Latest / Pod Save America / Marc Maron on Brainf*cked Trolls and Liberal Scolds

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Marc Maron on Brainf*cked Trolls and Liberal Scolds · Pod Save America

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• 1:25
  Speaker 4: Hey, everybody.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Lovett. Today on
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: the show, I sat down with Mark Maron to talk
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: about the end of his podcast, to talk about his
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: comedy special, talk about politics, Trump, Theo Vaughn, Jerry Seinfeld,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Bill Maher. I think Janine Garofalo came up very briefly.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: We covered a lot of ground about the right, the left,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: life and death. It was a great conversation. Producer Austin
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: said it was a funny conversation and one of the
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: darkest conversations ever. We've had, and you know, you'll decide
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  Speaker 3: how right that is, but it was really great. And
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  Speaker 3: here it is. Hi, thanks for being here.
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  Speaker 4: You're welcome. Nice to be here. I've admired your work
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  Speaker 4: from afar, my friend.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, that's so nice to hear.
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  Speaker 4: We all, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: What about up close?
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm going to see how that goes.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 4: Okay. Okay.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: When we, you were on Love It or Leave It
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: in 2017. I went back and listened to it and
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: my takeaway had nothing to do with you. You were there,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: but I was mostly listening to how I sounded. Sure.
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  Speaker 3: And it was one of the first shows we did.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: And it was one of the first times I'd been
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: doing a show on a stage and I was still
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: getting the hang of it. And I remember when you
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: came on, I really felt you not annoyed at me,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: but like, you're.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Like, okay.
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  Speaker 3: I felt like you needed to be won over. Like
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: you've been doing this a long time and you think
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: we're going to talk. I felt you like alpha dogging
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: me a little bit. Oh. But not in a bad way.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: It was fine. But in watching you do interviews, here's
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: what I took from it, which is when you're with
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: somebody you genuinely like, you will not laugh as much,
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: but you'll sometimes throw a pity laugh at someone who's
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: trying their best who you don't care for. And I
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: wasn't getting that. And I wasn't getting that.
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  Speaker 4: With people in terms of pity laughs, You know, there's
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: an old radio habit. I don't know if people who
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: started in podcasting, but it seems to have, there is
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  Speaker 4: a radio laugh that you do out of politeness and
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: it's instinctual. And I think after a certain point, you
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  Speaker 4: may not know the difference between that and a real laugh,
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: but it is an acknowledgement. It's not always pity. It's
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  Speaker 4: just saying like, yeah, okay, yeah, you did it.
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  Speaker 3: You did the thing.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, if it's funny, it's funny, you know,
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  Speaker 4: but I think people know when I'm really laughing. And
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  Speaker 4: I think that in In terms of alpha dogging, I
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  Speaker 4: get a little dickish.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's not full power play. It's just sort
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  Speaker 4: of a defiance. I'm defying you to bring me down
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  Speaker 4: a notch. But you're setting a bar for if you're
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: going to want to have a conversation.
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  Speaker 3: Sure. You're going to have to bring something. Yeah, I
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: don't know what's going to- You can't just.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: Show up empty handed. Sure. I mean, yeah, because I
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: can talk probably too much if I'm allowed to. Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: I don't mind it. This is the first time I've
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: done sort of a run of guesting in a long
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: time over the last month or so.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no.
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  Speaker 3: I noticed that. I feel like you've done every podcast
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: and I assume what's left after this is maybe like
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the Geico caveman. Is that what's after this?
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Is he doing one? Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I think you're going to hit that. Well, I did
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: a couple. That Petco dog. Sure.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't think I'll do that. I was kind
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  Speaker 4: of strategic in what I wanted to do for reasons
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  Speaker 4: that I had. Some of them were not the reasons
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: that were sort of interpreted. I learned recently that people
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: are going to assume they know why you did things
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: or frame why you did things in their particular context.
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  Speaker 4: And I know why I did things. And it's very
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  Speaker 4: odd to come up against these type of people where
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  Speaker 4: they're like, you did that because of this. I'm like,
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  Speaker 4: I wasn't even thinking that.
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  Speaker 3: What's an example of that?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, For instance, that there is this notion that,
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: you know, I did a lot of the comedy podcasts,
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  Speaker 4: the more bro-ish ones that, you know, I would do
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  Speaker 4: or get on, you know, specifically to take them to task.
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  Speaker 4: And it really was the farthest thing from my mind.
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  Speaker 4: I just wanted to make sure that people who were
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  Speaker 4: fans of comedy knew that I had a special out there,
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  Speaker 4: you know, no matter what ilk they are. That was
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  Speaker 4: really the intention. Because I got into stuff that I've
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: been talking about a long time about the political situation
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  Speaker 4: within comedy, that just happened. It wasn't like that was
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  Speaker 4: my agenda. I didn't want to talk that shit to
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  Speaker 4: Howie Mandel. I barely wanted to be on Howie's show.
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  Speaker 3: That does come across. Sure.
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  Speaker 4: But I mean, but it was like, you know, I
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  Speaker 4: know how to have fun.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: You know, but he was, you know, spouting his mouth
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  Speaker 4: off in sort of a boomer-y, shallow kind of insulated
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  Speaker 4: way that I thought was, you know, way off the mark.
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  Speaker 4: And so I didn't engage, you know, fun mark because
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  Speaker 4: it became not fun very quickly and it became serious.
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  Speaker 4: And he didn't have much to say.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Let's talk about politics because you have been going already. Well, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: this is what I put on the.
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  Speaker 4: Top of the card. We can edit however. No, no, no.
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  Speaker 4: We don't have to follow this.
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  Speaker 3: No, you're kidding.
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  Speaker 4: Do what you gotta do.
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  Speaker 3: He's kidding. So in your special, which is great.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you.
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  Speaker 3: Which is great. You say it's your best. I think so.
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  Speaker 3: I like your last two. I think they're both your best.
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  Speaker 4: End Times Fun, Bleak to Dark. Yeah, yeah. And this one,
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  Speaker 4: it's kind of a trilogy, Panicked.
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  Speaker 3: One of the things you say in the special is
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  Speaker 3: that liberals annoyed average Americans into fascism and that we
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  Speaker 3: have a buzzkill problem. Now, a lot of the buzzkills
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  Speaker 3: listening to this are going to take issue with that.
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  Speaker 3: But what is the buzzkill problem? What is it?
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  Speaker 4: I think most of my specials. I speak to politics
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  Speaker 4: and culture in a specific way because I think I should.
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  Speaker 4: I think it's my responsibility. And over time, especially in
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: this last episode, I figured out a way to what
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  Speaker 4: I felt was finessing it because the situation culturally and
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  Speaker 4: politically for this special was different than the other ones.
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  Speaker 4: And some sort of strange empathy... kind of evolved in
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  Speaker 4: terms of my presentation. So I'll explain to you, I'll
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  Speaker 4: answer the question. But in my last special, like Bleak
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  Speaker 4: to Dark, where I talked about Christian fascism, you know,
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  Speaker 4: it was sort of like, I had some swagger to it.
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  Speaker 4: I was laying something down. I wasn't really exploring it.
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  Speaker 4: It was sort of a heads up in a fairly
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  Speaker 4: cocky way in what you would say, probably what it
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: looks like as alpha dogging. In the special before that,
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  Speaker 4: I did a fairly operatic closing bit with Mike Pence
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  Speaker 4: blowing Jesus, which is a specific sort of homage to
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  Speaker 4: a comic that had an impact on me. So you blew, huh?
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  Speaker 3: You gave him a blowjob.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know, you got to do what you
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  Speaker 4: got to do. No, it was more like as I
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: get older, I realize what my influences are and I
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: realize what part they play in certain bits. Like I
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  Speaker 4: can kind of identify it. So I see it that way.
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  Speaker 4: I see that I would not have been inspired to
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  Speaker 4: navigate this joke without Hicks. So that's that. But in
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  Speaker 4: this special, because I started doing it after the election
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: or maybe a little leading up to it, I found
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  Speaker 4: that at the audiences, in the theater audiences, that there
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  Speaker 4: was a frightened, desperate, angry... vibe, which was justified and
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  Speaker 4: real and despairing. And so over time of building the material,
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  Speaker 4: I realized that I was sort of doing some sort
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  Speaker 4: of community service in a real sense that these are liberals, Democrats,
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  Speaker 4: Democrat liberals, Democratic liberals, whatever to the left of center,
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  Speaker 4: that these people were showing up. I don't know their lives.
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  Speaker 4: I don't know how long they're sitting at home alone
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  Speaker 4: on the phone. I don't know what they're doing. But
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: I did know they were scared and I knew I
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: was in the same boat. So I figured out a way,
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  Speaker 4: I made a decision this special to speak directly to them.
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  Speaker 4: You know, not just posture as one of us, but
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  Speaker 4: to say, look, I'll do this for you. We're all
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: in the same boat. We all have flaws. There's funny
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: things about us. I don't have any answers for you,
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  Speaker 4: but I can give you that kind of relief of being,
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: of sort of taking pokes at, At who we are.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And that joke, and I think it's a problem now
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  Speaker 4: too with comics and comedy. When I do comedy, when
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: I say we annoyed the average American into fascism, that's
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  Speaker 4: a joke.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a joke.
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  Speaker 4: But it resonates. And it resonates for a reason. Because
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  Speaker 4: I've also lately been exploring the difference between anger and hate. That,
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: you know, anger as a tone in all its spectrums.
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  Speaker 4: is not always entertaining. And self-righteous anger is about the
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: most intolerable anger. And even if you believe what the
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: person is saying, you want them to shut the fuck up.
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  Speaker 4: So that joke, and to answer your question, I think
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  Speaker 4: we know what these things are. And I don't know
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  Speaker 4: that there's a way around it. I mean, that's going
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: to take some sort of.
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  Speaker 4: Amazing vulnerability and empathy in the face of a completely
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: unsympathetic and terrifying force to make it not annoying. But
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's sort of what's at stake.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny because.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: Did that make sense?
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, it does make sense. Well, even when I was
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: thinking about what I want to talk to you about,
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: I know when I say, you know, oh, you in
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  Speaker 3: the special joke about America having a buzzkill problem, annoying
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  Speaker 3: people into fascism, the people are going to say, well,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: that's not fair. It's obviously more complicated with that. But
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  Speaker 3: that's why it's a joke.
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: Is it? But see, and I say it in the
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  Speaker 4: special that, you know, in terms of a real organized left,
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: you know, when was the last time we had that?
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: And look, I did Air America. I know what it's
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: like to deal with different factions of the left. And
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: even within, you know, the Democrats trying to figure out
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: how to platform the left, right? And I know that
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: there's very insulated factions very committed groups of people to
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: very specific things that are all part of this big
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: umbrella idea. But there is no unifying policy. There is
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: no unifying community. There is no, you know, it's not,
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: it's not as simple in terms of what it's become
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: as what Bernie preaches, you know, the original American left, right?
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: So when you have all that fragmentation, it, What becomes
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  Speaker 4: annoying is people's commitment to their specific cause. As righteous
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: as it may be, it doesn't fit into the umbrella
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: of the community necessarily. It does not have that much
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: significance on its own. I mean, some issues do. So
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  Speaker 4: it almost becomes, you know, I don't want to use
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: the word virtue signaling, but there is a sort of righteousness.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: And I get the whole idea is like pick an
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: issue and you work it. But bigger problems abound.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. My take on it is we do have a
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: problem of being buzzkills, that the Americans have a very
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: dim view of Democrats and Americans do find Democrats annoying.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Why is that? One reason, they're kind of annoying. That's true.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Another is, yes, there's like a kind of a collective
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: sense of loss and righteous anger and uncertainty around the
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: fact that that's even more extreme this time, because at
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: least in 2017, you could say, oh, half the country
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: didn't vote for this. It's a fluke. He won the
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: electoral vote, not the popular vote. but we lived through
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: it and the country embraced it. And anyone, a majority
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: this time, which makes it even more kind of enraging
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: and insecure poking kind of experience for the left. But
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: there's also a big right-wing apparatus that exists to take
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: all these things and the most annoying liberal and make
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: them famous.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: There is- Yeah, they turn it around.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: And then there's social media that takes the most annoying
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: bits of things. Like, you know, you make a joke
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: in your special about Theo Vaughn. It's very funny. It's
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: a great joke.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: It is everywhere.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: It is everywhere. That gets pulled out, right? And it
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: gets spread because it's great material. It's very funny. It's resonant.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: But it's not surprising that the more thoughtful and circumspect
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: parts of the special, it's not surprising those parts aren't
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: what's online. What's online is the bit that travels.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: That's sensational. Yeah, the R word and the Theo Vaughn thing.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: A couple of the smaller ones did okay out there.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: But yeah, there's a lot in the special. And, you know,
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: I had to think about, you know, what that Theo
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Vaughn joke would do because there's this idea, there's a
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: talking point within the right-wing, you know, tribalized comedy community
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: that any sort of criticism is some sort of jealousy,
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: which it isn't. And I had this issue years ago
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: before this type of stuff. If you're going to be
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: critical through humor of people in your own profession, there's
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: always this sort of stigma to it. But I believe
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: that if somebody becomes a cultural phenomenon and they are
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: part of the cultural apparatus, that they're fair game.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: And I think the Theo joke at its base is funny.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: You know, what it implies, you can do whatever you
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: want with that. Sure, it's an easy correlation to make
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: to Trump or to humanizing fascism. But in and of itself,
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: the impression was good enough. You know, the jokes that
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: I put within him talking were funny. Yeah. I mean,
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: I'd be hard pressed to think that he didn't think
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: it was funny.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: It's really funny. It's good. But my point is only
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: that like- Sure, the.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: Apparatus is it's impossible to fight against. And that's a
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: whole other problem that the left messaging is never going
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: to be as efficient because we don't have an army
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: of frustrated teenage boys who have been taught over the
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: last 20 years that this is all some sort of
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: game and that trolling is a pastime. And they were
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: sort of turned out and radicalized by Bannon. And it just,
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: the apparatus, it feeds itself. And people who are doing
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: it are not ideological thinkers or deep guys. They just
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: are in it for the game.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's what I mean about it going further
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: than just the left being annoying. Of course. But it's also...
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: You look in the past.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I'm talking on a human level.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: On a human level. But when countries have embraced right-wing
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: fascistic leaders, right? Germany, the economy's in shambles. Millions of
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: men were in World War I. Their brains are all
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: fucked up. There's no word for it. The only advice
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: is for everyone to whisper, right? Like there's nothing. And
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  Speaker 3: they embrace this autocrat. America had a lot of problems
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: in 2016. They had a lot of problems in 2024,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: more than we had before. But we don't have let's
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: try autocracy problems. But there's something about this era, whether
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: it's social media or what's happened in the economy, that's
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: led people to feel this loss of meaning, loss of purpose,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: loss of order. And they're casting out. And Donald Trump
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: had purchased with a lot of those people. A lot
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: of people, turns out, were excited about someone like Donald
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Trump their whole lives. We just didn't know it. It's
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: very frightening. But there was a lot of people that
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: were just receptive to someone like Donald Trump in a
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: way that I think was very surprising. It was surprising
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: to me. I don't know if it was surprising to you.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: I think that, look, anger and the excitement of being
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: validated and having your grievances honored despite any sort of
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: human connection to them, I think it's appealing to angry people.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: And the people that weren't angry were annoyed. And they
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: may be untethered. They may not have any real sense
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: of civic responsibility or even the structure of government. They
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: just knew that it felt good to be able to
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: double down on hate and to double down on othering
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: and to double down on bullying. I think most people
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: have an innate bully. I think that empathy is a
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: muscle that you have to work. And at some point,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: the Democrats were okay at that. But I don't think
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: most people are naturally empathetic. I used to think that.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: But I also think that a lot of this propaganda
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: you're talking about and the sort of intensity of what
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: we're taking in on a day-to-day level creates the mental
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: relationship with the information creates a kind of mania. I
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: just watched a brilliant documentary this morning. I've watched all
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: this guy's stuff. It's a guy, he calls himself Elephant Graveyard.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: on YouTube. And he specifically focuses on the alignment of
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: politics and comedy. He did one called Comedy Jonestown, how
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: comedy was destroyed by an anti-reality doomsday cult. And I
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: think that that is a bigger conversation about what you're saying,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: that the propaganda and the existence of social media platforms
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: and what they can do to the human brain and
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: what they can do to foment a sort of mania.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, mania is a good word for it.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: That enables it. You hear it in people on these mics.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: And I used to do it. I used to do
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: morning radio. And I knew what it took to get
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: it up to do that, you know, for three hours.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: You know, you're up at three in the morning, you're
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: crunching news, we're doing comedy bits, you're live. So there is,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: there was a mania to it. And if that mania
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: has a specific ideological thrust that's driven by talking points and,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: you know, basic debate exercises... It's rewarding and it lands
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: and it makes you feel good. Mania makes you feel good. Yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: And it has sort of left conservative radio, talk radio.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: It was in your car. And a lot of people
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: listen to it. A lot of salesmen and truck drivers
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: listen to it all day, every day. It was kind
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: of this secret audience for it. But you got out
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: of your car and it stayed in the car and
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: you lived your life. And now that kind of frenetic
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: pace follows us all the time. And I do think like,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: you're going to look back on this area and say,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: what happened? And we're going to look at the way
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: in which we all kind of, whatever direction it was,
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: we were all radicalizing each other through our phones.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: But radicalizing in emotion.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: That the information is fleeting and unfounded, but if it
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: fits your emotional... feeling than just drive it.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: And now it's, it's everywhere. People, it's the guy in
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: this new documentary and the, the doomsday cult documentary identifies
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: something about, uh, collaborators that may not have seen themselves
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: as being willing collaborators at the beginning, but they go
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: through something called, I think he called it philosophy side,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: which is where you don't kill yourself, but you kill
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: yourself inside. And if you look at, somebody like Mark
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: Rubio or anybody within that administration in what happens in
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: cult-like behavior is some point after another, in order to
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: stay in the game, they kill whatever principles they might've had,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: even though they were a few.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they surrender to it. And there's also, I think,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: another part of this- I think killing.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: It is probably better because that sort of supports the
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: mania element that you have to surrender, but you have
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: to aggressively push it back. Yeah. Because you literally have
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: to Your personality is in conflict with that until it's not.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Look, we're doing Germany. We're doing 1984. Deal with it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: But like, you know, in 1984, it's about letting go.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: You know, you're fighting against this tide. You're fighting against
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: this tide. And all of a sudden, just like, you
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: know what? I'm just going to float.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: But that's the rest of us. That's not the operatives.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, the operatives, you know, they make a deal.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: They make a deal.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: Like, I mean, I, you know, have had to, on
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: some level, believe and... Except, not in the way that
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: I surrender to it, that we're currently in an authoritarian country.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: I have to see it that way in order to
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: exist in my life. I have to frame it like that.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying that there's not hope, but I do
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: think that what we're up against is something more than
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: a two-party problem.
• 22:06
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• 23:40
  Speaker 3: One way I think people rationalize it is around, well,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't like Trump, but I really hate
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: the fucking Democrats, right? Or like, I don't totally on
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: board with this, but both sides.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: But that's a false equivalency, right?
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Of course it is. Of course it is. But what
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: I see, there is a reason that Donald Trump gains
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: purchase in this ecosystem of podcasts at the same time
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: that a bunch of this anti-woke, anti-trans masculinity core takes
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: hold at the same time. And it has to do
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: with some, there's some way in which a lot of
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: men feel lost. And there's order and meaning in what
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Trump offers, in what kind of the Rogan kind of
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: way of learning about the world.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, look, bad daddies are pretty powerful. And, you know,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: these docs that he talks a lot about the daddy
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: hole in these guys, you know, from bad daddies, that void.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: That needs to be filled. And a lot of megalomaniacal
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: people come from that. Trump comes from that. I mean, look,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist. But in order for someone
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: to define themselves, especially if they're lost or they feel
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: neutered or diminished, if you get the right words into
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: those people, they're going to light up. And if they
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: feel like they have a leader, they're going to light up.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: As opposed to like, you know, I didn't like what
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: the Democrats had to say or whatever. I think that
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: is all part and parcel to the demonization of Democrats
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: as not having real policy or not being real men
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: or not speaking to the working class. Because there's a
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: couple of guys out there, and I don't follow as
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: much as I used to, but it seems like there's
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: a couple of guys out there that are rational, sort
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: of level-headed, very wonky. Democratic politicians that are totally inoffensive
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: and really bright and are making it as simple as
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: possible to understand what the real issues are. But I
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: don't know if that's what it takes to get people
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: on board. And then you got Newsom's approach, which is.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Okay. He's trying to get... Everyone is struggling. Look, I
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: do think that the Collapse Society can be tied back
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: to crowd work. I think we can get it back
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: to comedians that are just doing crowd work. In the
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: same way, we could talk about how what goes viral,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: what spreads, what gets people's attention is conflict. It's anger.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: And so the satisfying things. Satisfying things.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: Because cats do too, you know.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Right, sure. Yeah, things that scratch some sort of a
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: primitive itch in there.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, whether it's like sweet or sad.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, cats too. Yeah, you know, a rescued puppy getting
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: a growth removed will also get millions of that.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: I can watch a pipe evacuate itself for a minute.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: You ever see a video of someone pulling a tire
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: through a pipe?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: It's the best.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I'll watch that all day.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: I guess that's a kind of primal fecal thing.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Well, bring it back to crowd work is that with
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: all this othering and with all this sort of idea,
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: this is one of their big debate points. When you
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: come at them, they accuse liberals of being closed-minded in
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: terms of really embracing other people's point of view. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: for me, if that other point of view is shut
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: the fuck up. I don't want to hear it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Well, I just think what happens is once the othering
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: is successful, and I covered in the special that real
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: rights are denied and real lives are at stake because
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: of what comics thought was an anti-woke just was just
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: about their language issue. And now they were used under
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: the sort of auspices of anti-woke. You destroy all the
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: policy that helps people who are vulnerable or marginalized or
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: in trouble. And I can't separate them. I will remain
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: committed to the fact that they did that, that comics
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: helped that. But I think in the bigger picture with, say,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: crowd work or the kind of hackneyed tropes of tribalized
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: comedy is what ultimately happens, and I said this to
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: Howie and with all the proliferations of podcasts, is that
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: because the production values are shitty, And everybody knows them now.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: And because crowd work is kind of establishes this way
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: of lighting, you know, kind of having an improvisational moment.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: What happens to all this stuff that is really good
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: and truly creative and interesting is that the bar gets
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: lowered to the point where regular people just adapt to
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: the garbage and they don't seek out the other stuff.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: And the sort of outlets that make the other stuff
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: are kind of marginalized. Mainstream show business is kind of marginalized.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: So all this stuff fits into that anti-elitism kind of
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: frame of right-wing thinking. Yeah.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: And it does, it's about taste too, which is that
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: this stuff performs well. It does well in the world.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: For good and for ill, all the gatekeepers are gone, right?
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: You can kind of Build an audience online. That's good,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of amazing people have started online. But we've lost,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: there was curation. Human connection was a limited resource, whether
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: it was through art or through having to go somewhere
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: to meet a friend. You didn't know what happened to
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: people in your life, so you saw them at a party.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: The party had real meaning because you connected there. And
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: all of this took out, the availability of all this
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: removed the meaning of liking a comic, discovering someone, going
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: to a club and seeing someone's hilarious, telling your friends
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: People with researched and respected opinions.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I look and I did a joke that was,
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: you know, turned inside out by one particular kind of libertarian,
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: you know, thinker. I don't even want to give him that.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: He's a comic. But I said it was better when
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: everybody didn't have a voice. It's a joke.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a joke.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: But it's the same thing as saying, like, everyone's got
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: a podcast now. But I just said it like that,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: so I left myself open to, like, that guy, see,
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: the liberals are, you know, they're totalitarian.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Well, it's everybody, you know, cancel culture, anti-woke comedy. It
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: was about feeling like there's feedback that they didn't want
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: to hear anymore. But I also like being a celebrity
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: got worse too, which is why I think it was
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: able to spread so far, right? Because if you were
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: famous in the 1950s, you could do coke, get drunk,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: drive your car through a plate glass window, give $ 200
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: to the maitre d' at the hotel and it was gone. Now,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: like James Corden gets into a fight pulling a suitcase
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: down from the overhead and it's news and it follows
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: him forever. There's a way in which attention, celebrity, and
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: feedback have made having the power of a platform less fun.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: And I think that annoys very powerful people.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: It's predatory. Well, yeah, they have to insulate themselves. But
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: I do still think that outside of just the kind
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: of emaciated world of press and this chasing of clickbait,
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: I do think in terms of the ideological bend on
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: it is that it's anti-elitism, it's anti-intellectualism, it's anti-expert. I
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: think it's all part of that. I think that Hollywood
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: has been framed as elitists. I think that not unlike
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: with the universities and the intellectual thing was always part
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: of fascism. But I think that Hollywood represents elitism to
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: the right. And I don't, believe that's true. I mean,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: you know, movie stars are movie stars, but I really
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: think that's where a lot of that comes from outside
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: of just clickbaity stuff. Yeah.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: And then there's also just a big audience for it, right?
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: If there is, it turns out, an audience for.
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but that doesn't make it right.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: No, of course not.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: I think that.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: What does that tell us about the people listening, that
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: they wanted this?
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: But most people, like, so what do you got? 75
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: million vote for Kamala, 77.5 vote for Trump. And there's
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: 150 people who did what? What are they doing? Who
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: are those people? Are they just floating? Are they the
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: ones that's watching? It's a lot of people. What are
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: they doing? So, and I think that in terms of
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: how fascism or authoritarianism, like, you know, we've got a
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: president who is a thug. So, you know, his way
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: of doing business is like, oh, you got a pretty
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: nice university here. Hey, throw anything bad to happen to it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: You know, like, that's a nice state. No, I hate
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: for anything. bad to happen to it you know maybe
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: you kick into the charity yeah it's it's straight up
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: mob shit but the you know but like people like
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: um russ voss vote yeah what's vote i mean that's
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: the guy that's doing it yeah you know so like
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: however you see trump you know he's still a puppet
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: to something that is bigger that he doesn't give a
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: shit about as long as he can be the guy
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: out front but those guys are the guys that are
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: dismantling the federal government in the name of christian nationalism
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: but i think that the way that business see what
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: you're saying to me feels like that you know fascism
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: is good for business yeah because if you like netflix
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: like netflix will just you know co-opt anybody that can
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: take that algorithm and i think you kind of i
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: used to do a joke about it i don't i
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: that you know netflix can become reich flicks you know
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: very quickly and and and i think the The pivotal
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: moment was when they had pushback from the trans community
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: about Chappelle, they realized after several days that that community
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: was not going to affect their bottom line at all.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: And they cut them loose. And, you know, that is
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: how fascism works in business. Right. Well, right.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Their argument and response would be, well, we believe in
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: being a home for everybody. So there's Chappelle. There's Ricky Gervais.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: There's all these kinds of comics that do the same
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: fucking joke. and we have a bunch of gay movies
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: and films and queer stuff, and we're a home for everybody,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: and that's our answer. Sure.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: But ultimately, who's getting the big deals? Which shows stay
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: on the air?
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: What do they keep repeating? It's like the bigger audience.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: That's them saying, we got this other stuff, and we
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: know there's a few of you, but we're throwing you
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: a bone, so shut up. But the big money's on
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: the ones that you're talking about that titillate in a
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: certain way that is not always right-minded And look, people
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: can say whatever they want. My belief is that eventually
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: this stuff would have found its level. That ultimately, in
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: terms of left-leaning or specific marginalized cultures creating grassroots action
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: by overwhelming Twitter and stuff, that when Trump was campaigning
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: for the second time, that was ebbing. That it would
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: have found a level where Tolerance would have maybe reigned
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: because like I believe that in order for democracy to
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: work if these guys are doubling down on Intolerance and
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: hate that you you've got nothing to work with I
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: mean it used to be like, you know, you to
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: get a guy who'd be like a gay marriage now
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: the gays they want to get married It's ridiculous. Fuck
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: the gays and then it passes in his state and
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: over time. He's like, I don't know I work with
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: a guy, you know, they're nice it evolves and In
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: the way that democracy is supposed to work. But I
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: think it should always be said that what these guys
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: are fighting for is not democracy. And they're shameless about it.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: They can say that, you know, democracy enabled us to
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: vote for that guy. But that was the fucking end
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: of it. And that's the loophole in democracy is that
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: you can freely elect a fascist. And then who the
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: hell knows what's going to happen, right? But I do
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: feel that they are shamelessly anti-American in their political ideology.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: And I imagine most of them would own it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: The hope, right, too, is like, this is hacky shit, right?
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: A lot of this, like, anti-woke comedy is, like, hacky shit.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: And the way you beat that, you can scold people.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying you're doing it, but people on social
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: media can try to scold their way to the other
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: side of it. But the answer is to just be
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: fucking funny. And the answer is to have a bit
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: about Theo Vaughn that people really like and sort of clicks...
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: So turn something on in their brain.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: It's subjective.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Makes it silly to them.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: But it's not going to make it silly to the
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: guys that are brain fucked in that direction. It's not
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: going to make it silly to the believers. And the
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: problem with like comedy comedians as news influencers is that
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: now anything any comic says is a representation of their
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: personal ideology. So the ability for them to be objective
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: about humor is gone and they are subjective, which most
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: humor is, to a specific ideological bent. And sure, you
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: can make it as funny as you want. There's plenty
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: of beautifully funny people doing amazing comedy all the time,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: but they're in the shadow of this momentum of the
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: tribalized comedy of, you know, Rogan. And again, those documentaries,
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: which I highly recommend from Elephant Graveyard, You know, Rogan
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: has positioned himself as the arbiter of what comedy is.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: And the way I framed it in my conversation with
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: Howie was like, how long can you kind of claim
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: the victim mantle?
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: It's like my question is, it's like you guys won.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Woke is dead. What do you got to keep beating
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: these people up for? Some of them are losing their rights.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: Some of them are being, you know, literally killed. Some
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: of them are being deported. And these were all the
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: big funnies for you guys who claim to be victims
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: of this horrible policy. So then why not stop now?
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Well, but also part of it is, yeah, but then
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: also there's this sort of, well, we're just, we're just comedians,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: just telling jokes here. And then it's like, well, hold
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: on a second. You can't, they're not you. Well, you
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: can't have the president on, uh, in the run up
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: to an election and give that person a forum, Trump, uh,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: and not push back, uh, You can't get behind him.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: And then when you don't like the consequences, say like, well,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I don't like any of this immigration stuff, but I'm
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: just a comedian. I just had a mind.
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: He was a guest. I can't forgive it. I can't
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: forgive it. Yeah.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Don't think you should.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: And it's like in the sense that like, well, you
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: should have done your fucking homework before you come out
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: and say this is the guy to your army of
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: kind of minions. Yeah. who look to you for intellectual
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: fortitude and the proper diet and, you know, what is
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: real and what isn't real. So in a sense, it's
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: like they're going to backpedal and they're going to backpedal
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: in relation to what's kind of like moving through MAGA
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: in general. And I don't know that it matters. I mean, this,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: I think it does matter. Oh, I think it does matter. No,
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know that it matters. Oh, if
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: MAGA buckles, I may have to accommodate them.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: I think we have to be practical and I can't
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: go back in time and make people not endorse Trump,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: but people with big platforms realizing that they were, look,
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: where is a decadent and depraved era at American politics
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: and American society. And part of that is a glibness
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: with very serious things. You have, uh, you have, uh, uh, uh,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Zelensky in the oval, uh, He's getting questions about putting
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: on a suit. His country is being murdered by Vladimir Putin.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: He's getting jokey questions. Donald Trump is showing him his
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: fucking hat collection. This is a depraved and decadent era.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: And as part of that decadence, there are people being
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: glib about life and death decisions, including endorsing a monster
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: because it's good for the gram and that happened how
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: do we help now that there's a good side to
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: that which is There's a shallowness to that support and
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: that embrace, which means, yes, we can say that was stupid.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: I don't forgive you. Fine. But we got to get
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: those people to realize we got to make ourselves feel
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: open to them because those people with those platforms are
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: maybe gettable, as are the kind of soft Trump voters
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: that maybe got on board because all their favorite hosts
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: liked them.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: I'll agree with that. Okay. But I think you're taking
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: out of the picture, they're afraid. They're in, man. And
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: they're in over their head. And, you know, there's real
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: consequences when you push back against your authoritarian overlords. And
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: who the hell knows what they are? Because once you
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: get above Russ Vaught, I mean, you've got the tech oligarchs, right?
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: So they're the real ones, you know, whoever's, you know,
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: pawned out, you know, Vance is a stooge for those guys,
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: for Elon and Thiel and those guys. So once you
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: get above Project 2025 and you get above Trump, Then
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: you've got these guys who really seek to destroy the
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: fabric of democratic society. Okay. So if you're on the
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: payroll of that shit and you want to soften up,
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: there's a lot at stake. So it's not just sort of, well,
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: we got to say the right thing to these people
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: and change their minds because you don't think Rubio is
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: shitting his pants every fucking day? I mean, you don't
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: think like any judge that rules against him is getting
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: like hundreds and hundreds of death threats. I mean, this
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: is straight up, you know, terrorizing shit. So I know
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: we were heading towards hope somehow.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: But- And we don't need to, let's turn around.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: No, but I think that in terms of voters and whatnot,
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: if they are still capable of empathy, you know, underneath
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: this mania of grievance validation- then in so much to
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: say as if they're still human, that maybe something will
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: speak to them.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that's where there is genuine hope. Trump
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: has many powers, talents. One of them is he is
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: very good at making what's the worst thing about you,
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: the truest thing about you. He's very good at that.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: He's very good at kind of reaching into somebody and saying,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: this thing, this weakness you have, I'm going to make
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: that more true, whether it's animus towards immigrants or embracing
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: their ambition over their politics, if it's a politician. But
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: one reason I think Trump was able to get back
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: is because there was a big hole, and everybody listening
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: will be annoyed at my saying it, but whatever, again,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: but the bully pulpit, Joe Biden, he left it open.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: And we didn't understand how big of a price we
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: were paying for not having a vocal, aggressive, relentless advocate
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: for democracy, for just empathy, which is something Joe Biden
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: I think is very good at, but had lost his
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: ability to communicate well. And if we can start getting
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: leaders and influencers, it matters now. It's the world we
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: live in. to kind of reflect those values more, suddenly
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: a lot of people that were open to Trump might
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: remember some good parts of themselves. Because I think people
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: are complicated. And you're right, in every person there's a bully,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: but in every person there's always an empathetic part of
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: them as well. Donald Trump does a crackdown on immigration, terrible,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: terrible crackdown. And what happens for the support for immigration,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: just itself as a good, rises. Anti-immigration summit plummets. Support
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: for immigration itself, irrespective of the policy, rises to 80%,
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: highest it's been in decades. There's something that you can
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: turn on in people. That's what leadership is. And we
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: kind of, and we need that. I think it's possible.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: No, I agree with that. I mean, I, of course,
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: and like historically it happens.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: You know, you can push back and you can, you know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: change people's minds if the sadness, the weight of it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: But like what happens to, like, I've, I've become sort
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: of obsessed with this idea of these You know, these
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: angry white dudes that you were talking about that were
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: untethered and many of them, the whole sort of angle of,
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: you know, Democrats used to be like, they're voting against
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: their self-interest. That used to be the big thing. How
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: does that happen? You know, because it feels good to
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: be angry.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: And well, you can't tell people what their interests are
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: is one thing, I guess.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: But I'm just taking economic.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: So but now it's like I don't I don't want
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: to get more grim. I'll stick with, yes, maybe people. Well,
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: you get all these angry dudes, I mean, and then
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: you offer them, I mean, South Park covered it, the
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: second one. Offer them a job in ICE. Yeah. As,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: you know, non-officer guys with guns for big money. And again,
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: then you get into that philosophic side thing where they
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: kill part of themselves to serve this because of their self-interest.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: And I guess that ties into me with what you're
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: saying about influencers and about that, if you can get,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: you know, them out from under their self-interest, which sometimes
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: is just posturing for a particular cause that determines their
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: brand sort of appeal that, but is rooted in almost nothing.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, how do you make- Momentum becomes momentum almost.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: Well, it just becomes like, you just, you're using it
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: as a marker to sort of determine your brand. Everyone is,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: is stuck in honoring the context of the social media platform.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: So arguably, if you really want to do it, there's
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: no free speech because you're trying to get onto this
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: platform and get traction with what you have to say
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: in the bits and pieces that you can do it
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: and make it appealing to enough people to get you
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: some sort of recognition so you can get your grift
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: going or move money into the right direction.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: And subscribe to our YouTube. It was one of those
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: fake laughs.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: But also there's a difference between this hyper-reality and just
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: sort of like, you know, going swimming. So I just
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: think that it's complicated without a unified message.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: I think that's true. Let's turn to life. I think
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: we've done enough politics. Sorry, was that too much?
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Am I the bleakest guy you've had on?
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: No, and it's going to edit beautifully. Darker, but not bleaker?
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: We've had darker people, right? No.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile.
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• 47:36
  Speaker 3: All right, let's talk about life.
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: You ever buy that $ 14, 000 amp?
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: Yes, long time ago.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: You got it. You got the nice amp.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't spend much money on things, but I
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: did buy that. Yeah, it's a tube amp. It's a Macintosh.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: Some people don't love them. But I've got a good
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: stereo setup with some nice Wilson speakers and the Macintosh
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: amp and the Macintosh preamp and a Rega 6 turntable
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: and a Hama cartridge. And, you know, I kind of,
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: it's waning a little bit. That's the problem with getting
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: obsessed and not being a fully committed nerd to a thing.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: Fully committed nerds have one thing and they do their
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: life with that. Mine kind of comes, it dabbles. But
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: when I dabble hard, then when it starts to pass,
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: you're like, I'm going to have to build another structure
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: for these records.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. I get monomaniacal and then move on.
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: And you're left with a bunch of objects.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Sometimes they're great and you can go back to them. Like,
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: boots always seem to come back around.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: You got boots going?
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: Nice. Well, I got, yeah, these ones I'm trying to
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: figure out if I like them or not. But what
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: I was going to tell you before, sorry, is that,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: like I said before, about playing to our audience and
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: having enough, you know, skill to kind of take little
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: shots and have that fun experience moment of like, we
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: are kind of like that, that entering the political part
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: of this last special, I, days before I changed the
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: tone of how I was going to do it. Because
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: like I said, with that, you know, alpha doggy or
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: whatever thing that like with the swagger, which is either
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: genuine or just a means for me to confidently, a
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: trick to, to deliver it. I decided in this one,
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: just go under it, almost be passive about it. Like, Hey,
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: everything's great. You know, everything. And then move from that
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: tone because I believed in the spirit of what you're
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: doing here, that if I do it like that, you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: people who aren't necessarily like-minded will listen.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: And, and, and I did some of these shows. I
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: had a guy come up to me and like Skokie
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: or somewhere. And I did all that stuff. And he
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: came up to me and said, you know, I think
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: I'm probably the only Trump supporter in here. And I said,
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: did I get it right? And he said, yeah, man,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: he's crazy. Like, what do you even do with that?
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I think it gets to something important, which is
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of liberals and gets to
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: the kind of buzzkill thing. A lot of liberals have
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: kind of had convinced themselves that if only we can
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: reach people with the truth, they just don't have the facts.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: And once they have the facts, we got to get
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: them the facts. We got to make sure the New
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: York Times headlines are accurate, that they capture things correctly.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: Because if people had the facts, they really knew who
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: Trump was, then they wouldn't do it. But no, a
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: lot of people got behind Trump knowing who he was.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: And that's a harder, deeper, sadder problem. And I think
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: that is where we're at now. I think the first
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: term was, oh, we just have to reach people to
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: make them understand. Now it's, wait, wait, wait. They did understand.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: They did this anyway. This is a bigger problem than
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: we realized.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: You have to, like you said, have a leader that
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: believes in liberal democracy. Yeah. And can speak to why
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: it's good. Even with creating policy that may undermine businesses,
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: maybe creating policy for the benefit of all, you have
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: to somehow re-engage people with the idea that they have
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: a civic responsibility for those who don't have.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: And it has to deliver. It has to deliver for
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: people because I do think that's right. That, that people
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: have come to believe that it just doesn't matter that,
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: that Democrats can't, they under promise, uh, they over promise
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: and they under deliver if they deliver at all. And
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: really the federal government just doesn't affect me. And that's
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: a wealth problem. It's a wealth problem. I think it's
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: also a, uh, um, a, uh, this is a, this
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: is a kind of cultural problem right now, which is, uh,
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: the assumption that how things were is how they will be,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: that there are certain things you can count on, right?
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Like you can just, yeah, Trump is crazy, but social
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: security is gonna function. And yeah, Trump is crazy, but
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: he's not gonna ruin the whole global economy by announcing
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: tariffs for penguins. I think a lot of people learn
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: from the first term that things don't really get that bad.
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but that was before they had 2025 in place.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Exactly, of course, of course.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: And all they had was Bannon and his mystical beliefs.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: you know, churning out executive orders. But now you have
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: guys that really know all the fucking weak spots of
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: the government who are churning out executive orders.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: And they had four years to prepare.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: Totally.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: And second-term presidents always know the job better than first-term presidents.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: They rarely get four years to be outside so that
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: the policy people, the wonks, can get their plan together.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: That's what's so different.
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Sure. But also, how do you get the young people
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: that identify... with liberal democratic or leftist politics to focus
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: on getting involved in being involved in the government.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Well, I think this is where it's like, what brings
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: all these disparate groups together? What makes people see themselves
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: as part of one movement? Leadership, and we didn't have it.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: And Democrats didn't have enough troughs with non-Democrats to believe
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: the threats, to believe what we were saying about what
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: Trump posed. And Democrats didn't have enough purchase with less
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: engaged lefties to earn their vote and to believe that
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: they could be trusted either to kind of get people excited.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: And Kamala did a lot to try to fix the
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: damage that that Biden had had left. But there wasn't
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: enough time. So, Theo Vaughn, Dax Shepard, you. Is there
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: something about being a recovered addict that makes you good
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: at hosting a podcast and having conversations?
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I cited as a foundational thing the sort of
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: idea of the seed of AA thought is that one
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: alcoholic talks to another alcoholic about their life and gets
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: out of themselves. So on that premise, maybe. I just
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: feel also that if you have some experience in recovery,
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: you're very used to people being very candid about showing
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: their emotions and vulnerabilities and telling their stories of the
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: most horrible things. It's just part of the community and
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: part of how it works. So on that level, maybe.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of people that are miserable
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: and hate their lives and they're not brave enough to
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: fix it. And they're also not brave enough to do drugs.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: You know, it takes a little bit of courage, I think,
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: to ruin your life with drugs. You've joked about that
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: too in the past. And like, you know, bravery is
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: just a kind of recklessness that we like, you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: it's recklessness with a good, good, uh, good, with a
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: good direction.
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: I don't know if they see it as bravery. I
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: think they're out of control and if they survive, they
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: can frame it. You know, I don't, my joke was,
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: I don't trust anybody who hasn't lost complete control of
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: their life for a few years.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: There's a kind of, um, uh, yeah, a willingness to say,
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: fuck it. Right. There's a fuck it quality.
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: And I think that like, sometimes it's a, it's compulsion
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: more than willingness.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe at some point it started as I'm just, I'm,
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: I'm furious. I'm angry. I'm sad.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: I'm whatever. Oh yeah.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: I'm going to throw this back and change my circumstances.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: But there's a vulnerability to it too. I like feel like,
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: like in the addicts, the people that I know that
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: have had an addiction.
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: Once they've gotten out of it.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: Well, once they've done that, the hole is open. The
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: hole is open.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: But also I do think that there's a kind of
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: a vulnerability from before to a kind of a, a,
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: a softness that made, uh, um, they're a pain, right?
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: I think that comes from a vulnerability and that continues
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: after you've beaten it. But I think it's part of,
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: I think what makes you a good host, right? You, you,
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: you know, you, you are open, right?
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I'm pretty like, you know, my, my empathy
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: is sort of expanded from doing it. And also I'm,
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: I'm kind of innately kind of codependent in that, you know,
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: I assume that anyone I'm talking to has their shit
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: together more than me. And I kind of meld with
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: them and I kind of pick up their vibe. And
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: there's certain times where, I'll ask Brendan McDonald, my producer,
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: I'm like, did I start talking like an old Jew
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: when I was talking to Mel Brooks?
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: He's like, yeah.
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: And did I start talking a little bit like a
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: black guy when I was talking to a black guy? Happens.
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: You mirror, you mirror.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: But that's me. I don't know how they do it.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they do it either. Yeah, there's
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: something about that that you kind of like match somebody's energy.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: Are we doing that? I think so.
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: A little.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: You're a little guarded.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: You think?
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: A little bit. It's okay.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: I think I am. Well, I can bring it down.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: No, you don't have to. It's your show. You got
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: to drive.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: I don't even know how to be. I don't even know.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: What's the guard? What should I take down? What do
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: you think it is?
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: I think you have purpose. I think that we're all scared,
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: but you have to sort of keep it together for
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: the operation.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's true locally and globally. I think
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: I want to make sure, I know you as a performer.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: And I want to make sure we don't land in
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: the fucking grave.
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: You know, I want to be out of it by
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: the end.
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: I think we're good.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: But I also want to, I want people, I want to, yeah.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: So I think that's right.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that if you watch the special that
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: I do, you know, I do walk a tightrope, but
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: it definitely, it comes out funny. And it took a
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: lot of time to do that.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I remember you in the Conan days. Yeah. Like I
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: remember watching you on Conan.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: And- I wouldn't have known you were on drugs and
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: drinking that, like when you were in those, in that.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: I wasn't like sloppy, you know, and a lot of
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: times I didn't do it the day of those shows.
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't think a lot of people think
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: I was on Coke for that HBO half hour at
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: the Fillmore in 95. I was just sweaty. I don't
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: think I was on Coke. I do know on my
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: first Comedy Central half hour, I had done Coke the
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: night before and I didn't sleep well, but I wasn't
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: getting jacked to work.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: You weren't, you weren't.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: No.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Even now, like I forget when I'm thinking about like,
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: I don't sort you into the category of, oh, guys
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: that did a lot of drinking and coke, because you
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: strike me as a nerd. You're like a nerdy guy,
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: kind of contained Jewish. Like I just, I think of
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: you like that. And even when I think of you
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: from the Conan days, I think of you as being
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: like a, like not a party guy. I think of
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: you being like a record guy.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I was like, I kind of wrote
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: a line, you know, I grew up in, you know,
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: townie culture in Albuquerque, but I was from Jersey and
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: I was very compelled towards, you know, higher pursuits. I
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: wanted to really be an intellectual. But I do have,
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: at some point, a rock and roll element. I was
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: never really a nerd. I was more of an awkward person, unfocused.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: I think nerds are awkward, focused people, and they can
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: find community in that. I was just an uncomfortable guy
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: that knew how to be funny and sort of move
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: through all different cliques. But I was never that focused.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: And I kind of took to, and still do to,
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: a kind of rock and roll sensibility. So it's that
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: combination of that with pretty, I think, I don't like
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: using the word, but neurotic, anxious Jewishness. So it's kind
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: of a hybrid. I think that Randy Newman once told
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: Lorne Michaels many years ago, and Lorne told Jim Biederman,
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: who was producing me on a show for Broadway Video,
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: It was a streaming show that was before streaming, though.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: But Randy said I was a verbessin, which is a sourpuss. Oh, yeah.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: And I'm okay with that. I was a cranky guy,
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: but I didn't know quite how to make it funny.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: I don't think I have the real cranky guys who
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: are naturally funny. It's a rare thing. You know, like
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: Louis Black is good at that. I think, you know,
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: Burr at some times just is sort of put upon,
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: you know, kind of anger that doesn't cross over into
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: intense anger, which isn't fundamentally entertaining, which is where I
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: would go. I think over time I've become a little
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: more cranky funny.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. Why is that? And I think part of
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: it is for whatever reason, there's a way in which
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: with like Bill Burr, Louis Black, you're rooting for them.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Even when they're... Populous crank. Yeah, they're populous and.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: I'm a heady guy.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: I'm more of a poet in terms of how my
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: brain processes things.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: It never rhymed, though.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: No, it's all free verse. Occasionally there's a rhyme. I
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: take them right out.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: You do.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you gotta take them out. Rhymes are cheap. Rhymes
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: and puns. No, can't do it.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we do it.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: That's okay. We do it.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: It's cute.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: There's a way in which now, I don't know, you
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: seem more like comfortable as a performer, as a standup,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: which is amazing how, how you've doing it for such
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: a long time. Was it like, I know that like
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: when I was in politics, I remember when I got
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: a job as a speech writer, like I have several
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: chips on my shoulder. A couple of them are still there, but, but, but,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: but I've, I've seen them fall off. Like when I've
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: had milestones, like Jenny and you, you say you can't
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: get you, you know, that outside validation can't really change
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: how you feel. I don't think that's true. I think
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: it absolutely can.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: Totally.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: Do you think for you success has, was it financial success, acclaim?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: Did those things matter in how you are on stage?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: Did it make you feel comfortable, safer, freer? What?
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: I think that, and I've said it before, that for
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: a long time, however long it takes, your comic's job
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: is to pretend like they're not afraid. And then eventually
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: the fear will leave you. And that's sort of a
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: big day. And I think in terms of success, just
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: the fact that I was able to build an audience
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: of grown-up people mostly, mostly thinky, creative, disgruntled people, I
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: kind of talk about in the special. I worry about
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: alienating them, but there's also some part of me that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: wants to a little. But I think that once I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: got an audience and I had a freedom of mind
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: that I knew would be received, that it did help
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: my comedy. And I guess that's success. But ultimately, I
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: have been working a long time at this. And I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: think along with that fearlessness, especially in this special, it's
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: the only special where beforehand I didn't let my brain
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: undermine me for dumb shit. There's some part of my
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: brain that prepares that way. I've got to find something
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: to make me uncomfortable. And it just didn't happen. And
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: I was more grounded in this special than I ever
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: have been. Because I had purpose. I always kind of do,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: but I had a different purpose, both to my audience,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: to the way I thought about culture and politics, and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: also to the risks I wanted to take around personal things.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: A long time ago, I really set out to not
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: talk about anything that wasn't from my point of view,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: because I could own that and no one could take it.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: And anytime that I'd see similar things I'd have to
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: sort of like go, well, is it that similar? I'll
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: just lose it. You know, I don't, I want it
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: to be mine. So the risks I took in the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: last two bits around trauma and around grief were, it
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: took a long time to work those out. So I
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: just feel like that I have a confidence in how
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: I do what I do that is much more grounded
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: than it's ever been. But yeah, validation is still too
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: important to me.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Is it?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: Who do you want it from?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: I don't know. My parents... It's always about the parents. Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, because, like, if you don't have a voice
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: in yourself that you've evolved because of being, you know, emotionally,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: you know, manipulated one way or the other in a
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: negative way by, you know, your early experiences, it's hard
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: to have a voice in your head that says, good job.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: And you don't have that even now?
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: No, I do, you know, but I still, like, I
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: know it, but then when other people... don't know it
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: as much as I do, it makes me upset. Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: With this one, the stuff that, like, I felt like
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: it was really the best work that I've done in
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: terms of, like, the risks were different. The last special
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: was about grief. And, you know, at least 20 to
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: 25 minutes. And this one was back to sort of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: almost a three-act structure, you know, where, you know, I
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: do the political, cultural stuff, then I tell them I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: want to just be entertaining, and I do that. And
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: then I get into personal stuff. But I do feel
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: like the stuff that I thought needed to get out
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: there in terms of not the stuff, like you said before,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of stuff in this special that goes,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: you know, undiscussed. That's gnarly shit and deep shit. But,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: you know, the stuff that landed, I'm okay with because
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: I felt like it was not being said, you know,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: in a way that was, Like no one can deny
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: my skill set. So as a comic, if I'm going
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: to take on what's going on in comedy in relation
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: to culture and I do it in a funny way,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: then I've achieved something because a lot of comics are
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: scared to talk about it. They're afraid of audiences. And,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: you know, you just got to really get that ratio
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: into your head. It was, you know, 75 million to 77.5 million.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: Not every room is full of monsters and certainly not
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: in L.A. And that there has to be some, you
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: have to have the guts to be a stand-up stand-up
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: and say what you want to say. Again, you know,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: it's dicey when you sort of take on people in
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: your world, but when it reflects on the world at
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: large in a negative way, I think it's ripe. But
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: to the point, like I felt good about, I articulated
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: it well and going into it, I was 100% confident.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: in the set. And I feel good about it. And
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: I'm fortunate in that it was received very well, which
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: is not always the case.
• 1:06:09
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• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: I think it's technically your cusp, but I think of
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: you as a quintessential Gen X.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: Comic.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: Last year boomers so it's it's.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah you're you're you're right there right but but you
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: gen x energy all the way through sure right there
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: with the kind of in the sure in that sort of.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: There's probably a little too much you led zeppelin in
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: me to be fully gen x but yeah yeah grunge
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: it up a little i suppose sure i did yeah
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: it was later later yeah i already the groundwork had
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: been laid by uh acts from the 70s.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: But why why we we have had a bunch of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: baby boomer presidents uh i'm not running no and And
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: first of all, thank you. That's one less thing to
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: fucking worry about. Imagine that.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: That would be annoying.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: But just you heckling Democrats back at you. What a disaster.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: I don't know. Gavin's doing that.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: I think he's more suited to it, honestly, than you.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: He wants it pretty bad. I can't. Look, I know
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: what it's like to think you are speaking your truth
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: and to be completely saturated in talking points that you
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: don't know anymore. I mean, I did Air America for
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: a year every morning. And you start to realize, like,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: I didn't think this.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: I don't remember your show being that talking pointsy.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: No, it's not, but it's the tone.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: That you're honoring a narrative.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: But we seem to have skipped over Gen X in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: terms of presidents. Sure. there's a sort of a gap
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: in terms of even our representation. We went right from
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of boomer members of Congress. There's obviously Gen
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: Xers in there, but we went right from the boomers
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: to the millennials as well. Why is it that Gen
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: X hasn't really shown up? They've also moved to the
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: right more than millennials have. What was something about your generation...
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: that kind of had this sort of.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: I think it was probably the beginning of that sort
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: of self-centered entitlement and need to define yourself in a
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: unique way that was based on, you know, music, fashion,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: you know, bits and pieces of, you know, esoteric wisdom
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: from old books and whatnot. I think it was probably,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: you know, the boomers are selfish in a different way,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: you know, because they built the world and now as
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: they were looking down the tunnel at death, they kind
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: of want to end it.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: Only buried in their pyramids.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: Well, they just, I think there's a part of narcissism
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: that it's like, if the world ends at the same
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: time they do, they don't miss anything. And I think
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: Gen X is probably guilty of a kind of the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: beginning of a terminal uniqueness on an individual level and
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: not so hip to, you know, real civic community. Yeah. Maybe.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I'm really spitballing. I don't really think
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: in terms of generations that much. I do know that
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: the boomers need to get out of the way. There's
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: sort of the Gen X comics. Jon Stewart's in there.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: You're in there. Bill Maher's in that group, I think.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: He's a little older.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: Is he a little older?
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: I think he's kind of a solid boomer.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: You think?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got to be close to 70. It's going
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: to Bill Maher age check.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: He's going to be a producer work.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: Nice. 69, yeah.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: Nice. Famously 69.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: Oh, right.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: We talked to him about it. I had him on.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: That's pretty solid boomer shit. But Janine, you know, John, sure.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: You know, some of the other Gen Xers, you know, Patton.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: And then there's a bunch of other, you know, younger guys.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: The alt comedy scene for whatever it did was mostly
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: Gen Xers and some millennials, I guess. Yeah. It was
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: a insulated community that was based a lot in kind
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: of snark. And, you know, snark doesn't age well because
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: it doesn't run that deep.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's, well, it's, there's something about it too. That's, that's, um, snark,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: you have to be on the outside and you have
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: to not want to be on the inside.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: That's your answer right there. Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: I think that's it. There's something about, there's something about
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: Gen X that was like, you know what? We're just
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: going to, we'll be, we'll be back here.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: We'll be back here with our zines.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: I think that's it.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: I think it was a mistake. I think you should
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: have gotten in the ring with us.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: I'm the last boomer. Don't blame me.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: You're right. I take that back. You're a catastrophizer. I
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: was thinking about this. I went back and I watched
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: parts of this special from Bleak to Dark. I'm a
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: catastrophizer as well. I'm on the phone with my fiance.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: I'm engaged. Second time is what it's going to take.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: How long have you been engaged?
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Like six months.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: Six months. You're planning the wedding? Good.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, good.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're planning the wedding.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: It's not like a six-year engagement.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. The last one, we didn't plan the wedding.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: And I think that that was a sign.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: This is a second marriage?
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: Second engagement.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: Second, okay.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: There was no first marriage.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: Okay. Okay.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: I made a lot of changes when I turned 40.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: A lot of changes. Yeah?
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: Like what?
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: I was no longer engaged once I was 40.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: I actually never was single in my 30s.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: I was single when I was 29. I met somebody.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: And then the next time I was single, I was 40.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: So I forgot to be single in my 30s.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: And yet you did it again.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I thought it was going to be like when
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: I was in my 20s. It is not.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: When you're in your 40s.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: A little more work.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. You can't get my dunk gone.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: And I didn't have a dunk.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah. The game starts to fade.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: And now I'm 40? Yeah.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: But you look good.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: I'm okay. I'm working on doing Pilates. Do you do Pilates? No.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: I do kind of a full body... Flexibility workout. And
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: then I run a few days a week.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: You run?
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: This morning I.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: Did, yeah. Where do you run?
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: I do a hike out in Glendale sometimes. And then
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: other times I just do intervals on the treadmill at Equinox. Okay.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: I like Equinox.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: I'm an elitist.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: You seem to be aging well. I think comedians age well.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: That is not true.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: Not physically. They become ghouls. But I'm saying that mentally
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: some of the great, like.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: You're going to have to give me an example.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: Well, I think.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: Comedians that have tried to stay kind of sharp and
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: curious about the world. I think you're one of them.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: There's got to be a couple more.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a faulty premise,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: but you said it confidently.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: I think that... Well, like, look, I think Seinfeld is
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: somebody that's keep trying to do new material. And I
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: had to do like, you can like, or dislike what
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: Seinfeld does.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: But you can, but even the, I great. But even
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: the other day, like he, he gave some answer about
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: woke stuff and it got some blowback and he actually
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: came back and he said, you know what? I was
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: wrong about that. And he actually gave a really good answer.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: He thought about it. He came back and he said,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: you know what? Uh, I, what I said was stupid.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: And actually, uh, if the, if the goalposts move, I
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: should hit the goalposts. That's my job.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: And I thought that was cool.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: I think that- What happened with Jerry ultimately is that
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: he was really a guy that didn't speak much publicly.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: And then just because of the advent of podcasting and
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: the needs of the new publicity environment, all of a
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: sudden Jerry was never shutting up. So everybody saw Jerry
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: for Jerry. And you do with that what you will.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: Okay. I'll do with it what I will.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: I'm glad he apologized. And you feel good about that.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: Let's do some more beefs. What do you think about
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: Bill Maher?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: I can't. I can't do it. You know, I can't.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't. I always had a problem with
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: his tone. I think I did politically correct years ago.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure you did.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: A couple of times maybe. And I think I did
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: real time maybe once or twice.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: That's when you were dating Ann Coulter at the time.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was a dark time. I tried
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: to help her. There's no, she's lost cause. I couldn't
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: do it. There's nothing I could do with all my
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: years of experience in and out of bed that could
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: help her. So no, I don't, I don't know. Like
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: I feel with Bill that there is this, and it
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: happens with some of the other boomers. There's this desperate
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: chasing of relevance that, you know, changes someone's mind in
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: terms of how they approach what they do. And also
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: kind of makes the whole, undertaking feel desperate. And outside
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: of his ideas about primarily, I think, wokeness, I don't know.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: It's just not for me. I know his joke writers.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: He's got good joke writers who know how to write
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: for his tone. And I've known a couple of those guys.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: They were comics. And they're good guys. But I can't
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: see past You know, the desperation and what he's willing
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: to do to stay in the conversation.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: And what do you think about the death of, like,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: you know, Late Show's gone. Conan Show's obviously gone.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: It's coming undone. This place that I know I'm sure
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: for you was this pinnacle of where comics went, what
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: comedy was.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: From Carson to Letterman to Conan. Yeah. What do you
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: think of that?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: I think it's just the nature of what we talked
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: about before is that if the bar has been lowered
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: to consuming only clips, you know, which is dictated by
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: media platforms, that this whole idea of like, you know,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: algorithms and what people's attention span can and can't do
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: is it's sort of, I don't know if it's a catch-22,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: but it's like even with any streamer you work on,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: it's like, well, our algorithm says people can't pay attention
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: for this one. And I'm like, but not my people.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: And if you keep promoting that, they won't. I mean,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: if something is good, they'll stay in it. I guess
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: the format and the nature of show business has just, again,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: shifted to entrepreneurs and, you know, media bubbles that are
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: self-driven by, you know, individuals or tribal entities and that
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: the whole framing of show business being this You know,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: it's the talk show. Here come the celebrities. It's just
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: people don't care anymore. And they're all chasing clicks, you know,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: for clips of, you know, having interesting people do dumb shit.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: And we're going to bring those pies in in a second.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, God damn it. I knew there was a big closer.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: No, I want to end with this. It's a serious question.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: And it's where I was going to before. But when
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: I'm on the phone with Ari and the phone cuts out,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: I think they're dead. I just assume the building has collapsed. Truly,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: like an earthquake, a 9-11. Truly, if they're in New York,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: I think a 9-11 has happened. Like, I'd really go there.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: You're a catastrophizer, done it your whole life. And, you know,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: you've been through a terrible loss. Your plane hit the mountain. Yeah.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: Did it change how you view catastrophe? Does it change
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: how you allow your mind to create catastrophe all the time?
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: No, what it changed was my sense of mortality. It
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: did not change. Like, it doesn't. You know, tragic loss
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: of somebody you love, that's not my go-to catastrophe. I
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: didn't see that coming at all. I mean, my parents
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: are both still alive, It's not great, but I didn't
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: see what happened to Lynn. There was no way I
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: could have ever seen that coming. So when somebody dies tragically,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: all the other catastrophizing about me and cancer or what
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: someone's going to say about me or the world or
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: the fires or anything else, when somebody dies, it does
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: make me more scared in relationship because it's happened. But
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: it also sort of makes you realize just how fragile
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: it all is and how there is no real kind
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: of universal order to it. And, you know, there's no
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: way to answer the question why. And that's just life.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: So I don't, it didn't diminish my catastrophizing, but it
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: did make me realize how fragile life is. Too heavy
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: for an answer.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: No, I just think now we're ready to start. Let's record.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: Oh, good. Finally.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: Let's get the things going.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: We got warmed up.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: About time. Yeah, now we're in it. Mark Maron, good
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: to have you.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Nice to be here.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: That's all for this week. Thank you to Mark Maron
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: for Stop, Bake, Buy. We'll be back in your podcast
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: feeds on Tuesday with our usual episode with me, John,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: and Tommy.
• 1:20:06
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• 1:20:08
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• 1:20:11
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• 1:20:26
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• 1:20:33
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