Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Comedy Kingmaker on Speaking Fearlessly & Living Well

Transcript

Comedy Kingmaker on Speaking Fearlessly & Living Well · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  You don't.
• 0:04
  I'm very good.
• 0:05
  Well, you want to know the truth?
• 0:06
  Yeah, truth.
• 0:07
  Yeah, sure.
• 0:07
  I had a lot of aggravation today because, you know, we're opening this new...
• 0:11
  Yes.
• 0:14
  And, um...
• 0:14
  This new...
• 0:15
  This will be your fifth...
• 0:17
  venue it's our fifth stage we have two stages in one of the places in Manhattan yeah I was including Las Vegas no it's our sixth sixth yeah so we have here we have Village Underground and two upstairs right great um
• 0:33
  And we're a year past.
• 0:36
  We're supposed to be open for New Year's last year.
• 0:38
  Yeah, right.
• 0:39
  In fact, I think there are things on the internet that say 2024.
• 0:42
  Was that ever going to happen?
• 0:46
  New Year's 2020.
• 0:47
  No, not 2024.
• 0:48
  And it's just one thing after another, after another, after another.
• 0:54
  And it's, you know, of course it costs a fortune, but it's not...
• 0:59
  And when I say, if I tell you what it, I joke sometimes, if I tell you what it cost me, you couldn't possibly feel sorry for me.
• 1:08
  Well, but also, I mean, I wouldn't feel sorry for you because it's going to make back, I mean, it's going to make, it's going to be profitable.
• 1:14
  You're not doing this as a charity.
• 1:15
  No, no, it'll be profitable.
• 1:17
  But we're not doing it for the money, as you might think, to be honest.
• 1:20
  But it will be profitable.
• 1:21
  Why are you doing it?
• 1:23
  It takes a certain amount of years to make back money you lose.
• 1:30
  Um, I need something to do.
• 1:33
  No, no.
• 1:33
  It's like, it's like, it's okay.
• 1:36
  So you have a podcast, you have five comedy venues, you have the arguably the most influential, uh, you know, comedy, uh, live comedy enterprise in the United States.
• 1:50
  You have a huge platform through your podcast and your colleagues.
• 1:55
  Huge.
• 1:55
  Hundreds of people.
• 1:56
  No, no.
• 1:57
  That's not true.
• 1:58
  Do you know, last time we were at this desk, and thank you for hosting me here, because last time we were here, I was on your show in, I think it was May, and the following day, I'm on the subway, and someone's looking at me constantly from across the way, and I'm like, am I about to get mugged?
• 2:16
  And as he gets off the subway, he says, excuse me, are you Josh Sepps?
• 2:20
  And I was like, oh, isn't it great that even my podcast has made me famous in New York?
• 2:24
  And he shows me his phone, and it's me on your show.
• 2:26
  Well, you got very, very lucky.
• 2:29
  No, we have, you know...
• 2:32
  It's not huge, but it is actually influential in a certain way.
• 2:36
  A lot of, I'm very flattered that a lot of people that I would have, you know, only hoped would ever hear about me, listen to it with some regularity.
• 2:43
  Yeah, and you are influential.
• 2:45
  I mean, I think you've done an amazing job in the past, I guess, decade to go from being someone who, as far as I was aware, which was not aware of you at all, a person who was behind the scenes, who was essentially a business person in comedy, to being someone who is making a case about...
• 3:00
  about what it means to live in a flourishing society, about free speech, about how to get along with each other, about Western civilization, about a whole lot of things that bring a certain community of a certain type of comedian and kind of podcast bro together.
• 3:14
  Well, that's nice of you to say.
• 3:17
  Can I tell you the answer about why I'm opening the place?
• 3:20
  Yeah.
• 3:21
  Because it's forcing me to think about it.
• 3:22
  So money...
• 3:28
  You know, a lot of people have, I think, an unhealthy psychological relationship with money.
• 3:34
  But I was raised, my father practically beat it into me that money is for enjoying, for buying things, for living your life.
• 3:45
  He used to say, we don't do this for money.
• 3:47
  Money is a fortunate byproduct.
• 3:49
  And he used to tell me why I didn't become a lawyer.
• 3:52
  He used to tell me, no, everybody you know.
• 3:56
  Living for the weekend.
• 3:57
  They can't wait for the weekend because they can't wait for a day off work.
• 4:00
  He says, I love to go to work every day.
• 4:03
  I hate it when there's no work to do.
• 4:05
  So that's the way I've always lived my life.
• 4:07
  And so the money from this place, and we're much more successful now than when my father was alive.
• 4:12
  Not because I'm a better operator than he was.
• 4:16
  Just, um... Well...
• 4:18
  No, partly the momentum of what he built and partly luck and partly comedy as much as a boom and, you know, and some smart decisions.
• 4:28
  So just to clarify, he was an immigrant, as was your mom.
• 4:32
  They both came over from Israel and.
• 4:34
  My mother's still alive.
• 4:35
  Yeah.
• 4:36
  Yes, sorry.
• 4:37
  And I didn't mean to imply she is an immigrant, but she's not currently in the process of immigrating.
• 4:44
  And he created the Comedy Cellar?
• 4:49
  He, he, well, you know, even he didn't create it.
• 4:53
  There was a guy named Bill Grunfest, who I'm still friends with, who actually came in and the place was kind of empty at the time, the basement of the olive tree.
• 5:02
  And he had the idea.
• 5:03
  He said, hey, I'll bring some comedians here and, you know, you can take the drinks.
• 5:06
  I'll take the door, that kind of thing.
• 5:08
  And it was mostly just like a treading water thing for a room that wasn't really doing anything.
• 5:13
  And just to clarify for people who aren't New Yorkers or aren't familiar with the geography, this block and this portion of the city was incredibly influential in the 60s.
• 5:24
  Like, when are we talking about?
• 5:26
  Because this was where, I mean, you could roll off the names better than I could.
• 5:30
  But for everyone.
• 5:31
  This is where Dylan and the Loving's Bullseye, James Taylor, Joan Baez, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, they all were on this block.
• 5:40
  All started right here on this block.
• 5:42
  Yeah.
• 5:43
  And my father had the Café Fienjan, which is a very, very famous place at the time, too.
• 5:48
  But it was Middle Eastern and Israeli, so it's not legendary.
• 5:53
  But anyway, this was 1981 when the village was already not that anymore.
• 5:58
  Right.
• 5:58
  OK.
• 5:59
  But my father was still doing well.
• 6:00
  He had moved his Café Fienjan next door to where the Café Wah is now.
• 6:05
  Another iconic place, Café Watt.
• 6:09
  The original Café Watt closed in 1968.
• 6:10
  Okay.
• 6:12
  And then when I, now I'm fast forwarding another six, 17 years, when I reopened the Café Watt,
• 6:18
  I just took the name because I remembered it from when I was a kid.
• 6:21
  Oh, you didn't even have to pay for it.
• 6:23
  No, it was abandoned.
• 6:24
  And the Fat Black Pussycat was also an abandoned name from when I was a kid.
• 6:27
  Right.
• 6:28
  So I started plucking these names from when I was a kid.
• 6:30
  Nobody had any idea what the Café Wa was.
• 6:33
  I remember trying to tell people why the Café Wa seemed like a stupid name.
• 6:37
  Yeah, and if people haven't seen it written, it's like, what?
• 6:39
  W-H-A question mark.
• 6:40
  Like W-H-A question mark.
• 6:41
  What?
• 6:41
  What?
• 6:42
  Cafe What?
• 6:42
  Yeah, Cafe What.
• 6:43
  And that was, again, Bob Dylan and all those kinds of people played the original.
• 6:47
  Well, Jimi Hendrix was discovered.
• 6:49
  Hendrix, amazing.
• 6:50
  So you just come in and pilfer.
• 6:53
  You essentially scavenge the name.
• 6:55
  Well, we actually, I mean, I'm going to so many different things.
• 6:58
  We were friends with Manny Roth, who was the actual originator and owner of the Cafe What.
• 7:03
  Okay.
• 7:03
  Okay.
• 7:04
  I knew he had some kind of blessing.
• 7:05
  Yeah.
• 7:06
  And he and so we told him we were going to do it.
• 7:09
  And he wasn't happy, but he was David.
• 7:11
  He was David Lee Roth's uncle.
• 7:13
  I thought you were going to say that you asked him and he gave you his blessing.
• 7:16
  But instead, you told him and he didn't like it.
• 7:19
  We asked him how he felt about it.
• 7:22
  And he he was ambivalent.
• 7:27
  And then in the end, he said, OK, so I think if he had if he had said, listen, I really don't want you to do this.
• 7:35
  I don't think it wasn't.
• 7:37
  It didn't seem that important at the time.
• 7:40
  But the argument to him was and it's true.
• 7:43
  It actually it happened exactly as I said to him.
• 7:46
  I said, this will reanimate, revive the history of the Café WI and that will lead to you.
• 7:55
  I remember saying this to him.
• 7:56
  And if the if I'm successful with this, you will then become known.
• 8:00
  Just dangle a little bit of ego and glory in front of a man.
• 8:04
  Well, yeah, but it was true.
• 8:05
  And it's exactly what's happened.
• 8:06
  If you if you read about Manny Roth now, he's he's he has a whole story about him now, which because people think he was the owner of the cafe while that I own.
• 8:15
  Right.
• 8:15
  Right.
• 8:16
  Right.
• 8:16
  Right.
• 8:16
  I don't care.
• 8:16
  And so the original Comedy Cellar, which is now, because I want to just sort of get to your expansion of this business and how it takes place.
• 8:23
  Yeah, I want to talk about the money too.
• 8:25
  And the money, yes.
• 8:25
  We're going to get to the money.
• 8:26
  And we're also going to get to enjoying life instead of money because I've got an anecdote about that.
• 8:29
  So remind me if I don't tell you.
• 8:32
  So 81, New York's in the doldrums, is it?
• 8:35
  It's kind of dirty and crime-ridden.
• 8:36
  It's definitely.
• 8:37
  It's definitely dirty and crime-ridden, yes.
• 8:39
  And so your dad opens a comedy club because he can, because this block is a former heyday and now kind of derelict.
• 8:47
  Is that right?
• 8:48
  He had an empty room.
• 8:49
  It was a nice little room.
• 8:50
  They were doing...
• 8:51
  There was a Brazilian girl was coming named Ana, and she was doing Brazilian music with guitar one night a week.
• 8:57
  It was just like...
• 8:57
  Treading water is the best way to put it.
• 8:59
  Yeah.
• 9:00
  And then Bill came in with this vision, and then he...
• 9:04
  was the house MC for, I don't know, five, six years and booked the acts.
• 9:11
  Was he a good comic?
• 9:12
  He was a, he was a good comic and a very good MC.
• 9:16
  And he was also friends.
• 9:18
  Um, he didn't take himself that seriously.
• 9:22
  He, he saw his function was what a good MC does, which is to, to make the room happy, to, to, to, um, cast a spell of informality.
• 9:32
  Yeah.
• 9:33
  to the audience such that they were in the proper mood to receive the comedians when they come up.
• 9:39
  And he was very good at that.
• 9:40
  And I'm sure he was good as an act as well, but I never really saw him as an actor.
• 9:45
  Is it also an emcee's job if a comedian tanks to get the crowd back up before the next person comes on?
• 9:52
  Absolutely.
• 9:52
  And he was very good at that, too.
• 9:54
  He was very good.
• 9:55
  Hey humans, just jumping in here quickly to make sure you're aware that this is just a preview.
• 10:00
  This is just a brief highlight of one of our premium episodes.
• 10:04
  If you weren't aware, it is our very generous paid subscribers and channel members who help make all of this possible and they get extra juicy premium episodes just like this one.
• 10:15
  You can become a member on YouTube to watch the full episode or you can subscribe via our sub stack to get the entire back,
• 10:22
  catalog of mind expanding bullshit free, uncomfortable conversations back to the show.
• 10:28
  He has a great sense of humor.
• 10:29
  He, he later went on to become the head writer for mad about you, the Paul Reiser show.
• 10:34
  So he's, you know, he's a real comic mind.
• 10:38
  Speaking of money.
• 10:39
  Speaking of money.
• 10:39
  Money and being a head writer of a big primetime sitcom.
• 10:43
  I don't know.
• 10:44
  Maybe, probably.
• 10:46
  So, but he was also very, very smart and would do everything with a purpose.
• 10:54
  He's like, okay, I'm an emcee.
• 10:55
  This is my function as an emcee.
• 10:57
  So let me set about...
• 10:59
  uh, doing the best job at emceeing that I can do without regard to the brilliant classical music.
• 11:07
  I want to play, you know, this is this, I'm, I'm writing commercial jingles now, so I'm going to write commercial jingles.
• 11:11
  Very valuable.
• 11:12
  Yeah.
• 11:12
  So he, and he, and that's the way he approaches everything, which is why he's very successful.
• 11:16
  He knows what he wants to accomplish and that's what he does.
• 11:19
  So somebody could see something like that and they, and they could, uh, uh, under, underestimate his talent.
• 11:25
  Um,
• 11:27
  But actually... Because they only saw one piece of the jigsaw.
• 11:29
  Yeah, but it's actually because he's focused.
• 11:32
  And not out for ego.
• 11:33
  Okay.
• 11:34
  So what did he want to achieve with the comedy salon?
• 11:36
  Did he?
• 11:37
  Did he?
• 11:38
  Yeah.
• 11:39
  He wanted stage time, I think.
• 11:40
  And he wanted... Who knows?
• 11:42
  He was young at the time, in his 20s.
• 11:44
  And then he left.
• 11:45
  And then...
• 11:47
  You know, and he and my father hit it off very, very well and very intimately.
• 11:52
  They thought alike.
• 11:53
  They had similar Jewish backgrounds, American Jewish backgrounds.
• 11:58
  And my father thought the world of Bill.
• 12:01
  And then when Bill left, my father, I remember him saying, do you think we can make it without him?
• 12:08
  You know, we didn't know.
• 12:08
  We'll try.
• 12:09
  And what were you doing?
• 12:11
  Yeah.
• 12:12
  At this time, I was running the Café Rois.
• 12:14
  So that's, you know, I had the Café Rois.
• 12:17
  I was in the band.
• 12:18
  I was playing five nights a week.
• 12:19
  It was a huge success.
• 12:21
  And that's why you went half deaf?
• 12:23
  That's why I'm three-quarters deaf.
• 12:24
  Three-quarters deaf.
• 12:25
  I was being polite.
• 12:26
  What's that?
• 12:27
  I was being polite.
• 12:29
  So you're there.
• 12:30
  So just to give me the short version of how you expand into this empire that you currently command from your father having won.
• 12:40
  Okay, so I got out of law school and I didn't want to be a lawyer for the reasons I already told you.
• 12:45
  So my father said.
• 12:46
  I mean, some people like being lawyers.
• 12:50
  I think people who do public interest work, appellate lawyer, there are certain areas of the law which are very intellectually rewarding where I think people like them and maybe even ambulance chasing for the adventure of it.
• 13:04
  I mean, I know I have a lawyer friend who is one of the best like defamation, like protecting people who are probably and also –
• 13:14
  who are probably bad, right, but have been, but have nonetheless been wronged in some way, or, you know, someone has said something about them that technically this wouldn't fly in America, obviously, because of your First Amendment.
• 13:25
  But in Australia, if you say something that's untrue about somebody that could cast aspersions on them, then that, you know, you can get sued.
• 13:33
  And he likes it.
• 13:34
  Yeah.
• 13:35
  Great time.
• 13:36
  Yeah, it's like a lot of journalists like ruining people.
• 13:38
  Yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 13:40
  It's true.
• 13:40
  So, but most of the lawyers I met
• 13:47
  You know, they just couldn't wait for their sabbatical they'd get after eight years.
• 13:51
  They were just miserable.
• 13:53
  Now, you know, there is part of what we're describing isn't the law.
• 13:57
  It's that people who are their own boss are generally happier.
• 14:02
  So certain areas of the law allow you to be your own boss.
• 14:05
  We're using the describing this guy who works for himself.
• 14:07
  Yeah, yeah.
• 14:08
  As opposed to working for a law firm, which is where most people work.
• 14:11
  Well, it does work for a firm, but it's so high up that it can take whatever cases it wants to.
• 14:15
  And, you know, it doesn't have to be.
• 14:17
  Yes, I agree.
• 14:18
  Being on the clock and having to punch in and punch out and do the paperwork submissions.
• 14:22
  And to answer to somebody.
• 14:24
  Yeah.
• 14:24
  For your mistakes or to get permission for a vacation or how come you're late or I'm just so I mean, it's it's a miserable way to live.
• 14:33
  Oh, my God.
• 14:33
  Getting permission for a vacation is the weirdest thing.
• 14:36
  No, I got a I remember getting my first job job.
• 14:40
  Because in this game, like, I don't think I've ever gotten a job that was advertised as a job.
• 14:46
  And so I've always just, like, wrangled my way into something and slithered in and then they've just let me stay.
• 14:52
  But one time I was, I got a job as a radio producer when I was fresh out of college.
• 14:57
  And I remember my, I wanted to go and see my grandmother in New Zealand.
• 15:03
  And I'd been working there a few months and I was like,
• 15:06
  can I take a week off in, you know, three or four weeks time, but don't pay me, obviously, you know, I don't need you to pay me.
• 15:12
  And they were like, no, you haven't earned enough holidays yet.
• 15:16
  And I was like, yeah, I get the, I said, you don't have to pay me.
• 15:19
  Like, I just want to, I just want a week off, but you know, and, and,
• 15:25
  They wouldn't let me take unpaid.
• 15:27
  Like it was like I was asking them for, you know, could you please shave a turkey and hand it to me in the studio.
• 15:34
  I was like, they were so by the book.
• 15:37
  And this is normal.
• 15:38
  Yeah.
• 15:39
  Like everyone listening to this is probably like, well, yeah, of course, that's the way it works.
• 15:42
  It was completely new to me.
• 15:43
  And I was out of there within the year.
• 15:45
  And I've never had a job like that since.
• 15:46
  Well, let's keep talking about how miserable it is to be an employee.
• 15:49
  So that Steve, our engineer, fucking sabotages the recording.
• 15:53
  Yes, Steve.
• 15:54
  What's it like to be a loser?
• 15:56
  I need to take some days off.
• 16:00
  But this is one of the pleasures of running your own business is that you're completely autonomous.
• 16:06
  You do what you want.
• 16:07
  And by the way, you don't take a lot of vacations because...
• 16:10
  You're worried about your business, but it's your own child.
• 16:14
  Well, you can – Yes, that's true.
• 16:15
  It's not you're not babysitting, it's your own child.
• 16:17
  You can take semi-vacations.
• 16:19
  I used to work for Arianna Huffington when she was at the peak of her powers.
• 16:22
  And I remember saying she was in – you know, she was on a yacht in the Greek islands or something like that.
• 16:27
  And she got back and she said, oh, they were always telling me you've got to get off your phone.
• 16:32
  You know, I shouldn't be on my phone.
• 16:33
  I was like, the reason I can be on this yacht is because I'm on my phone.
• 16:37
  Oh.
• 16:37
  And she was right.
• 16:38
  She's always working and she's always able to not work.
• 16:41
  But like, there is a liability in that, though, as well.
• 16:45
  I do find that I would love, I think this is a mega version of the problem that we've all encountered with the rise of smartphones and home computers in the past generation, that...
• 16:58
  I can't believe that like when my parents started working, you could not be reached.
• 17:03
  You just left home, you left work and you went home and there were no computers.
• 17:08
  It was the best.
• 17:09
  That's so bizarre to me that you would not be reachable on your email at 8 p.m. You know, even while you're watching TV, you'd just be scrolling.
• 17:17
  And if your boss sent you an email, you'd respond to it or something.
• 17:20
  Listen, I'm so old that I remember the first time we got a home answering machine.
• 17:27
  before there was a home answering machine, literally, if you were out, you were out and somebody couldn't even leave a message for you.
• 17:34
  Like, where were you?
• 17:35
  I was out.
• 17:36
  Yeah.
• 17:37
  And I mean, you know, this was great for men who wanted to...
• 17:43
  have some privacy in their lives.
• 17:45
  But and now I think it's horrible.
• 17:48
  I think the fact that that, you know, you're you're reachable 24 hours.
• 17:52
  And it's not just that you're reachable, is that you know that someone's going to interpret the fact that you're not answering in some way.
• 18:00
  So you feel tremendous pressure to answer, but you don't want to answer.
• 18:03
  You just like to have three hours.
• 18:05
  you know, to think or spend time with your kids or whatever it is.
• 18:09
  So I think everyone has that on the micro level of not being able to switch off when they go home, unless they're like a laborer or something.
• 18:16
  And we self-employed people have it on a bigger level, which is that because we love what we do and because what we do,
• 18:24
  because our success is directly correlated to how much attention we give it.
• 18:29
  We both have the freedom to not be chained to a desk and also the liability of the fact that when we aren't chained to a desk, we are still always thinking about work, if not actively working.
• 18:42
  But it's very important to keep perspective.
• 18:43
  So, I mean, I have people who spent, you know, 40, 50 years
• 18:52
  working for my family in the kitchen.
• 18:58
  Five days a week, six days a week, coming and cooking in front of that stove every day.
• 19:03
  That's how they spent their lives until they retired.
• 19:06
  And they raised families and they, you know, we had- Wait, your family had a cook?
• 19:13
  No, I'm saying in our kitchen, in the restaurant.
• 19:16
  I'm sorry.
• 19:16
  Professionally.
• 19:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 19:17
  But I'm saying like to-
• 19:21
  And these were pretty decent jobs.
• 19:24
  They stayed 40, 50 years.
• 19:25
  Obviously, they thought the job was okay.
• 19:30
  But I'm just saying, when you think about
• 19:35
  the limits of spending your life cooking behind a stove or, and you can extrapolate that to, or compare that to, you know, most jobs, 80, 80% of jobs are some form of that.
• 19:47
  Right.
• 19:49
  Um, we, we have no right to, to bellyache about, I mean, nothing's perfect, right?
• 19:54
  There's always something, but we're so, so, so lucky.
• 19:58
  And that doesn't even express it.
• 20:00
  My father used to say,
• 20:03
  If there was one of these big lottery things, you know, and he said, and every soul... You're doing the visual of like rolling one of those big spherical cage with balls in it.
• 20:15
  Yeah, exactly.
• 20:15
  And he said, imagine every soul that's ever lived is a ball inside that.
• 20:20
  He says, what are the odds you think you could pick out a life happier, preferable to the one that you're leading?
• 20:28
  You know, yeah.
• 20:29
  0.00001% chance.
• 20:31
  Yeah, that's great.
• 20:35
  Almost impossible.
• 20:36
  That's great.
• 20:36
  I mean, I would say happier is a tricky thing because happier is somewhat, well, not somewhat, is entirely subjective and somewhat within our control.
• 20:48
  But in terms of, but like materially better off.
• 20:52
  I sometimes say, like, imagine throwing a dart at a dartboard.
• 20:54
  Imagine all of the people, not just who are alive today, but who have ever lived...
• 21:00
  And if people listening to this are like feeling down or complaining, it's always hard to say this because, you know, everyone has legitimate reasons for their own problems.
• 21:11
  And sometimes you can't get out of a headspace of, you know, you might have clinical depression or whatever.
• 21:15
  It's hard to wag your finger at somebody and say, you should be happy because look at all of this shit that you've got.
• 21:20
  But if you had to throw a dart at a dartboard and hit a portion of the board.
• 21:26
  where, you know, to be reincarnated as one of the people, and like that dartboard is covered in a dot representing every single person who's ever lived anywhere.
• 21:35
  The odds that you're going to hit someone who is safer and better off materially than you.
• 21:43
  But he didn't mean it materially.
• 21:45
  He meant it in terms of fulfillment.
• 21:48
  And I think that...
• 21:50
  I'm thinking about this for the first time.
• 21:51
  So, you know, we sleep a third of our lives.
• 21:54
  Let's say we sleep eight hours a day, right?
• 21:55
  And I think many people will imagine the time that they spend working, as I'm describing.
• 22:04
  Essentially, it's my lost time.
• 22:06
  It's like sleep time.
• 22:08
  And then some of those people are left with the rest of the time, which is very fulfilling for them.
• 22:14
  But somebody like my father, 100% of the time that he wasn't sleeping,
• 22:19
  was fulfilling time.
• 22:21
  There was no drudgery in his life.
• 22:24
  He created his life.
• 22:25
  So he would not do anything, not even for five minutes that he did not want to do.
• 22:30
  And this is whether he's playing music, whatever it was, hanging out with the comedians, whatever, this is what he wanted to do.
• 22:36
  And that's what he did.
• 22:38
  And so, and so, so this is a relationship and money is fuels that you need money, but money's not the goal for that.
• 22:44
  Now, just to, just to wrap it up.
• 22:47
  I'm not opening the comedy club.
• 22:49
  Let me just pause.
• 22:49
  Yeah.
• 22:50
  We'll get to it.
• 22:50
  Just on your dad.
• 22:51
  Yeah.
• 22:52
  Was that a choice, an attitude choice on his part?
• 22:56
  Not just how he spends his time, but how he looks at spending his time?
• 23:00
  Or was he naturally a sunny person?
• 23:05
  He was naturally a sunny person.
• 23:08
  He was very, very gifted.
• 23:11
  So, you know, he...
• 23:16
  he approached life without a net and he succeeded.
• 23:20
  You know, you can't really advise everybody to do that because most people would probably fail.
• 23:28
  And, um, he, but he also had a, a, a mentality, which was not typical of his one, 1930, you know, which is raised at the time of the depression and the Holocaust and, and, um,
• 23:44
  Typical Jews of his age did not have his attitude about life.
• 23:50
  Where was he raised?
• 23:52
  He was born in Israel.
• 23:53
  He came here in 19...
• 23:56
  So, before it was Israel?
• 23:58
  Don't get technical now.
• 24:01
  I thought he might have gone to Israel when Israel came into existence.
• 24:06
  He was born in occupied Palestine.
• 24:09
  Yes, yes, right.
• 24:10
  He was born in Palestine in Jerusalem.
• 24:12
  I think he was born in 1939, but he was eight years old.
• 24:16
  G'day humans.
• 24:17
  Well, if you've listened to this much of the episode, then you must enjoy it, presumably, unless you're just listening for masochistic reasons.
• 24:24
  So you should listen to the rest of it.
• 24:26
  And the way you do that is by subscribing to the premium feed, where you not only get to hear the rest of this delightful conversation, and trust me, oh, it gets better than what you just heard, but you also get to hear no ads, zero ads.
• 24:38
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• 24:42
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• 24:48
  But here's the thing.
• 24:49
  We are now on Apple premium podcast as well.
• 24:52
  So with one click, Apple will just subscribe you up to the premium feed.
• 24:55
  You'll be able to listen to the rest of this conversation right now, right now.
• 24:57
  Right now.
• 24:58
  So open up your Apple podcasts, click the old pay old Zepsi button.
• 25:02
  That's probably what it's called.
• 25:04
  Pay old Zepsi.
• 25:05
  And you click the button and then you no longer have to be a free rider.
• 25:09
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• 25:13
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• 25:20
  a way to steel man our opponents and to take the most gracious approach towards disagreement.
• 25:25
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• 25:32
  I love you.
• 25:33
  If you don't do that, that's fine.
• 25:35
  I'll see you the next free episode, I guess.
• 25:37
  Take care.