Patton Oswalt

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We're taking away the innocent years that you kind of need to remember as you get older and realize how cynical and dark things are. What kind of adult does that produce?

And what kind of kids do they raise?

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

I am very excited for you all to hear the conversation I just had with Patton Oswalt. I'm not going to talk about it a lot.
I'm going to let you just listen. He is an amazing actor.

I've had the pleasure of working with him several times, and his stand-up is brilliant. And he has a podcast, and he writes books, and he's about to hit the road soon with his new stand-up.

The stand-up is called Effervescent, and visit pattonoswalt.com to see if he's coming to a city near you. So let's get into it.
Buckle up. Here's Patton Oswald.

Before we came on the air, we were talking about this comedian friend of mine, Lisa Correo, who dated an astronaut and said astronauts, and I think rock climbers, and I'm sure skydivers and deep sea divers and cave explorers, they do have an adrenaline junkie aspect to them.

How about the people who dive off cliffs and they have the rabbit on the, what do they call it, squirrel or whatever who was the first guy because all i remember is you know those old films of the 1800s when people were trying to create the first flying machines and there were guys like 18th century top hat version of the squirrel suit and they just plummet and die right and again an adrenaline junkie

and and i'm sure a physicist or a engineer was like okay i'm gonna jump off and this will actually like how do you lead up to that and make sure that it got because or the first one.

The first one, and then it worked.

And then, of course, once the first one does it, then everyone's, oh, now we, it's like breaking the four-minute mile. Oh, we can do it.

But that is a thing where I just, the one, one random breeze hits you, and you're just smacked against a rock and you die.

It seems random, what we're talking about, but it's not because to me, what you do as a stand-up is right next door for me.

The older older I get, the sheath around my nervous system, you know, nerves getting thinner and thinner. So

things traumatize me.

If I go watch you, I like you, patent, I want you to do well, and now I'm going to sit there and watch you do stand-up in front of a bunch of people who may or may not like you would terrify me.

Just watching it. Yeah.
I mean, watching it, I understand

it's that parent watching their kid at a recital syndrome where you don't want them to do badly.

But for me on stage, not that I'm nowhere near an astronaut or a rock climber, but the one time that I'm weirdly comfortable is when I'm on stage because my thinking is, A, I've been doing this nonstop since I was 19.

So it is something that I have become very good at because I've just always done it. And two, I've got a microphone.
I've got a light on me. I have advantages.

And I'm also, I'm at that point now, and this just comes from experience where I'm just really interested in what I'm talking about. And I'm not in a rush anymore.

My, I've, I've noticed my pacing now as a stand-up. When I watch my earlier specials, you can see kind of this frantic, like, let's get this show cooking.
And now I'm just way more patient.

Like, okay, I know where I can get, walk them to a surprise laugh rather than give him a laugh every single second. Right.
You know what I mean?

So that, but that just comes with doing it over and over and over. I'm sure, like.

No, no, there's no comparison. If you're trying to look over here and well, hang on.

I will argue that there was stuff that you did on damages where up to that point, you know, you had been Ted Dance and you were on a very successful sitcom.

You were a very, you know, set up punchline, laugh, laugh, laugh. You were in movies and stuff.
And then

this was like the dawn of the

like these basic cable dramas like the shield and damages that were really doing cinema type stuff, but on TV.

And there were very, very laid-back, quiet things that you would do that I don't think a younger actor would have done.

Like there's the scene when you wake up in that hotel room and you reel, not in your hospital bed, and the guy gives you the thing of ice, and it comes crashing in on you that the whole world hates you.

And this one guy is giving you a sip of ice water and like the enormity of it. And you're not rushed in getting to that point.

You're not rushed rushed to getting to the point of, I am the most hated human being on the planet. And it's, and it's also done.

I think older actors and more experienced actors can underplay everything because when you're young, you're like, I've got a pop in this scene. And you learn as you get older, the camera's got me.

It'll get every little thing that I do. And your gestures are so much smaller and subtler.
But that comes from watching yourself in films, watching this on TV, going, oh, I didn't need to be that big.

It would have caught that. So that

I just remember that scene so clearly. Me too.
Yeah, I loved that scene. Before we move on, do you have any other stories about me? Oh,

my gosh. I mean, tap dancing on the dock and body heater.
So I'll always, I'll always remember that. Yeah.
Okay, here's the difference.

So sorry,

your theory, your whatever, does not hold water. Because here's why.
Here's why. Because

let's stick with damages in my case versus stand-ups. Damages, they had three of the most amazing writers.
Oh.

And they came, you know,

they were just brilliant.

And they would give you certain freedoms that you, you know, and you could be indulgent.

They were so confident in the event of the scene that it doesn't matter what the words are at this point. This event's going to be amazing.
Yes.

So there was a team of people there that allowed, set the table for me to get lucky and do something fun or good.

You're standing up bare, buck ass, it's just going to be you and me, you know, buck ass naked. Yeah.
And you can't tell me that's the same. You know, I mean, they're just different disciplines.

I mean, when I'm acting in the scene, here's the thing that makes me nervous in the scene. When I'm on stage, it's just me.
If I go down in flames, I'm the only one going down in flames.

But if I mess up a scene or don't give the right energy in it, I'm affecting other people's work. And that weighs very heavily on me.
I don't want to be a bad,

I want to contribute to a scene.

The best, I remember Bill Murray saying, what we learned in Second City is if everyone in the scene is trying to make everyone else better in the scene, then the whole scene is amazing.

Rather than someone going, I've got to win this scene. And a lot of times, especially when I started off as a

stand-up and then I started acting, I still had that stand-up mentality of, I've got to win and be the best.

And it took me a while to get over the fear of just going, you can just sit there and listen to the other people and be just as compelling.

I learned early on that being in a two-shot of something funny is just as funny as you, you know. Oh, I mean, so much of cheers is they're surrounding you with kind of lunatics and unstable people.

And just like Monty Python, they would fight to be the straight character in the scene because the straight character reacting is what, that's where the laugh lands.

The goofy person does something goofy, but it's not that the person goes, okay, like having to deal with that. That's what gets this huge laugh.

You know? And so it's really, really, I mean, watch taxi.

Judd Hearst is just reacting to everybody, but it gets such massive laughs because he knows exactly how to react to them. You love actors.
You love

TV, you love watching. You love film.

Wow. Love it.

And you remember it all, pretty much everything you've seen.

Stuff that really lands when you really see someone

finding something in the scene and figuring it out. Back to me.
Back to me.

Well, I mean, back to, you know, when you, when you connect with you tap dance on a pier in body heat, it just, it was such a weird choice. By the way, I got to ask you,

was that in the script that your character starts taping? Oh, it says that you started tap dance. Literally, you started to dance.
It looked so spontaneous.

You could take Larry Kasden's script, Lawrence Kasdan, the one that you auditioned with,

and go to the theater and watch the film and you could conduct it like a symphony.

Everything was in it. Well, then you guys just made it feel very spontaneous.

I mean, when he throws that friggin chair through the window, yeah, and the way she reacts to it, like terrified and turned on, and like, okay, where do I do? Where do I go with this? Yeah, I'm sorry.

That movie is just perfection.

But yeah, I just, I, I love when, and I love this with anything, like when you see a, a band on stage and, and they like all, you can, you can see it if you know where to look for it.

When a note or a chord all comes together, like they've been doing this, they've been doing like 200 shows in a row, and some nights are good and some nights are bad.

And then this night, a random Thursday night in Wichita, oh my God, everything just came together. And you see them all kind of react to each other like, nice, okay, good.
That's,

there's, there's a moment in

Hard Days Night near the end when the Beatles are playing for the TV show and Paul and John look at each other and just start laughing.

Like, can you, like a year ago, we were in a strip club in Hamburg for like 80 angry businessmen.

What is happening? Like, it's such absolute joy. They can't believe this is happening.
So I love when those little moments come through.

And a moment that really comes through acting for me is when someone actually brings something to a character that that they might not want to admit oh but this is something that i have in me and it and it's very uncomfortable when you embrace only reason to do it really is when you there's there's again getting back to damages there's that moment when you're like wow i'm going to

when furbisher is going to now i'm going to devote my life to good works and then that lasts maybe two episodes because the the the innate core of his character is i don't care and i'm in a rush i just want the money and I just want the, and he kind of has a

has a passive aggressive blow up at his guru.

But you, there was clearly things in that scene where you're like, I have also been this petty and impatient about shit. Like

it just, you, you are stepping into a part of yourself that's like, okay, you know what? I do asshole things too. Here we go.
The joy of being able to have a character where you get to release that

and go, oh, yeah, this is fun. All this stuff I've been denying myself and bullshitting is fun.

But it's also, it really connects with that audience too, because I think a lot of times in our world, especially now with all the social media, people are very, very conscious of how they present themselves and they want to be the good guy or they want to be the smart person or they want to be the compassionate person.

But the reality is, and everyone has compassion and intelligence and good in them, but also we have moments where we're assholes.

And so when people let that slip and then decide, you know what, I'm not going to apologize for that. That's also a part of me.

That in a way, I think connects you even stronger to people because you're like, I just saw something real. Cause so much of what you see now is engineered and mapped out through a PR team and,

you know, choreographed.

And when you see those moments, it's why like some kind of awful people end up kind of getting followings because they're like, yes, this person is awful, but they're actually being who they are.

I haven't seen that in so long.

Yeah,

I was, no, you're right. Sorry.
I was about to interrupt you a second ago. And my point no longer holds after what you just said.
But it was like there are some people who are

who pride and take great joy in being assholes.

That's a different thing.

It is.

And

they would learn and grow if they would let just a little bit of good out because they have that too.

They do

because there is an impact. I never thought of it that way.
There is the opposite of that, but it's just as engineered and fake as a person going,

I got to be the truth teller no matter who it fucking hurts. No, no, you're going out of your way now to be it because this is the image you built up and you need to super serve your niche right now.

I'm talking about it should go both ways. I like it when, you know, what's really weird?

Whenever like a president slips and like curses or does something, like there was President Bush was talking about the Mideast. This was years ago.

He's like, ah, if they would just stop doing this shit, like he had this moment on, and they're like, oh, this hot mic moment. I'm like, that actually made him seem a little more human to me.

I'm not even a fan of his, but like, I could see someone getting that frustrated, you know?

So

when you let, when you're just honest about, I don't have, not all my days are good days, and I do shitty things sometimes, you know, or I just lose my temper or I'm petty, or I'm the that's another thing, too, is a lot of comedians when I see them interacting with other comedians, especially on podcasts.

And I know this is part of insecurity, and I understand that I'm not criticizing it, but there's a lot of not laughing at other people's stuff. Like, I've got to be the alpha here.

And I've never understood, like, you're a comedian, you get to hang out with other comedians, laugh like a fucking loon when they say something funny.

You get to, you get to to hear people making up jokes about it. You know who's great at that?

Larry David. Oh, he loves it.
Larry will ruin take after take because you've made him laugh.

He's so generous with his laugh. We did a scene on the show.

It was a dinner scene, so I'm there, and Richard Kind is there.

Spectacular actor. Spectacular actor, but also deadly in a scene because he can destroy everyone.
And he'll go after you to make you break. He'll do two things.

things he'll go after you and then also he'll ruin a scene without realizing he's ruining it because the most normal shit he says is hilarious so all he had to start off by saying

now i'm laughing just thinking about it he just said i was at the bookstore but the way he said he was like i was at the bookstore and larry could not i think we did like five takes just to get that line without Larry laughing.

And then knowing Larry was going to laugh, the rest of the table,

Susie, me, me, Jeff,

Vince Vaughn, like we couldn't, like, he's going to say it and we're all going to lose it now.

And all he was saying was, I was at the bookstore and he's about to tell a story about it, but just the way he said I was at the bookstore was the funniest thing we'd ever heard.

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Okay, I love this conversation because I have this, for me, this confidence of knowing where I want to go, and then you just take off. But here I want to go back to stand-up.
Okay.

I heard you tell someone in some other podcast: books, writing, movies, TV, all of it's just to keep my celebrity high enough that I can go out and do stand-up and draw a crowd.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I love acting in things. Oh, go ahead.
I just caught you up. Why? Why stand up? Why?

And

here's where I want, I would love it for you to go with.

What is that?

Do you feel a responsibility in this day and age to put something, whatever it is, doesn't, I don't mean sanctimonious, but something out into the world that is

a good thing for the world? And if so, is stand-up a place for that? Or does that, can you go with that?

I do have a problem getting, I do have a thing where sometimes I am very sanctimonious and am very self-righteous. And I got to check myself.
I'm like, it's the faux Christ thing.

Like, oh, I want to be seen doing the good thing, thing, you know?

But

at the end of the day, it's that I,

I think the best thing that stand-up does is it reminds people you are not alone in your confusion and your exasperation and your

and feelings of ineffectiveness and embarrassment. We are everyone, no matter how.

um amazing they may seem or how together because

when i do stand-up i've got to talk for an hour If I only have to talk for an hour, I can come off pretty wise and sage.

But what I remind them during my hour is: if you were to hang out with me all day, you would see me doing the dumbest shit, like to the point where you'd want to maybe call in a wellness check, like the stuff that I do.

And then people go, Yeah, I do that too. That's how we all struggle through things.
And you hope the good stuff gets remembered.

You hope that the good things you do or the smart things you do get remembered. But also, you've got to wink at the stupid shit you do.

You've got to wink at the mistakes because you're going to make them.

So that's, and I'm, I'm not trying to, I'm getting really, really disturbed lately about how suddenly comedians are, but comedians are the truth tellers. They're the philosophers.

They're the ones who are actually giving us the truth. And then, no,

the news media, the philosophers should be giving us the truth. The comedians should be the ones opening the pressure valves.
We all don't go insane.

But because we are in this weird post-truth, almost feudal society again, we're back to, oh, but the jesters are the ones pointing out that the king is fat.

Yeah, but the king stays on the throne and is sending your kids off to war to die. That's not like there should be people calling him out and holding him to account.

Saying that the comedians are doing that is basically saying, well, there's nothing we can do to stop the king. But hey, the comedians can point out that he's goofy looking.
That's good, right?

Like to me, when comedians become the truth tellers and the philosophers, it means that the truth tellers and the philosophers are failing. And that's really scary to me.

You know what I'm saying? That is a brilliant fucking riff. That was really.

It's true. I wish that was a riff.
That's something I've been stewing about for a few months now.

But it's true.

It's an accurate description of where we are. Yeah, exactly.

There used to be like

Because you could have wacky comedy or a fun action movie because you felt like, well, but the people in charge are preventing this kind of insanity from happening.

That's why I can enjoy it vicariously.

And now when you watch it, it's like, oh, this is the people in these fools that I used to watch in comedies, these bad, clumsy presidents or goofy doctors or, you know, charlatans that are running things.

Like, I love. Ghostbusters, but there's a weird, it is kind of odd watching Bill Murray's character now and going, well, charlatans like him are actually in charge.

Like he was in the movie to show, hey, maybe don't let a charlatan like this have a nuclear reactor strapped to his back. And now we're letting that person in real life.

So it's not so escapey anymore.

Do you know, it just feels a little weird.

It's the same thing. Okay, when

Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas did Wall Street, you know, and

they worked up the Gordon Gecko character, they worked that character up like, let's make the most evil character we can conceive. And then he turns out to be a hero to a whole generation of people.

That's terrifying. That must have been so like, no, no, we were doing that to go, don't live your life this way.
And everyone's like, yes, that's me.

I want to do that.

But a lot of times your creation gets away with you, gets away from you, and then it becomes a hostage to the bigger times you're living in, and you can't control it anymore.

So I'm going to keep defiantly trying to say, hey, people, get over yourselves. We're not this.

And anyone who thinks that like their deity has come to find them, to choose them, to lead people is terrifying. I'm like, no one's searching for you.
Do your best while you're here.

Laugh at your mistakes. Everyone calm down.
And then it'll all like that is that you're, you're actually doing more good for the world if you're just showing everyone else, hey, it's okay.

we're all going to screw up. You're forgiven.
Let's keep moving forward.

Can we do a little parentheses here for a second with atheists?

I've never heard you talk about it, so I don't know. Yeah, you know why? Because I'm not one of these.
There's a lot of atheists out there that are no different than evangelicals.

They are just as ready to pounce and try to own people in a conversation. I'm just like, I have no, I think religion itself is kind of beautiful.

It was a way for people to try to explain the darkness and the unknown and the things that are terrifying. Now, just like anything, it fell into the, sometimes it falls into the wrong hands.

Yeah, it comes a business. But

the regular lay person that's just like, I believe there's a thing in the sky, and maybe if I'm nice to people, then I'll, you know, move on.

It's just, it's, and I'll also, it's all just a metaphor for our own.

I just think the story of like Jesus and the crucifixion and the resurrection is just a metaphor for our own creativity and our own psyches. Which one do you free? Do you free Jesus?

Do you free Barabbas? You know, which one do you become? And it's just all of us just trying to.

It's just myth. Yeah, it's myth.

And the same myth gets told in all the different cultures, which means we do clearly come from some kind of common psychological creative source, and we're all trying to work out the same thing.

But a lot of times it becomes profitable for someone to go, well, no, we're just a little bit better than them.

And then it's hard to give up that power once you grasp it for yourself.

I'm the kind of atheist, and I like to think that I'm the kind of atheist that's like

a truly good Christian or a truly good Muslim. It's like, this is just my own thing.
I don't need to talk to anyone about this. You're a crappy atheist.
I'm a crappy atheist.

I should be screaming at people. I should be at Whole Foods right now.

Where did those dates come from? Where were they sourced?

I'm a bad atheist. I'm just like, I don't care what any churches I visit.
You ever go into like some of the classic churches? They're gorgeous. They're gorgeous to go sit in.

And sometimes when I, you ever go to the worship area in an airport? I haven't. I've watched

them.

They're so quiet and peaceful. It's the best.
So your dad. Yeah.

Vietnam,

hardcore experiences in Vietnam from what I listened to you talk about it.

Did he expose you? Did your parents expose you to a faith-based anything? My mom was raised Catholic, so I was raised as a lapsed Catholic. My dad was...

He was, he, my dad was the kind of Christian that I became as an atheist, which is just very quiet about it. It's my own thing.
I don't need to show up at a church.

I don't need to, you know, always be putting it on people. It's just my own thing in my own moments.
He was like,

he was weirdly one of the more godly people I've ever known and never went to church. My mom started taking my brother and I to a Catholic church near us.
We were teens and he never went.

He's like, it's just not my thing, Carla. And I'm not saying you shouldn't go.
Absolutely, you should go, but it's just not my thing.

And

we went, but I was a teenager.

Like, she waited too long, and I I had, I had just read too much and I saw too much weirdness going on in the, there was just too many things that didn't really click for me at that point.

And I was very, and also I was very much, you know, kind of egotistical and like, I'll figure out my own system and whatever. So it just, it was just too late.
But I had no, you know,

we went to St. Catherine of Siena in Northern Virginia, which is where that spy, Robert Hansen, would go, the guy who, I think he's in in Supermax in Colorado now.

And apparently, he was like, he was like crazy Catholic, like in the Opus Day or something. And he apparently would report families for not dressing nice enough to his liking for Sunday service.

And I think ours was one of the families he reported because I would, you know, fight with my mom in the morning, like, I'm just going to wear my Spiderman t-shirt.

And she's like, no, honey, can we just put on a suit? No. So I feel like I was reported by Robert Hanson.

Mrs. Oswald had his

son had a t-shirt on, and I think that's very disrespectful. So, but yeah, it was just,

I don't know, it was just, it was that kind of,

it was just too late for me to latch onto it. And who knows? I'm not one of these people that's like, for all I know, when I turn 70, I will have some awakening.

Don't make that sound so fucking weird.

I'm telling you, that's not, that's not weird at all. That happens all the time.
You know, it happens all the time. Okay, so this is, it's, uh,

this is kind of a political science conversation. It's a get ready for laughs.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is the opposite.
Okay. So we're in L.A.

There's a lot of suffering and sadness and fear in L.A. right now.

I don't mean the fires and the strikes and the COVID and all of that that has hit this town, but I'm talking about immigration, the sadness and fear that you see on the streets.

And what can i and i'm sitting here talking about it i'm not

doing and i'm not sure what that doing is i i

felt the exact same way i know what you're saying like what am i doing why am i doing anything you know i i i contribute to action funds that try to provide legal assistance you know money stuff somebody pointed out um i remember this it's just giving me hope but again this is also a very weak i could there's there's always more you can be doing but you can't do everything and And what use will you be in the long run if you absolutely burn yourself out?

You have to also keep yourself healthy and focused so you can, you know, because also what we're going to need is healthy, focused people for the rebuilding when we get to the other side of this.

It's one thing to resist this to the best of our ability, but the rebuilding is going to be even more crucial. And if we burn ourselves out in the resisting,

then

there'll be no one left to rebuild. And then something even worse can come along and take the reins.

find a balance. But somebody, remember somebody put on social media, no, I'm not doing the most that I can for immigration.
But

I'm signal boosting things. And I'm sure that

during the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, if there had been people posting and saying, hey, the Nazis suck, it would have helped the people that were know that there's other people out there that have your back and see this for what it is.

I mean, when you talk about the sadness and the suffering of what's going on with ICE and immigration,

you realize very quickly the sadness and suffering is the point. This has,

no matter what they say about, no, we're trying to make America safer and trying to bring jobs back. It has nothing to do with that.

Because they killed a bill in the Senate that would have at least approached this problem. They're rating kindergartens, kindergarten graduations, and grabbing parents.

It's like there's no way, there's no argument for this. And it's going to be one of those things where

there's so much awful stuff happening right now that is so massively awful that you realize, oh, this is a distraction.

Not only is it a distraction, it's one of those things that no matter how much you say about it, people just wave you away because it's so obvious and massive that it can't be true.

And in 20 years, there'll be histories written going, well, this is what was going on. And the people that were yelling about it were made to look like they were insane.

You're like, we can't point out what's happening right in front of us

because it's so massive and so comical.

They are one of the scariest things that a lot of these fascists are doing is they're usurping comedy. They're using the, we're just goofballs.
What do you come on?

It's a joke, which is a big thing that

authoritarians and fascists do.

You make yourself so ridiculous that if you point it out, suddenly you're the scold in the Animal House caddyshack movie that's just trying to spoil the good time and you look like the nerd.

Again, that's a tactic. So all this,

for these ICE agents with their fucking masks and their stupid, you know, ordered off of Amazon body armor, it's just fucking fun and games for them.

And you're the one ruining a good time for these assholes. And

they just want everybody terrified and thinking twice. But like you said,

while they roll in the really big machinery that you don't, that then once that's in, it's too late to do anything about it. Because you were yelling about how badly they were.

And again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be also focusing on this.

The violence against gay people, trans people,

people of color, immigrants. Yes, all of that should be pushed against.
But there are big,

gray,

not as exciting evil things rolling in behind us that are so hard to articulate. And then once that gets in, there's no going back.

It's like the savings and loan crisis. Everyone's like, oh my God, it all just happened in the background.

No, no, no, it was reported every day in the financial sections, but it's so boring, it's hard to follow it.

You know, it's why someone like Michael Lewis is so essential to go, no, this is what is happening.

I'm trying to spell it out in a way that you'll understand, but they're counting on it being so boring and it's all numbers and it's all that you'll pay attention to the other stuff which is just just awful that's true but that's the that's the that's the game plan

and and and and again the the ice raids are so

like comically evil they're so comically evil that it's hard to wrap outrage around it it's like they're trying to be more outrageous than the outrage that is coming and they're counting on that

but but luckily you know i'm seeing we're seeing genuine pushback going on. And I just hope that this will end in disaster for the people that are doing this.

Before I ask you something else, I'm totally ruined your career. I'll put you in a new pride tonight.

Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Okay, you have a 16, 17, 18-year-old daughter.
16-year-old daughter. Okay.

So.

All of everything

that you say, I feel like I see too. I don't know if I'm as eloquent as you are.
I'm not. But

you then have to turn,

my grandkids are younger, 13 and down.

If you say, you know, if I were to talk to them about things, and I'm not saying this is what you did. I want to turn the corner into hope is where I'm going.
Yes.

Because you can't turn to your children and say, things are hopeless.

This has gone so far that it's hopeless. Climate change is gone so far that it's hopeless.
You can't

do that. You can say it's severe and we're going to the da-da-da-da.

So how do you turn that corner in your brain for yourself so you can pass it on to your daughter?

Is that a.

Just a reminder, there's always new Marvel movies coming out.

That's interesting that you bring that up because...

There has been, and I see this among her friends too, which, and, and again, I absolutely don't blame them for this. They have grown up, think of the, think of 16 and 15 and 17 year olds right now.

Think of what they've grown up watching right when they, when the doors of perception kind of opened for them when they were in 10 or 11, and they saw adults acting like children.

There's nothing scarier for kids than when you see the adults in charge are not helping you or are just saying, there's nothing I can do, or they're acting like other mean kids.

When you're at school and a kid is mean to another kid, the teachers step in and go, hey, you apologize. We don't be mean to each other here.

And then you see an adult standing in front of the presidential seal saying the same mean things that you saw a 10-year-old saying, and nobody, he doesn't get in trouble.

That really can shake up your world. And I think we're going to see the effects of this in another 10 years, how we showed these kids that there was no one in charge.

And there was a there's a piece of footage. I'm going to get all

there was a piece of footage the other day, and it's a little, um,

it's a little kid. And her, I think her dad ran like a

taco stand or like a food stand.

You know, her dad was an immigrant running a food stand. And ICE came and, you know, I think grabbed her dad or like wrecked the food stand.
They had do, I don't know what ICE had come in.

These, again, these fucking thugs, these

just fucking proud boy idiots came in, wrecked the stand. And then this little girl is talking to a policeman.

And she's like, when they, they were wrecking my dad's stand, and why don't you help us like why didn't and asking like she wasn't acting like a saying in a political way like i was taught when i was a little kid the police are here to help you so i'm and and i just watched them

do nothing while they wrecked my dad stand my dad wasn't hurting anybody mean guys in masks came like like villains came wreck this and now i'm asking you why don't you do anything and the guy's like i i don't know there's nothing i can do and i'm i just keep thinking of that footage like that little kid is going to grow up believing in nothing.

No one is coming to help. No one is there to, like,

we're taking away

the innocent years that you kind of need to remember as you get older and realize how cynical and dark things are. And there's going to be people going, I didn't even have that when I was five.

When I was five, I knew there was no one there for us. Like, what kind of adult does that produce? And what kind of kids do they raise? You know, we don't see the long-term effects of this.

They just threw a kid into alligator Alcatraz. There's a little kid right now in a bunch of cages with adults with guards making jokes about feeding them to alligators.

That's one of the core memories this little kid is having right now. And I just, I always remember like, we always go,

where do these terrors come from?

I think the terrors come from the innocent people that we throw in cages that then are forged in that environment and then come out of of the cage going, well, I don't need to believe in any of this.

I don't need to believe in any of this. I can take it all down because they showed me there's nothing to trust in.
And we don't see that you need to pay that trust and comfort and

charity forward when we're just not doing it right now. Because right now, cruelty is currency.
And it's cool to be cruel. And it's the new currency is how little feeling can I show?

How cynical and ironic and postmodern can I be be about the most awful stuff on the planet?

And if you stop and get angry about it, they're just like, oh, look at the normie all, you know, messed up about thing. We're beyond that now.

We're past the, you got to be tougher, man. It's like,

I don't want to be tougher.

If it means I'm a big fucking dork, then I don't want to be tougher.

Because then,

I don't know. It's like.

Clive James, I remember there's a quote of his. I'm not going to get this exactly right, but he's like,

one of of the project of the Nazis was, even if you survived in their world, it was a world that wouldn't be worth living in. Like they were creating a world that even if you survived their, you know,

their methods of torture or their extermination machine, you would not want to live in it.

So it's, so what, what's the like, so in other words, they were making the sensitive and the caring and the artistic and the searchers and the people that really wanted to make the world better just make themselves cancel themselves because they're like, well, I can't live in this world.

Look at the world they're creating. And I'm seeing this world that's being created.
If I was a teenager, I would question whether I wanted to live in that world.

Watching adults act like bullies on a playground, middle school bullies, middle school bully shit coming out of the mouth of a 73-year-old on TV.

And it's a person in authority, and everyone just goes, Well, he says it like he means it, man. What are you going to do? You know, that would be terrifying if I was a little kid.
Terrifying.

Anyway, so I'll be at the comedy store tonight. It's 8:30 show and also the improv.
So come on by. A lot of laughs.

You make a lousy atheist. I know.
I'm a really lousy atheist. I'm sorry.
Hey.

Hey, I would like a lot of these Christians to start acting like Christians. That'd be an amazing world if they actually followed the teachings in the Bible.
This world would be incredible.

Thank you. Yeah.

I'm not through with you yet.

Do you want to talk about damages again?

No.

Okay.

No, that would be highly embarrassing. I can literally see his head like, I don't want him visiting me in Ojai next month.
Oh my God, I do not want him to do.

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I'm kind of speechless. I really appreciate you, what you just said.

It was very eloquent and real and honest. I don't know if we addressed hope.

Oh, oh, God, I never even got to hope. I mean,

here, okay, I actually will give you some hope. And also not naive.
I mean, but I do think you need hope.

Yeah, and here's the hope that I'm seeing. There does seem to be a pushback now, as there always is.
The new generation rejects whatever the old generation is doing.

There especially seems to be a rejection to being terminally online and being terminally meme driven and

fad driven. There seem to be kids, friends of my daughter at least, that their new clout is, I can't be found online.

Like, Like, if you want to contact me, I got a flip phone and a number, and that's the only way you can get to me. And there's kids who want, like, they want analog phones put back in.

They're thinking they don't want their stuff online anymore because they just see how it all ends in tears.

So, there does seem to be this really interesting pushback of like, no, I don't have nine different social accounts.

Here's my number. If you want to call me, you call me.
That's all you're going to get out of me. You'll never even get a text from me.

Like, like, that is becoming the new cool for a lot of these kids.

And with that, it means that they are going to start creating, as much as we're being drowned in AI slop and we're being drowned in repurposed memes and post, post, post, post, post irony.

I think there'll be a younger generation that's going to start craving. and boosting authentic experiences.
Like it'll be that.

It's like when I used to see Prince in concert and he would talk about you're actually seeing real musicians playing instruments. We actually practice this and you're watching this happen.

There's no backing track. There's no, we are actually playing this.
That's what you're seeing.

And it, and yeah, it did seem at the time like, well, I mean, but no, that actually really, really mattered to him. And it made those shows special.

And I think that that is, you know, one of those, he's one of those people that is, that's why he just keeps perpetually

being beloved by new generations because as

good as you can make AI, as good as you can make virtual reality, and it's not going anywhere. It's not like it's going to die, but you'll never get rid of people craving a authentic experience.

Real constantly. You'll just never get, you'll never be able to get rid of that.

Never.

As much as what was that when they were, John Ford was shooting some movie and they got on location and there was a massive sandstorm, like blinding. And they're like, we can't get any footage.

And he goes, we can shoot the most interesting thing you can film. We can film a human face.
People will will always stop short to look at a human face.

It's how we communicate. And that's what he did.

So like that, that encapsulates what, yes, we're going to have to go down this road of AI and all this online stuff, but there's going to be a massive pushback against it, which is a generation going, I just want the authentic stuff.

I don't need 9,000 sensations. I can just sit and eat a sandwich without having my phone on.
I can actually just eat and just think for a little bit.

And, you know, like that, you'll see more and more of that

rather than

this,

which, by the way, you know what that is? Me, that's me. Like, I'm just now realizing, put your fucking phone down when you eat.
Do you need every hole having stuff going into it?

Like, what the fuck are you doing?

Or I'm embarrassed that I sit down and my phone's in my back pocket, so it's uncomfortable. But I put this

computer

on next to my napkin and my forks, yeah, You know, and think nothing of it, you know. You put a thing with, I don't know, what, a thousand times the computing power that they use to get us to the moon

next to your poke bowl. You're just like,

like, we don't even think about it anymore. It is, again, it's very, very comical.
Like when they would do like those, remember those Looney Tunes cartoons, but Life in the Future.

And then the guy just has like his own nuclear fusion thing on his wrist and he doesn't even think about it. Like, hang on, let me just get some power for my house.

Anyway, you know, like, but that is kind of how we live now, yeah, with just miracles next to us that we don't give a shit about. Yeah,

hey,

you're my new hero. Oh, no, and and this is this is the courage of a stand-up, right? Well, that I just saw, and I will come watch you do stand-up.
The courage and the stupidity, both, yeah.

I hope not stupidity, okay. And uh, yeah,

Thank you so much. Really, really, really appreciate all the stuff you read, watch, learn, digest that you then were able to like put back out into my ears.
Thank you. Thanks, man.

And go back and re-watch Damages and watch Ted Danson

play the most patiently evil character.

on TV. It's really unnerving.

If you know him from Man on the Inside on Netflix or you know him from Cheers, it is a very unnerving experience watching him in damages because you don't get rid of your Ted Danson charm.

A lot of times, when comedic actors play villains, they go, I'm going all the way down.

You keep the charm, which is even scarier because you're like, wait, he could have used that charm for real evil in real life, but he chose not to. You know, it'd be really funny.
What?

Is if we cut all the middle stuff and we just lose it. Oh, it is just me.

That would be true, Frobisher.

That would be. That is what Frobisher would do.
That's exactly what he would do. But it is, okay, really quick.

It's like, remember when Robin Williams took that movie One Hour Photo, when he really played like he was not Robin Williams? And it was great.

But he did another film, a Christopher Nolan film called Insomnia, where he also plays a villain, but he plays it like a charming Robin Williams. He has the Robin Williams

and Al Pacino. And he is so terrifying in that movie because you realize in real life, if Robin Williams had decided to use his charm for evil, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

A lot of trouble. That movie is so unsettling to watch.

Just like Damages.

Love you, buddy. Thanks, man.

That was the brilliant and hilarious Patton Oswald. Please catch him on tour at a city near you this fall.
It's called Effervescent. Dates can be found on his website, pattonoswalt.com.

That's all for our show this week. Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.
If you enjoyed this episode, send it to someone you love.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and maybe give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you're so moved.

If you like watching your podcasts, all our full-length episodes are on YouTube. YouTube.

Visit youtube.com slash teamcoco.

See you next time. Where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer.
Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl. Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.
Our theme music is by Ludi Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

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