Tom Green Has Been Living Out of a Van

You're the wild man living in a van now. Oh yeah. You are that eccentric character. You go from being a television and movie star to being a wild man traveling the land with your vagabond dog that you got from another country. She's a rescue from the Bahamas. Yeah, Charlie. Yeah, she's a rescue from the Bahamas. She's goddamn adorable, by the way. I love her. She's beautiful. I'll show you. You are this eccentric character now. Look at you. I feel like maybe, I feel like in some ways what I'm doing right now is the most normal thing I've done in my life, but it is actually kind of crazy too. It's crazy compared to people, but I think it fits you like a glove. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I like going out into the wilderness. I always have. Yeah. And I've been out in this van that I just got, which is amazing, and I'm going pretty hard with it. Is this the first time you've been tested since you got tested the last time on my show? I got tested one time between, but that's another interesting story. But let's hear it. What happened? Well, my ex-wife asked me to come on her talk show, and I hadn't talked to her in 15 years. Oh. Drew? Drew, yeah. Oh. And so I thought, oh, that's- Was that a trap? It was nice. Did you get nervous? It was nice. It was nice. We had a good time. That's cool. But I had to get tested to do the show. But it was interesting because, you know, I mean, it was a very sort of interesting thing because, you know, we hadn't talked in 15 years. At all. At all. And then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, I got a call from her saying, you know, what come to the new show? And her new show's really pretty wacky, you know, like she's getting really kind of- I'd like to put your hands out for wacky. Oh, yeah. Wacky. Like she's definitely pushing it in a very sort of- I mean, I enjoy the show. It's very funny what she's doing. Very, very, very over the top, some of the things she does on there. That's representative of her as well? It reminds me a lot of her. Well, it is her, yeah, for sure. But she really is, like who she really is. I think so, yeah. Well, as you get older, like you tend to be able to figure out who you really are better, like with you, like doing this van thing. I'm the guy living down by the river in the van, yeah. It makes sense to me. When you told me you were going to do that, I'm going to travel across the country and just drive around the van with my dog, I was like, I could see you enjoying that. Yeah. You know, it's a whole world, man. It's a whole world that I didn't even know about. I didn't know, in Canada it's called Crown Land, here it's called BLM Land, Bureau of Land Management Land. I'm sure you know all about that from hunting and going out into the wilderness. I didn't really know about Bureau of Land Management Land, and there's certain apps that will show you all the fire roads, all the remote places that you can go and do dispersed camping, go boondocking. Does your van have off-road capabilities? Can you drive on rugged trails? Yeah, pretty good. It's not an off-road vehicle, it's a Ram Promaster 2500, it's a delivery truck that they convert into- A lot of people are doing that these days. My friend Tim Poole did that. I believe he got a Ram as well. This was a Ram, wasn't it, Jamie? I think it's a Ram as well, and he did the same thing. He turned it into a bug-out van. The Ram is wider than the Mercedes-Benz Rovand, which you see a lot of. It's wider, so I can actually sleep full width-wise, the bed's width-wise at the back. It just happened pretty randomly. I saw this clip online of these guys in Arizona who convert the vans. I called them up. They were on Shark Tank. These guys, they're called Boho. This van's called Boho. They're really cool dudes. Boho? Yeah, Boho. B-O-H-O? Yeah, and by the way, they are like... They love this... I'm here right now. They're your biggest fan. They literally have watched every episode of your show, and so they're going to take a shit right now. I'm really happy that I'm mentioning them on the show. They were on Shark Tank. These two young guys, they started this company where they bought Ram Promasters, totally independent thing, and they do this great carpentry. They build out the inside. It's all cedar. Do you have images of your van online? Yeah, that's the inside. I've been there. I like the wood. I've got my studio set. That's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And see, I got my speakers set up. The thing that's kind of cool about this in the Mojave Desert... There's Charlie chilling. Look at her. Yeah, yeah. So when you say you have your studio, so you're doing your podcast from the road? Yeah, exactly. And how are you doing it? Whenever you feel like it, you just fire up the podcast when you've got something to say. Yeah. Dude, that thing looks killer in there. Yeah, yeah. See, it's got a little kitchen. Oh, you got a little kitchenette set up. How are you cooking? There's a vent. Oh, you got an awning? And I'm shooting these drone shots too, which are pretty fun. Dude, you're rolling drones? Look at this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the Mojave. Check out all those Joshua Trees burned. Those are burned Joshua Trees. Oh, wow. So it's kind of like... I've always been into the techie kind of building out studio stuff, right? Sure. When I found out about these vans, the thing that really kind of piqued my interest is the battery and solar technology that exists now. So there's two solar panels on the roof. And in the back, I've got these batteries. Okay, they're really called battle-borne batteries. They're like really solid. Like they use them in sailboats to go around the world, basically. And there's four of them. And the solar panels are charging them constantly. So I've built... I've got my computers. I've got my cameras. I've got my drone. I'm charging batteries all the time. I've got a refrigerator in there. So I can have cold beer, right? And it's sweet. So I can go out into the middle of nowhere and have virtually unlimited electronic capability and stay there as long as I want until I run out of food. Wow. And so those solar panels, how efficient are they? Like, will they power your studio and all that stuff where you don't have to use your engine? You don't have to start up and use gas? Yeah, exactly. But you run a diesel in your van? No. No, but gas. It just happened to be the way it went because that van was available and I got that one. But how's the gas mileage? It's pretty good. I'll tell you one thing though. I am always filling up. I never let it go below three quarters of a tank because... Just in case shit gets weird. I never know where I'm going every day. Like I got some weird stories over the last six weeks where I've just been like, not sure where I'm going to sleep and the sun's going down and then I end up going down a crazy road. And then the first night I got stuck in the Mojave Desert because I looked up on this app, dispersed fire road. I'm thinking, oh, that's pretty cool. I get there. There's a sign that says tortoises crossing. Careful. I start driving out into the desert. I'm 200 yards in. I get stuck because it's the soft sand. Gets stuck in the soft sand. So I've been a little more careful. How do you get out when you get stuck in the soft sand? Called AAA. Oh. AAA comes to the desert? I was 100 yards from the freeway. I hadn't even gotten into it yet. It was so pathetic. It was hilarious actually. Because I've been planning for months. And then all of a sudden I'm seeing the freeways. This was outside Barstow or something like that. Before we get into your adventure, I want to get more into this van build now. So you started it out with just buying this van. Is it a new van or did you buy it? Brand new, yeah. So you bought a brand new van and then you bring it to these Boho guys. And these guys, what do they do? They ask you, what are you planning on doing? You plan on using this as a studio? Your idea from the jump was to do your podcast on the road with no plans other than your own whims. So when you do something like that, how do you know what you're going to need? You didn't really have any experience in off-roading or that kind of living out of a van. How did you know what you're going to need? Did you research it? Yeah. Well, there's a couple of categories of research. One was just building the studio itself. So I built the studio at home first. That was just the nitty gritty technical stuff. What kind of microphones, what kind of amps and preamps I'm going to use. I have some amps that use tubes. I got rid of those because I figured the tubes would rattle out in the dirt road. So boring techy stuff. As far as the survival and the food and all of that and the van, they've been real great. I built my studio equipment into a road case. I knew that I thought, well, that could fit under the bed. Then we sort of planted out where there's a little door that opens and you can access it under the bed. We've wired all the cables through the walls and it's pretty efficient. See everything you need to do a podcast down into one box. Just pull that box out and then you're ready to roll. It's actually permanently housed under the bed. So I have a table that pulls out. That table I was sitting at there. Just under there a little door opens, microphones plugged in and away you go. The other side of it is a lot of the video stuff too. The drone, the cameras. I've got some new cameras that I'm kind of messing with that are exciting to me. I'm kind of out there. The thing that I was thinking, I was thinking, am I going to get bored out here? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. I'm all alone. Or lonely. I'm not going to get bored or lonely. I haven't because I've populated the van with stuff to do. So when I get bored of the drone, then I'm making music too. So I've made a recording music studio too. What kind of music? Well, I'm doing some sort of different stuff. I've got my acoustic guitar, so I'm going to start doing some country rap type of stuff. Are you going to go on tour? Country rap. I call it crap, Joe. Are you going to go on tour? Maybe. As a singer? Wow. Yeah, I could see that. No, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I probably maybe incorporated into my stand up or something like that. Episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!