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MARC MARON -The Maronated Burger · Eating While Broke

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Eating While Broke.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, coleeen Witt, and today we have a
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: very special guest, comedian, actor, writer, producer, but the godfather
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of podcasting. As everyone has been like buzzing about, Mark
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Marin is in the building and I am I'm like nervous,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: which I never really get nervous. I'm excited. I've been excited.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I've been emailing you. And just so you guys know
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a little backstory. I just walked up on him, did
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: my elevator pitch, and he was really really nice.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Guys, So if.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: You want to get a glimpse of who he is,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: like off camera, that's who he was. And I sent
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: you an email.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: I know, I didn't know how it was gonna unfold, really,
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: you know, I said okay, and then I didn't know if.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: You were going to email, and then emailed and then
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: I was like maybe later. Yeah.
• 0:47
  Speaker 5: He kept on me and okay, yeah, I did a
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: little follow I'm driving out there.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And then what I loved is that you were like,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: you know, you used to eat meat, right, yeah?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: And then you were like I'm vegan, now how do
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: we do this?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: And we went back and forth about that a little bit,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and guys, before he announces his dish, I just want
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: to let you know that I was so excited. I
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: got in the kitchen to a little bit on his
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: meal and I helped make.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: One of the ingredients.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: I was surprised, that's pretty good.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Well, I just figured that ingredient out, because when I
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: was coming up early on, I don't even remember what
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I ate.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: I don't remember cooking.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I don't because I was in New York City and
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: there was really the kitchen was hardly a kitchen in
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: the apartment. This is going back to the beginning of
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: the career. I can cook now and I cook all
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: the time, but that back then, I was like, what
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: did I even eat? And then I started to think
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: about it today and I still can't remember that well
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: because I didn't really eat breakfast. I smoked, so it
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: was like cigarettes and coffee for breakfast. I don't know
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: what happened at lunch.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Really. I know I didn't cook in New York.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Back and I was there eighty nine like and in
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: a small apartment on the Lower East Side. But I
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: do remember trying to figure out how to eat cheaply
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: and what me and the other comics would do. So
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: I had to dig up this restaurant, which is the
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: one I remember going to a lot and look at
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: their menu and then figure out what it was that
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: we used to eat there. And I figured it out.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't easy. I mean, it wasn't hard to
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: make vegan.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh no, no, it seems pretty simple.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: But why don't you tell our listeners what it is
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to have me eating today?
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the original dish was at a place called Dojo,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: which was this sort of kind of almost like hippie
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Asian place on St. Mark's and it was open late,
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: so we would go. It was do you know Todd
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Berry is to comic like. There was a few guys
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: that would hang out, but we would eat there a
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: lot because it was cheap. And what we would get
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: they had, like, you know, they had a lot of
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: like noodles and stuff, but they had they had turkey burgers,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: and they had these kind.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Of tofu burgers which were kind of weird.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Because you'd think it was healthy but it was deep
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: fried and it had like so we.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: Would get No.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they made it. I remember I
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: had like seaweed strands in it somehow. But what we
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: would get we get a turkey burger, but not a
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: turkey burger sandwich. Get the turkey burger on brown rice.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: And then they had this this Japanese barbecue sauce, which
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: wasn't that good, but I forgot to tell you about that,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: so I bought one.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: We'll see how that goes.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: And then they'd have either a side salad or side
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: of steam vegetables. And they made this dressing. There's a
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: few different versions of this dressing in New York. It's
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: a I think it's a Japanese style dressing, kind of
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: this carroat ginger thing. But I've tried to make make
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: it another way, which is more complicated. And then before
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: I was going to talk to you, I looked up
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: that recipe because when I went to look at the
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: dojo menu, it was a carrot ginger tahini recipe. So
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: I found this and I tried it at home and
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I'm like, that's kind of it, and then you and
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: I sent you the recipe.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: So ye did it?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Did it? I actually did it?
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: So basically what we're eating is brown rice with a
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: patty on top, with the side of the steam vegetables
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: with the dressing, and I'll put the barbecue sauce on
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: the patty.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So there are no buns.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was, well, you can, you can have a
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: turkey burger on a bun.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: But we were I think we were kind of I
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: don't know if I've always been health conscious, but it
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: was just it was the way to do it, to
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: get more of a full meal for the price. Right,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: you can get a burger, but like the rice and
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: everything else, it was the way to go.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: It's like a platter versus just a burger.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, because you know, you
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: go out and you order a burger, You're like, what's
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: going on the side of it?
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: What can I fill up even more with?
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: Sure?
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: And a lot of time when you're starting out in
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: comedy anyways, you kind of figure out, Like once I
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: got into the comedy cellar, you could just eat there.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: You would figure out ways to eat for free at
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: the club and that's not always healthy. But the comedy
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: seller had great food, like great food, but I was
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out what was I eating and we'd either.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Go I'm surprised you didn't get like chopped cheese. But
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: it sounds like you were more health conscious.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Well it was health conscious, but also like I was
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: never I don't feel like I was ever so conscious.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Like I would spend money on food and the kitchen.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: Like I said, I didn't have anything in that kitchen.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: I remember one time I tried to, like, I gone
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: out to eat at a Chinese place and they had
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: this full, like steamed fish with ginger.
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: It was like really good. I'm like, I'm gonna make
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: one of those.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: So I went down to Chinatown and I bought a
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: walk and some soy sauce and a whole fish. And
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: I got back to my kitchen. I'm like, I can't
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: even cut this.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: It was so sad. It was just me and this
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: whole fish and.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: You didn't have knives or something.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: Well I did, but not much.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how to, you know, manage a kitchen.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: And I'd worked in restaurants my whole life. And that
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: was the other thing about starting out too, back when
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: I was in Boston before New York, because I worked
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: at a restaurant, but it was a coffee place before Starbucks.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: It was a real high end coffee place at a
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: small menu, but still I was just jacked up on
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: coffee all the time, smoking cigarettes. So there wasn't a
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: lot of eating going on that I remember. But I
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: do remember when I lived in New York on the
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Lower East Side that like, if I was going to
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: eat breakfast, it was one of those kind of wrapped
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: you know that that coffee cake with the cinnamon brown
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: sugar crumbles. Oh yeah, I love the best, but you
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: know it's all suit Yeah. Yeah, So I remember eating
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: those with coffee and smoking, and there was another place
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: we used to go to. No, but I'm on the
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: nicotine again. I had a nicotine lost a je I
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: like nicotine.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: What is that like a patch or something.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: No, it's literally a candy and you just kind of
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: put it in your mouth and suck on it for
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: a minute until you feel the buzz and then you
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: just kind of stick it in your lip.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I have one in now. Oh wow, I don't know.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: I was off.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: I've gotten on on and off nicotine and forms over
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: the years.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I did you feel the buzz from the cigaret? I've
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: never really got. I'm never well. I suck at smoking.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like I've tried smoking weed. I tried smoking
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a cigarette once, I just don't think I know how
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: to Yeah, well, I know how.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: To smoke anything. So you know, drugs are definitely part
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: of this story.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I every night, sure, I just do it, and I'm like,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I have the best sleep.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't do that. I've been sober a long
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: time twenty four years.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing now. Where you sober back then?
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: No, I you know that that whole thing.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: But the other place I can tell you about, the
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: other place we used to eat was this Polish place
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: called Kiev, And it was like there was a whole
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: crew of comics that were around then. So it was me,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Sarah Silverman, Jeff Ross, Louis, Nick Depolo, and Todd Berry
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: where we'd hang out after these clubs.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: But Kiev used to be up.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: In twenty four hours, and I didn't want to try
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: to get You want to try to figure out.
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: How to make parogi's or borsh it's a process.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: But that was like the other cheap place we would
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: eat drugs and alcohol. I think when I got to
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: New York, I was out here. I graduated college and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I wanted to do comedy. I came out here to
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: La Yeah, and I didn't really know my a buddy
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: of mine who I used to do like comedy skits
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: with in college, was a year ahead of me, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: he moved out here and we had written some stuff together.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: So I was going to write with him, and he
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: lived in Culver City, so I moved to Culver City
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: in with him. We wrote a script and it was
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: a nightmare working with him. And I just want to
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: do comedy. So I had auditioned at the comedy store
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: and the improv or whatever, and then by coincidence, you know,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I got a PA job on a shoot that Mitzi Shore,
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: who owned the comedy store, was doing. And then I
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: was like, do you remember me, I auditioned for you.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: She's like, yeah, you can be in paid regular.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: So then I got a job as a doorman.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's by the way.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's so weird that the comedy door makes
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: or doesn't make their comics, but you know their comics
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: are like dorman.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: Well, there was a system, yeah, and it was it
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: was the way it worked.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: It was a singular thing, and all the doormen were comics.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: And back then it was before Bringer shows and any
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: of that crap.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: Right, So so when you were a door guy, at
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: the comedy store.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: You were in the system and you'd be and I
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: loved the place, like and eventually I got pushed out
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: of the place in Culver City and I moved up
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: to uh Mitzi owned a house behind the comedy store
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: that she rent out to comics. So I lived in Crestilla,
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: And you know, at that time, the big acts or
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: who was I watching as a door guy became I
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: was the head door guy because no one wanted to
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: do it. It was ridiculous because I was doing blow and
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I was like drinking. I was living the life, you know.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: And then like the big comics at the time, I
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: was watching Damon in the main room, Cannison, Dice, who
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: else was like? Who were the big acts around? Like Cannison,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Sam Canison and Dice were of coming up at the
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: same time and they kind of blew up at that time.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: But there were people I liked to watch. Belzer was there.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: I used to love watching Damon Wayams, Louis Anderson. But
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Damon would always be He'd take chances would be pretty weird, yeah, yeah,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: because he would go on, I mean, this is nineteen
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: eighty seven, and he and I would be like, well,
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: what kind of are you going to do your act?
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: He's like, no, I think I'm gonna do a jazz
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: set tonight. And he would just push it and do
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: these characters and just push it.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: Way over the edge. But Kennison was like that too.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: But anyway, so I started hanging around with Cannison kinda
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: and doing a lot of drugs with that guy. So
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: the point being is when I left LA in eighty eight,
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: I was out of my mind from cocaine psychosis and
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: I was just crazy, like I was, you know, like
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: hallucinating and like I thought, paranoid and I was way
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: gone and things fell apart at the comedy.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: Store and I just left.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: When you say they fell apart at the comedy store, well.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: I mes a door guy. There wasn't much to fall apart.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: But I was using my mind from staying up too
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: much and not sleeping and hanging out with these demons.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: These It was insane at that time. It was the
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: late eighties.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: It was insane the people that were hanging around what
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: was going on there, you know, because there was like
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: this weird triangle between the roxy which was rock and
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: roll so and Monday nights at the store back then,
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: we're open. They were free, all the rooms were free,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: so all the freaks would come and that was like
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Kennison's big night. He'd show up at like Elevin. He
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: give me a bunch of money to go set up,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: you know, a party at the house that would start
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: on Monday and go to like Wednesday.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It was just literally three days.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Crazy, So I lost my mind and I realized that,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: you know, I remember the moment I kind of had
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: a meltdown in the parking lot because I was just
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: out of my mind and I had a falling out
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: with Sam over some weird shit, and I remember asking
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: the drug dealer.
• 11:55
  Speaker 6: I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't know what
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: to do. It's like things are falling apart, you know,
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: out of the group. And the drug dealer was like,
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: you got to you gotta leave. You got to go
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: do your own thing. So if the drug dealers telling
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: you to leave, wow, it's time to leave.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, because yeah, So I went.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: Home to New Mexico.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I got clean for the first time, went to rehab,
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: and I went back to Boston.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Wait when you said home to New Mexico.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I grew up in Albuqerque.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: So you went back there, you got clean.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I checked in and if I if I can
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: dry it out, and then I went back to Boston.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: And how old were you, if you don't mind me asking,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: around that time, that.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: First time, so that was probably eighty eight, So sixty three,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: seventy three, eighty three, I don't know, like twenty four
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: or twenty five.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: You were young?
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: You were, Yeah.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I mean I went out there to you know, be
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: you know, a comedian right after college. But it's all
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: I wanted to do. So I went back to Boston
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: where you know, and I got clean, but I wasn't
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: really doing the thing. So I went back to Boston
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: and I auditioned for Barry Katz and I started, you know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: kind of trying to do open mics in Boston because
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: you know, I was I was, you know, I was
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: a non paid break or at the comedy store, but
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: you know, you didnt get a lot of stage time.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I had chops, but I had experience.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: And I've been hanging out with some you know, big
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: comics and I'd seen everybody. And I got a job
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: at that coffee shop, and I was sober I was
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: doing spots at catch Troizig Star, auditioned for this guy
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Barry Katz, who's still a manager. He had a bunch
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: of rooms. And then like in eighty eight, and like
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: I guess it was August of eighty eight. I was
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: in a competition, but I was doing these.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: Horrible one nighters. By the way, like, well that was it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: I mean like you were saying you're bombing when you
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: say horrible.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: No, the way it worked, I mean, if you're interested.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So I get back to Boston and I'm just doing
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: open mics and there's a few clubs. There's a scene
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: in Boston. It's real.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of Boston comics and I'm doing open mics.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: And there was a competition in eighty eight called the
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: WBC on Comedy Riot, and it was like a process
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: of elimination, and I came in second.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: And from like then from.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Eighty eight, late in eighty eight, because I came in
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: second the competition.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: I started working as a comic in eighty eight.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: And the way the work worked in Boston is there
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: were a few clubs, a few bookers that booked one
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: night ers. So these were comedy shows that you know discos, hotel, ballrooms, hotel,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: you know, conference rooms, small bars like they would just
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: satellite gigs that would be booked through these agencies and
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: you'd drive anywhere from like a half hour to three
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: hours to five hours anywhere in New England to do
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: these one nighters and you'd go get a map and
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: you'd usually open for a headliner who came in to
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: do So that's how I started, is doing those one nighters.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: And it was only a matter of time before I
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: started drinking and doing drugs again, about year and a half.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: I was kind of every year and a half or so,
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: i'd get clean.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: I'd go about year and a half without really doing
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the work to stay sober, and then I'd ease back
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: into it. And it kind of went like that throughout
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: most of it.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: When you say doing the work, like not going to
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: like the AA meetings or what have.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: You, well I went for a bit, but I never
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: really got it. You know, if you're gonna do it
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: that way, you're gonna get it or you're not gonna
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: get it. The program, the way to use the program
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: in order to not do the thing that's you know,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: making your life bad, Like you can go to meetings
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and listen and kind of you know.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Absorb it.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: But until I think you start to understand the ideas
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: for yourself, you don't really have any tools to not
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: drink like you know you or do drugs. You got
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: to sort of make phone calls to other people in
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: the room.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: You got to go to the meetings and.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Keep it fresh, and you'll figure out how when you're
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: gonna use or you're gonna drink, to either go to
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: a meeting or make a phone call instead of doing
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: the drugs.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: So that's tricky because you know you want to do
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: the drugs.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Like it's it's a definite pull. And by the way,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have to start cooking for us. Did you
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: eat breakfast yet today?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: No? I waited too. I'm starving.
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: It's going to be good. There's no way it's not
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: gonna be good.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Well almost. You make it simple, just beyond burger. Do
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: you need oil when you do it?
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah? You want me to turn this off?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Yep. I want to see you cook. Do you cook
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: on electric or no?
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: I got a guess of yeah, I have you do? Yeah.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: But here in the studio, everyone complains about this electric store.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't like electrics are sort of hard to control.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I cook all the time because I I don't well,
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: not not just because I'm vegan. I've been cooking a
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: long time anyways, ever since I had a kitchen that
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: was functional. I cook because, like, if I go to
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: a restaurant, you don't know what you're gonna get.
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Sometimes it's not that good, and I can I have this.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: I'm able to cook and I can follow recipes, so
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: if I can make it better, why not cook? But
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the only problem with that is you got to make
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: room for restaurants because if you cook all the time,
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: that means you got to clean up all the time.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: That means you gotta you know, you know, keep your
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: kitchen full. There's good reasons.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: To go out.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I used to always say, like as a single person,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I always else it was actually cheaper to eat out.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: More than That's why I.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Even I think, what was it Thanksgiving? I think the
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: other day I was like.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, especially now, the groceries are so expensive. Yeah, I'm like,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: is it worth it financially to cook the meal or
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to to get it out? I know for Thanksgiving, I
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: just did a seafood platter I just went and got
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: crab legs, yeah, lobster and some potatoes and called it
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a day. And it was you know, cooking seafood is
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: like nothing, pretty easy. You just boil it and you're done.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: For Thanksgiving, I usually go to my mother's in Florida
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: and cook for twenty people.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: You cook, I do the whole You do. Oh, I would.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Love like I've got a system, man, Like I did
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: it this time, this first time I've gone back. Is
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: a vegan, so I had to figure out how to
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: do that, you know, for myself.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyone else in the family vegan.
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a cousin.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: But it was pretty easy because all the sides can
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: be vegan outside of the turkey and the stuffing and
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: if you're gonna make turkey gravy. But I actually try
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: to make a vegan gravy which worked out pretty well,
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: and all the sides. So I made turkey stuffing, cranberry
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: sauce that's vegan. I made mashed potatoes with olive oil, rosemary, garlic.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I did stream beans, I did Brussels sprouts, I did yams.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: All that can make vegan.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Now are you are you still comfortable touching me like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: when you had the model.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Care like, I'm not like it wasn't really ethical. The
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: reason I did. I ate a lot of meat like
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: I had for years.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: I had this.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Smoker that they gave me, and I was smoking briskets
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: and you know, chickens and just you know, eating a
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: lot of fish.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: And then I don't know, I got smoked the fish
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: I try. I have smoked fish, Is it good?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: It was okay to do, like juice style fish because
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm Jewish, I.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Grew up with it.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: But you know, those smoke like you can smoke sable fish,
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: which is a black cod. It takes time, and you
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: know sometimes like there's certain types of food that are
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: better made by people who know how to do it,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: like you know, like Indian food, you know you better
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: I'll find in a good Indian place and trying to
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: manage those spices. But I got a good recipe for
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: china masala that I.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Make now really, yeah, you call it china massa. I
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: love te Tika masala.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Tika masaut well, chaina is the chickpeas so tika is
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: chicken right, or make it with meat?
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: The chauina is uh, it's just chickpeas.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Did you make it from scratch?
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. I'll cook for
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: the week, man, I mean I like it.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Like I got brown rice at home right now, and
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: then like just have that for a base, I get
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: ko kalifar or whatever. And then you know, for proteins,
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: I've been air frying tempe which is great. Tempe is
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: it's like a soy it's made from soy beans from
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: men and toy beans or these are pretty good.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: I'll eat these.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll do air fried tofu beans and rice some
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: different kinds, and I'll do uh, you know, I'm kind
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: of doing a macro thing. These be this restaurant in
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: New York called Angelica Kitchen, which was really the sort
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: of the.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: First kind of macro macro What does that mean.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a system of eating a vegan where you know,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: you get all these different things to balance your food.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: So usually there's a grain, a bean of some kind
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: a protein, and then there's a vegetable and maybe some
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: fermented stuff. And she used to, you know, do seaweed
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: salad too, So like you make a bowl of that,
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: so you get everything you need.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: And then when you say protein like you would just.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Do like a usually for there it was Tempe or
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Tofu or something like. There's not a or Satan. There's
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: not a ton of you know, vegan protein is you
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: really get it from the vegetables. But you know, Tempe,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Tofu and Satan.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Left off with you being sober for a year and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a half and then you took a nose dive back.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so I was in Boston right and you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: doing the one nighters and yeah, eventually I started drinking
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: using drugs again, but then I was going then what happened?
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: Is?
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I just have one question for you. Drinking and doing
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: the drugs.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Was it an every day pull or was it something
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: bad happened and then you wanted to do it.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: No, it's just part of my life, you know, smoking
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: weed every day, you know, drinking at night and doing
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: you know blow occasionally. You know, I wasn't a daily blow, dude.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: That's a big expense.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: But you know, in Boston we used to be able
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: to drink for free at Catcherizing Star. So you go
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: do the one nighters and then you race back to
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Boston to get in on you know, the free blooze
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: at night.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: So it was. It was pretty regular.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: But in eighty nine, you know, I was you know,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: a lot of the people I started with were starting
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: to break, you know a little bit, and a lot
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: of them moved to LA.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Like Dave Cross and that crew.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: They were going to do sketch comedy and they came
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: out here to make Mister Show eventually, and I was like,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not a collaborative person on a comic.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: So I moved to New York in eighty nine, and yeah,
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: I'd gotten sober again.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: And I got to New York and I was on
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: the Lower East Side and I was trying to break
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: into the clubs and doing, you know, wandering around New
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: York a lot. And I lived right on a street
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: I was just full of heroin junkies.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: Like it was before New York cleaned up.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: And there was a doorway like right next to my
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: house where these junkies would line up like it was
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: a movie theater to get dope in the morning. And
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: it was so sad because I'd see them every day
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: and I was sober, yeah, and you know, I would
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: be like, man, that's horrible, what a horrible life. And
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: that went on for about a year and a half
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: and something turned in my head. I'm like, wow, I
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: wonder what it's like. No, yeah, it's right next door,
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: The heroin junkies in New York when I was a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: little kid in up here, and I'd be like, uh, well, no,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: if I go back now, I see them, but I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: could recognize them more. But when I was a kid,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: my parents would always be like, this what happens if
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you try to smoke cigarettes.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: This is where you end up.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: And you'd be like, okay, never do cigarettes. But they'd
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: be like that was a doctor and he had a
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: family and he lost his whole family.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: You'd be like wow, So we just think scared straight.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Scared straight.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: I think my twin out of four kids, was the
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: only want to try weed at like maybe seventeen. But
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the rest of us are pretty scared straight from those
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: like this person had a whole life and lost it,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you know, and you see them like kind of you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a little balancing act, and you'd be like.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, there was a lot of the methadone that
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: was like you'd see him wandering around, yes, well, well.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: Thank god, Like when I did it, like in eighty nine,
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: or wait, what was it?
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Did you end up trying it or not?
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I eventually did. Yeah, I wouldn't try it. I didn't.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: I didn't shoot or anything.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: But it was at that time that was so clean
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: that a lot of people were snorting it. So I
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: remember I went over there after a year and a
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: half of watching these people.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: And were you one hundred percent sober at.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: The time or yeah, pretty sober?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's your first comeback kind of.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: I mean I might have been drinking a little bit,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: but I remember buying it and then going in my
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: house and snorting it and not really know any like,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: and I just got sick and I was like sweaty,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: and I kind of passed out, fell asleep, and I'm like,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: this is not for me, thank.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: God, thank god it was.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: I was a go fast guy like coke and booze.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the sort of like nodding out thing was not
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: my not my bag. So he got it didn't stick. Yeah.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Do you ever think, like what would have happened had
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that like geez, your life would have been way different, right.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's there's certain I guess miracles or
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: just you know, good luck.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: I always had a fairly healthy fear of drugs.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: But there were times in my life, you know, even
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: when I was doing them, you know, I'd had some
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: sort of idea because I grew up like idealizing, idolizing druggies,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: you know, like Keith Richards and William Burrows, many of
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: these writers you can be kowski whoever, the beat necks.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I thought that was like how you did it. That's
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: what being an artist was about. I had romanticize cigarettes, drugs, booze.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: But I always was afraid that if I lost my mind,
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: I would have to like pull out. And when I
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: was in LA and I lost my mind, I kind
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: of that was. That was as far out as.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I really can you say you lost your mind, like
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you had a real meltdown, like where you're like, No.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I had cocaine psychosis. It took like a year and
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: a half to get rid of it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't understand what that means.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: It just means you like either through lack of sleep
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: or it's I think it was primarily lack of sleep.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Like people who do meth now lose their mind pretty
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: for real, pretty quickly with this meth. But with me,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: it was just because I was sleep deprived, and eventually
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: you get a little psychotic, you know, you start you know,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: seeing like you know, I, well, I got very mystically.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Paranoid, do you know what I mean? Like I used
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: to do a joke about hearing voices in your head.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the joke was like, when you hear voices in
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: your head, it's never one, it's always And he spent
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of time trying to get them to pick
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: a fucking leader.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: I had.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I had a meltdown when I was thirty and I
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: was like hallucinating, like and it was really just sleep deprivation, right,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: But they ended up putting me in a hospital and
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the doctors were like schizophrenic, bipolar PTSD, and I was like, uh,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: let's just try giving me some sleep.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And it worked, and it worked.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I did get better and I completely came back to reality.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know, I had to be strong
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: enough to you know, tell doctors that no, I'm not
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to take whatever drugs you're assigning for
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a temporary.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, And the thing about that kind of manic
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: break or psychotic break is that it does screw your
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: head up. So like what I realized that I had
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: created this evil sort of back you know, mystical backstory
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: to the comedy store, and I thought, you know, people
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: were like I had, like there was a big, big
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: ideas in my head. And it took like really a
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: couple of years to you know, get rid of those
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: hallucinations or that way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, but you know,
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I eventually went back to the store. But anyway, so yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: so I tried the heroin and then I realized, like,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: you know, I got to get out of here. And
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I'd been with a woman for a while and then
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: we broke up and she moved to San Francisco. So
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I just like, not unlike when I left New York.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: I was just like, I got to get out of here.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: So I gave my bed to the guy across the
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: hall who was sleeping on the floor, and I gave
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: my a lot of my stuff to the homeless people
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: that were selling things on the street down there, and
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: I just got in.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: My car and I drove to San Francisco with no
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: plan and.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: I had I remember, I was like, had a little
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: bit of that heroin and I was smoking it with
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: reef with weed. I drove like twenty two hours in
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: one stretch and I just showed up on this woman's
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: doorstep and I'm like, can.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: I hang out, you know, and she took me back in.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: And then I was in San Francisco and then I
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: shove it up again, okay, and then you know, I
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: started doing more comedy there.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: That was a big, big change. It was a good
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: place to do comedy.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: They had a very open mind about what you could
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: do on stage and how it worked.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: And then I did a contest there. I did it twice.
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: I didn't think.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: The first one was maybe ninety two or ninety three,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: and I came I didn't farewell, and then again I
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: came in second in like ninety four, and now you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: I was start in the middle. I started to headline
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: a little bit, and then I got a job on
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: television in New York, is all.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And then I just have one other question, When did
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: you realize that comedy was the path you were going
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to choose.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: I always wanted to be comic and I didn't see
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: any other thing to.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Do, Okay, since you like in high school.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, since I was a kid really and I
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: never really had a plan.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: B I never like, by the time I took that
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: TV gig.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: I just I didn't want to do it because it
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: was not the kind of comedy I was doing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: I was kind of aggressive and you know, like shocking
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: and trying to you know, be very angry.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: And then but I was broke, you know, so I
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: got offered this TV job.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: How'd you get offered it?
• 29:03
  Speaker 7: Like?
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Because you're in San France? Did you have an agent
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: at the time or something?
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Not yet? Really how did that gig happen? I'm trying
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: to remember.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: It was like it was Comedy Central very early on,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: you know, and.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: It was just it was like a clip show. It
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: was called Short Attention Spent Theater.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: It had been hosted in different forms by John Stewart
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: and some other people.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: And this is sort of the last version of it.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember how the guy picked me, this
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: guy Robert Small, But it was basically me in this
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: fake vault where I was like supposedly showing clips of
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: comics and comic movies, but it's really all driven by
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: promotional stuff and they just wanted me.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: It's like a VJ job, which was it?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: Just I was devastated because it didn't serve my voice,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: but I didn't see that I had a choice.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was paying well.
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: I'd never made that kind of money.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: So what I was doing for the first six months
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: of it, I would stay in San Francisco living with
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: that woman and that would go back to New York
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and strip the show.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: So you would do four shows.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: At a time, and I fled back to San Francisco
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: for like five days and I fly back to New York.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: That went on for six months.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: They got me a subw at New York and then
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: eventually I moved back to New York in like the
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: mid nineties for the rest of that year, and I
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: had to fight to get myself a writer. I had
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: to fight for us to do comedy bits because they
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: just wanted me to be a talking head. I was
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: already mad that I was doing this job. I was
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: a pain in the ass and like some people that
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I worked with, you know, I think they thought I
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: was a complete asshole, and I probably was. I don't
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: think I was. I don't remember the drugs being a
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: deal then. But I learned how to re prompter, I
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: learned how to be on TV. I got you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: I got into the Union. You know, I got insurance,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: I got all that stuff. But I hated it. I
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: hated every minute of it. But I knew that there
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: was a good thing to do it.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but didn't.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: It didn't really take off. Its surfaced the network.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: And then after that was done, I was in New
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: York and just leaning into comedy, and I started to
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: so I was in ninety four ninety five. And the
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: other thing about comedy at that time, if it's interesting
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: to you, is that this looks pretty good, right, it
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: looks really good.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: The other thing that was is that, like there was
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of basic cable television, right, so we were
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: all getting these gigs like Evening the Improv, Caroline's Comedy Hour,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Comedy on the Road, MTV half Hours, Like there was
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: all these little TV opportunities that ultimately didn't mean much,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: but they were something.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So we were doing that stuff.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: MTV always had some sort of comedy showcasing, so we.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: Were kind of working towards that, trying to get on Letterman.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: You know, Conan started in ninety four, and but you know,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: I got back into the drugs and that go crazy.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: But yeah, like they that's when alternative comedy started, and
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: you know, we were doing this Lower east Side thing,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: and you know, then it became like I started drinking again.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: I married that woman, the woman in Sanford.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I met her at my brother's wedding
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: and she knew I was kind of a wild card.
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: But we got married.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: We you know, we were living down on you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Third Avenue and sixteenth and then the all comedy things
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: started and I started, you know, using coke again and drinking,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: but I was trying to hide it and keep it
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: under control. And we got married and we moved out
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: to Queens and yeah, I don't know, like it was
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: grim because I'd done the TV thing, I was doing comedy.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Now married to this woman, she kind of wants to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: have kids and stuff and I and I was not sober,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: and I really sort of fell into a kind of
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: bitterness and a kind of resignation, like, all right, well,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: I guess I'm not really going to make it in
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: show business. Maybe I can get a job on a
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: local TV show here I'd done some segments for and
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: just write it out in New York as one of
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: those people that kind of gets by.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: And it was pretty devastating.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Well, like what drove that message to your mind? Was
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: it like you you felt like you weren't booking enough
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: comedy clubs or were you possibly bombing? Like what made
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: you stay? Well, maybe this is.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I wasn't bombing, but I was a specific type of
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: act and I wasn't really getting much traction.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: Like everyone in you know, you know, like other comics
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: respected me.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: People knew who I was, but you know, people thought
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: that I was doing a character or what. But I
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: was really angry and kind of like intense and it
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: wasn't really a character. I don't think I got into
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: comedy to entertain. I think it was like this is
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: how I'm going to you know, engage my voice, is
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: how I'm going to find myself.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: How I'm going to say what I want to say.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Because for me, when I was growing up, comics I
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: always were able to kind of you know, make you know,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: kind of make things understandable, disarm things.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's year make you see things.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: A different way. Like I thought, that's an art, you know,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: so I want to do that. And the guys that
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: I looked up to were kind of, you know, said things.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: So it was really like I don't think I ever
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: thought in terms of entertaining people. I'm not sure I
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: do now either. But so I wasn't trying to like,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: you know, sell arenas or anything. I just thought that eventually,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: because I was, you know, doing it my way, that
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: it would come around. So at that time I wasn't
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: coming around. And I started doing Conan like I did
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Conan like three or four times a year. I became
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: a popular panel guess.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: But at that time you were doubting yourself.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, of course, because I just kept chipping away.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: But I couldn't really sell tickets, and you know, I
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: would do you know, I do club work, but it
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: was you know, I go do the clubs, but it
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: would be you know, you weren't making a lot of money, yeah,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: because you were an unknown headliner really and unless you
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: can draw people, which I never understood. I never I
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: wasn't particularly pleasant to club owners.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: I never really thought about.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Like, I got to come figure out a way to
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: come back here.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: I got to build these networks.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I was just sort of like, fuck you, I do
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: it this way, and you know, eventually people get it.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and they just they didn't.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: I mean that's you know, that's.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: The long and short of it. But I'm trying to
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: think what eventually happened?
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Did you so? But whereas your marriage going fine at
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: the time and all of that.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Or what happened was, uh, I'm so sorry here you
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: want to do that?
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I definitely want to do it.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Sauce it so right now we're just for all the
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: listeners in the Japanese barbecue sauce. Mark has plated our
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: plates with brown rice vegetables. I just drowned my uh
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: beyond burger in Japanese barbecue sauce.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: But I'm more excited about the tahini sauce because guys,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: guess what.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I actually made a good job and I was nervous
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you put.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: It on the vegetables, That's what I did. Yeah, I'm
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: gonna make it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna put them on.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: The side saucy.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Sure sauces are fun. So the marriage. Yeah, So what
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: happened was in the middle of this sweaty, bitter period
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: where I'd given up and resigned myself to being you know,
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: just an average you know, b room headliner and trying
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: to make do in New York to service this marriage.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I wasn't happy and woman came up to me at
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: a comedy club and she's gorgeous and she's like, you know, hey.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: You're Mark Maren and I'm like yeah, and she goes,
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: what happened to you? Like?
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: And she was like a comic, she was a fan
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, you know, what are you talking about.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: She's like, well, you would call fucked up and I'm like,
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: I guess and she's like, well, I can help you
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: gets over if you want to do it. And I'm like,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: what with aa or whatever? She's like yeah, and I'm
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: like and she's so pretty. So I'm like I just
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: wanted to do anything she wanted. So I started just
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: following her around and you know, she started taking me
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: to meetings and you know, we started having a thing,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and yep, the marriage fell apart, you know, because you know,
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: you know, I kind of wanted it to. But it
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: was kind of dramatic because she, you know, my wife
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: found out about her and I didn't know how it
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: was all going to go down, but it went down
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: pretty dramatically, like you know, changing the locks. I had
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: to find another place to live, I had to stay
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: sober through all that shit. There was the drama of
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: like being with this other woman and being like, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: I'm all right, my marriage is coming on, glue.
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: Are you are you in? Are you are we going
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: to do this or what? And she reluctantly.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: She's younger than me, and she was like, I guess,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: and so I guess, well that's enough. So yeah, the
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: marriage fell apart has sublet a place way downtown. It
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: was like a really chaotic time. But I was going
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: to meetings like a lot and I and that's when
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: I kind of like, you know, I was going like
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: every day at least once a day, and I locked
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in with a bunch of people that were just getting
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: sober and we're going to meetings all over the on
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: was taking me in meetings. We were going to meetings together.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: And that was like ninety nine, and that's when it's stuck,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: you know. So the first time I got sober was
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: in eighty eight, right, and then when it stuck was
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: ninety nine. So I was in and out for over
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: ten years. Wow, And now I got twenty four. But
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: for whatever happened with that marriage, because I ended up
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: marrying that.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Girl, Oh my god, this is delicious. Between the Tahiti,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: the Barbue, sauce even absolutely delicious.
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: We do, I get sober.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: I'm with this woman who's stunning, and I'm just doing
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: the comedy. I'm trying, you know. Then I got a deal.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: Like there's so many side stories. You know, I was
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: doing the festivals to Montreal, and I've already been doing
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: comedy at that point for you know, eighty eight. It
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: was like ninety ninety nine. So I've been at it
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: for ten years and I've had a lot of little.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: TV appearances and some opportunities.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I got management and an agent because of that TV
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: show in Comedy Central, and you know, a big manager
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: and the agent that I was with was very good
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: at getting people deals.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to think with that. I had a few deals.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: But during this whole period, you're not taking any side jobs,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: any side hustles, not.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: Since all show business one way or the other. But
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: it was lean for a long time. And then when
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: I did that TV show, I was making some money.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: And then but then you know, I got divorced, so
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: there goes all that money. I wrote a book, I
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: did a one man show, you know, and I had
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: but I was not able to save much money because
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: it really it comes and goes in this game. I
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: didn't get a big amount of money for the book deal,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: but I wrote a book on a one man show
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: I did call Jerusalem Syndrome, and then that book came out.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: But it's like a thirty thousand dollars deal, you know,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: with the idea that if it sells, you make more money.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: But you know, it didn't really make any more money,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: and then taxes takes some and so. But the book
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: comes out like within weeks or a month or so
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: of nine to eleven. So we're I'm in New York,
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: I'm nine to eleven. I was out in Queen's I
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: remember seeing it on the computer on the AOL homepage,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: you know, and just one of the towers was down
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: and I went up to the roof and it was
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: like crazy, man, it was crazy. So you know, I saw,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: you know, there was it wasn't a sound in the world,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: just you know, I was on the roof. It was
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: a clear fall day, no cars, no planes, no nothing,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: and you just saw the smoke coming off you know,
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: downtown and then you know, the second tower went down.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: And it was it was like completely.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: I can't even explain it, you know, entire world change,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: and we had to deal with that horrendous attack and catastrophe.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: As a city, everything just sort of stopped, you know,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: and you couldn't go downtown and that hole was smoking.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Then the signs were going up, you know, missing people everywhere,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: and the smell of the burning was in the city
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: for like what seemed like months. We didn't know when
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: we were going to start doing comedy again, but we
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: started not long after down at the comedy cellar a
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: few weeks, you know, trying to do it and people
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: were complete shock and they didn't know what to do.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Everyone was walking around totally you know, in trauma.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: And you know, we started doing comedy.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: It was pretty dicey because I was trying to be
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: provocative and talk about the politics of things, and there
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: was like almost got in a fight with a marine
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: and the comedy club and it was just a crazy time.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: And the woman that I was with, she she that
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: day was going to work at a job she had downtown.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: She got out downtown and it was raining.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Ash and then she had to walk all the way
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: up and I couldn't get touch with her all day.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: But she it just broke her and she was like
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: she left New York and she left and went home
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: to Seattle, and I was there kind of writing out
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: the aftermath of nine to eleven. And then when she
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: finally you know, kind of pulled herself together, She's like,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: I can't live in New York anymore and I want
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: to go to La. So we moved to La and
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: I had a deal at that time. I'd gotten a
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: deal with Fox Studios at the Montreal Festival, which was
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: a development deal. Gave me some money, gave me a cushion.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: We moved set up shop here and you know, I
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: sort of had to start over again.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: The deal didn't really go anywhere.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: I got set up with a writer, and.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I've had a few of those deals where you write
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: a pilot script and it doesn't go anywhere, but you
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: make money on those.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can bank some like serious cash and
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: just like and I'm still weird about money, like I
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: don't spend I did much.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well I would imagine in this business, like
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I actually I am a firm believer.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: I'm living on a budget and I don't go over it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: You know, if I made one hundred thousand dollars in
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: a month, which I've never actually done so, you know,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: but you know, if I were, I would still live
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: on my you know, five thousand dollars month budget, and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I would just can the rest. I wouldn't even I
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: would not even be in my sight like that's I'm
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: strict with my budgets.
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it is like. I don't know
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: if I was ever in it for the money. I'm
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: happy because there were times I.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Could get up to where we are now, but throughout
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: this time, Look, I'm doing comedy. You know, I had
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: some deal money. And now I'm in La and I've
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: got to re establish myself in La. I go back
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: to the store, which I really haven't been at since
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I lost my mind.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: I get back in there primarily because.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: You know, there was a new booker there and I
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: had sort of some sort of the mythic reputation because
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: of the book I wrote. There's a chapter in Jerusalem
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: Syndrome about the comedy store and about my experience with
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Sam and about the drugs and everything and the craziness,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: and some young comics had read it and put me
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: into this zone of like, yeah, that's you know.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Maren, When did podcast enter?
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Like I you know, I still wasn't able to sell
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: tickets as a comic, you know, but I was a
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: known guy.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Do you say cel tickets like if they book you
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: to a club, like no one's showing up.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: No one.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know I'm not getting door deals, okay,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm getting flat rates to do headlining on
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: weeks where they you know, don't have somebody there that's gonna.
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: You know, sell tickets.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: And you know, after the comedy boom in the eighties,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: there were still a lot of the guys around that
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: sold tickets. But I never understood how they made so
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: much money until you know, I was able to sell
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: tickets and get door deals.
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: It was very naive about the business.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Can you explain a door deal for everyone that doesn't
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: know what it is?
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Well, door deals where you you know, you are confident
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: that you'll sell out and you do a deal with
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: the club where you get eighty percent of the door
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: versus a bonus or whatever, and you know they can
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: you sell drinks, but which is really the business they're in.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: So if you're doing four shows at a club that
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: sell out, you know, for whatever amount of money the
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: ticket is, and you're getting eighty percent. That's different than
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: you know, getting twelve hundred for five shows.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: So you know, once you get to a certain level,
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: you can do these door deal structures and make real
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: money in nightclubs if you sell out.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But I wasn't that guy.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: But I was doing comedy all the time, okay, And
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: also like I did little parts and movies here and there.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: I did, you know, I was in almost famous for
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: a minute, and you know I was trying.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: To do that work.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: But I never really had an agent for movies and TV.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: You know, I had you know, there were agents that
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: did favors for my manager, but I never really committed
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: to acting because it's like.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: Roland, I can't take that kind of rejection.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? It's sit in those audition rooms.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? There's no way that it just
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: was not. I wanted to do it, but there's no
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: way that I could handle all that.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: So when you get when I see you on TV, now,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: is it just like, hey.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: We want Mark to do sometimes? Yeah?
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Or do you ever auditioned now?
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Well? No, I auditioned for Glow.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: I sent the tape, I mean I did a video
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: and they picked me, but like I have some profile,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: like people know, well, that's we'll get to that. So
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: two thousand and four, you know, I'm not making a
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: living really that well at comedy. You know, I don't,
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: you know, I can't. It's just very tentative. I bought
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: a house in Highland Park. I was with the woman,
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: and then I get offered this radio job for Air
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: America Radio, the lefty talk radio network.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: And this was, you know, in response to.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: You know, what was going to be the second term
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: for you know, George Bush Junior w the you know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Al Frank and a bunch of people is Wednesday, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: you know, they wanted me to be on this network
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: out of New York and be on a morning show.
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: And I'd never really done radio.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: So this was really the sort of kind of cosmic
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: choice that led to what became my future. And it
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: was that I got offered this job and it would
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: have been hard, Like I was in LA I would
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: have to move to New York.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: I had kept the apartment there, which.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Was good, oh the whole time.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sublet it okay in Queens, and you know, I was,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: you know, I was with this woman, and it was
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: a difficult relationship because you know, when you get sober.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: With somebody, you know, you're out of your mind.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: And you know, she was, you know, younger than me,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: and it was just a volatile, you know, relationship. But
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: I didn't see any choice but to take the gig
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: because the money was like solid, it was crazy. It
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: was almost like TV money because they had a lot
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: of money. So but it would be me going back
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: to New York, you know, to do morning radio and
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: it was political talk radio and we had a crunch
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a lot of news. It was like getting up at
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: three in the morning to get to the studio to
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: be on the air at six from six to nine
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: every day. And I didn't really know what that would
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: be like or whatever, but I did it. I flew back,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: and obviously we pushed strain on my marriage, but I
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: was getting up and we were doing a lot of
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: comedy bits.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: It began with three of us, and then eventually one
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: of the people kind of got pushed out. I ended
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: up becoming the driver of the show as opposed to
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: the comedic sidekick, you know.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: I was sort of the lead.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: And it was it was incredible because it's live, you're
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: in it and you know, I was doing my thing,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: telling stories, throwing the com learned how to do radio
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: and I did.
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: That for like a year and a half and you
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: loved it.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: I loved it, but you know, it became very difficult
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: to do stand up because you're, you know, when you're
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: getting up at three in the morning and doing I'm
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: going to.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Say, are you just sleeping during the day, and then
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: doing your comedy going straight from comedy to radio.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Well, I learned how to like get sleep at different times,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Like you know, I try to get four or five
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: hours at night and then go to work and then
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: get a nap in during the day and try to
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: do a set or two and I do sets on weekends.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: But you're always fucked up when you do morning radio.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: You like walking around like you've been in a pillow fight.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: You're just like it's fuzzy and like, you know, you
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: can't quite you know, like reality it was.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: It was fucked up. It's like you feel kind of
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: sick all the time.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: But I did it for a year and a half,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: and you know, it strained the marriage, and then I,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: you know, I got fired from Air America because they
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: were going in a different direction. That's a whole other story.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: That network and what happened there. It's crazy. But they
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: pushed us out and I came back to LA and
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: they were going to you know, someone was going to
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: try to get me an evening show, which they did
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: for a while.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: But I get back and you know, my wife leaves me.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Like I went out and did some shows on the
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: road with Henry Rollins and Jenia Groothel. I came back
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: with my wife, so like, you know, I want a
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: trial separation, and I think she'd start up with another dude,
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: and you know.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: I was like, oh no, you know, I couldn't even
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: fathom it.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: So she leaves, and you know, trial separation is not
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: really a trial separation. So I was doing everything I
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: could to make myself better, to go to you know,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: anger management all this shit. But she was out and
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: that fucking leveled me. That like talk about hitting a
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: bottom in sobriety. So here I am, I'm off you know,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: the radio. She leaves me and just hires these lawyers.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: I don't even we don't even have kids, but she
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: just thought that she deserved the house and it was
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: in my name, and like she just like the lawyers
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: just put me through hell and just basically almost bankrupted me.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: And and then the whole time you're stay.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I did stay sober, and you know, comedy was
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: here and there, and.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Like did you end up keeping the house?
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: But I didn't really understand what divorce was when you
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: have money because I'd made money with the radio thing,
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: unshaved it and and she just.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: Was killing me there.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: You know, you have to do that whole thing where
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: you what do you call it that process to disclosure process?
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: Did you like disclose all your money that assets the homes?
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: But it's a it's a racket because divorces don't end
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: until somebody gives up unless it's like, you know, it's
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: a state where you just split it, right, which California is.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: But there's all these whoopholes.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: And she hired a real animal to come after me,
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: and I hired this little scrappy lawyer that a friend.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Of mine, knude.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: But whoever, it's all right, whoever got the money, they're
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: going to finance everything. You're going to pay for their lawyer,
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: You're going to pay you know whatever, Like was.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: She making any money at the time or were you not?
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Really she's doing comedy and doing this and that, and
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: she used to be a model, but like she wasn't
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: really making any money, and that was fine.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: I didn't mind, you know, uh, you know, supporting the situation.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: I helped her produce a one person show and she
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: eventually wrote a book. But the deal was is it
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: got very heated and bad, and it really broke my spirit,
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: like entirely, Like I was heartbroken, and I couldn't understand
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: why we couldn't do it fairly. And you know, in retrospect,
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: she just had her mind on the house. She thought
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: that she deserved the house. She made it a house,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: and in retrospect, I think she was right, and I
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: could if I had understood things better, because I thought, like,
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: you get half, I get half.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: That should be enough, right.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: But her lawyer then there like I didn't know about
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: spousal support. I didn't know about like you know, that
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: whole thing. And then her lawyer was trying to get
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: the spousal support number up to where it wasn't it
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: usually is about the last year of marriage, what you made.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: But her lawyer was like, because of my job, they
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: wanted to make it, you know, ark over five years,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: you know, including their America years, which would have mean
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: I would have been into her for like like eight
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: nine thousand a month, which I didn't have, and we
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: ended up in court for no reason.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: And that's it was a nightmare.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: But so I'm broke and I'm about to lose the
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: house because I'm trying to, you know, win this divorce
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: or at least make it fair.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: But you know, all my money's paying for a lawyer.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: It's paying for her lawyer. It's all my money.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: And then like what happened was air America kind of
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: resurfaced and there was somebody within a America that was like,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: you know, we want to try a streaming video show,
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: which is before streaming. It was like before anybody the
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: technology wasn't there. And I'm like, I don't care what
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: it is. If you can give me what I was
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: making before and give me like sixty K upfront so
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: I can give it to this woman and stop this shit,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: I'll take the job. And they were like okay, So
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: they gave me sixty K and I gave it to
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: her and I'm like we done, and she's like okay, yeah,
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: we're done. And then I got back on my feet
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: and that streaming job that nobody watched break Room Live
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: that last year, and I was barely able to function
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: because I was so shattered from the divorce. But you know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: it got me back on my feet. And then I
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: got back to LA and this was two thousand and
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: what eight, and I'm like, you know, just barely solvent,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: and I didn't know how to Like I still wasn't
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: a big comic, and I didn't know what I was
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: going to do, and I was pretty depressed, and I
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: didn't I had no idea, you know, what we're going
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: to do. But I actually had happened a little before that,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: like when they fired us at Air America, they didn't
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: kick us out of the building because I had three
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: months on my contract. So me and my producer were like,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: there were people doing podcasts, basically just Corolla and like
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Doug maybe Doug Benson and a few others, but it
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: wasn't a thing I said, can we figure this out?
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: So at the beginning, you know, we were just like
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: going into the studio at Air America after hours because
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: we knew the tech, we'd let guests and you know,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: on the freight elevator. And so we did the first
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: dozen or so like that wow in secret and we
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: you know, Apple was looking for people who had some
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: kind of profile and they got behind it. So there
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: was some banners, and you know, I had to figure
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: out how to get more Twitter followers and like this
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: was all happening. That's why we were there at the beginning.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: So I had to figure out how to get Twitter
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: followers and how to get attention.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: So I was booking.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't the show that it is now,
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: but guests would come on and some of them would
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: get press, and then it started to sort of build
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: like that. And then I got back out to LA
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, well, what are we going to do?
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I got to figure out how to do it here.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: So I reached out to Jesse Thorn, who was a
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: pretty early adapter to podcasting. He was a radio gut too,
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: and he told me which MIC's to get and how
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: to hook him up. And I stole a mixer from
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: Air America, like this little blue mixer, you know, and
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: I set that up in my garage and I was
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: running the mics through the mixer right into my laptop
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: and I just had and the garage wasn't even a thing,
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: which is literally garbage in there and a table, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: I started talking to comics. So the whole beginning of
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: the show is me basically bringing people in, you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: to you know, apologize for being an asshole.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: So the entire style of what I do is based
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: on me having people over to talk about me. And
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: at first there was like a third act but me
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: and my producer Brenda McDonald, who is a brilliant guy
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: and still with me, and he had to do the
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: show on the SI for years because he had another
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: job where he made money. We couldn't make money at
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: the beginning. We had we had to put together like
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: a donor thing. This is before Patreon. There was no Patreon,
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: There was no Patreon, So we had to set up like,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: you know, if people like our show, you know, you know,
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: if you give us this monthly payment of like ten five,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: twenty five, we'll send you some T shirts or whatever.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: So I was in my house with five hundred envelopes.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: I had a roommate at the time because I couldn't
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: really at my own house. We're stuff in envelopes and
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: we're trying to get this thing, trying to get like
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: some income coming in and it was all pretty crazy.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: Then we started doing live ones. We created a pay site.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: We thought, well maybe if we do live ones and
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: then offer them for sale, So we were doing that.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: There was no way to make money in podcasts. Yeah,
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: if you wanted to keep building your audience. Yeah, because
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: if you put a paywall up, then that's a real gamble.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: How are you going to get new peoplewall?
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: Well you could do, you know, in order to listen
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: to the whole show.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, but there was only a handful of podcasters.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: So what happens is, you know, I'm doing in my garage,
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: and there used to be a third act, which was
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: a comedy act, and then it became just me talking
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: up front and then doing guests.
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: We had one or two sponsors.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: It was like, you know, Adam and Eve Sex Toys
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: and this coffee sponsor out of Wisconsin.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: And how did you get the sponsors?
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know at that time, I don't remember
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: how we got those first two. The coffee sponsor was
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: somebody who sponsored were the only sponsors for my streaming
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: show that nobody watched, So I just carried them over
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: as a favor. They weren't paying me hardly anything. But
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: they were sending me free coffee. Then Adam and Eve
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: had done a few podcasts. They were also I think
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: a radio advertiser. There was a time at the beginning
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: where when it started to happen podcasts, like radio ad
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: consultants were selling the podcasts. So we had audible sex toys,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Adam and Eve. We had the coffee sponsor. But that
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: was really it, and it wasn't enough to make it real,
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: you know, kitting and the numbers were what they were,
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: and no one knew about podcasts.
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: So there was just a small crew of us, and
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: we were all sort of in touch, you know.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: Rogan came a little after me, the nerdous Chris hardwickers
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: around Corolla. Jay Moore had a show, Jimmy Pardo, Kevin
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Smith had his network at the time, Jimmy Dore. There
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: was like a handful of cats who were like, you know,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: chipping away at it. And then it kind of like,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: you know, I started to get more press for the podcast,
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: and you know, because of guests and a lot of
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: the kind of entertain.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: Journalism, I was doing their job for them.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: So they'd always refer to what Guess would say on
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: my show, and you know, and articles about it, and
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: then the profile of the guests started to get bigger.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Robin Williams, you know, Ben Stiller, Conan, these people were
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: coming to my house.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: But that's what I was gonna I wanted to know, like,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: these people are coming to your house, like yeah, and
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you were just like, this is it like Barack Obama
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: sitting in your garage?
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: Like by that time, the garage was pretty cool, you.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Know, like it was like I want to see it
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: so bad.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: Okay, well that one that garage is gone. I'm in
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: a new place, okay.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: But it was full of my whole life books, you know,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: art things, guitar like it was this beautiful like, you know,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: kind of like it was. I wouldn't call it a
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: man cave, but it looked more like like a library
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: in a museum. It was crazy by that point. But
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: at the beginning, Brendan and I our only commitment was,
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: you know, we're going to do a new show every
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: Monday and Thursday, no matter what. And we've done that
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: since two thousand and nine. Wow, and uh, you know,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: it's been crazy. So it started to build up steam,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: and then podcasts started to get more attention, and then
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: more people started getting into it, and then you know,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: networks were starting, and then a guy Jeff Ulrich created
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: a a advertising interface that would link advertisers with podcasts.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: So some of the you know, and then the radio
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: people who were kind of glimbing on podcasts, they kind
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: of fell back a little bit.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, you know, there was
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: a real game to it, you know, and then there.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Was became a little higher profile, and we all were
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: kind of a community at the beginning, and then it
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: just kind of now, look at it.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: You know, we were there. You know, people say like,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: look what you did. I'm like, it's good and bad.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: I guess you know, why did you say bad?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: Well, it became like this thing. It became sort of
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: like anything else.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: So like everybody thought, you know, I really think that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: I enabled people to think like, oh that guy could
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: I could do it. Yeah, you know, and and then
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: it came it.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: Became very glutted and everybody who was trying them and
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: then you know, people would last a week or two weeks,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: and then then there was like you know, kind of
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: predatory uh kind of what do you trade shows where
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: they you know, they asked me to speak at one.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't really wasn't realize what it was.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: But it was a radio consultant who realized that podcasting
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: was a racket and they could convince a bunch of
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: people that they could sell him the equipment, they could
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: show me how to do that. So like they kind
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: of bring people in in almost like a motivational speaker way,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: like anybody can.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: Do this, get in it, you know, and it kind
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: of it kind of blew up. I mean no, in
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: a bad way in that like eventually.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: Brendan and I, because of what we do and how
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: we do it, are very kind of you know, we're workaholics,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: and he's very sort of specific about how he does audio.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: He's an audio producer and we're still only audio and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: that was what we set out to do. And he
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: spends a lot of time doing what he does.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: I do what I do.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: But as the businessess kind of grew, it's only a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: bad thing in that, you know, everyone has a podcast.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: It's like a joke.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, and then the bigger enterprises.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Got involved and now you know there's yeah, you know, Amazon,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: you know, Spotify, all these It just became this huge
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: business where before it was just, you know, pretty scrappy.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think people, you know, yeah, people really
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: like this, even if you look at social media, like
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: I've talked to influencers, like, I think people or the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: audience really liked the scrappy underground versus the commercialized. And
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I could see what you're saying with podcasts becoming so commercialized.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: But even also like when you see someone like yourself
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: of me being a new podcaster, it's like I have
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: to be reminded continually all the time, like do you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: know how long this person has been doing this? Like
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: I was with the president of iHeart Radio and he
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: was like, my number one podcast has been around for
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: like thirty years, Colleen, And I'm like what He's like,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: remember this always it's gonna take a long time. And
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: I like that you talk about it because in our
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: ages like, oh, you could become a famous person, you
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: could have a lot of money overnight, and it's really
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: just a marketing gimmick.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: But the reality is it took work.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: And also it was never like that for me. I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: don't know how these people do it now.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: I can't live in that world. In terms of being
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: a content provider looking for clips you know, and playing
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: that game where you're just like these guys who are
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: just dumping stuff three four times a day, trying to build,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: you know, an empire based on you know, whatever it
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: is their racket is.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: You know, I get all that, but we're kind of
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: at school and that.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've been doing it a long time, but we
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: were fortunate in that my cosmic timing and my particular
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: skill set, you know, enabled me to seize this moment
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: without having any real plan in place.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: There was no way to make money at the beginning.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this just wasn't It seems like all of your
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: choices though never from what I understand outside of the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: divorce situation, never really Money wasn't really a driving motivator
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: for you.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: It seems like you're no, like it was.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it was, but it was a
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: sort of persistence and passion to do stand ups. So like,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: and I've had to deal with that too, Like I
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: was an established stand up when I started the podcast,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: and now this podcast blows up and nobody really knows
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: me as a stand up, And so we get people
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: coming to the shows like we're here to support you.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, I know how to do this. You know,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you're here exactly right, right. So I had
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: a real hard.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: Time with that being known as an interviewer versus a
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: stand up, because I always want to be a stand up.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that was like a dicey.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: It was hard for me in my brain to realize
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: that I was becoming this interview guy or this conversation guy,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: which was great because you know, no one really does
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: it like me, and I was developing something and now
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: it's kind of established. But at the beginning, I'm like,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: I'm a comic. I'm just doing this, you know, because
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: this is what you know. It's working out, you know,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: but I love it. I mean, I you know, it's
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: also good for recovery in a way, you know, like
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: the whole premise of of AA was one alcoholic talking
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: to another to get you out of your head. So, like,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: you know, interviewing people is a big part of my
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: social life is having these conversations. Yeah, with these people
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: who I don't know, and they're fairly intimate and kind
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: of very focused, and you know, I'm kind of all
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: in and I'm just as nervous and anxious about doing
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: them as I always was you know, this is like whatever,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: thirteen years in or however long.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: But I think that the timing of it was fortuitous
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: and that you know, the business grew around us.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: There was a core community of podcasters and we all
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: evolved together and we took you know, we you know,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: there was an issue with a patent troll that was
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: a very complicated thing, that was a threat to podcasting,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: and we you know, I remember, we had a big
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: meeting about how to deal with it. So once the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: business started to expand and everyone found their footing, it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: all happened simultaneously. You know, I was there at the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: beginning of I guess what would be modern podcasting. There
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: were a few before it was kind of a thing,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: but it wasn't you know, a cultural phenomenon.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: So I came up with it.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: It built it, you know, I was one of the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't know if OG is you know,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: I don't want to take any real credit, but I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: found the the conversation space at that time. In the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: way I did it was unique, so and it became
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: kind of one of the pillars of modern podcasting. And
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: I don't mind saying that, but it was all coincidental,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: but the quality remains, and you know, it really becomes
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: about like, well when are we going to stop?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: Dude?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: You know, like, oh yeah, keep going. But I do
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: have one question.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Were there any moments where there was just like almost
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: like an aha, or I can't believe that I you know,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: like I like, there are certain interviews where.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: I would be like, holy sh I can't believe this
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: is me. You know what were those moments?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: Well, a sitting president was pretty bad.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, how did you land that?
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: But even before that, you know, because of my business,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: you know, talking to people like you know, Robin Williams
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: and people like you know, big actors like and people
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: would come to my house and be like, where the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: fuck am I kind of like here, I don't know
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: where I am. I don't know how you found the studio.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: But but there were a lot of big performers. I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: was talking to some old guys. Sometimes I'd go to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: people's houses and do it.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: I was like, I'm all in.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: So I talked to a lot of people that I
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: thought were pretty impressive. But when when the president became.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: A thing that was crazy.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: I just want to know, like what that day was
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: like it was like like I just I want you
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: to paint me that picture of even also getting the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: interview that.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: Was like seven years in.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Well, ultimately what happened was, you know, there was conversation
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: earlier on this was it was in his last term,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: and there was some conversation in in the beginning of
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: that term that maybe as vice president that Biden might
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: want to do it.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: And you know, but we weren't really a political show.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: That's one thing.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Coming out of political radio, which both me and my
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: producer did, we were like, no politics, I'm not going
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: to do it. So we detached from it completely and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: became this other show. You know, I've talked politics since
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: then because when Trump was president, I'm was profoundly concerned
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: and I'm still concerned, but it's difficult. It's primarily not
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: that kind of dialogue. But someone in the president's office,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: someone in Obama's crew, thought it would be a good
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: thing for him to do the podcast because it was
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: his last term.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: It was the last year.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: You know, you don't want to be a lame duck.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: You know, he wanted to be relevant, and you know,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: they reached out and said let's do it, and you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: my producer, who's like, you know, a straight shooter, decent guy,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: real political dude. Like it's funny because the date they
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: had wanted him to come, I was supposed to be
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: on vacation. So I literally told my producer, I'm like,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I don't know if if I
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: can do it. I'm supposed to be on vacation, freaking.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: And then it turns out, like you know, it was
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: booked like for the day that I got back, or
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: the day or two days after I got back, and.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: I and I remember my producers are telling me, it's like,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: you know, I wouldn't.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: Have let you go, yeah, yeah, out of here. But
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: you know, you talk to.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: Famous people enough, and I granted it's the President, but
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: you know, people were just people, and you get a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: sense of people. I mean, I've done fifteen hundred of
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: these things.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah have you really?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're coming up on fifteen hundreds, and you know,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: I've talked to a lot of different kinds of people,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: but the President was a big deal.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: But the trick of it was, look, a lot of things.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: Had to happen for it to happen, but we were
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: fairly specific that that It wasn't going to be political
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: in the sense that, you know, this is going to
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: be what we do. It's going to be a conversation
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: about life.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: So I was down in Hawaii.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: I read his book, and I wasn't really as nervous
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: as you would think, you know. But but this my
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: producer was brilliant in it all because, you know, he
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: had to go out to my house. He lives in Brooklyn,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: So he flew out to the house so the Secret
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: Service could do a sweet They had to figure out
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: they had to come and figure out how to set
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: up a parameter, how to get the president of the
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: United States into this little neighborhood, into Highland Park, and.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: How to do it safely.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: So Brendan was there for that, and they were trying
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: to figure out where they could put snipers and you know,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: how to make a perimeter, and and you know, the
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: roof of the garage was not strong enough to.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: Hold the snipers.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: So we had to ask my neighbor Dennis, if we
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: could put snipers on his roof.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: And he was thrilled.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's retired, he's excited. And then they you know,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: they built they tented my driveway, so the motorcake park
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: and they could come up, you know, without any sight
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: lines and then walk into the back and come into
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: the garage. And they'd set up this like like about
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: a week before, they put this box in my spare bedroom,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: which was like hooked up to a special phone line,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: like in case all communications went down, they'd have communications.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: So that thing humming along was that was the most
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: menacing part of the whole thing.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: And you know, so day of we'd set up a
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: bunch of listening stations on the deck for people, like
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: for his people to be out there.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: He didn't. He didn't he didn't uh need a pre interview.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: He didn't. He let us do whatever questions we wanted.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: He didn't.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: He didn't do like restrictions or anything.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: No what's the word I want? There was no screening
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: of what we of the question?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: Do you ever let people do that?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: But it's the president, you know, but we we were
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: kind of held on line. But like he was a
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: intellectual guy.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: He carried himself. He wasn't like, you know, some whack job.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: You know those guys the presidents are pretty well managed,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: especially with press, but you know, Obama was like, you
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: know whatever, and it was kind.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: Of intense, you know, because there was a lot of
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: people around.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: You know, we're waiting for the president and like, look
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: man like he had gone to school at Occidental briefly,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: so there was that connection. But there was also news
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: that had broken, like literally within the last within that week,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: that guy shot all those people at that church, all
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: those black people got shot by that little lunatic, racist
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: white kid, and that was big, big thing. So we
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: didn't even know if he was going to come, which
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: we would have understood, yeah, but he was going to come.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: So we had to figure out how to talk about that.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: There was some you know, Supreme Court stuff coming down.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: There was a little bit of business that was unfolding
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: that we needed to address politically and culturally, but the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: rest was going to be personal. And we had a
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: strict we had an hour, so Brendan, you know, he
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: had to like we had to figure it out. Usually
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: I do, like you you know, I kind of wing it,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: but we had we had a tight hour and there
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: was shit we need to get to. So he we
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: made a structure so we would get to it. And
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: we're all waiting around and you know, me and Brendan,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: I'm in the house.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: You know. Secret Service was funny because they came.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: By earlier with the dogs, the bomb dogs, and I
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: got three cats, and I was like, look, man, you
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: know I got these cats and they're in the bedroom.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: Is there any way you know, can you trust me
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 4: on the bedroom because I want to die. I want
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: the bomb dogs fuck with the cats. Did they Yeah?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: They did. So we're all waiting Secret Services.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: There's like fifteen people about and they're around, and they're
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: on the perimeter. The snipers there watching the snipers walk up.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: They had closed off the streets. All the cars were.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: Off the streets.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: Streets well just but you know, they but just my.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: Street, the neighborhood. There couldn't be any park cars on
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: the street. It's a little street on a little hill
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: in Highland Park. But to his benefit, he didn't he
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: was staying in Beverly Hills and he didn't take the
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: motorcade through the city, which would have like fucked everything up. Yeah,
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: but he was going to fly in on the helicopter,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: like on the Air Force two or whatever it is.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: And you know, I'm standing around, We're all standing around,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: and you know.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: I'm like, you know, let me know when he's close.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: And they're like, yeah, well, you know when he's twenty
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: minutes out. And then we saw the helicopter, like the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: presidential helicopter with the Ospreys in front of it, and
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: they were going to land at the Rose Bowl, which
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: is like ten minutes away, and we saw him in
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: the air.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, so he's he's close, you know.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: And then it was just nuts. Man.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: It was like, you know, the motorcades coming up and
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: they come up my street, they park, and there's all
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: these people coming up that like that tented thing, you know,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: his entourage, and I don't even see him and they're
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: coming up to driving and now I just see all
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, I see handle Mark and it's.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: Like Obama and I'm like, hey, mister president.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: And you know, that hadn't been a surreal moment totally.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: And my my, my, my producer.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: He's in a well, he's in a suit, and we're
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just we're just hanging out waiting for
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: the president and and uh, you know, I shake his hand,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: I say, I say, he goes to we We're gonna
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: have a good time, I hope, so, you know.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: And we go in there and it was like it
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: was intense. Man.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I had one Secret Service guy in there
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: and he was behind me, so I didn't see him
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: as Obama was there.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: I remember I asked him to nervous about this, and
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: he said, if I was nervous about this, we'd all
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: be in trouble.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: Bombay has like a cool sense of humor.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: But I love his poise, Like I love the way
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: and I feel like he really processes his answers.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, very deliberate.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost like you've got to like I had
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: to keep it moving because he can, you know, get
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: he can talk, you know, and you gotta be careful,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: you on getting the weeds with politics because he can
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: very deliberate.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: But he'll he'll go on for a while.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: And we only had an hour, so I keep it going,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: you know, and then we got you know, we got
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: into the stuff that we needed to talk about. We
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: talked about his life and you know, it got it
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: was kind of blew up, not just because he was president,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: but because he used the N word, know, and like
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: he made an example on.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: The podcast, like you know, racism.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: Racism isn't over just because people don't use the N word,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: but he said it and it was like, well, I
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: didn't really notice it because you know, it's like as
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: a comic, you hear a lot of things, but it
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: didn't register to me.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh, this is going to be a huge deal.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: But my producer was like, this is going to be
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: a huge like this is going to be crazy, and
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: And you know, we only did a.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: Couple of interviews afterwards, my producer who was working for
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: Chris Hayes on MSNBC at the time as well. We
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: did an interview with Chris and I did Terry Gross
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: on MPR. Those were the only two interviews because once
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: we released it with that word in there, it blew up,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: like it was like global news, Like they were parked
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: in front of my house, you know, how do you
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: feel about you know, they want to know how I
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: felt about it.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: It just became news. The right was like why does
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: he get to use it? You know, all the shit.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: It was crazy, but my he managed it, like God
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: damn Champ. He did the two interviews and no one
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: else got near us, and that was it. They were
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: in my driveway and I didn't deal with them.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Wow, the news people.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, wow.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: When you when you look back at your we're about
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: to close up unfortunately, but when you look back at
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: your life story, what would you say was your Well,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: I think you covered it, but what was that one
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: milestone where you were like, I don't know if I.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: Could go on.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: I think we covered it, but just it happened all
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: the time.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: It happened all the time.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because with comedy I saw my friends getting successful
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: and I wasn't you know what am I doing? But
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: it got to a certain point where you know, you
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: don't really have a plan B, Like I never had
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: a plan B.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: And it gets further and further away.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: You think you have a plan B, but what is it?
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: What Am I going to go back to cocon at
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: a restaurant? What am I going to teach? Am I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: going to go back to school?
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: You know, the further way that shit gets and what
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: am I qualified to do? Like you know, I used
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: to do a joke about it.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: It's like you get to a certain point where things
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: aren't working out but you know there's no plan being place.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: Then your brain sort of goes like, hey, well I
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: don't have to do this because I could always oh shit,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: there used to be something.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Well, sometimes when I get really stressed, I'll make a
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: joke and I'm like, sometimes I just think about moving
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: to a small town and working.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: At Walmart and sure like disappearing.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just like disappearing and working a regular job and
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: living a regular life where I'm not competing against my
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: invisible self, because sometimes I feel like I have, you know,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: these things that I'm aspiring to be. But when stress
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: levels get too high, I'm like, I can totally work
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: at Walmart. And then in my brain it's like, yeah,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: how long do you think you can last? Like you know,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: like I don't know what that'd be my that's literally
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: my plan B is like I moved to a small town.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I live in a little house, and I like, you know,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: a register at a deli or something.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: You know, if you go can.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: Handle that, that's it's a nice place to go in
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: your brain, if that makes you feel better, Like I,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: you know, I would.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: I just kept pressing along, you know, and I kept
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: pushing and pushing, and you know, I could you know,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: I was still in the game in a way, you know,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: like I would do cone and I do TV, I
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: do radio. Like, you know, there was always I'd get
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: a deal here and there, so there was always something
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: which isn't always great.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: That was you know, encouraging me to keep going.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: And you know I wasn't again selling tickets as a comic,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: but you know, I knew people who knew me, and
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: I could you know, I would go.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: Do the job and I could get on stage and everything.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: But there were just like sometimes you get indulged or
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: you get you keep getting little paychecks here and there,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: and you probably you might you should quit.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: There's I've seen you know, I've been.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: In this game a long time, right, so almost almost
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: forty years. You know, people come and go, some people disappear.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: You don't know how people survive. You know, you have
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: no idea what people are up to. You see comics,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: you know, you know, see him for ten years, You're like, well,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: you've been doing. Some guys get out altogether. Some guys
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: go into writing, they go into radio, they go into
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: you know, producing whatever it is, or they get out.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: But but there's something when you're the one in charge
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: of deciding when you're done, you know, delusion could certainly
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: feed into that, and you kind of have to be
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: delusional to make it go with this game, you have
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: to be. But and also, like I've grown to realize that,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: like there were people in the past where I'd seen
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: them like, what's this guy thinking, this guy's never gonna
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: do it, and they do it.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: They figure it out, they.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: Figure out something, so I don't really judge. And also delusion,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: being a delusional to a certain degree is necessary to
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: do this. Yeah, but you do it innately because you
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: want to do this. You don't plan on being delusional,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: but you have to.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: You are to be.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Of course, I think any time you're pursuing your dreams,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: especially like you know, there's no resume to get to
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: like I didn't work a million places to.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: Get to this point. I just had a vision.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Or you have a vision and you're like, I'm gonna
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like what I was saying, I was, I
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: had a vision and then just I take one step
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: at a time.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: And I actually think that kind of works if you
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: don't talk about your vision too much and you don't
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: smoke too much weed. But but yeah, there's been definitely
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: pivotal points.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 7: Why do you think if you talk about it too much,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 7: it's because you just you know, it's like if you like,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 7: there's some things I want to do, and I stick
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 7: them in my brain, and you know, I don't sit
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 7: there and meditate on them, but like, I know I
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 7: want to do it.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: There's there's not there's a small menu of things I
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: want to do. So I put in my brain that
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: I want to do it, and then at some point,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: you know, the opportunity reveals itself and I do it.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's magic or what. But
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: the thing about how it happened for me in that
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: you know that the podcast happened and my timing was right,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: is that the one thing I knew is that a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: lot of opportunities came from the podcast, you know, book opportunities,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: acting opportunities. I did my own show and I have
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: c stand up became a real business for me. I
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: got following, but that all came out of the podcast.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: But the one thing I knew when I did that
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: podcast was that, you know, I was ready to do whatever.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I'd been in the game, like that was
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: in my forties, right. So the podcast starts two thousand
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: and nine, sixty three, seventy three, eighty three, ninety three,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: two thousand and three, so I'm forty five man.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you started Yeah, so look you.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: Know or was that it? Yeah, something like that, not older.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when I started the podcast, but I've been doing
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: comedy since eighty eight.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So I had chops.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: I had radio chops that had stand up chops, and
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: I had some acting chops, and I you know, I
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: definitely had put my you know, ten thousand hours in right,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: so by the time the other opportunities happened, you know,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: it was gravy man, like, yeah, I'll try that. Yeah,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: I don't give a shit. Yeah, you know, even without money.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: It's like, here come the opportunities. When I was younger,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: I get opportunities. I wasn't ready, but I was so
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: hungry for them. I'd take them anyways, and then they
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: don't work out because it's hard to know when you're ready.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: It's one thing to be delusional and committed and persistent
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: to doing something, but if you get an opportunity that
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: you may not make yourself, you better be ready to
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: Like, because what I'm saying like, yeah, the podcast, I
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: made that myself, acting and you know, doing stand up
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: and movie options like if I get a deal, if
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: someone goes, we want you to do this for our networker. Ready,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: Like back in the day, I'd be like, yeah, of
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: course I wouldn't ready. But now, like I knew after
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: the podcast after a few years, like I can do anything.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: I put the work in.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can show up for that gig with full confidence,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: in a full, self actualized way.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: And did you ever this will be my last? Did
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: you ever focus on your age too? Because when I was.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Young, I would be like, by the time I'm twenty four,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: I want to be a millionaire. But I don't know
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: if it's because I came from being poor, you know,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: where money was like always a issue, you know.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: I guess I did a little little bit, but I don't.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: I don't remember, like I always thought, like, well I
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: used to.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: There's to be this idea that you know, as you
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: get older, the heroes that you wanted to emulate or
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: be like they, you know, the age goes up, you know,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: like at first, like I want to be like you know,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: Richard pry or whatever. Yeah, but then like you know,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: you pass a certain line of agent. It's like, well,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: Rodney Dangerfield didn't.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: Make it really till it was like sixty, like that's
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: the new guy.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That was the thing I always try to remind
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: myself of the founder of KFC. Did you hear his
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: story about how he like he was like living in
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: his car he was trying to sell his recipe off
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: and he didn't make it till he was like it
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: is sixties.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: I get those, and I'm always like, yo, does he
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: make it? So he was like, sixty, you got time?
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know that helps you yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: But like it ultimately, whether you backloaded or not, it
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: is a process, and you don't you don't really know
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: how it's going to work out in this business. Like
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: I had no anticipation. And by the time I or
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: the podcast, I was pretty bleak, pretty depressed. I was
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: looking at, you know, a lifetime of you know, being
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: like a b headliner in a way, you know, or
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: just kind of hammering it out, and you know, it's
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: almost suicidal, really, and because I didn't know what else
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: But at least you were, but you were you were
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: almost suicidal, but you did not cave in sobriety.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: No, I didn't drink.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's it.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: Like, well, if you work that first step, man, you
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: know you do know, you know that if you understand
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: what powerless means, you know, like if if the idea
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: is like you were powerless over whatever, and your life
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: has become unmanageable, you realize that what that means is
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: that I have no ability to control my drinking or
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: drug use. And that's I've proven that to myself again
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: and again that I can't control it. So if you
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: get that in your head deep enough, you know that
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: taking a drug or taking a drink is only going
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: to lead to more drugs and more drinks is not
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 3: going to give you anything but that. Okay, So once
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: you understand that, like because like as an attic person,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: it's like, if you're honest with yourself, you don't the
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: idea is like I can drink regular.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: It's like, no, you can't. You never did. So you
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: got to get into your mind that like, if I'm
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: gonna drink, that's what I'm gonna do.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna be every day, and it's
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: gonna be for real. Yeah, Like there's all this legal
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: weed around. I used to love weed, but I know that,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: like if I start doing a gummy or smoking a
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: little weed.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 4: It's gonna be every day. It'd be every day within
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: two weeks. Wow, it's to the nature of the game.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: But the first step is to recognize that you're powerless.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: Wow, that's the heavy one.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: I think save that for myself.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 4: Well, you're well, the weird.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: Thing is powerlessness as a position. You realize that, if
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: you really think about it, you're powerless over most things.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been starting I had a tough year this year,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: and so I've been starting to realize that. Slowly.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: It took me like hit in my head. You know,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: you repeat the same actions, you just the same results,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know what, you gotta admit this
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: one right here. This is you have lit hit insanity.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: And I think in that you realize that you're powerless.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 4: Well that's yeah, that's the equation.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I just want to say it's a pleasure
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: having you. Your meal was a ten out of a ten.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, and uh, the last couple of episodes, my guess
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: we'll know. I've been like it will never happen again.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: I for sure will go home. I'm keeping the tahini sauce.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Did you want it? Okay, sa the I won't even
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: have that? I will? Are you sure I was gonna say?
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna get shout outs to the Japanese barbecue
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: sauce and the tin sauce. Yeah yeah, let me just
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: tell you, guys, that sauce rice the beyond burger.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: I think the beyond burger's texture and flavor than you thought.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well, I've had Beyond burgers. I do have
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: one question. How do you cook a beyond burger and
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: know it's cooked?
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: Brown it on both sides. I don't think there's anything
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: in there like raw meat. I think it's all plant stuff. Anyways, Okay,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: we just cook it like a burger, but you don't
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: you know, you know, you know, don't dry it out,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: I definitely one hundred percent will make this meal at
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: home for me and my minion. But yeah, thank you
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: so much for taking time out of your schedule. How
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: can fans keep up with you? It's oh, you know,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: you guys know how to keep up with Mark Merret
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: Come on.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: Wtfpod dot com is the website for the podcast at
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: Mark Maren on Instagram.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: And do you still have a Patreon and all that.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: I never had a Patreon, Oh, you know, because.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: You were before it ever. A lot of podcasts that
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: I know are doing it and know.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: What it is. I'm not really that tech savvy. You know.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: I've got a TikTok too, but I'm not that. I
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: have a guy that just puts stuff up there Instagram. Occasionally,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: if you follow me on Instagram, I'll do a live
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: and they'll be long, and they usually happen the day
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: that I have to record for the podcast the next day,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: every Sunday and third and Wednesday. You know, I've got
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: to do the ads and the intros for the for
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: the interview. And sometimes before I do that, I'll go
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: on Instagram live for like hour an hour and a
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: half and just walk.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: Through my life, talk to my cats, play guitar. Yeah,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: I did it.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: I started doing it during the pandemic, just to stay
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: staying and stay connected to an audience.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: And I would do almost like a morning show.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: You went through a lot during the pandemic, Yeah.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah I did. My girlfriend passed away and.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: And you again, you stayed strong, like sobriety if.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: I stay strong. I went through a lot of pain,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: but I did not. Yeah, yeah you didn't stay it's sober.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you stayed sober.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: The only reason why I say that is because typically
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: from the little bit that I know about addiction is
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: like when those things happen, you find those ways to cope.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you'll But what.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: You know when you get enough sobriety is that you
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: adding drugs or drink that this ain't gonna help nothing,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: and you know it could just lead to more drugs
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: and drink, because you know, coping is one thing, but
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: you know you're built to cope no matter what. You
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: just have to feel the feelings, like because drugs and
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: drink is not really coping. Self medicating is not really coping,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: especially if you have a problem, because then that becomes
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: the problem.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 4: The thing is is like you know, you have the
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 4: feelings and you know eventually it'll get better, you know.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: I was had a conversation with my little brother the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: other day and he said something that I felt was
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: so remarkable. On a group text with our family. He
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: said something like he was depressed, and I'm like, I've
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: never heard my brother use this term. So I reached
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: out to him, like, what's going on He's like, don't
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: worry about it.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: I was like, why he.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Goes depression is like a cold. He's like, eventually, you know,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: in a couple of days, it's going to ease up.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: You just go through it.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: And I never thought of it like that, but just
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: the thought of thinking of, Okay, I'm in this sad state.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a moment in time and then
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to come through it, and you know, shout
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: out to my little brother. But I thought that was
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: one of the most unique ways of dealing with pain.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: It's just like in a couple of days, in a week,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: I'll be fine.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: It's a cold.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: Well that's the Yeah, Like that's a there's a little
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: saying that called feelings aren't facts.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, like you know eventually though, yeah, but yeah,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 4: be careful with the depression. If you got it, you know,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: if you really got it.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Sadness is sadness.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: This is sadness. But thank you so much.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed our meal, and thanks for sharing your story
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: and being very transparent with me.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 4: You're welcome, Thanks for having me.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, all right, peace out guys for more
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: eating while broke from iHeart radio and the Black Effect.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.