go there and then we just fuck around occasionally we get people complaining like they were so rude to that man but it was all just comedians juanae yeah juanae it was a lot of fun um do you still talk to the jackal the birth dude it's just like and i'm like's a bit offensive, but it was all my friends. It was so fun.
Late night at the store was so fun. The jackal that birthed you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as a mud person, would you say, and I'm like, well, stop you there.
Yeah, we'd have this thing at the end of it where Don would go, he would run it and he'd be like, I saw a documentary on the Holocaust. It didn't seem that bad.
It seems like you guys are exaggerating. I was like, I don't know, man.
What was the documentary? It was called Hogan's Heroes? It seemed like bumbling oafs. It doesn't seem like they could have done any of that stuff.
We had a smell test goes can you uh can you smell money and i was like yeah i can um yeah it's just one of the things we have and then we set up ahead of time he was like all right i need three bills a one a 20 and a hundred and then he like crumpled up a turn and i but we all knew the order so the crowd didn't know and i'd smell like that's like uh hmm that's like it's got a nutty aroma hint of saddle leather yeah it was like is that like a i think it's a 20 and everyone's like i got it one in three shot you know and then it then the hundred like oh i love that smell i know what that is and then he showed me the one out of my face it's disgusting yeah so wait what was i going with this fuck what did you ask how you write it oh right so i just asked people so it kind of birthed from that I ask people, what questions do you have? And sometimes they're like, what was I going with this? Fuck. What'd you ask? How you write it.
Oh, right. So I just asked people, so it kind of birthed from that.
I asked people, what questions do you have? And sometimes like, what's with the wigs? I'm like, oh, okay. Well, it's a loophole.
You can't be attracted to your neighbor's wife. So hair is something you're attracted to.
So you cover up your hair. So it's not your hair.
It's some fucking Asian lady's hair, you know, which is actually better hair. It's weird, but it's not you hair it's some asian lady's hair you know which is actually better hair it's weird but it's not you it's suddenly um and you just do stuff like what are the what are the pillows i'm like what pillows what do you mean oh it's your bag do you have for your for your tallis or filling that you carry it looks like a pillow to them i never it's just so it was a way of looking at stuff like and so the same questions would come up over and over again.
And I'd riff, try to be funny. And then I'm like, if the same question keeps coming up, this is something I should cover.
And if a question came up once ever, then I'm like, all right, that's just one guy. One of us like, why are Jews afraid of cats? I'm like, that's just one Jew you knew, bro.
That's not a stereotype. That was just one Jew.
And so I would just try to cover everything. Why are Jews afraid of cats? That's not a thing.
A hundred percent. That's not a stereotype that was just one jew um and so i would just try to cover everything that's not a thing 100 it's not a thing um so yeah i would just try to and then i would try to tweak it and tweak it and tweak it and then i'd have to do this thing where it's like i had to see if i was wrong which i don't ever do in my stand-up but it had to be correct i couldn't be wrong about the religion yeah yeah yeah so like I started doing a bit about that fucking through a hole in a sheet.
And then my friend was like, that's not a true thing. I'm like, fuck.
I had other rabbis. I had this giant bit, a closer about Noah and his, and his, his 40, he had 40 children and how his wife was a real hero.
Cause her pussy must've been blown out. And then a rabbi in Copenhagen was like, Hey, loved whole thing he didn't have 40 kids and i was like no he did he go no he had two two sons i forget now two sons and three daughters whatever yeah yeah and their husbands yeah and it was like it just wasn't 40 i was like no and he goes he goes i don't mind i don't care i'm just telling i love the whole thing i'm just telling you that wasn't that's not right and i had to lose it i had to lose a fucking five minute like crushing chunk because it don't mind.
I don't care. I'm just telling you.
I love the whole thing. I'm just telling you that wasn't, that's not right.
And I had to lose it. I had to lose a fucking five minute, like crushing chunk because it wasn't correct.
Any other bit I was doing, I could just like, eh, fuck it. I made up a detail.
But why were you fact checking your own stuff? It had to be because I was doing a thing about a religion. I was doing a factual informational hour, which I've never done.
Did you have any complaints? Yeah. But like real ones, any campaigns against you? No.
No. In Melbourne, it was that thing of like, this is hate speech, you're calling them inbred.
And I'm like, no, it's loving. All the Orthodox Jews have thought was like a little too much cursing for my taste, but nothing's really wrong in here.
It's respectful. So who was saying that- It was a love letter to my religion.
It sounds like it actually. In my artistic way, in the comedy way.
But people can, don't you think people can smell the intent behind things? Well, that's what it was. So it was like a couple outliers were like, let's look for something angry in the world.
But she's like, that's all of Twitter. I love how I've been telling people to get off Twitter for so long.
Do you go on it? No, it's a cesspool. And it's like oh what elon musk is fighting like no no this way predates he hasn't gotten rid of the negativity on there it's hey look there's this cool telephone pole you know a lot of people die in the making of that there's not enough trees to go around and it's like jesus you guys can find the fucking terrible and everything so do you do you use the internet yeah i mean yeah you know to see if like a pill you found in your closet's good or bad expired yeah you know something like that like what is this but you don't spend time looking at other people's opinions online no you still see it though it seeps through if you're on Instagram and just like you see people weighing in on stuff,

it just like,

it kind of comes into your,

into like what you think of the world.

So you think that

the reason everybody hates everybody else

is because of the internet.

Yeah, it,

I didn't understand it.

You saw that movie that,

half documentary,

a little bit of like,

whatever, like,

what's it called?

The Social Experiment?

I never saw it.

Oh, you should see it.

So the acting parts are kind of hokey,

but it does illustrate

Thank you. Half documentary, a little bit of like, whatever, like, what's it called? The Social Experiment? I never saw it.
Oh, you should see it. So the acting parts are kind of hokey, but it does illustrate, like, in real time what this would be.
Like, somebody, like, lost on their phone, as this chick he likes is, like, looking for someone to talk to, and he's, like, lost on it. So it's just a little acting scene, but it's just, like, one possible reason why you're getting lost on this.
Instead of talking to your neighbor on the bus, you're like, let me...

Yeah, it's like... And these are the light problems.

When I moved to New York, I was like, how do you make friends?

And my friend was like, go to a bar, order a beer,

drink it at a regular pace,

order another one, midway through the second beer,

you'll be talking to someone.

Yeah.

That time is done.

Is it really?

Yeah, you look up to talk, they're down on their phone.

And then they look up to talk, and you're on their phone. And then they look up to talk and you're on your phone and you just keep missing the connection.
It's like. Boy, I haven't been to a bar in a while.
That's depressing. It's depressing.
Yeah. No one's open to meeting new people.
Hostiles in like Southeast Asia are still, I hear they're slipping, but like it's still that they can't afford an internet plan. So yeah, for a while I got rid of my smartphone.
I had a flip phone for a while. And, um, so you're like Ted Kaczynski level anti-tech.
No, I'm on a smartphone now and it's ruining my life. How? I'm not present.
I'm wasting time. No, that's right.
You look at your, your, your time used It tells you. You'd think they'd cover it.
If it's over 45 minutes a day, it's too much. And for most people, it's between four and eight hours.
Every day that you're wasting. Eight hours of sleeping.
Two hours is eating. So that's 10.
So you have 14 hours left. And four to eight of those are staring at a fucking screen it's it's we're all we're all losing it we're all losing our lives you should just be calling a friend like it do you call friends sometimes it's funny you have old friends whether you like text and they text back text text back and eventually they call i can't do this anymore we're just talking out and you what it should be.
So when I had a flip phone, it was this, you know, you'd miss the button. You'd miss the T and you'd have to go around again and keep hitting it till you get the right letter.
And it takes forever to text anything over two sentences. I'm just going to call you and deal with it.
So you don't text? No, I'm on a, I'm on a smartphone now. So now I text constantly.
But when I had that flip phone, it was fucking, I gotta, I gotta fucking do it. I gotta fucking go back.
Why'd you get off it? I was promoting something and I thought I had to and it fucking ruined my life. It's the worst.
So you've actually taken breaks from the internet? Well, so when I went to Southeast Asia in 2017, I changed all my passwords to my email, Instagram. I think I still had Twitter back then.
Email, Instagram, Twitter. What else is there? Facebook.
I changed my password to this. I just went to the computer and I cut and pasted that, sent it to a friend, and I said, do not send me this.
Wow. Password is like, you know, just a 17 syllable, whatever.
I was like, don't send me this. I i don't want it i'll get it when i come back i don't want to be able to get in there so you didn't look so i had no access to facebook no access to instagram no access to email and then i left my phone at home i called an uber to the airport and then put my phone in my desk closed it and And then I got an Uber and went.
That is really radical. Why'd you do that? It was the best.
It was the best. But why'd you do it? It's like not something you do accidentally.
No, it's not something I do accidentally. That was the first time I've done it.
I've done it since. A couple of times I went to Guatemala for 10, 12 days.

And I was like,

I'm not bringing my phone

on my computer.

You're just way freer.

You're more social.

But, and I don't want to be

connected to America.

I just wanted to be like floating.

You know, I just wanted to be like,

that's this level of freedom.

And you followed the dead for a while.

Yeah.

Pre-internet. Yeah.
I found my wife pre-internet really yeah what was just like a regular mail-in thing yeah just ordered her you know right from Saigon with no reviews but I was trying to explain to Rogan about it about leaving and I was like buddy i can't i can't i don't know how to express it but like there's this level of freedom it's like a second level of like hey i'm i'm in wherever i'm in southern vietnam and i was gonna go to the north but i was just i was getting sick of white people and i just like where there are no white people and it was like chodok it was like southern small town it was like i'll go there instead just the ability to swap someone's like i heard there's a good hike in me and more you go oh okay we'll do that instead and just like you're just floating meeting people talking interesting talk you didn't feel helpless or afraid without a phone a hundred percent afraid really oh yeah i mean the yeah. I mean, the first, I mean, I almost came back right away.

I was like, this is a mistake.

The dopamine dropped from being on there.

That's what they're trying to get you on there.

So that dropped.

And I'm like, I'm not getting my fix.

I was going through withdrawals.

Really?

Yeah.

And I was like, this is a mistake.

I say, so I went, I just, I was like, I'm not going to make any plans.

I went, I discovered, I decided a region, Southeast Asia.

It was cheap.

Thank you. and I was like, this was a mistake.
I said, so I went, I just, I was like, I'm not going to make any plans.

I went, I discovered, I decided to a region,

Southeast Asia, it was cheap.

It was going to be that or South America.

So Southeast Asia seems so foreign.

I'd gotten to travel.

I did one, one like 17 day tour of China.

Did you bring a girl with you?

Go by yourself?

By myself.

China was fun.

So the comedians would kind of like guide it for you.

The ones that were out there, they'd interested.

and once somebody

and

Thank you. The ones that were out there.
And once somebody in Shanghai, Turner Sparks was like, by the way, it's safe here. Like they won't touch you here in China.
You can be a drunk woman asleep with your fucking phone in your hand, like passed out. And you'll wake up in that exact position untouched.
The punishments for violent crime are way too much. And the embarrassment for their families too much so once they told me it was safe i was like oh all my like xenophobia was gone i was like sick see you guys later like you don't want a guy i'm like i'm out and i would just walk around and discover i was then i was it blew my mind and i was like i gotta get lost again it was so cool so i wait i got my i got every visa i needed ahead of time like thailand's like on landing you get a visa um some places are on landing some places you need ahead of time so vietnam i think i got ahead of time maybe myanmar not cambodia i think that was on on landing and they were all like good for six months a month any six month period you know for six months any soon as you land.
So, and I just waited till like a day before. I was like, where's the weather the best? So there was rain in Vietnam.
So no, there was rain in Thailand. So no.
And then Myanmar had like 10 clear days. Did you call home at any point? No.
Uh, so you just basically disappeared for how long? Four and a half months. Yeah.
Goddamn, it was fucking great. What was so great about it? It's that freedom.
Seeing things, seeing the world new, seeing cultures that were different than yours. Meeting, and I didn't meet locals.
The language is a real problem in Asia. But I met Germans at the hostels I was at.
I met people from England at the hostels I was at. You talk.
I remember talking in- Did anyone recognize you? Twice. One time on an island in Cambodia, I was walking down this kind of desert beach with their girl.
I was like, Ari Shafir? And I was like, yeah. He goes, what the fuck, man? Fair question.
What are you doing here?'m like you know same as you got from henry rollins um later when he people like what are you doing here and he goes i'm here to meet you what's your story he would just switch it around but he i was in acadia people like what are you doing here i was like what do you mean international park here to hike for the exact same reason you're here um um yeah twice ever which was also great so i could be i mean i've told a bunch of comics this i'm like you are losing your sense of reality by being looked up to that's not the real that's not the real world you don't understand and when trump got elected all these liberals that i was around again i'm not liberal or conservative i. I'm this third thing, the majority of the country.
I'm the majority. I don't care.
We could hear them talking like, oh, you've never got under your limo. I know a really rich woman comic.
And I'm like, you've never been to Dayton, Ohio. You wouldn't understand disillusionment.
The recession is still going on in a lot of places. You got to get out and talk to people.
So I remember talking in Indonesia on an island. It wasn't Flores.
I forget. But over breakfast, this German guy, and he was telling me about German workers' rights and the five-week standard vacation time they get.
And I what do you mean like first year out of college he goes yeah five weeks i don't know you do better after a while he's like how much do you guys get i'm like two weeks and you're expected to not take it and he was like what so that kind of like talking to people makes you like realize yes oh some shit that's wrong well you learn more about your own country good and bad I mean you're in some places and you're like, what the? So that kind of like talking to people makes you like realize, oh, some shit, that's wrong. Well, you learn more about your own country, good and bad.
I mean, you're in some places and you're like, I wish they did it the American way. Right, 100%.
And in other countries, you're like, I wish we did that. Yeah.
I mean, when I got home, I noticed the first thing I noticed getting home was like, the toilet paper in my country is so fucking soft. Oh, it's superior.
It's like God takes the cloud and just wipes your ass.'s like angora yeah and i learned to appreciate that yes yeah yeah it's like angora exactly right but it does feel to me i mean having had you know a pretty failed educational experience but that you learn way more from a month abroad than you would in say a year in college the gap year. I met these four or five Canadian chicks, 18, in a city in Myanmar.
And we're all just talking. Everyone's so friendly and inviting at hostels.
Everyone's like, they're not ageist. They're not sexist.
Nobody even pays for a woman's drinks. They're like, no, no.
My money is my time I have left out here. I saved up 10 grand if I buy a drink for anybody.
And it's not expected. there's not even nobody even pays for a woman's drinks they're like no no my money is my time i have left out here i saved up 10 grand if i buy a drink for anybody and it's not expected it's so the quality level is crazy but like you want to play card you know cards we're playing a game you want to sit in with us there's not like who are you it's they just don't have it there at hostels and i was talking to these canadian chicks and they were like we're on gap year and i was like oh we don't get gap year in america no but they oh, we don't get gap year in America.
No. But they're like, we don't get gap year.

We just took a year off.

It's not a thing.

It's not part of the curriculum.

I don't know why we don't do it more.

In between college and high school

and college and grad school,

that's a year to yourself.

So, but weren't you worried about coming back

to 70,000 text messages and emails? Yeah, a little bit. My manager at the time was like, what if something big comes up? I'm like, I don't want it.
Tell them no for me. He's like, what if it's something you want? I'm like, I want to do this.
I want to disappear. Tell them no.
I'll just have missed it. What if there's an emergency? What emergency? What if your dad dies? Then I'll mourn when I get home.
I don't need to mourn at the right time. Why did you do this again? My mental place was I in when I did it.
I just, I was kind of having a fight with Comedy Central. They wanted me to work nonstop.
Oh, you understand this. Yeah.
They wanted me to work nonstop. I wanted some time off.
That friend Duncan who fucked me over with my name on the internet, with my number on the internet, didn't fuck me over. It was a fun prank.
He used to leave also glasses of piss in my fridge. Whatever.
When I say fuck me over, in the most respectful way. That's not a respectful way.
No, that's not respectful. I did it to my friend, Bobby Kelly.
He was the one who called.

I pissed in a bottle and put it in his fridge.

He's like, what if my wife found this?

I'm like, right?

He would have been in a lot of trouble.

What were we saying?

So you're fighting with...

Oh, so Comedy Central's like, you got to work.

And I'm like, it takes me eight months to edit this storytelling TV show that I was doing with other comics.

And I'm like, I need some time off.

And they're like, no, we got to get back to another season.

So Duncan was like, well, you want to see the world and this company you work for wants you to not see the world. So I'm like, yeah, you're right.
I got to get out of here. And I just like, hey, I'm trusting you to book the show the next year.
I'm trusting you to do this. I'm out.
Handle it as best you can. But it might get fucked up.
You ever read The Fountainhead? Yeah. So when he leaves for vacation, things get fucked up.
Oh, yeah. And he has to go correct it.
He's got to blow some shit up. But at some point, you got to trust some people to like, you'll handle this.
I mean, they're going to upload this video. Right.
You could stand over their shoulder. No.
But you're like, and they might mess it up. They might not quite do it the way you want.
Yes. I mean, interrupting where you're like, I could tell you're like, I shouldn't interrupt.
You should just get it right. But then they have to make a decision.
You're trusting them to do it so you can free yourself up to do other stuff. Anyway, trusted the people I had to trust and just got lost.
What happened to your brain not being on text all day long? God damn, it was great. So when I first got a flip phone, which was a halfway to that, I was talking at the Stan Comedy Club.
I was talking to Nikki Glaser before she blew up. Yeah.
But she was still, whatever, funny comic. And we were talking.
Before the Tom Brady roast. Way before the Tom Brady roast.
And I'm friends with her, but not like good friends with her. And I'm sitting at the back the back table we're talking she's like has and this is day one of the flip phone like i think day one or week one anyway she goes has it changed at all what does it change i'm like i wouldn't be talking to you i'd be in my phone looking for someone else this totally right and and man i i loved it being out there in asia with no connection You're just...
There was one time in this northern city in Thailand, I met an American girl. Started talking about Trump a little bit.
And then it's the same patterns of discussion. We both looked at each other like, we shouldn't do this.
And we're like, yeah, let's not. Where else have you been in Asia? I'm like, absolutely's switch.
Absolutely smart move. Let's switch the subject.
Yeah, it's just like. You may have come to the obvious conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalists, right, left.
The real battle is between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth. It's between good and evil.
It's between honesty and falsehood. And we hope we are on the former side.
That's why we created this network, the Tucker Carlson Network. And we invite you to subscribe to it.
Go to tuckercarlson.com slash podcast. Our entire archive is there.
A lot of behind the scenes footage of what actually happens in this cuando solo un iPhone está funcionando. TuckerCarlson.com slash podcast.
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did you find a distance between what you were expecting and what you found? I wasn't expecting anything. Like China, for example.
You said... Yeah, so like China, it was so foreign.
What did you expect out of China? No, no, I told my agent, I was like, I'm getting this itch to travel. If you find any foreign gigs, let me know.
I still wasn't making enough money to really, but I was making some. And he goes, well, I got you a 17-day tour of China.
Beijing, Shanghai, cities outside Shanghai, ending in Hong Kong, cities outside Hong Kong. And he goes, it doesn't pay very well but you know they'll fly you out there hotels every night and it pays you i think like i think it was like i don't know it was like three grand four grand and i was like buddy that's more than i was making two years ago that's great and to go see and it's just like tasting food like what the fuck is this seeing that they don't take them bones out of their meat they just cleaver it all i was picking up so many chops i'm like what the fuck there's bones in these pieces of meat and they're like you need a fork i'm like that's not the issue get the eyeball out of my soup um yeah and it was just like i don't know what i was expecting but i told you like i was at the beijing comedy scene it was they were in the hutongs of beijing doing blow and i like, isn't it punchable by death here? And they go, they don't care about white drugs.
They only care about yellow drugs. What are yellow drugs? The opium.
Oh. Stuff that the Chinese would lose their lives to.
They're like, you guys kill yourselves with Coke. We don't care.
We don't do that. So it doesn't matter.
You can't import it, but if you do it, they'll they'll just somebody actually in the Beijing thing got caught with coke they stamped a passport never allowed to return and sent them home she went home steamed out that part of her passport went right back and they don't have computer systems there so it's like welcome to China um but anyway we're doing coke in the hutongs having a good time And then we're walking around and it was like three, three 30 AM. It was hot.

This was like a June, I think.

And, um, went to a bodega and bought like a 20 ounce, like Heineken.

And I'm like, you can't do that where I'm from.

You can't buy a beer at night and walk around with it.

But there they're like, as long as you don't skull anybody with it, what's the issue? It's like having a knife. If you stab someone, that's now a weapon.
If you just have it to whittle, it's not a weapon. So it's like, oh wow, you can do these fun...
And then my friends were like, can you get on Google? And it's like, no, you cannot. You cannot search anything.
But that's not a problem for you. I still want to find out where's a good restaurant in town.
But I have more fun just walking and finding a good restaurant. You know? It's like discovery is...
So, in other words, sounds like it was freer than you thought it was. So free.
And then you learn how to adapt and overcome. They tell you to take a...
If you're in a hotel, this is early. I'm better at it now.
They tell you to take a business car from the hotel so you can show it to someone who does not speak English, get me home to a cab driver. Did not.
It was World Cup. We're all at a bar watching at like 2 a.m.
I was hooked up with this chick who was there. Chinese? No, although I did hook up with a Chinese chick.
She took me home and their dad came with a fucking bat and chased me out. No way, actually.
Yeah. It was pretty fucking nutty.
Yeah. But you know, no harm, no foul.
Nothing bad happened. So you scampered out.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
I was like putting on your pants, running. It was so fucking fun.
But then I had to like get this cab home after a world cup of making out with this chick and then

I was like uh the Sheraton he's like well I mean I may as well but just be you know and I'm like the Sheraton that's Chinese by the way yeah that's pretty close and then I remembered like if I gotta he's like no I gotta get out of the car torrential rain and I'm like fuck I'm like soaked to the bone another cab the Sheraton hotel no understanding at all I'm like fuck and then I'm like, it's near the train station.

So another cab

and I'm like,

choo-choo-choo- choo, choo, choo. Woo-hoo.
He's like, he said something. And I'm like, sure.
And until we got close to another train station, I'm like, forget that. I see it.
Sheraton, that. But you just figure it out.
My flip-flops started breaking in,

that was that first trip,

but in Indonesia,

they started breaking and I couldn't find 11 and a half size shoes.

They just,

people don't come that big

in that part of their world.

They don't have GMOs.

Looked and looked and looked

in Cambodia,

found like a bunch of 10 size,

you know,

flip and they're like,

they'll stretch.

I'm like,

the bottom doesn't stretch. It's the top that stretches.
I'm not a size and a half. Finally found some, some quick silver one in like a real store and they broke.
They were fake. They broke pretty fast.
It kind of flopped, whatever. And I was like, I was going to throw them away, but I'm like, Oh, I can't, I won't find more shoes.
So you're like, I have to fix these shoes. So you just go look for super glue glue you just learn to overcome situations the bus is gone what do I do how do I talk to people in another language so fun just getting places by the end I ended in East Timor and I was like I should learn some tetum.
I talked to an Italian lady in Indonesia,

and she was really learning Bahasa, Indonesia.

She was really good at it, actually learning.

She'd hear a word, she'd say, what's that word?

And she'd write it down.

It was kind of inspirational.

So I was like, I got to do that for East Timor.

So I could get by.

I'm like, place to sleep.

I know how to say that. I don't remember anything.
Fatim Descanse. It was like a hybrid of like Portuguese.
I can't fact check that for you. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah. So you'd go to a small town.
I'm like, Fatim Descanse, Fatim Descanse, and they'd point you to someplace and you'd get closer. Like, Fatim Descanse.
Like there, and they're like, Fatim Descanansa. Like, yeah, come this way.
And they'd feed you and give you a place for five bucks.

You know?

What's Myanmar like?

And why is it no longer called Burma?

Do you know?

I don't.

Oh.

So they got a bunch of bad press from human rights violations.

Yeah.

Like, change the name.

Is that really why they rebranded the whole country?

Yeah.

They moved the capital to the middle of nowhere so no one can protest.

It's like moving D.C. to two hours outside Wichita.
Really? Who's going to go there to protest? Only the hardcore people. Did it feel repressive? No.
Because it was only certain regions. And foreigners are not allowed to stay in those regions.
So it didn't really come up. They're also not allowed to rent motorized vehicles.
Foreigners aren't. Yeah.
So they had e-bikes. They just worked their way around.
So they had e-bikes and like Bagan and places like that. You can rent an e-bike.
Just an electronic bike they had to like, it's like a, you know, motorized golf cart versus an electric. But there was one time we saw there was a bus it took you like this way from inlay lake to maybe mandalay i forget and took you way over here then all the way back you know like this route i mean a couple friends like it's like three hours this way or six hours but it's like 17 hours this way it's like meh let's just get our own way let's not take it like a bus let's take it like little shuttles and stuff so we did we stopped halfway in like let's get out of here some fucking tiny town it was cool went to a hotel it was like can we can we stay here and they're just like like looking at us and we're like like do the bell somebody comes up and was like hi two rooms and they're just like and they're just like kind of talking to each other staring at us and we're like well uh is this a hotel they're just like looking at us and eventually somebody like calls somebody on the phone they like give me the phone someone spoke english in the capital yingon like you can't stay there foreigners can't stay there how'd they know you foreigner? Long nose.
One of the buddies I was with there was like, I don't want to take my, he's a photographer. He goes, I don't want to take my camera because they'll know I'm like tourists.
He goes, you're a six foot one white guy in Myanmar. They're going to know.
She goes, you can't stay there. She's got to turn around.
I'm like, no, no, we just came. She goes, you got to go south.
I'm like, we just came from south. We're going north.
She goes, no, you can going north she goes no you can't like the bus we're off the bus it's gone and i was like well can we stay at a fucking um uh monastery because like they sort of have to take you in and she just started laughing you can't stay in the region and i started like i'm pretty good at playing pretend so i like i was I was pretend poor while I was there. I was just like, whatever you guys' level is, that's me.
So when they're bitching about a $2 more expensive hostel, I'm like, I know, right? I can like sell it to myself. You know, I know it's the common people.
You could call your father and he'd like end it all. But I just ignored that.
So I'm like crying. I'm like, but I can't.

We can't.

We don't have.

We can't go south.

We're going north.

I don't know what to do.

And she's like, all right.

So she's like, we'll call a local minister to come and talk to you.

He came in.

He's like, all right, we found another hotel that you can stay in.

But he's doing you a fucking favor.

This isn't allowed.

He's helping you.

I'm like, okay.

And then we're there.

We're walking around.

My buddy shut down the market by just being white and walking through. It was like the parting of the sea.
They're all doing their work. And they're like, okay.
And then we're there. We're walking around.
My buddy shut down the market by just being white and walking through. It was like the parting of the sea.
They're all doing their work. And they're like, what the fuck is this guy doing? With love and admiration or fear and loathing? It's like if you see somebody seven foot eight.
Yeah. It's just weird.
Yeah. It's like, what? And you've never seen a white.
It's crazy. They're like, can you take through asia can you take a picture i'm like yeah sure do you have fun like no no i want to be on your camera i want my image to go back to america i think it'd be so cool you know hold my baby let me take a picture you're holding my baby it's crazy every black guy i know they're like can we touch your hair no they wouldn't ask they would just touch their hair and he goes excuse me they're like right and we touch your hair? No, they wouldn't ask.
They would just touch their hair. And he goes, excuse me.
They're like,

right? And it was nuts.

But so we stayed at a place. Then we started

walking. We're just touring around.
We saw

a statue on Maps.me, like a

Maps app. It was like statue.

So we're like, all right, let's go to the statue. It was near an army base,

like a junta base, which is like

they have rebels there in these

regions. And some of them work with the government.
Some of them

are against the government. Some of them have deals with each other.
don't fully know i wasn't there for the government anyway we're there taking a picture hanging out six or seven army people with machine guns come out went right at us what are you doing here nothing what are you doing you taking pictures of that like yeah it's a statue give me the pictures let me see delete them where's your passports like i don't know they're back in our hotels let's go let's go see them and they just let us machine gun style back to our hotel to get our passports it's just this is a no foreigners region and uh was there i mean anything worth hiding there that you saw no no there's not like a secret nuclear program or anything no it was just some poor people with like makeshift guns and like yeah and then and then we got back and the people they were like what why let's play soccer we all tried to do the hacky sack soccer thing they loved it i got violent diarrhea and food poisoning there that was more notable than the yeah well that's that's required so four and a half months on the road you come back to your country and what do you notice? Okay, that's a good question. And actually, I can tie that into this Jew special also.
So you see everything fresh when you get back. Yeah.
Clean, clear eyes. Yes, you do.
Yeah. Even probably, what'd you do, a month in Australia, two weeks? Yeah, two and a half weeks.
Even that amount of time. For sure.
You're off, sure off it's enough time to be like oh it's just a horse for the trees for a moment and it was a little overcrowded yeah the cities even dc and the metro like this is too industrial yes i went to visit my parents first surprised them they were like so stoked they haven't talked to me and i went right to them i just walked through the door i was like what the fuck yeah it was really nice um yeah it's oh it's it's overbuilt but also very clean but but then also i was in i was in france i took a writing class in france and i got that beautiful city paris um got back to new york i'm like there's writing on every surface here someone has graffitied every this is disgusting compared to Paris. Like the whatever...
And Paris is pretty disgusting. Yeah, but that old town, you know? Yeah, no, it's great.
I mean, parts of it are great. Yeah.
And then it's like, why is everything written on? Why is everyone signed their fucking name on every fucking surface? But so you notice those things like that, you don't notice. So I'm trying to remember what I noticed there.
It was just a lot of anger, a lot of hustle and bustle. Toilet paper was soft.
Did it seem angrier than when you left? Well, I didn't check my email right away. The lady I sent it to was an employee back then.
I was like, don't give it to me yet. I'm not ready for it yet.
And then I did, and it was like, fuck, it was overwhelming amount of requests I would need and people asking for things. Even to weigh in on this or that, I'm like, a lot of fucking tasks I didn't realize.
I didn't realize how much responsive that's what it was the overwhelming amount of responsibility and i'm not in a high responsibility field you know that's true yeah and it was just like needing to return texts and emails and that's right and weighing on this and pay your bill and do that it's just like oh it was so freeing before so here's what i noticed when i did the jew special it was weird because i've never done this before but i was living with a ghost for about five years i was living with a guy who was dead that that version of me isn't here anymore right like the yeshiva student the yeshiva kid yeah he's gone he's been long gone

and i was living there and trying to remember this ancient religion and ancient time in my life and i was lost and it was a very lonely hour usually it's like in relation to other things and i finished it and i kind of came for air and i looked around and everybody was very angry I came back into the world

and it was like

everyone's mad about everything. My friends were obsessed with stories that I didn't even know were happening.
Like what? There's some chick with no dicks swimming with a dick swimming against other chicks with with dicks like and their their whole life is fucking worried about it and it's like none of this concerns you none of this concerns you that there's a trans swimmer or that this covid vaccine or that it's like dude chill out all of you are mad about every little thing was, it's like, I don't know what happened in those five years. People got fucking mad.
I just came up and I was like seeing it. It wasn't like, you know, when a kid, you see a 10 year old, you see him five years later, like, well, you got so fucking big or five to 10.
Yeah, other people's kids. Yeah, but if you see him every month, you don't notice it.
So I was like dropped out, popped back in and everybody was at each other's throats everybody's so actively political uh how do you avoid that i don't read the news i try to change the subject i try to have i try to have tools change the subject how do you change the subject how do you focus you must be the only resolutely non-political person with a public voice left.

There's a few of us. My friend, Big J, we were talking once.
We did a week together in Miami, probably the worst city in America. I heard it was the best.
Who told you that? I don't know. Real estate agent? Yeah, exactly.
It's so disgusting. They value only beauty, no intelligence.
if you're a girl growing up in Florida, they will not reward your A plus in high school. They will reward your new hairstyle.
Yeah. Anyway, we got a beach house.
We're talking. He goes, I like Biden.
This was three years ago. I was like, why do you like Biden? You don't vote.
He goes, I hear about him less than the other guy. And I'm like, what a great reason to like one over the other.
Yeah, we do hear way more about this guy than that guy. If you're a non-political, I just want you to be away from me.
You deal with it. Yeah, you avoid it.
You learn how to change a subject. But aren't a lot of comedians pretty absorbed with it? Yeah, but we don't even know anything.
Yeah, I've noticed. It's like, we don't know anything we're weighing in.

So here's what I do.

It's like, you start to get an argument and we're like, well, mainly my stance is I don't care.

But if you're asking me to take a stance

on Ford versus Chevy, you know,

something that doesn't matter,

what do you think's better?

It's like, well, 95% of my reaction is I don't know or care.

Whatever I can get a better deal on is good.

But with that other 5%, I'm going to say, I think Chevy's better. Why? I just kind of feel that way.
Okay, so everybody's only publicly weighing in on their 5% and not their 95%, which is, I don't give a fuck. No one cares about women's college swimming.
No one's ever cared about women's college swimming. You don't think so? No.
I didn't even know it existed. Shut the fuck up.
And they're obsessed with it. They're fucking obsessed with women's amateur aquatics.
Fuck off. Eat a dick.
Shut up, dude. What are we talking about? What are the issues that get you spun up? The Yankees, mid-season collapse.
That's every fucking year. But I know it doesn't matter.
I know this is fake. I'm not pretending it's an actual real thing.
I'll bitch about somebody going to a slump, but I know at the end, I'm just playing pretend angry. It doesn't really matter.
So there are no issues that get you mad? Stand-up. People coming after stand-ups.
Who's coming after stand-ups? It's a lot of people. It's an interesting time for my industry.
Tell me how. I love this thing you used to do on your TV show where you're like, play dumb to get an answer.
It's really fun. It's actually really a fun thing.
I am dumb. But that doesn't...
Interesting. You think you would be rewarded for helping a little woman cause a stranger and you're saying you were not rewarded? That's odd.
It's called evoking an answer. So I'm trying to pull back and keep my many opinions out of it.
Yeah, it's smart. It's a good way to do it.
Instead of like weighing in and go, I know, you're right and weighing in. It's like, keep talking.
Well, you know more about the top, No, I sincerely, I don't know that much. I know a million standups and I like a lot of them,

but I don't know that much about your business.

Yeah.

So you had a lot of people.

It's,

it's worse when it's from the inside was other comedians weighing and saying

that crossed the line publicly.

Oh,

do you get that?

Yeah.

It's disappointing.

It's really disappointing because it is already a battle.

Um, you're trying to get people to laugh at dark stuff.

Really dark stuff.

School shootings.

You're trying to get them to laugh at it.

You're trying to find joy in a terrible thing.

9-11 jokes.

Holocaust jokes.

AIDS jokes.

Rape jokes.

You're trying to get them to find...

Making fun.

Break that down.

We're creating fun.

People are like, you're making fun of this.

Like, right.

I'm creating fun out of a terrible situation.

That guy, Don Barris, used to run the Juanae.

Yeah.

There was a time we had a friend die.

Freddie Soto died.

I don't know what.

Just in the sleep one day.

Really helpful.

Looked out for everybody.

Really just supportive guy when we all started.

And nobody could believe it. At the time, I was banned from the comedy store for beating up bobby lee too much i was angry about a chick and i was taking on him and i was just every chance i get i was punching him and they were like all right you're out you can't be here and i live two blocks away and i got the call freddie soda died i was like what the fuck and theseans always lasted between a month and six months and then would end you're always welcome back but at the time I was banned I was we couldn't understand Freddie Soda dying it's like it was the first one that died that I knew of and it was like I remember walking down the steps of my apartment then just collapsing on the steps and then like keep walking and then I met someone in front of the conference or another comic we just hugged and we sat on the on the on the sidewalk like with our feet on the street and just like sitting there and don bearers comes up and he goes i'm glad you're letting the band be enforced you shouldn't be in here it's good you're on the street it was just a cathartic laugh he made fun yes out of a terrible situation and that's what some of us are trying to do.
Others are trying to do funny lollipop jokes. It is true that funerals and wakes, memorial services, the saddest get-togethers that we have, they always wind up in hilarity.
Have you experienced that? This guy, Bob Oshak, who ran the memorial for Freddy Soto, it was in the main room of the comedy store. And he starts off.
He was like really good friends and best friends. They started together.
And he goes, you know, this is a weird time. And he set the tone right away.
He goes, you know, I'm here. It's just weird that it took Freddy dying for me to finally get a main room spot.
And just Mitzi starts laughing. And it's just like, hey, we're going to enjoy this.
We're not going to cry. We're going to, but we're going to try not to.
So that's what we do. And then some people are just not understanding it.
It's almost. But other stand-ups are policing their colleagues.
They fall. It used to be we'd just talk shit about them.
I was doing a blowjob joke a long time ago and Mark Maron was just like looking at me like, whatever. And he goes, you're smarter than that, man.
That sucks. But like I said, he didn't put me in a moral low ground, him in a moral high ground.
He was just like, you're smarter than that. But I'm like, yeah, smart people also like getting their fucking balls drained.
They can all relate to it. It's universal.
It works in Romania, in China, in America. Everybody can relate to it.
I don't see a problem with it. Some stupid jokes are fine.
But it wasn't a fight. We would just talk shit about each other behind our backs in a fun way.
Oh, that guy's just doing alt jokes. He sucks.
He sucks. But we never go publicly about it.
Now it's this thing, this moral high ground. You get activated online where you just feel like...
Have you been attacked by other stand-ups? Yeah. Yeah.

But also,

far more.

The real story is

I've been supported by other stand-ups.

Yeah.

I would imagine.

At a 95% rate.

Would they attack the Kobe Bryant stuff?

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

A few.

But even in that,

it was mostly positive texts.

How you doing?

You okay?

I thought that was hilarious.

And then a few knuckleheads.

That's it. Who just felt...
you got punished for that yeah yeah yeah yeah it ruled out i got a call from milo going good one bro nice one you got a lot of people mad i'm like thanks buddy coming from you that's fucking awesome um so milo appreciated it yeah duncan was like i think this might be your best one i'm like yeah i know i made i made a i made a city crumble yeah it was great i turned comedians into hypocrites they were all like if you don't like a joke just walk away and now these same guys because they live in la or they were black they were like this is going far. I'm like, ha ha, you have no ideals.

I found you.

I found your fucking, it's all, oh, just walk away if it's a rape joke.

But if it's a fucking about one of your heroes, you're like, oh no, I don't like it.

You've never been triggered.

Now you're triggered.

Now you understand those people walking out.

He's screaming as they walk out.

It's also helpful for the rest of us to know who they are.

The phonies.

Yeah.

It's just like. Did you get dropped by your management for that? Manager dropped me.
She was also getting death threats at home. Because you made fun of Kobe Bryant.
Dude, Laker fans are retarded. They're not smart people.
They've only had winners, so they don't understand what struggle is. They're dumb're dumb they're bad people they're laker fans so how when she called you what'd she say your man she was like i think that's i think that's i think she might have texted me she's like i think that's the end of the road for us um but i'm getting these like that's the same they're gonna come to but they doxed her they're like i'm gonna come to your house and rape you it's like oh don't deal with that get yeah get out of you guys doing? They upped it.
They upped it at that point. I never seen them up it like that.
Where instead of going after you, they'll go after other people. Like your loved ones to try to hurt you.
And it's like, well, what did they do? What do you do? It's just idiots. You know? Online going.
It's like, they're all playing kids. If they actually saw someone, they wouldn't do that.
that you know they actually nothing actual in real life by the way zero only online stuff real and i tried to calm everybody down like guys i've been getting death threats for two decades this isn't real this is gamer talk this is just that's true yeah the best one was this guy was like if you come to north carolina i'll kick your fucking ass i I swear to God. And then an hour later, he wrote back.
He goes, okay, I see you're in North Carolina right now. But if you come to Greensboro, North Carolina, I'm going to really kick your ass.
I'm like, no, you took a shot already, dork. You took your shot.
Shut up. If I ever see you, I'll kill you.
I'm like, my tour schedule's there. Have some fucking ideals.
Come get me. Do you worry about that? I used to in the very beginning, but it's, it was never even a fuck you in person.
It was never even a like, shut up. Fuck you.
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Explore more than 300 undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs at asuonline.asu.edu. so you've never had anybody come to your house or hassle you or anything like that no no but online and they went off to other people and so then but no one i was never punished from any moral your manager shouldn't drop you i mean i felt sorry i feel sorry for her hearing about it that she got threatened yeah but you're paying this person to have your back in moments exactly like this right yeah right so to abandon you in one of those moments is pretty much the greatest dereliction of duty imaginable yeah we're not really friends anymore yeah yeah yeah exactly like you guys this is the time to what's the whole point right yeah help me through this Yeah, it're not really friends anymore.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. This is the time to...
What's the whole point? Yeah, help me through this. Yeah, it's not when you're like...
Oh, yeah. And then my producer pulled out because they were like, I was going to do that special.
And then he was like, I can't do it because he was in LA. LA people thought it was the end of the world.
And I was like, what? No, it's nothing. I even had an Uber driver.
I came back from Charlotte. I was doing a gig in Charlotte when it happened.
And I came back, had a an uber driver i came back from charlotte i was doing a gig in charlotte when it happened and i came back sat an uber driver and he was talking he was like uh did you hear about this kobe bryant guy i was like yeah he goes i was like what do you what do you think about it he goes it's just weird they're i don't know it's like it's sad but like it's him and his daughter and the seven other people they don't seem to give a fuck fuck about those seven other people. And I'm like, right, right.
That's fair. You got it.
That's, that's where these jokes are. When some celebrity dies and I'm mocking them online, it's because like you guys value celebrity life over a normal life.
Well, you also made a pretty biting point. I thought, well, I'll tell you my reaction, which is I never criticize anyone when he dies.

Okay.

Right.

So there's that, but I'm not a standup, but I thought you made a totally fair point.

I'm not against Kobe Bryant, but he was credibly accused of rape.

They hassled the woman until she dropped out.

Started spreading rumors about her.

Seven other people seeming inside.

I was like, no.

During the trial.

Uh-huh.

Right.

Stuff we wouldn't hold by today.

And he admitted that she never gave consent, but he implied non-verbally that there was consent and he strangled her so like there was something there his words although at the time i didn't realize i now know she does not think she gave me consent it's like all right so i'm not much of that's his word right i'm not much of a feminist Even I'm like, that sounds like great to me by the way also i don't really care what i'm doing is making fun of our society well that's exactly that's exactly it i haven't stayed up late worrying about kobe bryant's assault uh either but these are the same people who are telling me to value all women and believe all women or whatever but they actually don't care at all it was It was wild. And you made that point.
And I was in LA. Fair point.
As a Laker hater, just going, well, they're not going to let him off. Like he'll be going to jail, hoping he would, because like, I want the Lakers to fail.
Yeah. And then when it became time for him to go to like, when he retired, I'm like, they're not going to let him have a retirement season.
The women of LA, the liberal fucking women of LA are never going to let this accused rapist get through his fucking victory lap without mentioning it. And they were so kooky.
They just were like, no, we don't go after black people. We only go after white people.
That's just the way it is. So this has been brewing inside you for a while.
Well, I hate the Lakers. I just like, whatever.
I had a bid on an old album. It was called hashtag fuck the Lakers.
I was in Denver. I was like, oh, this is where he fucking raped that chick, right here.
Do people laugh? Yeah, of course. Why do you hate the Lakers? Well, I don't really.
It's just fun. But it's because they killed comedy shows in LA.
Every time they're in the playoffs. It'd be up 3-0 in the first round.
And a be the one seed against an eight seed and you'd have a show and no one would show up because they all had to watch the... These bandwagon fans had to watch the fucking Lakers.
So I'm like, I fucking hate the Lakers. Nobody hates the Clippers.
No. So it's like...
So you just lean into it. My number one team is anti-Lakers.
That's totally fair. My number two team is the pelicans yeah when you tell jokes in china yeah do you tailor them to a chinese audience and like what's a funny joke in china so anywhere else it's you get halfway through a joke and realize ah shit you're not gonna understand this reference like you don't even think about it a dog eating joke or something like that no you don't do that they were just like very clear do not make fun of the government and i was like okay and they're like listen we're gonna tell you twice because i know you're a comedian we're comedians we can tell you that it's gonna make you want to do it don't do it we'll get shut down there's a chance to get arrested there's a chance we get arrested don't do it it's not like it won't be it won't work it's gonna be painful for all of us and i still did one anyway I was like talking about anti-government at the time.
And I was like, my country needs a fucking mouth to come fucking murder all our senators. And they were like, whoa, whoa.
And I was like, no, it's pro mouth. It's pro mouth.
I was like, change the fucking subject. Yeah.
But anyway, that Kobe stuff, some people just like waded in and got mad. And they were like, he shouldn't say this.
I was like, fuck off. Wait, other stand-ups said that? Yeah, a few.
Like who? Nah. But like, they know who they are.
It doesn't matter. Others were mad, but just like, personally, like, dude, come on, man.
Miss Pat called me and was like, Ari, you can't make fun of our heroes. Like, make fun of Dennis Rodman.
And I was like, all right, or Michelle Obama. She goes, no, not Michelle Obama.
I'll tell you you can make fun fun of. But she just called and would check up on me and stuff like that.
And then other people, she'd be like, fuck that fat bitch for going against you. It's Pat Rolls.
But the normal people would just check on you and never say a word. Some people fought tooth and nail to be like, defend me.
Other people were just like, it's not my fight, but I but i hope you're doing okay who defended you mark norman went hard on me once not hard on me hard for me on a radio show in san diego talking about how like the jokes are jokes if you didn't like it it's just you didn't like it uh uh andrew schultz went on the breakfast club a very black show oh yeah and was like you guys are way off. You're way off.
I mean, that was ballsy, to go on a black show. He was a black hero.
So just like when Cosby's stuff came out and they didn't want to hear it, they didn't want to hear this either. So I like bringing it up.
Again, it's not about Kobe. It's about them worshiping heroes.
So he was like, no, it's a fucking joke. You guys are getting it wrong.
And then that was... How did that go over? They were fighting him.
And he was he was fighting back good for him schultz has always been on the right side of this other people hinge cliff some people he was like he goes hard defending just to any comic there air on the side of just defending your art form don't even say hey i didn't find the joke funny but it's his right to say it well don't even say that part just say the second part it's his right to say it why why when everyone's coming against somebody for a joke be like i didn't find it funny don't say that you would never say that normally you would never in times of peace go i didn't find that but tony hinchcliffe defended you tony no schultz defended tony hinchcliffe oh when he had a yeah they all get the kerfuffles you know know? Who else? Oh, Tim Dillon made like really funny jokes about it. Good for him.
You know Tim, right? He was just here. Yeah.
In fact, I texted with him yesterday. He fit in this chair.
He's slim these days. Yeah, he's in fighting form.
Yeah, he's on a diet of fucking twink cum. I didn't ask him about that.
I don't think he's really gay. I think that's not true.
That's a real theory. I don't think that.
I don't think that. We all be like, prove it.
Kiss one guy in front of us. I totally, we, do you remember Pete Buttigieg ran for president? He's supposedly gay and now he's transportation secretary.
And I had a, one of my is gay. And he goes, you know, he's not gay.

I was like, are you serious?

He goes, no, that's complete bullshit.

Wow.

Oh, no.

He goes, and you know, all gays,

I'll keep very close track of that stuff.

Oh, yeah.

And my producer's like, no, that's, it's totally opposed.

He was dating women just a few years ago.

That's totally fake.

He's not gay at all.

Smart.

So I said that on the air, people got all offended.

I thought it was kind of hilarious.

It is hilarious. Yeah, it is.
It is hilarious. Yes.
And you're also like, I'm not against gays. I'm saying he's not one.
Well, that's what I said. Yeah.
So Tim went on and he goes, he plays a good dumb sometimes on purpose. Oh, totally.
Like you do with the questions. He does that with dumb.
He had this thing about when they were trying to ban Apu. And he had Giannis Papas has this old Greek guy character.

And he was asking questions to Pete about Apu.

Asking questions to Tim about Apu.

And he goes, this man, he's a bad father?

He goes, oh, no, he's actually a great father.

There's a white character in the show.

He chokes his children.

He's a really bad father. But Apu is, no, he's got eight kids and he's really wonderful so he uh he's i'm sort of deadbeat no small business owner he goes i don't get it and tim's like yeah i don't know they just don't like a anyway so he did that with me where he goes um he goes well ari's actions and his words were terrible to take a hero like that and make fun of her and his and his um and his producer's like yeah it's tough it's like it's just like you get on on the day of a death to make fun of aretha franklin is so shitty and the producer's like no no no it was not as cobrin is like no no i read he did a thing about aretha franklin and he goes that was a different one he goes oh so he does this all the time it's not about this one thing that they hear no he said something about aretha franklin he's like it's not that he goes well i'm pretty pissed about the aretha franklin thing from like three years earlier it was just a way of saying like guys shut the fuck up in a funny way that was like the most creative way to do it oh that's that's inspiring does anybody pay any attention at all to the late night hosts?

No.

Like that's not even a category anymore. I guess.

But that's.

But not even.

No.

So funny.

You see them sometimes like crying about something.

What happened to your industry?

You're crying.

But when you were a kid.

That was all it was.

Yeah.

That was it.

You watched the Tonight Show monologue.

But when you guys get to it, when like you and Tim Dillon are having dinner. Yeah.
You was it. You watched the Tonight Show monologue.
But when you guys get to,

when you and Tim Dillon are having dinner,

you're not talking about what Kimmel said.

No.

Occasionally, we will talk.

I'm trying to stay positive.

So occasionally, we'll talk about how cool Kimmel used to be

and how that is really him, the cool guy.

Yeah.

And he's, I don't know, playing pretend or whatever.

Kimmel had a, there was a roast for a local kind of lunatic comedian, Peter Chen. We had a sort of fake roast.
As distinct from other comedians? What does that mean? He was a bit crazy. The owner of the comic store passed him to let everyone else kind of fuck with him.
He was a bit of a, yeah, not me lunatic or you lunatic,

but like off.

And when a standup says that,

it's real.

A terrible,

terrible comedy.

Like an un,

no future,

no past comedian.

Yeah.

And so he was just a local,

like at the comedy store,

he was like,

you could just fuck with him

all the time.

He's crazy and angry,

driven to anger at all times.

So it was fun to fuck with him.

So we had a roast for him.

Thank you. at the comedy store he was like you could just fuck with him all the time he's crazy and angry driven to anger at all times it was fun to fuck with him um so we had a roast for him and um everyone you know did their thing then it's his turn to get up and he goes uh to everybody's like you say this about me i but i you are the man uh nice you wear a plaid shirt not straight lines and like he thinks he's getting you and then he goes to jimmy kimball was on the on the dais.
I mean, it's an 80-seater that's got 30 people in it. He might have already had a show.
He might not have. But he goes, and Jimmy, you say I am a snake? You are a snake.
And Jimmy Kimmel cracked his beer bottle. He's like, I'll fucking kill you.
And he had to be held back. That's who he is.

He's a funny guy.

I don't know what that is, but he's a funny guy.

What about the other two?

Who was it?

Fallon?

Yeah, Fallon.

I can't remember.

And the guy from The Daily Show.

The guy from The Daily Show. Yeah.

I've never seen The Daily Show. His old show is pretty funny the fake republican very funny yeah i agree um yeah fallon's a fucking he's also he's so clean on there but i don't think he's that clean i think he's like a boozer and a fun guy from what i hear i know.
So that's just totally, that's not even a factor in comedy. Yeah, I did like when he goes, when they were like, hey, you're losing the ratings to the other guy, to the Daily Show guy.
You need to talk about Trump and stuff. And he goes, that's just not me.
I play ping pong with guests. So if everyone wants to hear that, then you should go to that guy.
But if you want to hear a good lip sync battle, I'm your guy.

Well, good for him.

Yeah, exactly.

Know who you are.

Yeah.

I just think more comics should do that.

Stay in your lane.

Be funny.

You can write a tweet against Trump or Biden.

Make it a joke.

So many comics.

Louis said this.

He goes, comics fuck themselves over because they were like, it's just a joke.

It's just a joke.

But as an audience member, you're like, but a lot of you guys are not joking.

Legitimately, you're making serious statements. So how are we, the audience, to know when you're joking and when you're not? This guy might be the worst president of all time.
That's not a joke. No.
Make it a joke. This guy's a worse president than Kermit was at being a fucking...
I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. But there's a joke possible.
So then what do you make of Chappelle? In general, he's a great comic.

Well, of course he is.

But there's also a, and there's not a criticism.

Yeah.

I've seen it.

Of what?

Well, there's a, it's all like his, he did this, the tranny special he did was like an

editorial.

It was not, he was not joking.

He was serious.

Is that good or bad? There's a thing I'll say that happens to a lot of people. You get some, and it's not necessarily him because everyone's on their own path, but you get some backlash.
Yeah. And then instead of just allowing that to be backlash, you want, I think it comes from a place of you want to win those people over and explain you're not

the guy. You're not the guy they think.

And you want to win them over. But then

what happens is

your creative output is spent

trying to win over people who hate

you instead of trying to please the people

who do love you.

And that's your core group.

And keep honoring them. And these other

people, it sways them all. It's so smart.
When the people go really. I just got it.
That is a really smart observation. Thanks buddy.
It's not just comedy. No, I'm saying fucking anti-Semite.
All we can be is a brain. You have a high verbal intelligence.
I'll say, no, I think that's a really insightful thing to say. It's not just comedians, by the way, who do that.
Right, right, right. Right.
right. And then it just keeps going further and further over until you have this warped fucking Gollum version of yourself.
Yes. And you're like, what happened to you? And I've seen it.
They won, actually. They won.
Your enemies won. The critics won.
They've driven you off. Because they distorted you.
And it's not even like, let me do a good joke about this. It's, hey, I was already done with that.
So I'm not gonna keep doing jokes. I'm not.
So people ask me about when I did i did this jew thing like you should come out in a helicopter and do whatever i'm like guys that was a throwaway line on a fucking three minutes you only hear about so that's what you want me to be i was never gonna cover that again that was the one joke about the fucking lakers i moved on to other stuff you want me to to live in that forever? That's crazy.

So you keep doing,

also artists do this when they get positive feedback.

Well, it's like,

I do a bunch of different paintings,

but this one's about deer

seem to sell more.

So, well, I guess I'll paint more deers.

And it's like,

that's not your natural progression

as a visual artist, as a painter.

So how do you keep in?

Can't read any of it.

Can't read any feedback.

Positive feedback is just as deadly

as negative feedback.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah, people telling you we like that. I knew I liked you.
This is exactly right. Yeah.
Can't read anything. Can't allow it in.
That's right. You can...
As a comic, we got something that nobody gets is immediate reaction. I can hear the laughs.
Yes. We know when it's good and when it's bad.
And sometimes when you're starting, somebody will be like, no, no, they were laughing in the back, you couldn't hear. I'm like, they're facing me.
I can hear, I got the best seat in the house for the laughs. And I know when there's good laughs and bad laughs.
And I know even in that 15-minute set that I thought was bad, there was one joke that killed and the other 14 were not good. So I'm aware what the line was for this crowd.
And I failed. And it's okay.
And they tell you, no, there's that, I can tell from immediate feedback. I don't have to go home and go, who was saying anything about it online? I know what worked.
Every time they come out with a thing against comics, they're like, and this fucking crowd was laughing. This crowd doesn't know me, especially if it's at the cellar, the stand of the comedy store.
This is not our crowds. They're just there for the show and we're going on.
And if you're making them laugh, that's a bunch of strangers

laughing. That's all the feedback you need.

Or a bunch

of strangers not laughing. And that's also great

feedback.

Occasionally you'll get a comedian and go, hey, there's

something there. Don't give up on that joke.

Everything you're saying is

true and wise, more important.

But there's also the

reality of touring for any gig,

which is you wind up in a hotel room

alone and there's also the reality of touring for any gig, which is you wind up in a hotel room alone. Yeah.
And there's nothing to do. It's depressing.
And you're on your phone and you're like, I wonder what the reaction to this was. That's fair.
And I should say this. I fall to it constantly.
When I say don't read that, it's advising myself, read it less. Yeah, that's right.

We were all talking once at the store in the parking lot,

and Gerard Carmichael showed up.

We were all talking about reading comments and stuff.

And he was like, yeah, you shouldn't read this before.

What year was this with him?

I think it was right after he had his first TV show.

So he was kind of a star.

Beyonce knows him, but not internationally.

He was doing well.

Anyway, whatever. And he goes, yeah, yeah, you shouldn't read it but it is people talking about yeah it's interesting right it's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn like let's go up there and hear my you're a performer I mean you play for people and for their reactions so this is another form of it yeah and you want to hear it and but it's just like do something else it's it's deadly every once in a while I'll go open up instagram when i'm bored and i'm like don't fight back one time and it's not like a wholesale like i'll never be on here but like right now i shouldn't be on i'm in the woods i'm in the woods sometimes and i go on my phone it's like fucking ugh well you do it later you did take four and a half months off without your phone so i don't know anyone else who's done that yeah It's just like you set your own line and I'm behind my line.
I'm about to, I've been for almost a year, I've been trying to get on this light phone. You know, the light phone? No.
This company, they made it, you can do regular texting. The buyers are two people.
They are people who want to spend less time online and people who don't want to be spied on.

They're woods people and there's fucking liberals who don't want to fall to it.

I'm in the latter, I guess.

Full texting.

There's no email on there.

There's a Maps app, but not Google Maps

because those people don't want to be tracked.

So it's some other Maps app.

I think there is a Rideshare app and some sort of music playing app, I think, but not Spotify because they don't want anybody out. The Light Phone 3 is about to come out with a camera unrelated.
Like it takes a picture onto a hard drive. So that's all I use my phone for.
So that would be for me. Yeah, I want one where I can't get this stuff on there.

I can't get email.

I'll check it at home.

I want to be able to text and not have to do this,

which is fucking annoying.

Right.

So a full key,

but they used to have the one that flipped open like that,

the LG Envy,

and you can text like that.

Flip phone,

but you can text like that.

It's a breeze.

Loved it.

I gave up email completely.

No email. No email.
No email. How do you deal with like long form i text him that's it and i try to make i mean i'm sure i miss a lot you know and i um how does someone send you okay so they can send you a link you can open read this yeah or a pdf or i just don't deal with stuff wow and because i think it's it's just it much time.
Yeah, I think I've lost probably half to a full decade of my life to this. Right.
And so it might be worth saying, you know, I'm an artist, I'm a creator, I'm a little eccentric. I've got a weird personal life and I'm just not playing along with your conventions.
You could probably pull that off. You're also in a position where you're successful enough where you'd be like, guys, deal with it for me.
Like handle this. Yeah, but there's not that much actually.
You can bang it out on text and then you can get to the bottom of it every day. Then you go to sleep with nothing.
And you make a phone call. Like, hey, explain this to me.
Let's go over it real quick. It's going to take us 10 minutes.
Not texting. It'll take us five hours.
Yeah, I don't do a ton of phone calls either. Okay.
Because you can't do those at two in the morning. Yeah.
Yeah. So you, I wish there was a way to send a text, schedule send a text.
Can you make more, at some point, will stand-ups be able to make more money on the internet than they made on tv they already are they already are yeah they already are so it's like it's pretty wild the lack of caring they have for these conventions now some of the comics have made so much money they've re-imprisoned themselves and that's why they usually come out against a comic who crossed the line because they're afraid of their own money kind of going away instead of just defending their friends when when harvey weinstein came out when it came out about harvey weinstein um they went to tarantino and it's like well you've worked with him you need a way you need to make your statement and he said along the lines of, hey, guys, I've known this guy for 25 to 30 years. He was at my wedding.
I was at his or vice versa, whatever. This has been a friend for a long time.
You need to give me some time to think about this. And it seemed reasonable enough, and it kind of went away.
And I don't even know if he ever said anything. But what's saying anything going to do anyway? Exactly.
they need more of that, but they're all scared of losing their positions.

So they sell out their friends,

LA comics more than New York.

So the more money they make,

the more cowardly they become.

We all wanted to do another,

our own thing.

And then this money in prison,

they had these jobs.

I mean,

I make fun of Rogan once in a while,

where I was like,

I remember when he was still in LA and I was like,

Hey,

I'm coming to town.

I'm going to go on a hike.

And he goes,

Oh,

I can't.

I got to interview some guy.

And I was like, I just canceled. He goes, no, he's coming from Australia.
I got to fucking do it. And I was like, oh, for your job.
He'd say, shut up. All right.
Oh, you wouldn't do it for millions of dollars. No, I would, but don't ignore.
Are you worried about getting too successful where you can't take four months off and go to Myanmar? I, I, no, no. The problem becomes when you have a, like this guy and that guy we're like you guys rely on me for money yeah so now it's a separate thing and that's when i didn't realize that's what comedy central did to me um you got employees well they were like well there's all these like you have all these staff members you have all these people gonna shoot your show we'll kick you out they'll be out of work they're not gonna pay their rent or you can comply and you're like oh fuck how horrible are they they're just really horrible like they are right i get that that feeling they're done now they're off which is sad because it was a good platform for comedians they don't take any happiness in their demise so that's actually my last question is about is about the new platform for comedians like how central is Rogan to all this to this ecosystem I mean he is the best the amount of support he has I mean there's times where he goes some big guy some Oliver Stone wants me to have a podcast but I can't I have this open micr on today or tomorrow so I'm already booked I want to promote this open micr whereas everybody else we go well the Nate Oliver Stone will get more hits than this open micr so I can't, I have this open miker on today or tomorrow.
So I'm already booked. I want to promote this open miker.
Whereas everybody else would go, well, the Nate Oliver Stone will get more hits than this open miker. So I can't, he's just like, I'm the, I'm the name.
I'm Joe Rogan. So I want to put this guy on or that guy on.
And this guy's funny. I want to push him to a big platform instead of like, what's going to help me book my show.
It's like, interesting. I'll help me.
He just, the casual talking about the outlawness of standup has helped all of us. Whether or not you've been on his show or not, he's made standup more popular.
You know, so now we can all just, I mean, it's succeeding on a level, it's a crazy level. So what, like, what's the effect on a standup's career of going on Rogan? Well well one time is not as big as as it once was because there's now there's thousands of episodes um but guys like theo vaughn launched off like a good early appearance tim dillon launched off that dave smith you know really became well known i know all three good guys yeah yeah and you do well on that.
Joey D, but like it was consistent ones, you know? It's not like, it's kind of like the tonight show with Johnny Carson was a long time ago. It's like, they say like, you go on there, you're a star.
And everyone you talk to from back then, like, no, no, no, you're eighth time on there. You're a star.
But that whole week people recognize you. But unlike Carson, I mean, Rogan makes the call himself he doesn't have yep like scouts in the clubs at night yeah he's like wow this lady was right there was a female open micr we're all getting high in the back and then you want to walk past the original the room and you kind of like go in there especially if you're high or drunk it's great watching some high level high-level unknown comic.
You just, it's great. It's laughs.
You know, it's free laughs. Yeah, it's like you're passing by a live stand-up comedy show on your way out of work.
It's the best. And he's in there laughing.
He goes, you were great. He was always really great.
Carlin was like that. He'd sit in the back.
He knew who he was. And if you did well, he'd be like, hey, that was a really good set.
He knew not to just keep that to himself. He knew what George Carlin saying good set would mean.
Did you know him? I met him once. Never said it to me.
He didn't like your shit at all. Never had a good set in front of him.
But if he was there and he saw you, he tipped me 20 bucks to get him a deli sandwich. And I was like, no, is playing great i know it's for you and i desperately needed it i mean i was poor and rogan was always passing money around really oh yeah yeah he kept me in business for a long time rogan did i opened for him for five six years on the road yeah we're good friends good friends.
We're good friends. But like, so I mean, I can't pay them back.
I just try to be, I just try to pass it. How many dates do you do a year? Try to limit it to 24 weeks a year.
And the weeks can either be 24 weeks? It can either be just Friday, Saturday, or like for the Edinburgh Festival, it's an entire month month. It's four streets.
How do you not get addicted to heroin doing that? That's so much time on the road. You get to be a boozer for sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Heroin is always like one time I had a thought like I might not want to try it but I was like okay I'm going to do it away from home so I can't find a dealer that I can and then you realize you can just find a dealer if you're in new york city you probably pull that off yeah so i just haven't gotten into it but how do you keep your life from capsizing sometimes it gets bad and you're like oh i gotta take that back a little pot also sometimes like i messed up a show a little bit not completely it went from an a to like an a minus be like eh cool it being high on stage being high being drunk like let's get drunk afterwards they asked earthquake ones like do you drink on stage i love this interview and he goes stand-up comedy is one of the few uh jobs that uh enable you the right to imbibe while you're at work and i like to avail myself of of that right. And they go, does it ever make you worse? He goes, almost every time.
But yeah, you just got to keep track of it and not let it get to your, you're your own employee. So it's up to you.
Yeah, but there's a, there's a disconnection that happens. There's a lot of sober comics.
Are there really? Couldn't handle it. Joe List, I met Joe Liste list great comic i met him when i moved to new york there was like a separation between new york and la um and i was like hey everybody here in new york talks about you like like kind of reveres you but i've never heard of you coming from la like what's because you want to know why i'm not as big as my name yeah Yeah, he goes, booze.
But I've been sober for six months.

And now, 12 years.

He's crushing it now.

But he had to do that for himself.

Other guy, I mean, Rogan gets high all the time.

He can handle it.

Yeah, but a lot of, I mean, there's a reason that touring musicians,

you know, it's just touring.

It's the touring.

There was a DJ who quit DJing. I forget who it was.
And they were like, he was like, well, I'm doing too much drugs. I can't do it.
So I got to stop DJing. And people go, well, just don't do drugs while you DJ.
And he goes, Hey, you just don't know the world. You have to.
Yeah. I don't know.
He tried to self, but yeah, Rogan, he just rules for it. And it's, And it's a way of like he's like pay your openers well he was paying me 150 dollars a set to mc the standard rate was 50 he's paying 150 and then paying joey diaz would go with us also he's paying him also 150 and the rate for the middle was 100 and then one day he called me and joey and he goes hey i'm sorry i'm giving you guys a raise but i'm like no one's offering us that much definitely not more he goes no you guys are headliners you should make headliner money i'm giving you 250 a set so we'd come home with like as much money as i would make pretty much on my own headlining that i never got any work by the way but like it would have been the same and also never touched my wallet and went out to the finest restaurants you know it was it was great that's amazing yeah why do you think he does it oh i don't know he's a positive guy so for a while he just brought joey diaz with him and then um and joey was pretty coked up back then and sometimes he just would would not show up.
And he could bring a local, but he had to be supportive to the scene. He had to help guys that are struggling.
And he'd bring just Joey. And Joey, he'd get to the airport.
And he's like, Joey, where are you? Don't answer his phone. And then he'd land in the new city.
He's like, where are you? He goes, ah, something came up. I missed my flight.
And he's like, I was at the airport. He missed your flight.
He just, coke excuses, you know? Yeah. And so he's just like, he's unreliable.
He might not show up. It became too much.
But instead of saying, you can't come anymore, he goes, I'll just bring a second opener. So if you don't come, I've still got somebody.
It's, it's nuts to have an employee go, I just don't show up a lot. I guess I'll hire two employees then.
Instead of just firing the guy.

He was like, he's too funny.

He's got to be supportive.

It's our responsibility.

That's remarkable.

Yeah.

So I try to do that with Young Comics.

It's like, you know.

One time I was.

Wait, so when your opener gets too high to show up at the airport, you're okay with it?

No, I've never had a guy like that.

People are too, whatever.

But no, I'm like, I'll pay for your meals. If we're out at a diner after spots, it's like, I got it.
Don't worry about it. I remember one of those.
He was brand new to LA. He took us all out for the standard hotel late night food.
He paid three times in a row. I'm brand new to LA.
This isn't normal for someone. You get a round, but not consistently get rounds.
That's weird.

And we're at Carney's.

It was a chili dog place.

And I was like, let me get this one.

I was broke.

I couldn't afford the standard hotel, but the Carney's, it's $3 each.

And he goes, no, no, it's okay.

I'm like, dude, please, let me get it. There's also like a man sort of like hierarchy thing.

You can't campaign for me.

I don't know you like that.

And I insisted. And he goes, goes okay thank you appreciate that and then later we're walking back to the commerce but he goes hey just so you know like it's not a power position when i pay for you it's just like that standard meal for me is is about a quarter to you it's about worth a one five nickels yeah that's why i pay for it it't, it's meaningless.
It's not for power. Thank you for buying me carnies, but like, that's all.
I have more money, so take some. You know, like if I could just, I could just go get coffee at your spot.
I don't have to ask. So when Rogan got attacked, when they tried to claim he was a racist of all things.
Oh yeah. It didn't seem, it had like no effect.
It had effect. Also, comics supported him.
I think this is what you got to do. There's this, like, meteor of hatred coming at anybody.
You get it plenty. Other people have gotten it plenty.
It's just media. It's solid ball.
And for a meteor to break up, it needs to start breaking up, and you get the image where it's like a piece falls off, a piece falls off in the atmosphere. A piece falls off, a piece falls off.
So what support does from other people in your industry, either broadcasting or comedy, is it shoots a fucking hole through that meteor, a little hole, and that starts to break it up a lot faster. If you have a few commerce who go, guys, you just don't understand comedy.
That's just a joke. It doesn't mean that.
You're out of your mind. It creates doubt in the story.
Yes, that's right. And then it breaks up really fast.
When there's no doubt, it's just fucking Paul that, sorry, that fucking blows everything up. Then what happened to, look, I don't know Louis C.K., but I, at the height of that, I always thought he was really talented.
So I read about it and I, you know, whatever, it was embarrassing that story, but it was not a crime that I could tell. How did he wind up getting destroyed for that? Puritanical.
I think there in society like no matter if you're big we want you down i think it's because it says something about me that i'm not big instead of like let me rise up to his level right let me take you down so in comedy it works in a few ways you're an evil person you steal jokes you're hacky you're um racist racist roseanne racist carlos mencia steals jokes uh larry the cable guy hacky these are all things i don't you know necessarily agree with or not agree with but this is what they say uh this guy lied about something uh this guy did that but they're just like either way we're gonna take you down it's not about one thing if it was about one thing i'd be like the society doesn't like Right. But since it's about lots of things, it's like what the common factor is you're big.
You're all big. Let's take it down.
Um, yeah, but Roseanne, she offered like a legitimate explanation. That lady looks white.
I saw a picture of her. She looks like an old Jewish lady.
Yeah. And then it's like, that's a believable fucking retort, but it's like, we want you out of here.
Do you know her, Roseanne? I've met her a few times. Great person.
Yeah, I don't know her that well, but. Truly a cool, interesting person.
Lunatic. Absolutely.
Yeah. A hundred percent.
But in touch with something deep. She's not a shallow person.
She's got to catch a vibe on stage and it's not even jokes. It's just a vibe and she just gets people on a wave like it's pretty pretty special but um yeah i don't know they go after rogan they go after louis i think it was that i think because what they were going after him for was puritanical oh yeah it was you're not doing sex the way we do but i mean when i was in college i started bringing up verbal consent and it was it it was brought up by virgins who had never really experienced sex.
If you ask any normal woman how they feel if a guy's like, may I kiss you? And they say, okay, yes. May I touch your breast? Like, dude, we're done here.
Yeah, because you're weak. Yeah, you're weak.
Go for it and I'll say no. That's how you know.
it's not like you're not holding them down you're just like it's like uh-uh i'm like okay i mean i've gone in for a kiss but like no no i don't see you like that i'm like okay it's embarrassing yeah i'm not gonna do it again i feel shamed they try to like that's okay i'm like when was last time that happened to you um yeah uh a long time ago good yeah just checking yeah yeah a long time ago. Good.
Just checking. Yeah, a long time ago.

Yeah, and it's like,

but we were like,

that doesn't work in real life,

verbal consent.

And he got verbal consent.

May I do this?

Yes, you may.

Okay, I'm going to do it.

Okay.

Fuck you! And they actually took him out and they yeah they did and and because then people were like well i can't i think that so the friends of his were like no we'll defend him other people like you're putting me in a moral weird spot to you're saying he's this evil guy and if you defend evil and you're out i mean norm mcdonald's saying hey i don't think i don't think roseanne meant that and they go well now you're off at tonight show tonight and he goes i'm not excusing it i'm saying it wasn't the right person if somebody goes to me like uh fuck seth rogan he's anti-trans and he's his his podcast only has this i'm like oh i think you mean joean. They're like, fuck you.
Don't tell me what to think. You know what I mean? And it's like, you can't even argue with, you're getting the wrong, you're at the wrong door.
You're at the wrong door. That's what happened to, what's her name? That black chick got shot through the fucking wall.
They went to the wrong house. What's her name? Oh, they had, say her name, say her name, say her name.
I never did say her name though, so I can't remember. Yeah, damn, wow.
It shows you what kind what kind of person i am but it's like they're going to the wrong house and you're like you're at the wrong house like don't you tell me you're an evil person so they made people feel weird about even defending louis but it was like what are you talking about it's crazy and whatever but it's also when you take a step back from it it's all comical if you don any personal, like, I know that guy. So here's a game I play.
It's called Defend Them. That's what I was going to tell you.
And it doesn't work with full rapists. Okay.
But anyone else, imagine they were your friend. Yeah.
And you had to explain to people, Louie's a good example, of why someone's not wrong. There was a comedian in the UK, we're at the Edinburgh Festival, and he was doing a, it was called When Heresy Met Sally.
This guy, Finn Taylor. He's a great comic.
And he takes these long, he goes, one year he did a Whitey McWhiterson was his hour. It was all about just white people and the culture.
And he takes every side, South Park style, every side. And when Heresy Met Sally, he had some great lines in there.
He goes, men are the only ones that rape ourselves. He goes, women, do you ever have sex with a guy and it gets weird the next day he goes he didn't want to have sex you raped him you talked him into it um and he did this thing about louis and he goes he asked him some women if he could do that and they said no and i guess he did it anyway and i saw him afterwards like hey great special same thing as the other one but like just so you know that's not the facts are wrong do what you want just like that rabbi told me but like they did say yes he goes oh shit and to his gravity changed it she changed it was like i don't want to get it wrong so he changed it made a still a funny joke but yeah like let me get the facts right definitely um so anyway we're all wait fuck i haven't smoked weed today.
At all? Yeah. I know.
It's a place. Wait, let me just ask you, you know Louis C.K., but are there people you would defend who you don't know? Yeah, okay.
So that's the game. Thank you.
It's defend them. So act as if they're your friend and say what happens.
So with Louis, it's like he asked someone for two girls come back to your hotel room, which by the way, always implies women aren't idiots. You know what they want, at least.
You know what they want. No victim blaming.
But if I walk out with a hundred dollar bill- No, but there are no surprises. Right.
This is, you know what this is probably. Exactly.
So you can be like, let's meet downstairs if you don't want that. Okay.
So you're at least putting a guy in a weird position if i walk up with a hundred dollar bill in the get an avenue d in new york and i get robbed i shouldn't get robbed but also like right don't do that you know so anyway if you defend him it's like he asked for verbal consent and got it and they go well as high- his high-powered manager tried to shut these girls up. Or, this is a defend them game.
Or his friend, his manager slash his friend was saying, hey, can you shut the fuck up? He's married. Yeah.
Can you shut the fuck up? And not he's silencing them, but just like, hey, quit saying this shit about my fucking friend. Use your head.
He's married. That's not the same as like trying to silence a fucking female voice.
And Janine said this on a podcast. She goes, we all thought it was funny when it happened.
We all thought it was like, what a dork he is. Yes.
Which is great. Yes.
A guy who jerks off in his stomach should be mocked. Of course.
But should continue to work. Anyway, so defend them.
John Gruden. Remember that? No.
He was a coach for the Tampa Bay Bucsa bay bucks yeah it's a sports team i know you're not into that um i've heard of him okay he's just a coach for the raiders and in the interim he worked for espn and he was talking to the owner of the red skins um online his buddy he was friends with him and they were shitting on roger goodell the commissioner of the league. Good for them.
And he called them the F word for gays. Yeah.
He goes, I said, whatever. And they were like, you said this.
And it was in leaked emails, in an investigation into Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Redskins, the old owner of the Redskins. And they leaked this stuff on purpose.
And they go, what's that? He said, I go, okay, it's either a homophobic slur or it's an employee privately with another employee talking shit about their boss. Who's, by the way, hetero.
So to call him that- Is he? Is that confirmed? I don't know. He's more hetero than fucking Tim Dillon.
But so it's just a guy talking shit about their boss privately. That doesn't sound nearly as bad.
Defend them. Play the defend them game and you'll realize, oh, actually people are not these evil monsters that you think.
I love that. Do you have forbidden figures in there too? It's the only people you know.
Oh, so you research it. It's almost like a parlor game at a party.
Who do you play this with? You could do it at a house party, but people don't want to be the one defending, especially liberals, or actually the other way. Yeah.
If it's like super Republicans. Yeah.
Most of us are in the middle somewhere. 80% of us are in the middle somewhere.

And the fucking vocal parts of each side

are way, way out there.

It's like Islam.

It's like the fucking,

the ones you're running in

are the fucking bomb makers.

Yeah.

The most of them are just like,

you're supposed to love your wife.

Yeah, exactly.

So they don't like it.

If you pull fucking AOC out,

you know, about something

and you're a fucking hardcore Republican,

you're like, ah,

you got a defender, defender.

And you're like, all right, let me look into this. And it's kind of debate club.
And you realize no one's a fucking monster. The monsters are gone.
Again, doesn't work with credible accusations of rape. So your talent study is coming in handy through lifelong.
Like you're looking at all sides of the question. It's a fun game at a party.
You put a few people's names in a hat and you pick one out and you go, go. Have you ever defended someone you don't like? Yeah, all the time.
And you realize, oh shit, if that was my friend, I would see the good in him. That's not the case.
Or this story was wrong, or they left out a certain part of the story to get their way. You know, the cops in the Robbie King beating.
You know that, how they cut out the first seven minutes of course and it's like doesn't excuse beating someone much but it does somewhat excuse it does explain it better exactly when he's fighting to a standstill with three cops by the way if you punch a cop they're gonna punch you back you think they're gonna go hard yeah that's the deal and he's fighting to a standstill with three of them and they come in like you don you don't do that to our fucking friends. But if you start with seven cops beating a guy, like he's defenseless.
You're like, well, yeah, you're not seeing the whole story. If I call you a piece of shit and then we cut to you walking alone, it looks like you're walking sad alone because I called you a piece of shit.
But that's not the real story. You know, we're having a good time.
Exactly. So anyway, defend him.
It's a fun game.

I'm going to play tonight. Yeah, try it.

Again, it does not work with

rapists. Actually, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to defend you.

Okay. Alright.
He's a good guy.

Yeah. Alright, Shafir.
Thank you.

Buddy, it was great to meet you. It really was.
It was awesome.

Great to meet you. Thank you.
Yeah, you know, I did not

tell my mom I was coming to meet you. Why, she's not a fan?

She's a fan. It's all these people.
And I'm like, he was an anti-war guy at Fox News who followed the dead. He's not.
How is he that guy that you think he is? Well, you can't be anti-war. That means you're a fascist.
It's racist to be anti-war. I think it would be different with the FAA.
With the what? With the FAA. You started saying fascist, I thought you were going to say something else.
No, no, no, no. Because I learned

you can't even call Roger Goodell that.

Yeah, exactly.

So I wonder.

Buddy, it was great to meet you.

I want you to do my travel podcast.

Done?

I know you've been places.

You have a travel podcast?

Yeah, it's called You Be Trippin'.

It's just about a place,

no politics.

Man, there's one thing

I've done a lot of is travel.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think it's

the most educational thing you can do.

Yeah.

I really believe

that i don't know why more people don't do it i feel like our rich people in this country i am one

but they don't travel right yeah like they go they kind of recreate their own lives with better

service in a foreign country but the whole point of travel is to learn how other people live yeah

read the local newspaper if you 100 yeah instead of how do we get the New York Times here? Good. Call me.
I'd do it.

Okay. Perfect.
Okay. You ever

in New York? No, I don't go to New York.

Okay. Well, or whatever.
Let's do it.

All right. Okay.
Thanks, man. Thanks, buddy.

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