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Ari Shaffir is a comedian, writer, and host of “You Be Trippin’.” His seven-episode live storytelling series, “The End,” is available now from YMH Studios. https://theend.ymhstudios.com https://www.youtube.com/@youbetrippinpod https://www.youtube.com/@arishaffir https://www.arishaffir.com
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You know what you are on my phone what Ari the Wanderer that's a new phone
number
That's what you are. Oh, I was telling you last night that I thought it was in
Mexico City
But we had a report that you were at an Oasis concert in Mexico City
And you said no, it was in Rio Sao Paulo
Oh, Sao Paulo? Okay, so it was in Brazil
So we no one knew where you were you were gone for how many months six seven?
Jesus Christ
Yeah, how many times have you done that now?
I guess three although when I went to Ecuador I was very much in touch with
everybody
So it was like that was a halfway that was halfway but you were there you were
kind of checked out
But I was I was in touch. Yeah, I still had numbers. I was still like doing
like
Podcasts and stuff and
What are you doing remotely do remotely?
Yeah, I would do one with a big J and soda. We did a 21 Jump Street breakdown
podcast
Yeah, yeah, we were so bored during pandemic. We're like, let's find a show and
just let's get together
I watched 21 Jump Street
First we chose sex in the city and then I found out gay fucking Ian already had
a sex in the city podcast
So we're like fighting. Yeah
Did he really do that guy blows dudes?
Obviously, he loves sex in the city. Oh, I guess so
So we're like we don't want to step on his toes. Like let's pick another he
seems like he's straight. Sometimes he does it's weird
Like he's the only gay
No, no, he fucks he fucks better than we ever did for women women. Yeah. Okay.
He gets it
So and then but then he went to guys he's a new breed. He's a new breed of just
like when did he go to guys?
Is it a new thing? I think he battled with it for a while. Oh, okay. So he was
fucking girls, but hating them. God
I wish you were a guy
Yeah, yeah, I guess anyone said glory holes and he was saying he wasn't gay. I'm
like, bro, that's one of the biggest signs of a gay
So you just stick your hole your dick in the hole or you suck the dick that
comes out of the hole
Like was he the glory giver or the glory taker? You're asking me questions. I
don't know. I always assume in my head
It was he was sucking dudes off, but oh, but I'm I'm actually not sure. Yeah,
interesting, right? It's interesting
Yeah, because if the dick comes through the hole if you like you ever wanted to
suck a dick
But I don't look a guy in the eyes. I just want to know what it's like see if I'm
good at it
Yeah, I don't want to be embarrassed in front of anybody. They're gonna
recognize me later. I just want to work on my technique
Yeah, I just want to find out if I'm right
I need more research not enough data points
Yeah, because so you didn't even ask him which side of the glory hole he was on
I think I was so overwhelmed by this heterosexual dude who was telling me he
goes to glory holes
And so then he was heterosexual. This is back in the day. We did a podcast my
old podcast on the way down to like somewhere
This is skeptic tank. Yeah
And and he was telling me that but he's telling me he's not gay. I was like
How do I say that? Wait, and I was like, buddy, I think you are gay
He goes why am I the glory hole stuff? It's a big sign
Do you think?
Do you think?
I was like
But you didn't even that's the crazy thing is you didn't even ask whether he
sucks or gets sucked
I was lost in it. You're right as an interviewer
I didn't do my job that day. Obviously, that's a major question. It's a one in
two chance
Yeah, right. How do you not know? How do I yeah, it's like very important to
know
It is because there is a percentage chance it might be a chick blowing you
There's no percentage. There's zero percent chance it's a chick blowing is a
vagina
Zero percent chance. It's 100% a guy or a guy pretending to be a chick. I bet
there's a ton of those dudes who have
Wives, you know who live in that world like I thought I always thought it was a
woman like shut up. Yeah, shut up
Yeah, plausible deniability possible deniability. Yeah
So then he just decided to just go straight gay
No, he's everywhere. He does everything. Oh now he's like Miami bisexual. Yeah,
okay. Yeah, so we did the 21 jump street podcast
And uh, and I would do it sometimes I'd get on they're like are you drinking a
coconut with a palm tree behind you like out of a coconut?
I was like, oh, it's just a tuesday guys. What's going on? Yeah
I really milk it because you're in ecuador because I was in ecuador. It's
having a good time
What is that gay tea you drink? Mate?
Shirba
So you just got into this it's literally a jar of hay. It really is. You pour
hot water and there's so much hay in there
It's so much it tastes you tried it. Yeah. Yeah, it tastes like just like ass.
Yeah, just hey. I don't understand
It's like a ritual. It's all the gauchos in argentina and then spread to chile
and southern
And so it's just a bunch of leaves that are in a yorba tree
Yorba mate, right? Yeah, but that drink is like different. I've had that stuff.
I think it's different. Really?
Yeah, I think it's about as much as like what willie nelson's like drink is
actually weed
Oh, willie nelson's drink is weed. Really? Oh, yeah. I take it back then. Oh,
yeah
I don't know what the legality of that is and I don't want to throw anybody
under the bus
But ron white brought a bunch of it to the mothership and it's
Very legit. Yeah
It's it's all dose dependent. I think one glass is like five milligrams or one
shot is like five milligrams
But if you drink a glass of that shit, yeah, yeah, you're gonna go for it. You're
gonna go into that weird dimension
You know that weird dimension where you're like I think this is earth
But it doesn't seem like earth anymore thumbs off. It's like a facsimile of
earth trying to look at people like you see what i'm seeing
Yeah, I remember one time um I was doing fear factor and we were in san francisco
and uh back
This is the unregulated edibles days, you know, because this is before
Marijuana was legal. Do you get a prescription? Do your joke. Can I do your
joke? Which one the x? Oh, yeah
I'll do it. You'll be
Early days and by the way, it was just like there's banana bread
Going around right now. It's killing people. It's great not killing people but
like destroying people. Yeah
It goes they came in these doses one x two x or three x the problem is x didn't
equal any number
Yeah, so it was just some guy mixing up his bathtub full of fucking whatever
like weed infused cookie dough and deciding what's x to him
That's not a mathematical equation. Yeah, x had no number value. So it's one
times this what's this right?
Yeah, well those I had the joke too about the gummy bear or the guy who
literally said that to me
I go how much should I take goes just a leg
I go just the leg
I go why the fuck are you selling whole bears if I should only eat it like
because it's only that big like no one's in to eat
Just the leg. It's a crazy dose and a half a cookie is the right cut. That's
not all cookie is a dose
So back in these days, we were doing fear factor and we were doing it
It was we were doing it off of a aircraft carrier in the bay area
And so we had to take the you know that one train I forget what it is
Is it the bart that goes under the water that goes under the bay between?
Oakland and san francisco the bart
Yeah, bart whatever it is
No, I called the bart just to fuck with them. Um, so
I I took this edible and it was an unregulated edible
So I have no idea and it was way too strong and I was
I was like why do my ears feel weird and they're like because you're under the
ocean and I was like no
It was like the longest 20 minutes of my life waiting to pop out on the other
side
I was like we're under this how long is this fucking subway been under the
ocean?
Like how long has this existed? Like what are the odds this thing is still good?
Is anybody out there diving checking on the tube making sure there's no holes
in it?
You know this
You start doing all the research in your head and it was like I I felt like I
was talking to people
But what I was seeing was a two-dimensional
Like uh, you know, like those uh stand-ins like when you go to the movie and it's
like, you know
A person standing there like thumbs up, but it's like just a two-dimensional
cardboard cutout
That's what everybody looked like to me. It was like a two-dimensional
cardboard cutout
But occasionally i'd see their soul peeking around their shoulder looking at me.
It was
So heavy. I don't know what the number was
How many x's that kind of high
I don't get that kind of higher drunk anymore. Well that kind of high is really
fun. It's so fun over
It's over when you look back when it's happening. It's terrifying
Oh, those are the best. I remember guy did jujitsu with he made pills
He made thc pills because he was like one of those all day guys. He was just
high constantly all the time
And so yeah, the dab guys, but this is pre-dabs. Yeah, and so this guy made
pills
THC pills I go how many should you take and he and he goes you should probably
start off with one
But I take two so I took two because i'm an asshole and uh, I wound up having
this conversation with this guy
Uh, and he was weirding me out. It was at a jujitsu tournament. I was like, why
is this guy so weird?
It turns out the dude, uh, eventually got arrested for rape
And not just arrested for rape, but he was on the run
And he was on the run and couldn't stop doing jujitsu and the way they caught
him
Was he went to like seattle or somewhere like because this was in california
He's signing for classes and he was just rolling, but he was killing everybody
and I was like, who is this fucking guy?
Like why is this guy so good? And then eventually they realized it was him.
They go. Oh my god
This guy's wanted for rape. Wow
He was a crazy person and when I was like super high on these pills, I could
see all the crazy in his eyes
Like it's like he didn't say anything crazy. Dude, you can
You can see through people
You can you can you can see their soul. It's it's it's interesting. It is you
really can see it
It's not one of those where i'm like no, it's just the drug with me. You can
sell and so this is like happy or sad
A year or so later he gets arrested and winds up fleeing
I think he maybe was out on bail or he was wanted and fleed and went to the pacific
northwest
But I remember when I heard the story I was like, oh
That makes sense because he had the weirdest energy just like this dark energy
like creepy dark energy
Sometimes if you're on like a psychedelic and then someone's not
On with you, you know, but they're around you you're like, hey, you got to go
you're freaking me out like
I don't know your energy is not of this. It's I don't know if you're looking at
me, but like you got to take off
Yeah, you see like motivations
You see everything so clearly. I know it's weird
But it's not reliable. It's not like like i'm about to go into a a meeting with
this defendant
I need to know if he's actually innocent or guilty. So i'm gonna take five
grams of mushrooms
Me and big j were leaving a blues fest in ottawa once we're leaving it's like a
city festival
But then you wander into the what used to be the safest city in canada. So you're
all fucked up. It's great
And as you're leaving you just see who's on what drug
Like you just can tell like mushrooms acid weed drunk molly molly
Yeah, you just see it all you just see through everybody. They're just sitting
there talking
Yeah, I don't
I wonder what's gonna happen now that this uh thing happened
I thought first of all
I thought you know, i'm out on the news. So i'm hearing stuff little by little
about everything
Yeah, I thought it was just ibogaine, which is like great. Those people need
that
and then and then
I mean ed clay has been telling me about that for
so long
Well, ed clay i talked about him on the podcast because he was one of the ways
that I found out
Me too
Yeah, in nashville
Yeah, yeah, right
And he would tell you he's like you should get on it helps with addiction i'm
like i'm loving what i'm doing right now
I don't know
I don't want to get off this
Yeah, I don't need to fuck up my high
But like uh
I'm like this makes sense
And then oh fine great you got that and then i find out it's also
I mean the best hippie flip you got that mdma and boomers and shrooms and psilocybin
Yeah, well, it's because mdma and psilocybin maps was already doing mdma
studies with uh veterans
So for people that you know watch a bunch of people get blown up and lost their
friends and come back mdma was one of the best therapies
For helping them overcome ptsd
So maps had already pushed that through and johns hopkins had already done
these studies with psilocybin
So they already pushed these things and they were already
On the way to getting approval through the fda but the problem was nobody wants
to stick their neck out and sign off on it
It's a problem with with politics if you're running we talked about this
If you're running for an office and the opponent can say he wants drugs legalized
then you're fucked
So it's like it really binds your hands, right?
But that's funny because that's kind of what dan patrick did in texas about
marijuana
But to his credit dan patrick met with rick perry and brian hubbard
The guys that passed this texas ibogaine initiative
And they convinced him of what this stuff actually is and so they've donated
So he's allocated rather a hundred million dollars in texas for the ibogaine
initiative
Which is amazing
But that's a sign of us an intelligent man like this dan patrick guy had this
stance on weed
There's like weeds bad it's ruined and everything and then they come to him
He's like i'm staunchly opposed this and they sit they sit down with them
He explains brian hubbard explains and he's very eloquent explained what ibogaine
does
It's not recreational at all and he hears it and he hears how much it'll help
particularly veterans that come back
They're addicted to opiates and they're all fucked up
And even cte even like brain injuries from getting blown up. It's neuro regenerative
somehow
It's a crazy plant and so he to his credit he signed off
And they allocated a hundred million dollars for the texas ibogaine initiative,
which is amazing
Wow
But it's like all these people have these ideas in their head, but it's all
because of nixon
All of it goes back. Well, you grew up this is evil. This is you'll get stuck
that way kind of stuff
Where it's like i think some people do yeah, this is what's important about
these studies
Yes, this is what's important about these studies like and I think this is
important about weed too
You know i'm very adamant that it's not for everybody. I think there's a lot of
things
Some of it's all strong and some people are already on the way to schizo
They're already on the way their schizophrenia in their family. There's like
they just that's not a good thing for them
Well, what's making a comeback luckily is like
Mexican weed is like the 12 12 percent. Yeah, THC where it's like it's just
gonna be
The old days i'm trying to bury myself and miss this movie again. I don't want
to go to pluto
Is there anything is there i want to be in the clouds right above the city.
That's it. What's the shot in a beer of weed?
That's it right. Yeah, right. I don't want to fucking dab. I see these dabbers.
Oh, I asked for meds in a dispensary once
They're like, what are you what?
What is that?
Yeah, they're all so hardcore. I remember the early days. It was like zen dispensary
one of the early ones
And i was like just getting into it atari hooked me up remember that guy with
like weed and it was like okay
So now i'm into it and i went to zen and i was like hey listen
I like to smoke cigarettes while i write i'm off cigarettes now, but it's a
habit
So i need something but if i smoke a joint i'm done writing right and that's
what he's like
Oh, you want mexican weed we can do that for you. Oh, just something calm. It's
just like yeah
Mild yeah, it's like going to a power lifting gym and saying do you guys have
yoga classes?
Yeah
Yeah
They did that in ecuador. There was a city. I was there when I did ayahuasca
and it was a guy from the tourism board
And he said what's gonna there's three cities that are like on the border to
the amazon
And and you know you can go in from any one of them and they go what's going to
separate our city from all these other amazonian cities
And you go let's be the ayahuasca city ooh and everyone else on the tourism
board said no
We are not getting
A bunch of fucking hippie backpackers in here to be drug addicts in our town
Like that's not what we're looking for at all here
That thing sucks. Yeah, it did you just filled it up. I'm not there's a lever
on it, too. I don't know
Uh, and he goes okay fair, but he goes can I take you on an ayahuasca trip to
each member each member was like, you know
They're half indigenous. They're like sure right and then one by one. They all
go. Oh, this isn't an addictive thing
Right, so I had the wrong idea in my head of what this was you come once you
don't come back for a year
Yeah, everybody had that thing from the nixon administration. It's the
controlled substances act of 1970 and that thing
That's it's really nuts. But for 56 years. We've been living underneath that.
It's just it becomes a given. Uh-huh
Yeah, you don't think to reevaluate any knowledge is in there already. I know
and it's like
So many people just a little micro dose of shrooms. It'll change your fucking
life
It would it would help so many people. There's so many people that are stressed
out for no fucking reason really does give you such a reset
A hundred percent molly - or I know that's why I talked to you the MDMA
MAPS people were always like please start calling it MDMA when you call it molly
it becomes a party drug
I'm like well, I do it at parties
So that's what it is for me the problem with what they're saying by saying that
is like no because it is a party drug
It is yeah, it's also just like what are we gonna call
Whiskey, we're gonna call it, you know alcohol by volume are you gonna have a
technical term for what whiskey is?
Fuck off. It's whiskey. You know what I mean? Like that's why people like it
like you call it that if you want
Yeah, you do whatever you want. I'm gonna call it molly. I don't know about you
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Fuck off with all your rules. That's it. That's a good ringtone
But it's because they've spent so much money and so much time and so much
effort trying to get this stuff passed through
It would be so huge if you just go get some mushrooms. Oh
It'd be so huge
And why can't you if you can go to costco and just buy a jug of whiskey and
drink yourself to death
It also so like in edinburgh
They have a season for it and you can go through the meadows or any of these
fields and just like pick mushrooms right now, but if it's
On your shoe, it's fine. And if it comes off your shoe, then it's illegal. Oh,
that's hilarious
But it's just like growing there
You know where duncan used to live in asheville
They started giving the cows like a certain type of feed that had antifungal
properties to it
What so that they wouldn't grow
So who knows what it did to the cow's gut?
You know for nothing to ruin the cows just because so many kids were picking
mushrooms off of the cow shit
Hey, we're gonna put a stop to this in thailand. It's the elephant shit
And they and the guys who ran the elephant like abusive centers, whatever so
you could ride them and make them play harmonica
The stuff that's natural in the wild
Oh, no, oh, no guys elephants love painting you a picture
We wrote them when we were in thailand
Then I went back my second time and they were all everyone the hostel was doing
that
And then I was like, no, I already did it and they go humane or non-humane. I'm
like, oh, definitely the humane one
Like did you ride them? That's inhumane. I'm like, oh, yeah, inhumane then
Well, the elephants wanted you to ride them
They don't mind like because you weigh nothing and you feed them first and you
make you give them an offering
Right, so you first of all you wash them and you feed them
So you feed them like you give them sugarcane and you you have to develop a
relationship with the elephant before you ride it
Like these people were all they were all free-range elephants. They're all
rescue elephants
So the elephants would come in out of the jungle. They weren't in cages. Oh,
really? Oh, yeah, it was wild
Yeah, get a saddle on them. Uh-huh. Well, you don't it's barely a saddle
You just kind of climb onto them and there's like a thing that you hold on to
and they're totally cool with it
And then the end you go to this like pond and you wash them
And so it's like they could kill you anytime they want to, you know
So it's like it's a relationship and it's not they're not prisoners and they're
not abused at all
The people that are running this the place that I went to but even then I did a
video with it
And I said, you know, I you could ride them. I go I wrote them. I don't
recommend it
I don't think you should do it. I would never do it again
I would never ride them again because it just feels fucked up
I would rather just feed them and pet them and say you're nice, but also go
through the jungle
Yeah, but also like you wrote them. I did so like if you if you hadn't wrote
them, you'd be like i've never ridden an elephant
I wouldn't have done it at all if my family didn't want to do it. They wanted
to do it
So I said, okay, let's go and they enjoyed it. It was a good experience
You know, the kids are they're little and we're taking them to thailand and
yeah, it's wild
I wonder sometimes that these kids I was talking to tommy about it
Like if they'll know later in life
How cool their experience was like it'll be till like that 35 or 40 like oh,
yeah, I had a great job
I didn't understand the cool things I did
Yeah, I think my kids are pretty aware of it
um, but
Anyway, they had these these hippies would go over the encampment and pick out
mushrooms from elephant patties
And then eventually the people the herders like why do these fucking dreadlock
people keep coming in?
At night and like sniffing around our shit
And then they realized what it was and they go. Oh, no, no, no, we'll sell this
Is it illegal in thailand like was the legality of money now?
I don't know because I think they just legalized weed in thailand did they
really yeah, but it back back then when it was illegal
There were bars that sold your joints and those are the bars that paid the cops
and so for all intents and purposes
You're fine, bro. I would not fuck around with drugs in another country
lame
Yeah, me that's me. Yeah, super lame
I mean talk to britney griner. How'd that work out?
Not good
Do you think when she was in jail the guards were fuck with her and show videos
of her missing like how come you miss?
How come you miss this shot?
Return to breakdown you eat too much pussy. You'll smoke too much weed. You
miss this shot
She was in jail for a long fucking time. She was in jail for a while
I think she was in jail for like wasn't it like six months or something like
that?
I knew someone who worked to the
The agency she was at
The sports management agency
Every day
They started with 15 minutes of like hey before we get into anyone else's
business. How are we getting her out ten months?
Almost a fucking year in jail in russia. That's crazy for nine years in a penal
colony
That was a fun because they just told america like hey guys keep quiet. We can
get her out. She's a nothing asset
Just everyone be quiet and the the liberal
Angry you know housewives like no, I want to say something and they all just
kept talking and eventually like russia's like. Oh, is this an important one?
Oh, we'll keep her in is that what I think so
I think it was biden was like just shut up
We'll get her out to shut up
So that they could get the merchant of death released we are the worst at hand
americans are so bad at handling things
They don't know how to handle they just rush in full bore going. I know how to
fix it with no knowledge of it
Well, it's also once a story gets out in any form
Influencers cannot help talk about help it. It's their currency. There's no way.
They're not going to talk about it
Same little late night guys. They knew after trump won
They're like talking about him helps him before we said we're trying to take
him down
But now we've seen the research. We know it's helping him. I'm still gonna do
it because it's my money. Yeah
People can't help it. They can't help it. Yeah
I mean, that's like
CNN's most of their ratings were talking shit about trump
Like every time he did something outrageous they would they would talk shit
about him
And they would have him on and it just made him more and more popular
Because I don't think they understood how much americas dis americans despised
them
You know, they thought we're cnn. We are the news. We're cnn
And then because the fact that trump was opposed to them and they were they
just kept showing him
They're like, oh, he must be good because you guys suck
Right
You ever hear the theory that terrorism and the u.s are symbiotic?
What's the theory? How's it work?
Terrorism can't exist without the u.s dominating their countries
Oh, yeah, that makes sense and the u.s
They can't keep funneling money to weapons without terrorists
Well, us and israel. I mean, that's just short, but it's like and and netanyahu.
He famously said
They were funding them
When we fund hamas, we can control the height of the flame for 9/11 like yeah
It popped off a little high, but there was like it's we need something to be
like hey, we're all against that
And then that those countries like look they're all against us
So they just like they need each other to keep growing
Well, it makes sense and also you need an enemy in order to get higher military
contracts and higher budgets
I mean if you don't have terrorism, how can you justify a trillion dollar
military?
So you need to like say hey, they're a real threat like that's a 30 person
group
Yeah, they're not coming for us, but like we got to take them down. Look at the
training they're doing
You ever seen jane's bit
Monkey bars monkey bars doing the training
I love that bit about how bad they are at jumping jacks
Fat people do to get in shape of the biggest loser. Yeah, and they're stuck
over there like shut up. Yeah, they're not going over there
It's and then I always wondered why we left behind all the shit like cynically
Do we leave that stuff behind so that they could use it the older I get the
less I think there's accidents
There's an aptitude for sure, but there's also like
We've done the research we know
Yeah, at some point, you know, there's bad moves you make here or there
But I mean we left behind tanks and blackhawk helicopters like what we couldn't
get those out
We had to leave right now
We were there for 20 years. Also, we got to get out right away
You don't put a grenade in each one first before you go like what do you mean
and also those are still good
Yeah, we didn't get out like vietnam park them in a field and drop a fucking
bomb on it
Yeah, you don't have to leave it there for the enemy
It's it's for the taliban so they can keep the people under their thumb
Yeah, if you retreated last second I could see it but it wasn't that and then
you're like
Yeah, I think they didn't have to leave when they the way they left was insane
When you see those those ships that are the planes that are flying away
And people are hanging on to the wheels of the plane and falling off because
they don't want to be left behind because they know
So many people that work with the americans you said you'd protect us over and
over again
And then you're like, yeah, we've done this over and over again. We'll just say
exactly
It says that we it was a equipment we gave to the afghan state
so it wasn't
You know, it wasn't u.s
Equipment any longer and it's already given over to them. Yeah, we gave it to
the afghan state
But not the taliban the national defense and security forces right and then it
there was not that many of them
And so the moment that we left the taliban just took everything there's also
like I guess what is the taliban?
We have this word on it. It's like an evil word
But are they just like the government in a lot of these places like the cartels
in in colombia?
They like build schools they do bad shit, but they also are the government they
make sure the businesses run. Okay
And so you have this idea cartel it sounds like that, but it's like it's more
than that
I wonder how much the taliban is all actually into terrorism and how much is
like just running day-to-day stuff
Well, that's a good point because in america. I mean, what are the
pharmaceutical drug companies?
I mean, how many people we talked about this the other day? It's like
70 000 people died of opioid overdoses in america in 2024 70 000 70 000
So like and a lot of that is probably cartel fentanyl, but a lot of it is like
flat-out old-school
Oxycodone, so it's like what are they?
What are they and how much are they donating to political campaigns every year
right?
But they thought you saw what the most effective thing at that sackler with ferris
bueller
That documentary series or whatever yeah painkiller is they started every
episode with a real
Person talking about how their son is dead. Yeah, or you know something like
that
Yeah, and then they kind of you're like oh my god. This makes it so real. Yeah
painkiller
That's what it's called. Yeah, so good. That's peter bergs. Yeah, we talked
about that the other day
It's so much amazing series amazing series like that. Yeah, matthew brodrick
plays such a good fucking creep
He did such a good job
God that fucking that shows so disturbing because it's based on true story and
he show a guy
Falling into the despair from being fine. Yeah to just like
We all know somebody who got hooked. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's so potent
It's so powerful and they told doctors they told people they told everybody
that wasn't even addictive
They knew it was addictive. They knew it operated on the same path. I mean that's
in the painkiller series
Yeah, that it operates on the same pathways heroin like you're saying that this
is not addictive. This is a lie
Yeah, what they did there was go if that movie is completely accurate. It's
like
Okay, so this is for heavily cancerous like bedridden people that have a pain
threshold of eight to ten
Like it'll be good for them
Why don't we just extend the pain threshold to three to ten? Yeah, and that
allows a lot more people in
If you're at a nine, it doesn't matter if I get addicted. My life is awful
right now, right
If you're to three like walk it off
Exactly
I talked about when I got my nose fixed when the doctor tried to give me two
different opiates
And I was like
It was nothing. I mean, it didn't even hurt
It was just mildly uncomfortable and that was also because it was stuffed up
with gauze like those
It wasn't even gauze like these foam things with a tube that they stuff in your
nose to keep your nostrils open while it's healing
But you know, he gave me two different opiates and I was like is it gonna get
worse than this?
Because I don't I'm fine fine
It doesn't they don't tell you but be careful. I would not take unless you
absolutely need it
No, they don't tell you any of that. They want you to do it because they're
financially incentivized. I got a wisdom tooth out and uh, the dentist
Was like um, I was like hey, I don't wanna like why'd you get a wisdom tooth
out? Did it hurt?
I don't remember it was so long ago. Yeah, like 8 15 18 years ago. What's the
what's the logic on that?
Are you supposed to get wisdom teeth taken out? I've had both out because I've
had people say
I've heard people say you shouldn't like there's no reason to take them out.
Why do you that?
They get impacted or something. I don't know often they grow in they're growing
in wrong and they cause problems
With other teeth it had to be that but he gave me this thing of vicodin
I was like, I don't want to and he goes
You're friends with comedians, right? And I was like, yeah, he goes your
friends will want it
Whatever you don't need what whatever you don't i'm sure you could find he was
joking around, but he was right
I have tons of addict friends. They they are all like nice
Yeah advising me to take aspirin
Not use up one of those precious I took that stuff once when I had my first acl
reconstruction
And it was it made me so stupid like it. I think it was vicodin. It was either
vicodin or percocet
I can't remember but I think it was vicodin, but I wound up selling it at the
pool hall. Yeah, sell it give some money
Yeah, yeah
The only time I would advise taking vicodin is if you have like two beers and
really want a good night
Really? Oh, yeah, those go so well with with liquor is vicodin an opiate
Is it the same thing as oxycodone like what is vicodin? It's a downer
I don't know what you're a downer
It combines hydrocodone and tylenol
a lot of people die from that shit too tylenol yeah, I was reading this sad
story once about this lady who
She had covid and she was in so much pain from kova that she kept taking tylenol
and she died of a fucking liver failure
What does the tylen the acetaminophen killed her liver?
Sometimes you see people dying. You're like what a loser way to die
You can't ever tell anybody there's no victimhood aspirin overdose
Dork, that's crazy. How much aspirin do you have to take before you die? That
seems nuts
I feel like all these middle school girls would try it before they had access
to stuff. Really?
But they just want to be drama queens like I took a whole bottle of aspirin. Oh,
yeah
Oh, I knew a girl did exactly that thing
Exactly that in high school. Yeah, me too. Yeah, she took aspirin, but it's
like that's not gonna do it
But your call for attention is there. She was also crazy annoying
Like let me tell you how she do it big tits and she fucked everybody. She was
nuts and I'll accept it
This girl was a fucking freak
She fucked everybody. She was an animal
Catholic school girl
Weird what I just typed in tylenol deaths and this thing came up the chicago tylenol
murders
It seems like it's a nun drug tampering. Yeah, there's tampered tylenol that
people bought that was
Potassium cyanide seven people died. Yeah
Yeah, they broke that's when they start that's when they start doing the seal
on top. Yeah. Yeah, right? I remember this
I remember this. This is when I was in high school. Do they know why?
Investigation suspects. I wonder what the conspiracy. Yeah, what what's the tinfoil
at?
Someone recently was arrested. No suspect has been charged as of 2026
Whoa, so a bunch of people died and they just got away with it. Yeah
Wow
Was convicted of extortion sending a letter to tylenol manufacturer claiming
responsibility and demanding a million dollars if I remember right
They said they said they said we found out that the problem with one plant that
had whatever and we've we've got and someone else like well
Okay, I bought this
Bottle before that happened. So this should be safe
And then it wasn't and then it was like tylenol or whatever was like covering
up how bad it got
Instead of going recall everything
Estimated 31 million bottles were in circulation with a retail value of over a
hundred million dollars
Equivalent to 334 million in 2025 the company also advertised in the national
media for individuals not to consume any of its products that contain acetaminophen
After it was determined that only these capsules had been tampered with
Wow
There's other ones in california that strychnine in them
Wow, so that's probably one of those things too. There's copycats, right?
Like one person hears about someone buying
Poison tylenol. I want to do that. Yeah, I want to poison people in ohio
Yeah, fucking hacks get your own shit fucking hacks
Yeah, just be original be awful evil, but be original
There's so many those like the tylenol we're like wait, were you guys evilly
covering this up and resulting in more deaths?
That that I found out down there was like coca-cola dole
We're like, oh, these are like evil corporations as soon as they realize that
they're you know, the pinto story
So ford found out let's let's oh, yeah
Research this to make sure this is true because someone brought it up on the
podcast
They're blowing up and they realize it's cheaper to just pay people
Off that died from their car being blown up than it is to recall all these ford
pintos
Because the pinto had like the gas station the gas tank rather was in the back
Yeah, so there's something about the design where if you got rear-ended it
would blow up
And it was just did a dollar value on it. Yeah
Somebody did I want to say for I want to you know you say for it, but really it's
a person
It's it's not the ford of today. It's some guy
Investigators and lawsuits showed that pre-production crash tests had already
revealed this vulnerability
But the car still went to market largely unchanged
Yeah, who told us about this?
I'll check
I kind of remember that it's one of our guests explained that to us and it was
just like oh god
Whoa, it's so dark. It's such a fucking dark evil thing to do to say well
people are gonna die
But we'll just pay them off. What's the number?
Yeah, what is the number first of all the car sucked? Why'd you make it in the
first place?
It's a terrible ugly shoe fucking kind of looks cool now, but no it doesn't
It's got that sun sun deck garbage car
So coca-cola would have people just like if you were like a leftist leader
running for whatever they were worried that
If that person got in power, they would unionize their population and that
would cost them more money in the plants
And they would just have people straight killed
Straight up get them out of the way
I had people whacked
Dole used to be the American fruit company
How about coke and a smile?
They had people whacked
James, I mean look it up
But see when we say coke it's probably an executive somewhere probably an
executive
They didn't do a big house of cards style who had some guy who was a fixer for
him
And he's like look these motherfuckers are causing problems
And this guy was concerned with his job as whatever ceo executive
But it's happened over a long period of time
They were giving money to I think fark or something in colombia after they were
already labeled like a terrorist organization
They're still giving them money
For decades coca-cola's faced several out severe allegations regarding the
murder and intimidation of union leaders at bottling plants in colombia and guatemala
They hired paramilitary death squads to suppress labor activism
That's like oh what they they want an honest like day's pay
Get rid of him
You know do you remember when ross perot was running for president you were too
young
I barely remember but sort of I was
Just starting to be aware of how fucked up politics were
And because he was on television explaining about the world trade organization
about when they were going to
Start opening up plants in mexico and moving jobs to mexico
He's like what you're what you're going to hear is a giant sucking sound
Where all the money and jobs are going to go down to mexico
And what we allowed during that time was
Essentially what the labor unions were doing in this country
Was making sure that people had a great wage because the corporations were
getting paid well
So the ceos wanted all the money like they always do the corporation wanted all
the money
But you really can't make a mustang unless you have the people that are on the
assembly line
Unless you have the people that are doing all the hard labor and all the work
And they should get compensated correctly so the auto auto unions workers
organized it
And they went on strike and they did the they did what they had to do and they
were making a great living
They're making a great living and these people had a nice house and they had a
car and a garage
And it felt good that they were getting paid really well
And so a lot of people thought well, they're getting paid too well and this is
fucking up our profits
And so what and i'm simplifying this if you're like 10 bucks from a million
people instead of like the top guys
What they did is just open up a plant in mexico and pay people fucking slave
labor
And they go over there and they pay them slave wages and these people are
making cars for like fucking how much a dollar a day or something like that
Instead of getting health care and retirement and you know
And so that's what we're talking about the free market says go to mexico the
moral market says no, no, no, no, no, no
Hold on. Let's just pay people what they deserve here. It's not just that but
they destroyed detroit
That's right. That's roger in me that documentary michael moore's greatest
documentary is all his first one is his best one
Because it's really documenting and a horrific
attack on detroit
And and flint michigan and all those places up there where there's all these
auto plants and they all just went away man
And those jobs went away and now detroit is detroit's kind of bouncing back
It's kind of back danny was talking about it brown where he was like just
before kovat it was like starting to be like
Some cool new restaurants and like really coming back then kovat kind of nailed
it down again
And now it's I think back back going back up again. They have some cool stuff
in there
I mean, there's there's a bunch of companies that are like proudly like made in
detroit
Underrated pizza. Yeah, detroit pizza. Oh, really square. Yeah, it's really
good square
Interesting. Yeah crispy like on every bite every slice. Oh, okay, because it's
not thick crust square
It's like that thin crust square. It's really good. Isn't it funny that we want
it in a circle. I want it in a circle. Why?
I don't know. Odd. It's weird
You get committed to it. It's like we don't get committed to that with a
sandwich
Like if I go to a jewish deli and I get a square sandwich, I don't say no
I want it like a hoagie. Yeah. I want it to look like a submarine. Doesn't look
right. Right, you know like no one cares
No one cares the shape. No, but it's a really good sandwich
But some people do like if you give them a cheeseburger, but it's on bread.
They're like, what is this?
Square bullshit. I want a round bun motherfucker. Yeah, on rye bread. Yeah,
what is this?
Rye bread is for pastrami. Don't give me rye bread with a fucking cheeseburger
you communist. Is my name Ruben?
Then why you give me something like looks like a fucking Ruben? Yeah, what is
this?
I give you buy an italian sandwich
It has to come on a big old fucking hoagie roll a ciabatta
You know one of those big fucking seated. Yeah, that's what you want all bread
It's weird that we want our pizza to only be certain
And then what's weird too is you're not eating it in the round version, right?
You're eating it in this weird triangle, right?
You're eating just an edge of round that edge could be you know
I've seen that deeply disturbs me. Oh, no when people take a circular pizza
And then they chop it up into a bunch of squares. I'm like, what have you done?
No, that's the Ohio style
Is that what it is? Really?
Or pub style
So you split it up a lot?
Yeah, that makes kind of sense, but not for
You bring one pizza into the bar and now fucking ten people can get a bite as
opposed to
I guess the only other way is to make slices like that thin
Like real thin like long, but that's not fun
We also have edge-to-edge toppings
How many pizzas has Dave Portnoy sold if you really stop and think about it?
A lot
Dave Portnoy is probably responsible for more pizza sales in this country than
any other living human being
Yeah, probably
Yeah, because I watch his pizza reviews. I want to go get a pizza
He gives it to be honest
Yeah, oh, he's very good at it. Yeah
I mean, he really loves pizza too. Like you could tell like this is a
He's not making any money off of that. No, he's really not. No, it's just like
some people labor of love
He likes it. It's fun for him and it's become a thing and he gets in arguments
with pizza places
Sometimes like they yell at them. Yeah, I can't film in here. They throw shit
at them. It's like really kind of crazy
That's so great
But I've I've gone to places because he recommended him
Like if I'm I find out that I'm in a town and I know that there's pizza there.
I'm like, what does Portnoy think?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want a local rec?
It's always better. No one's done that with anything else
Like what other celebrity has done that with any other kind of food where they
go places and review it?
There's a guy in New York not a celebrity
But he was his goal was to search out every single slice in New York. It took
him years and then named the best ones
Boy, how would you know? How are you gonna compare a slice to a slice you had a
year ago?
It's right. I guess you gotta write. Yeah, you really gotta know how you gonna
know
You can instantly go. No, but yeah, anything that's good. You got to go back
and forth plus. It's a super subjective
Obviously, yeah, you got to go cheese
No, you gotta pick her cheese the cheese, right? It has to be just plain cheese
pizza, which is a classic
It's so good. I mean other pizzas are great, but man a really good plain cheese
pizza is fucking phenomenal
Yeah, especially if it's done well
Fresh out here's the secret to if you're in New York underrated tip. I told ruddy
this he's going to New York
Fat guy, so he's gonna want to like get some tips
I was like no matter what you were gonna get just say do you have anything
fresh coming out?
And they say it's gonna be like 10 more minutes. So it's okay
I'll wait
That's like when you go to Krispy Kreme and they got the serve the hot donuts
where they're coming out hot
Lights on with that lights on if i'm thinking about having it when I used to
live in la
Yeah, there was a Krispy Kreme down the street like it was on the way home
And if I drive by if that fucking hot the hot light was on i'm like i'm pulling
it
I'm getting a hot one so much better than warmed up
It's so much better
Like when they come right out in the glazed ones that are coming right out hot
the planes they just dissolve in your mouth
Right there. Oh
Good for you. Oh, yeah, it's better than better than vitamins
Look at that it uh cures diabetes you have all dough and you're like let's put
with sugar in it like let's put sugar on top
Let's fully overwhelm your system. I remember I would eat them then I'd go back
to my house and I'd go. What was what's wrong with you?
What's
The fuck is wrong with you? We've all been there you fucking idiot. What's
wrong with you?
I feel so bad because I would eat like a half a dozen too. I'd eat like six
donuts
I'd get uh
I'd always buy like a box and I'd eat half the box. I'd buy like a box of a
dozen and I'd buy like
Chocolate cream filled and all the different ones and I eat like six of them in
my car right away home
And then I'd get home and I'm like
Just poison an adult has learned nothing about his body
39 years old
sitting on the couch
When you have that after 23 years old you're like what you're hurting like I
just have to let this pass
I have to just like for an hour
You're like what a fucking loser. You're not a fucking loser. Yeah, you ate
yourself into feeling bad. I do that all the time
Drinking I get it sneaks up on you. I eat when if I go to new york every time I
go to new york
I eat myself into a coma
I eat myself way too
Just way too fat. I get hurtning like where my stomach stretched out so much it
hurts
Because I've got so much food in there. I really can't fit any more food and I
look pregnant my stomach sticks out
You got burnt belly. Oh, it looks so awful and it's all swollen and bloated
because it's all the
Pasta and bread. It's all the water and the wine. It's making it expand. You
can't even think straight
Your body's like bring everything into the stomach right now. Yeah, you have no
like if I had to pass a spelling bee
I'm fucked my IQ dips by like 40 points
Yeah, it's it's terrible. I'm a glutton too. I'm a I have a real problem with
like volume
I just when I start eating I'm like a dog. I just keep eating. I just can't
stop
Like I'm good at not eating like I can not eat for like 12 16 hours
But when I sit down for a meal I just or when i'm ordering I think it comes
from being poor when I was a kid, too
So it's like there's something about like wanting
Everything I want it all I want steak I want pasta I want this I want that with
that
And then after like you never learn you fucking idiot
Yeah, you're like you're like i've had about enough and then you're like one
more bite and then you're like
And now if we're talking like i'm gonna eat like two more full plates worth as
we're talking
I remember we were in atlanta once this has happened more than once
But this one lady in atlanta was like almost arguing with me too much food.
Yeah, we went to a diner in atlanta after our show
And this I ordered two things
I ordered like meatloaf and I ordered a steak and she's like, oh, honey, that's
too much food
I go. No, it's not I go. I'm gonna eat it all and she's like that is too much
food
I go, you don't know you don't know me. You don't know you you don't know me I
can consume
I will consume all of this. This is not I need this
Yeah, when it's time for you to eat you eat especially also after shows dude.
Oh god
You do fucking long ass shows. I brought you and goldie once a hot dog
I was just like there was
I was doing the early days of yours not early but like mid-level days and then
high level days
So I remember having more access than anyone could really get anymore. Oh, yeah,
you were behind me in the
When the camera was on you and Duncan so you guys made out
We were bored they timed it so we noticed that we noticed the camera was
sitting right behind you
So the way they could see the monitor so they were sitting behind me so they
knew what the camera was capturing
So we're on that camera that guy's so they waited and then
It's got it right here and in the middle so there's the camera's on you guys
Frosty died
Oh my god, this is the early early days. This is probably like 2002 or
something like that. That was way back in the day
First, so first we're giving out on so Duncan was being accused of being an Illuminati
a lot then
So he goes oh there's a camera. I mean, I gotta do this thing. He goes what it
goes. It's just to stoke the flames
So we'll just do this. We'll do triangles at some point. We made a big triangle
with both our hands
And then I think he said it. I don't know it doesn't matter one of us said it
the other reacted
Oh, hey next time we got a kiss and I was like
Fuck yes
God damn it. Yeah, you're right. We do
It was like this is gonna be awful, but you have to
I didn't know about it till after it was over
People like your friends were kissing on camera
And I just I literally couldn't breathe. I was like, oh my god
Oh my god, I go show it to me show it to me
I like made the guys in the truck show me the video of it. I'm like, oh my god,
this is so funny
There was also like a wrestling moment or it was there was a lot of wrestling
in that fight if I remember right
It's a long time ago, but there was a blog saying from like a an mma blog. It's
like two bored bearded dudes make out
during a UFC fight
Like a comic a camera on you and we're like, let's go we gotta do something
especially like you have six hours six hours of fights
So there's all this time to think and they're not all exciting
Some of them are fucking boring and when they're boring you gotta come up with
different ways to entertain yourself
Yeah, what you gonna do?
It was so fun
You could see the one that was on it. So like when those fighters are in front
of us
I'm gonna fix this
Like it wants to work. It wants to work
How does this one work?
Those are fun times
That was back when the UFC was like no one was watching anyway
You could just do whatever the weigh-ins was the best
We had a weigh-in in florida and it was just like only the camps kind of came
in
And the tap out guys rest in peace
They'd come in there. Well, just one rest in peace. Yeah live well
But it was just like you'd be in there and I remember once you were like, hey,
all right, maybe i'll call you up to wait
And you could you just could you're like you want to go now? All right
It was like there was no real rules that it was pretty pretty wild. No one knew
what was going on. Ari Shafir
And you just walk out
Yeah, you could do anything back then and that was also a real weigh-in
That was when the guys actually would get on the scale now. It's a ceremonial
way. Oh, really?
Yeah, because now the they weigh in in advance because they want to give them
more time to recover. Oh, right
The whole thing's gross. They shouldn't be weighing in and they shouldn't be
cutting weight. That's a casual fan
It's the most obvious one make them weigh in at the event. It's crazy. I mean
we've had long discussions
I had a discussion recently with hunter campbell where we're trying to figure
out a way
To blow up all the weight classes and make people fight out what their actual
weight is
But you would have to like show up in camp like you know get to the right exact
right weight weigh them pound or two below to for safety
But it would have to be random like they couldn't know you were coming
Oh, like the whole way through it has to be at that weight. Just show up. What
do you weigh get on the scale?
185 bro, you're supposed to be fighting at 155. How the fuck are you 185?
It's done because you're not actually
You're you're it's like having field goals decide like an nfl game. It's like
this is not there's like a minor part of the sport
Right, so that's like you're having a 185 or finding a fight against a 160
pound
So you're not actually saying who's best at your class in the elite levels.
They're all doing it
So it's everybody's cheating. It's sanctioned cheating. It's not cheating
because it's legal
But it's rewarding guys who know how to cut better than guys who don't and as a
casual fan
That's not what we're into. It's also very biological
So some people can cut weight very easily and some people it's a fucking grind
and it's way more of a grind for women
Women hold on to that water weight a lot harder than men do
So when a woman has to lose like a woman has to cut like 20 pounds
Yeah, man, they cut weight, but apparently it's way more brutal for them.
Interesting. Yeah, it's fucking terrible
They should they should it should have never been in there in the first place
and they should figure out a way to get it
What do they do in high school wrestling when people fight at like 112?
That's just your weight or do you weigh in the day right the way in the day up,
but it's still you're still cutting weight
I I weighed I used to wrestle at 128 and then a 28 grown man. I mean a high
school. Okay, and then
134 and then I because I couldn't really make 128 anymore and then when I
started fighting in taekwondo
I fought my first fights were at 140. That was when I was like 15 16 and then
by my last fight at 140
I was 17 and I was not 140 and I was starving myself
And I was cutting a bunch of water weight and then I would fight dehydrated
like fighter
But I only did it one year. I only did it one year and then I went up to 155
Which was much better that was easy because I didn't have to cut any weight and
I was way better then
But that thing where they do in wrestling, you're not getting hit in the head
in wrestling, right?
So it will deplete you and so you have to make a decision like muscles
How much am I going to be depleted and want to be the the size bully and have a
bigger frame and utilize it?
But have depleted performance like how much how good a shape would I have to be
in where that depletion?
Only takes out a certain percentage of my ability and so it's like this
calculated thing like kurt angle
For instance kurt angle when he was olympic gold medalist. He didn't cut any
weight
And he was a phenomenal wrestler kurt angle was a fucking monster and he was
beating guys way bigger than him
But he had so much energy because he didn't cut weight
And so he was wrestling against guys that did cut weight and he was dominating
him
Yeah, because he was full strength. But they were bigger than him
They were bigger than him, but he had incredible skill
Also strong as fuck anyway, and had no depletion of his resources like his body
was working at full capacity
It's like Greg Fitzsimmons in the prime. He would just fight anybody
He would just fight anybody. Oh tiny little man fight anybody
He got attacked on stage at stitches and uh, the guy got a rush attacked him
and they they fucking some brawl broke out
And they the bouncers got in they take the guy away and then greg gets on the
microphone didn't even in the show
Gets on the microphone. He goes anybody else wants some of this?
It was great. He finished his set wow he finished great composure kept it
together finished his set
Fucking fun dude. Wow
Yeah, but they should they they really should ban
Weight cutting, but the only way they're really ever going to be able to do
that is to make more weight classes. There's not enough weight classes
And those then you'll have the what I don't understand
I think boxing has the box you have don't you have 18 weight?
Yeah, don't you have like some like who cares weight classes?
Yeah, so there's sort of and if you really want to get known you got to move up
or down to like one of the majors
Well, you know, it's weird like 160 is a huge weight class 147
welterweight huge weight class big giant fights
cruiserweight
which is like
Between light heavyweight and heavyweight no one gives a fuck about wow why it's
weird
It's just weird like nobody gives a shit about the cruiserweight champion
Like usick before he became the heavyweight champion was the cruiserweight
champion
And people cared about him just because he was so skillful, but he had to go up
to heavyweight before people cared
But if he was a light heavyweight, he would have been huge
It's weird
Very weird, but I think boxing how many weight classes is boxing and
professional boxing?
I want to say there's 18
Whereas in the UFC, there's only eight
It's a big difference. It's a big difference
You can and you can follow champions better. Yeah, but it's also it's like when
mighty mouse came in it was like
You have this dominant guy coming in uh-huh to to really launch the weight
class
But people like we don't know this weight class
So we're less interested in you that we should be well then people have a thing
about tiny people
They look at a small guy who's like 5'3 and weighs 125 pounds. They're like,
nah
17 here
17 red Ben said the 135ers and 125ers they should have to come into the octagon
on little mini horses and
Right around a couple times
It's so rude
And so what was also interesting is like flyweight women like valentina shevchenko
It's one of the premier weight classes in the women's division because that's
heavy
For a woman. It's like normal size 125 is like a normal weight. It's like a man
fighting at 160 or you know 170. It's normal
Weird yeah, it's weird, but there's not enough weight classes and they should
have fixed that a long time ago
There's there's giant gaps like the gap between 185 which is uh middleweight
and then 205 which is light heavyweight
That's crazy big one. It's a giant leap and then everything else
Well, not even that's what's even stupider. Yeah, you get to weight heavyweight
at 265. That's the cutoff for heavyweight
So you have to weigh 265 or under that's my favorite weigh-ins because they're
still wearing their jeans
Like they don't really they're like i'm inside a range. Yeah, they don't give a
fuck but the
So ceremonial weigh-ins is what we have now
So when someone weighs in now they've already weighed in in the morning in an
official scale in front of you know
Doctors and state reps they give them a chance to come back the athletic
commission checks them out
And so then they just suck a bunch of water down and electrolytes and they
slowly rehydrate over the four or five hours
Yeah
They have to do it slowly. The science is so crazy behind it. Heavyweight
division is older than the united states. Wow
Officially 1738 whoa
Weighing as much as they want. Whoa. Is that real?
So heavyweight was way they weighed 160 plus
Since the division is no way 60 plus. Yeah, people were tiny. Oh, yeah
You know rocky marciano was like one of the great heavyweights of all time.
Yeah, he weighed 185 pounds
So rocky marciano the heavyweight champion of the world one of the greatest of
all time weighed 15 pounds less than me
Wow
Yeah, and then nuts. It's so different if you ever look back at a fat guy from
like chris farley types
Whatever you're like, you're not even you're just a little big. Yeah, it's like
you're like steve simone body
Look at these guys back then when they wore diapers and shit like what's that?
What are you wearing?
What's that thing around your waist? What is that?
It's a wave of blood and they all fought bare knuckle back then too quick
fights
Well, they just broke their hands a lot
They had a they threw a lot of punches to the body back then because they didn't
want to break their hands on people's heads
That was the biggest defense back then the brian dennehy thing
Yeah, and make a puncher on the head and breaks lower your head and then they
all boxed like this too
Well, they would throw their knuckles out like that
Wow, because if you just blast someone you could blast someone like that if you
have gloves on and hand wraps
The stockton slap would have gone a long way back then. Oh, yeah, they would
have been legendary
slapped them
Yeah, it's uh
It's funny how things change and then how they go back to it because now bare
knuckle boxing is making a huge comeback
Sees chess boxing. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, it's ridiculous
It's beat the shit out of each other and then play five minutes
If you're a good boxer like you have a massive advantage the guy just got a concussion
He doesn't even know what the knight does. He's like, uh, like you can't move
that
I'm like, uh, fuck. I wonder whose idea that was what kind of fucking
psychopath who wants to combine those things. Yeah
You'd have to be people that aren't that good at boxing and aren't that good at
chess
Because if somebody flatlines you and sends you to the hospital, you're not
playing chess afterwards
Yeah
So it has to be people that kind of suck at boxing kind of suck at boxing
because if you really like Mike Tyson somebody
You fucking kale and they have to get carried out in a stretcher
Well, then you by fault one by default won the chest as well because they can't
even play
Yeah, just dusty boards. You have to take them to the hospital. How are they
gonna play chess?
I don't even understand the rules there. You have to have a minimum of 1800 in
chess to be a competitor. What is that?
What's 1800? I would imagine pretty good. Is that a score? What does that mean?
There's scores in chess?
Like a golf handicap. Yeah, it's something like that. Wow. So what is like Magnus
Carlsen the guy that was on the podcast?
What does he have? What's his rating?
Let's see. I'll just type this. He plays poker too. Does he?
He'd be in the top five to ten percent of players. Super smart dude. Yeah,
super smart. He's a math guy.
He's one of those dudes you talk to him like there's some guys you talk to him
like oh, there's a lot working on behind those eyes
So if you were high around that guy, you'd probably get weirded out. You read
my soul. You're an alien. He's a 2840.
Wow, way better. Jesus. What is the highest ranked chess player alive today?
Good question, Joe.
I think that'd be him. Thank you. That'd be him. Oh really?
Yeah, he peaked at 2882 the highest in history. That's crazy. That is crazy.
Wow. What about that schizo Jew turned Arab whatever his name is? Which guy?
The fucking boy. The boy who went schizo. Schizo Jew turned Arab. Yeah. Wasn't
there some-- Bobby Fischer, are you talking about? Bobby Fischer, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had to translate it. Oh yeah, he became like very anti-semitic, right? I don't
know.
Very close. 2785.
So Magnus is better than him? Yeah, I mean if Magnus is the best ever. Yeah,
Magnus is the best ever.
That's ever. Oh, okay. He's a fucking super genius. So what happened with Bobby
Fischer?
This actually has him rated maybe one point below Magnus' peak. 2881. One-year
performance it says.
Bobby Fischer? Yeah, it's based off of like who you're playing, when you're
playing them,
and how good they were at the time. Oh, right. It's like golf. It's like who's
in the tournament.
Yeah. Yeah, but that happens like Poole has ratings. They have a Fargo rating,
and they also do it per game.
Like there's this guy, he just died recently, Chang Jung Lin, and he's this
dude from Taiwan, and he played at a thousand.
A thousand was his for one game. He couldn't get a game. Not for one game,
excuse me, for like one match.
What would he have to give? To you or to me? Oh, it would be pointless. He'd
just destroy us.
Just as soon as you, he never missed. That means he played. He'd be like, make
a ball and you win?
There's another guy, this guy who's also from Taiwan, Ko Ping Chung, and he
played an entire match where he never missed a ball.
He won 11 to nothing against another world-class player. Who didn't get, who
lost a coin flip to start.
Yeah, he lost their lag. The lag, and I think...
That's it, the guy didn't touch the cue.
He broke and left a long shot on the one ball, and the guy missed that, and he
never made a ball.
He didn't make one ball. The entire, there was a couple times...
And winner goes first, winner goes first, yeah.
There was a couple times, winner breaks, so every time he broke, and he was
making the one ball on the side, like every game.
And every time he didn't have a shot, he would just play a lock-up safety, and
the guy would kick, and then leave a shot, and then he would run out again.
He just got in the zone, so he played at a 1000 Fargo for the entire match.
That's crazy. That means he never missed a ball on four-inch pockets.
Oh, really? Tiny little pockets.
There's people that are like...
It's amazing how big pool is, too, across the world, and billiards, too.
Oh, yeah. In Asia, it's huge.
In Asia, it's huge.
Do you find people with just an overhang, just so it doesn't get wet, and they're
all out there playing, and just like flip-flops, and...
Well, we're losing a lot of the top Taiwanese and Chinese players to a game
that they play in China now, where it's like a snooker table.
It doesn't look like a pool table, like the pockets aren't cut the same way,
they're rounded, but they're playing nine ball.
And they're playing with like purses, top purses, like $600,000 for a
tournament, $700,000.
Wow.
So they're all going over there and playing in that, because you can make
millions in a year,
instead of a couple hundred grand, which is like what the best players make in
America.
That's why women were going to fucking Russia to play basketball.
All right.
Until now.
Until now.
Well, just don't bring weed, you know?
I mean, it's just... I mean, just don't bring weed.
The thing is like...
But also, I think they were all doing it.
Weed helps basketball a lot, apparently.
I'm not a basketball player, clearly.
But...
You couldn't keep score.
Me and Muggsy Bogues.
Yeah, all right, that's a good reference.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice.
But weed, apparently, is phenomenal for basketball players.
Like, they all talk about it.
Like, I've talked to basketball players about weed, they say, "I can play way
better when I'm high."
Well, they had the collective bargaining, not a late one, but like 20 years ago.
And they're like, "We can test for drugs."
But they fought back.
They go, "Not weed."
So, if you get caught with weed, sure, you can suspend us, but you can't test
for it.
Because why?
We're all doing it.
Yeah, they're all doing it, and it helps the game.
Like, it helps their feel.
It helps pool, for sure.
It helps poker, for sure, for sure.
Oh, I'd imagine you read people's tells.
Yeah.
According to World Snooker Tour figures, more than 24.5 million unique viewers
watched the third session
of the final alone in China.
And during the whole 2025 tournament, it had a cumulative audience of 180
million in national broadcasts.
To compare it, that's like an NFL playoff game.
24 million watched the finals of this.
What's, what's, it's like a billion for Super Bowl, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But like a playoff game.
Yeah.
But that's snooker, or like the English call it snooker.
So snooker is very different, and it's on a 12-foot table.
It's a huge table, and the balls are very small, and they don't have numbers on
them.
It's just like red, black, pink.
It's mostly red.
There's red that's in the stack, and then you have black, pink, brown, and I
think there's another one.
I've never played the game.
I fucked around with it when I was in Scotland.
They had a table, and I was like shooting balls on it.
It's interesting.
In Columbia, they all play this thing, and it's-
Three Cushion Billiards.
Yeah, and it's, they take their cue and move a thing over, like a squirter over,
and they keep playing and move one over.
Yeah.
And they're all playing it, and they're just kind of casual bars, but it's like
20 tables,
and they're everywhere.
And this is where there's no holes in the table, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's called Three Cushion Billiards.
I sit there and watch and drink.
It's a fun game.
I don't know how to play it really well.
Strategy.
It's a hell of a strategy.
It's really, it is definitely strategy, but it's really understanding angles.
It's understanding how to kick, and how to like, but when I say kick, what I
mean is
like go off a rail and hit another rail and then collide with the ball.
So Three Cushion Billiards is you have three balls on the table.
That's it.
And so you have the whole table.
It's like a big-ass pool table, but there's no pockets, and you have three
balls.
And so what you have to do is hit one ball, and then go three rails at least,
three cushions,
and then hit the second ball.
And then another ball.
Yes.
Wow.
But also put yourself in a position where then you can make another shot
afterwards.
Right.
Or play safety.
It's a complicated game, and it's different because it's a lot of its spin, and
the harder
you hit it, the shorter the angle is.
And if you hit it with English, it spins out wider or shorter, depending upon
what you're
trying to do with it.
And it's a, but if you get good at it, it really will help your pool game
because you'll really
have a much more deep understanding of how the ball moves around the table with
different
speed and side spin and all that kind of shit.
I've only fucked around with it, though, and not in a long time.
We had a table at Executive Billiards in White Plains.
We used to have a 1-3 cushion table that they would fuck around on.
Just play for laughs?
I couldn't do it.
I want to see the balls go away.
That's nice to hear that.
I want to see when I fire a ball in.
I want to see it go down that hole.
Bye-bye.
I want to clear it out.
I don't want balls lingering just staring at me like, "Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.
I'm still here.
Do it again."
It's funny that that became a bar sport.
Mm-hmm.
It's really just darts and that became the sports at bars.
Sure.
And the table takes up a lot more space.
That dart board, yeah.
Dart board, sure, but the pool table, you need some actual space.
Yeah.
And that space is totally not usable other than that.
That's where it is, unless a girl's dancing on it.
I went to a pool hall slash samba place in somewhere in Brazil.
What?
Pool and samba?
Yeah, it's like daily it's a pool hall, but then at night it turns into samba
and the highest
level guys come in, their capital and their music capital.
It's so fun.
But these guys don't stop playing pool.
And so everyone's dancing.
It's so packed and crowded.
Excuse me.
And you're like, the etiquette is you just know when you're in a bar.
You're like, all right, all right.
But you want to be like, bro, it's packed.
You can't play pool here.
Yeah, you can't play pool there.
But they were doing it.
Well, there's a place in the Bronx that is this Dominican pool room where they
gamble big money,
big money, and they stream some of the matches on YouTube.
And it's fucking bananas because people are just talking constantly.
They're yelling at each other in Spanish and, you know, Dominican people are
having fun.
They're having fun.
There's all these Spanish speaking and they're yelling and they're all very flamboyant
and
having a good time.
And they get people to go over there and play like pros.
And they get so rattled.
They're not used to that.
Right.
Wow.
Play on this turf.
Right.
Not only that, but the guys can play and they're accustomed to that culture.
So they're accustomed to all the yelling and all the craziness and guys
standing in front
of the hole while you're shooting at it, which is a no-no in regular pool.
Oh, that's like high school.
Yeah.
Do it then.
Do it.
They don't do it that bad.
Yeah.
It's not that bad.
But there's plenty of guys moving around the table.
They're all talking.
Everyone's yelling.
The tables next to you are yelling.
They don't care if you're betting $30,000 on a set.
Wow.
Dominicans are having so much fun, they're allowed to use the N-word.
Blacks are like, you know what?
They kind of rule.
Give it to them.
Just Dominicans.
They're dark enough.
Let it go.
Let it go.
But it's really interesting because I've watched guys who are like top pros go
over there
and fucking lose to guys that they're not supposed to lose to.
And the reason why they're losing is because they're just rattled by the
environment.
Wow.
And so what a lot of these guys will do, they'll put air pods on.
So they'll put air pods in with the noise canceling.
So they'll try to take away some of the the fucking sound and just focus.
But you're really going to be playing at like 60% of your capacity because
there's just too much
chaos going around.
If you play in a real legit pool tournament, everything's dead quiet while the
guy's down
on the ball.
And then they clap when someone makes the ball, but then he moves to the next
shot.
They stop clapping.
Yeah.
Too respectful.
Yes.
Yeah.
But not in these fucking pools.
And these guys are playing for big money.
They're playing for tens of thousands of dollars.
And they're just getting sharks and rattled.
Stealing their blood.
I watched guys like, I watched this guy Oscar Dominguez play this dude.
Oscar's a top pro.
He was on the Moscone Cup.
He was on the Moscone team for the U.S.
And he was over there playing this dude.
I was like, how did they get him to go there?
Wow.
I talked to my friend Jeremy Jones.
And rep too.
It's like the guys who do Burning Man.
The DJ's like, I'll play for free.
It's just like, it's a rep thing.
Well, I don't think it's that.
I think it's the money.
Well, Oscar loves to gamble.
And he's going to a place where someone's willing to gamble him for a lot of
money.
Wait, you say this thing about Jones.
I'm going to listen while I go to piss.
Go piss.
Go piss.
We'll pause.
We'll pause.
We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm not going to say the whole thing.
We'll pause.
We're back, folks.
We're back.
So what I was saying is my friend Jeremy Jones, who was a U.S. Open champion,
he said he went
to that pool hall once and he said, I'm never going back.
Too much.
It's too much.
Too much.
And he's also said that the neighborhood is like, things can go sideways.
Yeah.
It's a neighborhood where like, hey, you might go there three nights in a row
and you have
a good time.
Fourth night, four people get shot.
You know what I mean?
That was always the problem with underground pool.
I mean, poker rooms.
Oh, I imagine.
You play at commerce or a place like it's legit.
It's fine.
You go underground and you're like, there's a guard there.
Right.
And you're walking out with a lot of money.
I remember when you were struggling in the early days of comedy when we kind of
first met.
Yeah.
And you were making your money by winning pool tournament or poker tournaments.
Yeah.
Finishing at least.
Yeah.
You would go to these casinos and make, and you would play it like a job.
You'd be like super serious.
I've read books on it.
Yeah.
The best book.
There's tells and there's strategy.
The best.
My favorite book is this guy, Mike Caro.
It's a book called, Mike Caro's book of poker tells.
Yeah.
I managed to use one of them once in a, in a world series event.
That if it, this is the one where it goes, if someone looks at your chips, it's
because they have a killer hand and they think those chips are theirs.
And there's a, it's just like, well, you know, when you lie, you look away a
little bit.
That's like a tell.
We all kind of know.
So you look at the chips, you look at it just for a second.
You're like, cause you're like, those are mine.
You're not worried about your chips.
Cause you know, your chips are staying.
You got a full house, you know, those are safe, but you're looking at those.
Like how much of that can I extract?
So I was throwing a bluff down against a pro at the world series.
It was like, whatever.
And I, I was like, I think he must've read this book.
And so I'm banking on that.
So I'm holding my bluff.
Nothing hand.
And I just kind of do a very subtly, just do one little.
And he goes, yeah, right.
And he chucked his hand away.
Wow.
Yeah.
He thought he had me read.
But the best thing about Mike Carroll's poker tells.
You double crossed.
I double crossed.
I double crossed Joe.
Thank you for recognizing that.
I love that.
I love a double cross.
I love that.
That's so cool.
That's the cool thing about poker that it's like a lot of it's bullshit.
You're bullshitting, you know, you're bluffing.
The best thing about the poker tells is written the seventies and there's a
bunch of raced,
race based tells.
Really?
Yeah.
Like if, uh,
Which ethnicities?
All.
All of them.
If an older white man re raises you, get out.
That guy doesn't bluff.
He's just trying to play.
You know, his wife died years ago.
He's just trying to extend.
Uh, uh, they're like, if you're playing against a Mexican, find out when payday
is.
And if it was this Friday, they're bluffing.
They're just throwing in anything.
They just want to play.
They're going to part with their monies.
There's a whole thing on blacks.
I forget exactly what they were saying on that, but it was like very
interesting.
What year was this written?
I think in the seventies.
Interesting.
Back when you could be honest.
Yeah.
And he was like, I don't know.
I was telling you how to win.
It's all in the family days.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You could get away with a lot of like, honest observations about different
cultures.
Oh.
Mike Carroll's Book of Poketels.
Orientals.
Orientals.
Are either very skillful or very luck oriented.
I like it says it now, Asian Americans.
Like why, what happened to Oriental?
What happened to Oriental?
Someone told me that Oriental is like a slur now.
But it's actually the right word.
Is it?
The Orient?
It's people or goods from the Orient.
You know what the opposite is?
What?
You and I, Occidental.
People or goods from, I guess, not the Orient.
Really?
Yeah.
We're Occidentals?
Mm-hmm.
You know what's also interesting?
It's like Asian, Asian is so much of the world.
Yeah.
Like Asian includes India, which is Asian.
Nah.
If I was president, executive order.
That's no.
No.
That's not who we're talking about.
That's not who we're talking about.
Is it Pakistan in Asia?
Yeah, right.
That's Middle East.
Fuck off.
Yeah.
Fuck off.
You know, oh, Israel's also Asia, by the way.
But it's also like the Philippines is Asia.
That's Asia.
I'll give you that.
Okay, but it's way over there.
It's way over there.
And then you got China, and then you got Japan,
and then you got Korea, and South Korea, and North Korea.
Okay.
Let's be real.
China and Japan are the obvious ones.
Yes.
That's Asia.
Those are the big ones.
The further you get, the more-
Korea.
Korea's also a big one.
Korea, okay.
Vietnam, you're still in the gold.
Vietnam gets a little-
Mongolia, I don't know.
Well, they're almost Russian.
Saudi Arabia is Asia?
Fuck off.
We're talking about China and their subsidiaries.
Look how big Asia is.
Cambodia, okay, sure.
All the jungles.
Wow.
How many have I been to?
So, Russia's technically Asia?
That's Asian Russia.
Israel is the craziest one.
I would cut off right here, because it's about European Russia, too.
Oh, okay.
So, there's Asian Russia, so that would be Siberia, right?
Yeah, maybe.
The Maldives, or?
But that would be like Mongolia, for sure.
Kazakhstan is Asia.
Wow.
Yeah, but no.
Mongolia.
But a lot of the Kazakhstan guys look Asian.
True.
Like this guy, Shavkot Rogmanov, who fights in the UFC?
A Mongolian accent is crazy, because it really is.
It sounds like half Chinese, half Russian.
You know, they look Chinese speaking like the Russian accent.
Hard people, bro.
Mm-hmm.
Hard people.
Kazakhstan, India, Iran?
Iran is Asia?
Wow.
Israel's Asia.
Israel's Asia.
Israel's the edge.
Yeah, basically everything that's on the other side.
All those people are oriental.
Orientals.
I'm gonna, next time I go to Jerusalem, I'm gonna call them all orientals.
Look how close Yemen is to Ethiopia.
It feels like you could swim there.
Yeah.
If you really were motivated.
Damn.
Yeah.
If you want to, you just go to a pool also.
You don't really have to.
Hey, look where Israel, no worries.
Look where Israel is.
Matches are so interesting and see how they split shit up.
Israel's like, that's what's nuts.
You ever see the border between Egypt and Palestine?
That border's nuts.
What do you mean?
Oh my God, it's the most fortified border you've ever seen in your life.
You think the border between Israel and Palestine is rough?
Really?
Yeah, the border between Egypt and Palestine is way harder to get through.
They do not want those people in there.
They do not want those people over there.
You ever see it?
No.
Fucking rolls of barbed wire.
It's crazy.
Yeah, look at that.
What does that guy just catch a baby being thrown over?
Click on that one, please.
The one that says the Arab Weekly on the top.
Yeah, right there.
Look at that.
Look at that, bro.
Wow.
You ain't getting through that.
What a nice place to stroll for those two guys.
Just a relaxing afternoon near the Gaza wall.
Look at that.
That's crazy.
Sad times.
Oh, the saddest.
The saddest.
Peace in the Middle East.
Yeah.
Good luck.
Um, yeah.
They're all nuts.
Well, it's even more nuts now.
Look what's happening in Lebanon.
Now they're bombing Lebanon too.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Follow any of this.
Israel's bombing the shit out of southern Lebanon.
Lebanon?
Yeah, I was reading about this.
Uh, Ryan Grimm was covering this, uh, Lebanon reporter.
This reporter in Lebanon that Israel killed.
They followed her with drones.
They bombed a car in front of her.
She ran into an abandoned building and then they bombed the shit out of the
building.
And this took hours and all the while she was contacting like whoever runs
Lebanon and they
were contacting Israel and saying, hey, this is, this is a reporter.
And so then they got text messages between like she, this, someone from the IDF
had been
saying to them, we're going to kill you.
And then they got the number from her phone and contacted the person from the
IDF and they
were saying, hey, she works for Hezbollah and you know, fuck you.
And you're naive.
It's, it's crazy.
Like they're just openly killing journalists.
You know, they did a good job.
And when I was traveling is they got it more than up here is separating Israel
from Jew.
They really were like, we don't have any problem with Jews, but they would like
be very staunchly
like Israel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if you live in Israel, you have to do military service, right?
So everyone who lives in military in Israel is a part of the military in their
eyes.
Like everyone who lives in Israel has served in the military.
It's interesting though.
It's like a lot of those kids and then turned into adults are like very against
what they're
doing.
Oh yeah.
It's like an uncovered, I think, um, like part of it.
Like, yeah, we don't like this.
I mean, half this country or more even didn't vote for Trump, didn't vote for
Biden.
So they're like, well, I didn't, I don't like this.
But then you're still like, you have to like be pro everything about this thing,
even though
like you can not like certain things.
Right.
The idea that like all Israelis have a, a single hive mind.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
That's not the case in any country ever.
It's not the same in any crowd, especially a democracy.
Because Israel's like literally the only democracy over there.
Really?
Yeah.
And they have parliament too.
So there's a lot of choices.
And they're trying to like prosecute Netanyahu while all this is going on.
Who is the Israelis?
Yeah.
Wow.
I mean, this was one of the things that most people aren't aware of, but that
before October
7th, there was hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in Israel
protesting Netanyahu.
We talked about it the other day because they were trying to expand, but this
is before the
war.
Right.
Right.
So they were trying to expand what they can do in terms of like with their
constitution.
We talked about it.
What was the exact, Jamie, do you remember?
The exact thing that they were disputing over, but it was expanding the power
that the government
has.
And so people were protesting that.
And then also October 7th pops off.
Pow.
You got to support.
Yeah.
And then, you know.
So it happened here at 9/11.
It became like, if you say anything bad now, you're like a traitor instead of
just like,
well, I was already saying they have issues with police overstepping or
whatever.
You're like, but now you can't say that for about three years.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So before October 7th, Israel experienced nine months of massive sustained
protest against
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, largely driven by opposition to
proposed judicial
reforms.
These demonstrations included hundreds of thousands of participants accused the
right-wing
coalition of undermining democracy, weakening the Supreme Court, and attempting
to interfere
with Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial.
Yeah.
And so that's the same as here where it's not about like, are you pro gay
marriage or not?
Right.
Or are you pro like peace with Palestine or not?
That's just people taking power.
Right.
And so that goes beyond the right or left and just go, no, no, that's an overstep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, but anyway, it's fucked because it's not going to get any better.
It's not.
And they've destroyed Gaza.
Gaza is just a wasteland now.
I mean, someone posted recent video of Gaza, like what it looked like now, like
right now.
They sent a drone or something to get video footage of what Gaza looks like.
And it's crazy.
It's crazy.
It looks like they dropped a nuke.
They just did it slowly.
Instead of dropping one nuke, they did thousands of fucking conventional bombs
and did the kind
of destruction that a nuke would do.
It's interesting if you ask people how it's like polarizing.
Everybody got to polarize that you couldn't just be like, any suffering is
wrong.
But like, yeah, I could show you a dead baby.
And a lot of people will go, well, what?
I got to know what their last name is first before I can tell you if I feel bad
or not.
Right.
Yeah.
Instead of just like, that's, I don't know, clearly.
I know.
That's what's so dark about it.
Yeah.
That's just so dark.
And then if you talk about like what's happening in Gaza, people say, well,
October 7th shouldn't
have happened.
Like, okay, you're right.
It shouldn't have.
But guess what?
Those kids that live in Gaza, they didn't do October 7th.
They didn't do it.
So like, well, they're on their team.
It's like, ah, dude.
What we did to Iran.
What if Iran nukes New York City?
Those kids that live in the Bronx, they had nothing to do with what happened in
Iran.
So like, is that okay?
Like, what are we talking about?
It's a mess.
It's fucking nuts.
It's tribal warfare is fucking bananas and it's still going on.
Well, I was talking to people when I knew like cousins and stuff in the
military and
they had just gotten out and they were like, we're all now, this is before
October 7th.
It's a few years before, maybe 2018.
They're like, we're talking now because we have the internet now.
And we're like, this isn't sustainable and we don't want to keep doing this.
We've got to start figuring out a peace thing.
And then that's all, that's all gone now.
It's all gone.
Yeah.
Not only is it all gone, but now that they've started bombing Lebanon,
everybody's really
terrified because they're like, well, where is this going?
Because they're bombing Christian villages in Lebanon and there's video of them
destroying
these solar panels that these Christian villages have in Lebanon, where they're
just plowing
over and using like tractors to take down these solar panels.
So part of it goes to like, this isn't the military.
Like, what are you doing?
Yeah.
It still goes back to like Wesley Clark, if I got that right, where they're
like the seven
countries and Iran was on there and we just hadn't gotten there yet.
Oh yeah.
But that was always like, that's not a new thing that was just in the works for
a couple of decades.
Just waiting for the time is right.
Yeah.
They wanted to do it within five years.
It took 25.
It took long.
Yeah.
The Wesley Clark thing is funny because, you know, Dave Smith had a debate with
Coleman
Hughes about that and Coleman Hughes is like, but Wesley Clark never said he
read the memo.
He said someone told him about the memo because any historian would not even be
able to use that.
Oh, I thought they said they had this.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think so.
I think the way Coleman was describing it, but the reality is, okay.
Yeah, you might be right.
Maybe because he hadn't read it, any historian would not have been able to use
it in the book.
But the fact that it all took place exactly how the memo stated, that seems
relevant.
And that came out before.
So you're like, hey, we're going to Iran soon.
And then it's like, they did Syria.
They kept trying.
Syria was the best to me because when Obama was doing it, and I don't care who's
in charge,
they're all doing the same shit to me.
But they go, we got to go in there to overthrow this dictator.
And then people would just come off the whole like Middle Eastern war.
Like, no, we're done.
And so they couldn't justify it.
And then they go, hey, this is insurgent
group and they're going to get out of hand.
We got to go in and control them.
And then it's like, wait, you want to go fight the guy who was fighting against
Assad?
And then that ended and they go, no, we got to take down Assad.
And it's like, you really seem like you guys want to go into Syria looking for
any sort of excuse.
It's all crazy politics is stupid.
Let's move on.
It's just evil.
It is gross.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Your perspective is probably the healthiest.
Just stay out of it.
Stay out of it.
Leave me alone.
Fuck you.
Live my life.
But the thing is like, some of it does affect your life.
Like this psychedelic drugs thing.
So in that moment where you got fucking maybe hopefully shrooms legalized, you
know, in an
ideal world is a very rare case of someone who can actually accomplish change.
You are a higher level than most people in terms of influence, both personally
and like broadly.
But also the individual, like him, like most people wouldn't do it that way.
Like if I was friends with Obama, there's not a fucking chance in hell I could
have gone
to Obama and say, hey, dude, you know what would be cool?
If you got Ibogaine legalized, it would keep all these people that are addicted.
He could have done that decades ago.
Everyone could have done that.
They've known about Ibogaine forever.
And they've also known about the pill crisis forever.
So all this stuff was common knowledge amongst plenty of people.
Yeah.
I mean, John Hopkins has been doing these studies.
John Hopkins has a playlist for shrooms and MDMA.
They make a playlist for you.
They do?
That you can like, this is a good MDMA or shrooms, I forget which one, shrooms
playlist.
Is it like John Hopkins like sanctioned it or someone who-
Yeah, no, someone who works there.
No, no, no, a professor or something like that in the research they're doing.
In the psilocybin research.
It was all psilocybin, right?
And not Molly.
I think, yeah.
John Hopkins was all psilocybin research.
Yeah, they all kind of led the way.
They have a playlist that you can get.
It's on Spotify or whatever.
These people have been aware of it for so long.
You know, inside the John Hopkins psilocybin playlist.
Wow.
This is 2020.
Dude, I'm always amazed when my memory turns out to not be false.
Look at that guy.
He looks like he's tripping.
He looks like he tripped.
He looks like an old dude who's tripped balls.
Just hug people.
Look at his smile.
Bill Richards.
That guy's not working for an insurance company.
No.
Loosing his tie.
Yeah.
Bill Richards.
Look, he's tripped.
Psychologist and researcher.
They should put researcher in quotes.
Psychologist, researcher, and former dead head.
I think of it as a non-verbal support system, sort of like a net for a trapeze
artist.
If all's going well, you're not even aware the net is there.
You don't even hear the music.
But if you start getting anxious or if you need it, it's immediately there to
provide a structure.
Oh, Bill, you trip hard.
When I was doing ayahuasca, this guy was like, this shaman guy was like beating
a drum very lightly.
And when you come out of it, whatever, the slow like, boom, boom, boom, it
would kind
of like pull you back into it.
Mmm.
Seven hour and 40 minute playlist.
Boy, those guys go hard.
They make sure.
Put that on loop.
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Hey, don't do that.
Don't give me sorrowful songs while I'm tripping.
You trying to have a bad time?
Yeah, I want to hear.
I want to hear beautiful music.
Think about your grandmother's death.
No, not grandma.
People always ask me about mushrooms.
Like, is it going to be this emotional, like spiritual thing?
I'm like, if that gets hyped more, you're going to laugh with your friends.
Yeah.
That's the main thing.
There's going to be, I mean, it depends on the dose, right?
Like a heavy dose will bring you to a very strange place.
Dude, I had a, especially with your eyes closed.
Mushroom trip of all time, on this trip.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Of all time.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe, maybe the first one.
The Muhammad Ali of mushroom trips.
Yeah, and it wasn't like it was crazy hard.
It was just, they were fresh.
And it was just like the thoughts.
And it was just in places where nobody really gave a fuck.
So you didn't feel like you're like a drug addict.
And just like, yeah, just seeing everything so clear.
Mushrooms fucking rule.
You just see everything so clear.
It kills the you in your brain.
Well, it kills the bullshit part.
Yeah, and so you go like, look at this behavior.
And it's same as analyzing someone else's behavior or your own.
There's the same.
That's a part of one of the problems that comes with living a stressful life.
Is you get really wrapped up in yourself.
Like you're managing yourself.
You're managing your thoughts.
You're managing your whatever you're trying to do.
And you think so much about you that a thing like that can take you out of that.
And you go, oh, what am I wasting my thoughts on this for?
Why am I wasting my energy on this?
It's so pointless.
It's not helping me at all.
And you see people.
Yeah.
I saw my father for like who he really is now.
Just like a loving, caring granddad.
And you're like, oh, what a fucking cool guy that I always saw as like this guy
I grew up with.
And then just like, man.
Yeah.
And just like realizing like I'm doing the same stuff he did.
Like going, you know, starting a new life.
He did the same shit coming to America.
And it's like, wow.
Look at it separately from your father.
Like that's a cool guy.
You talked about having your father come on this podcast to talk about his
experience as a Holocaust survivor.
He would.
How old is he now?
It's about to be 90.
Wow.
Still with it though.
He's not like a feeble.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Would he do it?
He would do it.
He loves getting the word out.
How old was he when he was in the camps?
Young.
Single digits.
Wow.
And maybe up to, I think maybe released at 12.
Yeah.
He would do it.
He would love it because he works at the Holocaust Memorial as a docent or
something.
And he has a tattoo and everything.
Does he have a tattoo?
I don't think so.
No.
He wasn't in a death camp.
He was in a work camp.
Oh.
His, I believe, this is all, I believe his, my grandfather, his dad was in, was
liberated from
a death camp.
But yeah, you should talk to him.
He would actually love it.
He loved getting the word out.
I've seen him make speeches before.
And there's all these inner city kids from like Kansas city, you know?
And then when they hear him talk, it's just this moment.
You realize like, oh, this isn't a story.
This is like his life.
Yeah.
It's a real thing.
Yeah.
Like a till of the hunt.
And you're like, that seems like a fictional character.
Yeah.
Cause they're so removed from it.
And this is just at the borderline of that dude.
He would, he would.
Yeah.
You should do it.
I would do it.
I'd love to have him on.
Talk to him.
It's, um, it's a weird time with, uh, with anything that has anything to do
with
people being Jewish because they conflate Jewish people with the Israeli
government.
The Netanyahu government and what they're doing in Gaza and what they're doing
all the
other places.
And it's also, it's like, there's a weird time now where people, people are
enjoying
questioning the numbers of people that died in the Holocaust.
It's an internet retarded.
It's just kind of like, but just like, but there is some weirdness to it.
And one of the weirdness to it is like, there's some photos of like Auschwitz
and a lot of these
other that they took after the camps were liberated and they had people go
there and they took photos
of them a lot like pretending that these people were at the camps and they
weren't.
They were done after the fact.
Yeah.
But there's also tons of videos.
It's like, what are you hoping for?
It was only one million?
Right.
So that's okay.
Somehow you want to justify it in your head.
Yeah.
It's that's where it's weird.
I don't know.
But it's 600 people.
I'd be like, right.
Well, it's, it's clearly there was a lot of people.
It was, I don't know what the number is, but if it was 6 million or if it was 1
million
or 3 million, it's like to catch people like, no, no, you, you guys said it was
six.
And then the thing is like, it's the 30s and 40s.
So it's like, I don't know how we're guessing.
We don't have the, we don't have the wherewithal.
And you asked somebody in the Holocaust, they go, well, I was only in my one
camp.
I can't tell you what was going on in Bergen-Belsen.
But there's people that are like equally sure that it was 6 million.
And then there's people that are equally sure that it was like 300,000 or 600,000
or whatever
the fuck they think it was.
And it's like this weird argument back and forth.
I mean, you have to see how many Jews were in Europe before and after.
Right.
And there should be more.
It's funny.
You see, like, if you have a stat like that, like separated from this, like in,
uh, as in
Peru, we were hiking to Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu.
Me and O'Neill.
Oh, we got to talk about that.
And, and, uh, and they're like, it's fucking pouring rain and everybody there,
they're not
liberal or conservative.
They just go, it's been raining earlier than it should be.
And they don't know about the word climate change.
They just go, we're told November 1st is when you plant.
After that, you're in a risk.
Now this is mid October and I don't, I don't know what's up.
Well, there's going to be climate change, whether human beings are here or not.
That's the reality of the earth.
The earth's temperature and climate has never been static.
Right.
And the real problem with climate change is not recognizing that human beings
are having
an adverse effect on the planet, because we certainly are in terms of pollution
and particulate
release, but that people like Al Gore and a lot of these fucking, these greenies,
they're profiting off of this concept of climate change.
And then also using it to clamp down on people's rights.
There's that too.
Like we talked about people taking money from a good cause and just like,
so it's like, for every good thing, they'll be like, somebody's going to misuse
it.
A hundred percent.
Forever gets conflated.
But then it becomes a thing where like, you know, when I had Bernie Sanders on
the podcast,
he was like talking about, I was like, and I said to him, I go, problem with
climate change
is not just that the climate is changing because it always has, but the people
are having an effect
on it because they definitely are.
But it's that there's a lot of money in this whole concept of climate change.
There's money.
There's a lot of money in this whole thing that was never done.
Fake ground landfills.
It's all landfills.
But it's better than nothing.
Like, no, it's equal to nothing.
Well, it's not only that, but you fucking made people feel like they were doing
good
by throwing their fucking water bottles in a blue thing.
It's just, it's all kind of crazy, but.
We're gross.
Yeah.
People are gross.
But it was cool to see people's perspectives that were like away from political
and just
their observations about stuff.
Like I said, things change.
Yeah.
Sub-Saharan Africa used to be lush green lands.
I mean, they find whale bones in Sub-Saharan Africa in the desert.
In the desert, they find whale skeletons in the desert way before there were
cars.
Right.
Okay.
Way before there were plastic and power plants.
So the earth's climate has never been static.
But the Machu Picchu thing is I really want to go there.
My friend, Luke Caverns, who's been on the podcast before, he's studied-
Todd's been three times.
Has he really?
But as a kid, that's what I meant.
Oh, yeah, his family.
Yeah.
So they're like, oh, it's a one hour flight from Lima.
And then just take the train.
But like, yeah, it's pretty wild.
So you're saying it wasn't even the Aztecs?
Is that what you told me?
Well, that's, yeah, that's the Incas.
Incas, Incas, Incas.
Yeah, it wasn't.
They don't think it was.
They think the initial monolithic structures were, or megalithic structures,
were an earlier,
previously unknown civilization.
Because the size and scope of their structures, the way they build it, and
Graham Hancock has
gone over this as well, is so much different than the stuff that's on top of it.
So what happens is you have this old stuff that's enormous stones that are cut
like jigsaws,
right?
Yeah.
And almost like it's melted, like the way it looks.
You can't put a piece of paper through it after 200 years of like breakdowns.
You still can't put it.
Way more than 200 years.
It's thousands of years.
But the thing that's really nutty about it is that design is because when they
have earthquakes,
that way it won't fall off, right?
It disperses the energy better as opposed to just stacking stuff on top of each
other.
That stuff falls.
But when it's all interlocked in these weird forms, like that shit.
That, yeah.
So Che Guevara talks about it a little bit where he goes, so Cusco is the gem
of South America.
It was the border of the Andes where people would come in and do trade and
everything.
And you see this and the Christians would come in, take over and build like facades
on it and put a
cross on top to be like, look what we did.
We're more dominant than these people.
And then an earthquake could come, facade would fall, and this would just
remain.
That stuff remains.
Over and over and over again.
Over and over again.
These aren't even squares.
Look at that.
It's like Tetris.
Yeah, it's so cool.
And that was on purpose.
They did that because that would survive.
But if you look at the stuff above it, that's the stuff that the Incas made.
So the Incas made this stuff was like, it's all just stacked.
It's not as sophisticated and also not as large because they didn't have the
technology.
Whatever the fuck these people had that was huge.
I mean, hundreds and thousands of tons.
I mean, these things are fucking enormous.
The really crazy one is the Lebanon ones.
In Lebanon.
I've been there.
Wait, no, I'm Jordan.
Jordan, I'm talking about is the.
So in Lebanon, they have these massive stones.
What are they called, Jamie?
The Trillathon stones.
So there's these stones that are like more than a thousand tons.
And they're like several meters above the ground place.
And then on top of them, you have these Roman structures.
Oh, right.
So if you see like there, like that click that where you had your cursor.
Town.
Yeah.
Look at the size of that guy.
Wow.
And look at the size of that stone.
And then you see the stuff on top of it is smaller.
It's not as sophisticated.
And then you had the Roman.
Now, the thing about the Romans is Romans had meticulous record keeping.
And they talked about all the construction of all the different things.
They don't even mention those stones.
So they don't mention how they mean.
No, I don't think it was them.
I think it was a previous civilization.
Look at that fucking thing.
Oh, bro.
I'm about to, you know, Nazca lines.
Yes.
Okay.
Oh yeah.
I saw them.
Oh, did you?
Yeah.
I flew over them.
Bro.
How weird is that?
They're so big.
You can't, the pictures won't do it justice because you'll see like a road.
They didn't know because from the ground level, you can't see any of it.
And so they just build these roads through the desert.
And so you can see a car sometimes like, so this for perspective and you're
like, it's
this dot on this giant monkey in the middle of a desert for however many
hundreds of years.
Yeah.
They don't even know how long they're crazy.
Weird.
And they're all like signals to something.
There's all these theories on what it is.
Something from the sky.
You have to see them from above.
You can only see them from above.
That's nuts.
Pilots would go over there and then somebody's like, what's that?
I go, oh yeah, we don't know.
We just kind of go over.
Well, they found a bunch of them now because of AI, you know, they've like
scanned the areas
and found a bunch of previously undiscovered Nazca lions.
Wow.
Yeah.
And the, the weird thing about it is that's also the place where they find
these people
with elongated skulls.
They find like these weird skulls that have additional capacity.
So they have like 30% more capacity and they, they don't have the same lines in
their skulls
that we have.
Like when we're babies, you know, we have these, what are they called?
Different species.
Sagittal, I forget what the lines are called.
Sagittal crest.
These lines that we have in our skull, you know, like your skulls, not just one
piece,
right?
It's like, there's a bunch of pieces.
The anchors used to tie them off so they get longer as a sign of like.
Yeah.
But some of these skulls don't have the same structure as ours.
They're human skulls, but they're longer.
They have more capacity of the 30% larger capacity and they don't have those
lines that we have.
So it's like, what was that?
Were there different kinds of humans back then?
They died out.
Were they flying around?
Were they flying around and making these fucking structures?
Were they responsible for Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu and all these other
places?
And they just died off and all we have left is like some skulls that we can't
totally explain?
We don't have the means to explain it yet.
Right.
Because if it was 20,000 years ago or 30,000 years ago or whatever it was that
these people
were ruling back then, what would be left?
Fucking nothing.
Nothing.
Very little.
I mean, you look at Angkor Wat where it's like.
That's crazy.
Yeah, if you didn't see it.
It's shocking.
Any of it remained.
Yeah.
Well, Angkor Wat's crazy.
And how about that other one in India where the entire temple is carved out of
one stone?
Or the one in Jordan.
What is it?
What is those?
The Indiana Jones one.
What's that called?
That's where I went with my brother.
Yeah.
What is that called?
What is it, Jimmy?
Petra.
Petra.
It's nuts.
You come through this canyon and it's just in a mountain.
A giant three-story temple that is just carved out of the mountain.
It wasn't added to.
Right.
And where's the stone?
Where'd you put the stones?
What'd you do?
That view.
Coming out of the middle one.
Coming out of that cavern and seeing it after about an hour hike.
That's crazy.
It doesn't even.
You have to see a human.
See how small that person is in the middle?
That is so crazy.
So like, what?
Right.
Have you ever heard of Darren Cuyu?
No.
In Turkey?
Uh-uh.
This is crazy.
You want to hear this one?
It's a place or a person?
It's a place.
So, um, I think they found this because someone was doing like construction on
a house.
Yeah.
And they found a path.
Oh, so this is what it was.
So a guy kept losing his chickens.
They would go through a hole and they would never come out.
So this guy was like, well, where the fuck are these chickens going?
So they broke down the wall to figure out where the chickens go.
And they found an underground city that can hold 20,000 people.
Turkey?
With many, many levels.
Wow.
Like many levels deep into the ground.
Wow.
It's fucking bananas.
It's like an anthill.
Yes.
I watched a documentary.
Now you see.
Wow.
Now you see where you, uh, could you please go back to that one image with the
houses?
Yeah.
Like that.
Like, so this guy, it was like behind a fucking wall in the house.
So these chickens would go into the hole and they would just disappear.
So it's like, where's my fucking chickens?
So the guy starts digging around to try to figure out where the chickens go and
they found this.
And I want to say they found this in like the 20th century.
I think it was the 20s I just saw.
1920s?
Like 29 maybe?
Wow.
So no, they forgot about it?
Nobody knew about it.
Nobody knew who made it.
There was no record of it.
And it's so big it can house 20,000 people in there.
What was it for?
No one knows.
Right.
No one knows when.
No one knows who.
No one knows nothing.
There's other ones they found in China.
They found this fucking insane one in China that also has no records.
It's enormous.
Like enormous caverns with giant columns.
It's all carved out of the stone.
They moved millions of tons of rocks out of there.
No record.
No one knows where the stone went.
I'm staying with the Lacandans, Mayans, whatever.
And we were on a hike and there was this little like abandoned temple just the
size of this room.
And so the guide was like, so now there's a tunnel in here to like the main
temple.
It's about a mile and a half away.
And there's a tunnel where you can go through it.
It takes a couple hours to walk.
And he goes, you know, my brother wants, he goes, I'll never go back.
It's so frightening.
And there's fucking pumas around.
And you don't know.
Pumas in the tunnel?
Yeah.
You're like, you can't see shit.
He goes, it's a bad place.
But it's this long underground tunnel that was made however long.
What the fuck?
This is the one in China.
This is one of the caves.
So this is one of these caves in China.
By the way, no record, no historical record of when it was created or who
created it.
And this is another one that they found.
In 1992 they found it.
Four farmers and Long Yu found the caves and they drained the water from five
small ponds in their village.
The ponds turned out to be five large man-made caverns.
Further investigation revealed 19 more caverns nearby.
They've been determined to be more than 2,000 years old and their construction
is not recorded in any historical documents.
Like, look how crazy.
Please show some of those images.
Yeah, it's the only one on this page.
It's fucking bananas.
So they're just guessing that it's 2,000 years old.
They don't know.
Right, right.
They're just like-
Because there's no record.
There's no record of it.
But it's bananas.
And they've also, those carvings they think are post-
Later people.
Yeah.
That came in.
Post-discovery.
That's their way of doing-
Yeah, because you see how like those lines on the walls?
That's how everything looks.
It's just those carved straight lines.
And it looks like the other stuff was like more modern that they carved-
You think those lines are so that the erosion wouldn't hurt it as much?
I don't know.
I mean, that might have been how they did it.
They might have had some sort of a device that they carved the stone out with.
But the thing is, it's like-
Where's this on a map?
Show me where Longyu is on a map.
Yeah.
I want to visit a lot of China.
There's some a lot of places in there that I'm like don't know about.
China's a big-ass place.
Back out, back out.
China's so big.
Longyu caverns.
Keep going back.
Keep going back.
Let me see the context.
Oh my god.
That's pretty deep in there.
Yeah.
Good luck.
Good luck.
It's near Wuhan.
Look.
Yeah.
Take a train to Wuhan.
Catch a bug.
Yeah.
Go eat some armadillo.
Pangolin.
Pangolin.
That's how you got leprosy eating armadillo and pangolin.
You're really not supposed to eat those things.
Go back to the images, please.
The images are nuts, man.
It's like, what were these people doing?
Like, who made this?
I love standing in a place like that and just like you just instantly get
connected to the history of it.
Could you imagine it's 1992 and you're just draining a pond.
You're a farmer and then you drain the pond and you go, oh, there's a little
cave in here.
Hoping to find some nickels.
And you go and you see this shit.
And no one knows who made it.
And China, again, China has extensive historical records because China has
existed for thousands
and thousands of years.
It's one of the few countries that's essentially been just China for 5,000 plus
years.
Bananas, man.
Aquarium for real dragons.
Well, I mean, who made it and how did they make it?
Like, how did they do that?
And for what purpose?
How did they make that 2,000 plus years?
And by saying 2,000, it's like you're just taking a guess.
2,000 means, so there's a Joan Didion piece on El Salvador from a long time ago.
And she goes, they don't use numbers the way we use numbers.
They say 50, it means a bunch.
Oh, like 72 virgins.
Yeah, it means a bunch, an amount.
Like, bro, he went there a million times.
Tons, tons of, tons of, like, what is a ton?
Oh, bro, I smoke tons of joints.
Yeah, that's not possible.
Break it down.
So Perplexity, our AI sponsor, says no one knows for certain who created the
Longue Caves.
Archaeologists agree they are man-made and probably over 2,000 years old,
but there's no record of their builders or patrons.
That's crazy, dude.
That is so crazy.
Oh, pottery and other finds inside date roughly to the late Quinn or Western
Han period,
around 200 BCE, suggesting they were excavated at or before that time.
But the thing is, that pottery could have been someone who just left pottery
later.
It's like, if you leave behind a cell phone in Egypt and 5,000 years from now,
people say, oh, well, this is an iPhone 16.
This must be from...
But that means it has to be at least that old or older.
Yeah, at least that old or older.
Yeah.
So it's at least 2,000 plus years old.
But how crazy is that there's no known records?
Shit going quick and just bury some, like, shit from a long time ago.
Get some artifacts and just leave it in there and step away.
How much shit like that is still out there in other parts of the world where
they don't know about it?
Well, it's like this tunnel that the Mayan guy said.
He was like, yeah, no one knows or no one knows.
He goes, me and my friends know about it.
Fuck.
So it's just like everywhere.
Well, we were talking about the Aztecs, about how the Aztecs,
and this is another thing that I found out through perplexity when I was just,
I was writing this thing about Mexico and about how crazy the history of Mexico
is.
And, you know, that the Spaniards came over with essentially like 12 muskets
and took over the whole country.
But when the Aztecs were living in these temples, they didn't build them.
They called them the place where the gods were born.
So they found them.
So there's a previous civilization that like Teotihuacan and all these other
beautiful pyramids
and temples, they don't know who fucking made them, man.
So they don't know who made them.
That cave in Vietnam was found in 1991.
Oh, I saw the 60 Minutes thing on that.
Did you see that?
Look at that.
That dude from 60 Minutes, like a dude and a lady from 60 Minutes went and
visited this cave.
And I was like, that's one cool thing about something like 60 Minutes,
that they would do something like that.
Because it's a long journey.
Wow.
You have to fly in, drive a long distance, then hike a long distance.
Some of these places, nothing's there.
You can fit skyscrapers inside of these caves.
Wow.
They have their own ecosystems.
Like there's clouds in there.
It probably fucking rains inside the cave.
There's insects, there's animals that live in these caves that have over time
lost their
ability to see because they didn't need it.
So their hearing goes up, their sight goes down.
There's like bugs in like Thailand and like Sapong and places like that where
it's like,
oh yeah, these animals only exist here.
They hear you breathe.
There's a salamander in Barton Creek Springs.
Yeah, a special salamander.
Oh really?
It only lives there?
It's a hippie salamander that got mixed with weird people swimming in the creek.
Yeah.
Oh, whoa.
They survive on chicks with arm hair.
They're only able to survive here in East Austin.
Hippie menstrual cycles.
Yeah, I was doing bottom of the barrel last night and somebody brought up that
there's like,
there's nude beaches at Lake Travis.
And I'm like, what is it like?
Barton Springs.
No, no, no.
Barton's topless.
Yeah, when you take a, well, maybe.
Is it?
When you take one of those boat rides out.
Chicks, they show the-
Bro, it's noice.
Noice?
Yeah.
Noice?
It's noice.
Hippie tits?
Hippie, some of them are gross hippie tits, but some of them are like real tits,
dude.
Real ones.
Influencers go there too.
Oh, like girls who do too much ayahuasca and they wear wooden beads and they
want their tits out?
Dude, so I was in Patagonia where I was-
Hippie Hollow Park.
4.6 stars.
That's a lot.
I was asking people, it was a rafting thing and I was like, who's the worst?
I always try to do this, especially at comedy clubs too.
Who's the worst person you've ever had here?
Right.
So there's like, which country, which people are the worst?
And they go, I don't know.
I'm like, listen, I'm from Jews.
So you can, it's Jews, right?
And they go, I mean, they want freebies for sure.
But like, I was trying to get which, which country's the worst.
And he goes, well, the worst overall though, is influencers.
And they have no country, but they make everything about them.
They make you pause too long to take their shots.
They make you get out of their shot.
Oh yeah.
We're all just trying to raft.
They think they're there for them.
Yeah.
One of the influencers got arrested in Korea, Johnny Somali.
Do you know who that guy is?
He was in Korea and apparently they have some statue that is about,
I think it's something about sex slavery or something like that.
So he was like kissing the statue and being rude to people.
And they just sentenced him to, he did a bunch of shit over there.
They sentenced him to six months of hard labor in Korea.
We need some of that here for influencers.
Quit doing fucking selfie talking on the, while you're walking.
You're not a black lady.
You don't get to talk to your phone.
Black ladies get to talk to their phone?
Oh, they love speakerphone.
Why do they didn't like that?
I don't know.
It used to be a...
It's just black ladies like...
And it's like...
Why do you think they like that?
Why do they like it?
They want everyone to hear their conversation.
Maybe because their fucking nails will cut up their face if they bring it too
close?
I'm trying to think of possible reasons.
It is weird where like certain cultures gravitate towards certain behavior and
activities.
It's new racism.
It's fun because it's like, this isn't in the books.
Right.
This is a brand new observation.
Speakerphone is like...
I remember being outside of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles and saying like,
how many...
How come so many black guys are on speakerphone?
And people are like, that's racist.
I'm like, no, it's not.
No, it's a racial observation.
I'm observing.
Yeah.
I'm not mad at them.
Yeah, I don't care.
Just wondering why.
Like, why is it worse that I hear both sides of the conversation versus one
side?
Like, if someone's just talking on the phone, why is that less offensive than
someone talking
through a speakerphone?
You can observe.
Why do the Hasidic Jews always talk on flip phones all the time?
And you're like, there's something up.
Do they?
Yeah, there's some where it's like, why do the...
People used to ask me that when I would do GNAs, when I was doing the Jew Hour
building.
So they'd ask questions.
I'd ask questions.
I'd be like, ask questions.
And I'd build my material that way.
Oh, that's smart.
But one of them was like, why do they all wear matching clothes to daughters?
Or like, if one's 10, one's eight, why do they wear matching stuff?
That's the only one I couldn't figure out until I finally figured it out.
It's two-for-one sales.
United threatens to kick off passengers who don't use headphones.
Yeah, good.
Oh, well, that's because people are like listening to like loud YouTube videos
right next to you.
Bro, all over South America.
Oh, really?
It is.
Scroll Instagram videos.
Wow.
Loudly.
There's no even thought...
We were on an overnight bus once and there was a guy listening to like best
Hollywood screams.
And it was like, dude, we're sleeping.
Oh, God.
It's crazy.
They just don't do it.
And you want to be like, be quiet, but they're like, why?
It's not part of our culture.
It's like the Dominican pool hall.
Yeah, exactly.
This is how we do it.
That is used to the chaos.
It's weird that like people get used to a certain amount of chaos, you know?
And that's just normal.
Yeah.
New York is a normal jackhammer.
It's like nothing.
Yeah.
If you live in New York, you're totally accustomed to that.
Oh, that was what I wanted to send you, Jamie.
I don't know.
Maybe I did send it to you the other day about where they figured out that
there's a part of
your brain that recognizes when birds aren't chirping and you kind of freak out.
Like there should be some background noise.
Well, if the birds aren't chirping, it generally means that predators are
nearby.
Oh.
Their brain has a circuit that doesn't know you live in a city.
Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing.
Right now in this room, it's on.
The circuit predates primates.
Whoa.
Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continually as a predator detection
system
for roughly 200 million years.
Birds stop singing when something larger moves through their territory.
For most of them, a million history.
The forest full of song meant that no large predator was nearby and the cessation
of sound
was the warning.
Your nervous system never updated this software.
A loud quiet.
Yeah.
Like something's up.
Yeah.
The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants,
six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size.
Six minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same.
The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no
regular contact with nature.
The brain still ran the check.
Wow.
Listen, I'm a hippie.
I live in New York and it's like I gotta get to nature once in a while or I'll
go crazy.
That's why we have to protect the parks.
That's why we have to protect the parks.
We have to.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow we're protecting the park.
Tomorrow we are.
Yes.
It's back.
It's back.
Fucking this new guy.
Listen, I'm a one issue voter.
I'm not a voter at all.
But if I was, yeah.
And it's, it's this, we saved another park, Elizabeth Street Gardens, classical
park.
And they go, no, the other guy was like, we got to tear this down for low
income housing.
And then Lower East Side in the East Village.
That's a community oriented place.
They take care of shit on their own.
Always have.
They made the, it's a parks district because they were like, these buildings
collapsed.
And they're just like, let's build it into parks.
And then the city, when it came back, they're like, let's take those back.
They're like, no, no, no.
Fuck that.
We made these.
East River Park's massive, but Elizabeth Street Gardens is tiny.
And the other guy, the black guy, whatever his name was, Eric Adams, he goes, I'm
going
to protect that park and I'm going to protect all the parks.
Parks got nicer.
They, they redid them all and they painted all the benches.
I liked them.
And, um, and he goes, okay.
So this community goes, we will find you another place to build low income
housing.
And they did.
They had this whole platform and they go, we can do it on this block, down the
street
there and there.
It's actually more houses than you were planning on building.
Okay.
And now this fucking new guy goes, no, we're bail.
We're going to raise that to the ground.
What?
And like, no, no, we did it.
We found another place.
Mom dying?
I thought he was for the people.
They keep trying to get him to like, just say, you're going to protect it.
And he's pretty much like, I won't.
I won't.
Elizabeth Street Gardens is fucking gone.
If I have my say.
Really?
Yeah.
And I'm like, dude, come on.
You're supposed to be of the people.
Again, it's a single issue voter.
I don't know about the rest.
You got to protect that park.
So do you think that there's some sort of a financial interest?
Someone's getting, someone's always getting this.
Someone's always getting that.
But you would not think it would be him.
He's a democratic socialist.
There's a non-capitalist reason why green spaces are important.
Yeah.
It doesn't bring in money.
It's good for everybody.
They try to fuck up with this one.
Central Park.
They try to fuck this one up.
Zilker?
Yeah, with underground garages and stuff and totally redoing it.
Ew.
The people won.
So it didn't happen.
But there is a thing that helps all of our level of life, level of joy.
Well, Central Park is a genius idea.
Central Park's great.
It's a genius idea.
They would never do that now if it wasn't already done.
Yeah.
We were talking about this with Bryan Simpson.
I was like, if I lived in New York City, if something happened and I had to do
JRE from New York City,
I would have to live near the park because I would have to have my dog.
I'm not going to get rid of my dog.
Yeah.
So if I'd have to take him, I just have to like have a place where I 100% were
able to take,
I'd have a routine where I'm taking him to the park every day.
Central Park rules.
And you see somebody playing saxophone and you feel like you're in a Woody
Allen movie.
Bro, Central Park's incredible.
It's so big too.
When you stay in a hotel that like looks over the park,
you really get a sense of the scope, the size of it.
Like the scale of it is incredible.
It's so, and by the way, they would love to sell that off.
Oh yeah.
And just start stacking it up.
Make it look like China, you know, like one of those big cities that they have
over there.
You need green spaces.
They are important to our way of life.
Yeah.
It's good for your dome, obviously.
It's good for the fucking mind.
Yeah.
It's healthy.
But even Central Park, it's like, it's not as good as like real wilderness.
Yeah.
Real wilderness is better.
Central Park will buy me two days of sanity.
I got to get to the actual woods and then I get a week or two.
Central Park will balance you out.
Yeah.
It'll balance you out.
Like it's way better than no.
And it seems like people are cooler there.
Like every time I've been in Central Park, people seem like a little nicer.
Like, like if you run into people on Broadway, they don't seem as nice as
people that you run into in Central Park.
It's not this full.
Yeah.
There's also that thing with like, hey, no smoking in here.
Like, I'm really sorry.
And then you put it out and you're like, I'll light it up as soon as you're
gone.
But like, you can't smoke in Central Park?
Nothing.
Really?
You do.
But weed, but cigarettes I get more mad at.
But also like, yeah, if I got a cigar and I'm with a friend, I'm smoking.
Yeah.
Well, I could see how that would annoy people.
Sure, but also chill.
But you can walk down the street in New York and smoke a cigarette, right?
Or joint, yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
It's still weird to me when I see a black guy on a stoop rolling a joint and I'm
like,
what are you doing?
That's legal now.
You're going to go to jail.
That's right.
I know it's totally legal.
Well, now it's different nationwide because Trump just changed it to schedule
three.
Again, this is something that Obama could have done.
Biden could have done.
Clinton could have done it.
Trump one could have done it.
Yeah.
And now it's schedule three, which is still not good.
I mean, it should be just like alcohol, but at least it's getting close.
It's getting close.
Dude, I had moments out there of nature where you're in the middle of nowhere
and you really
do feel rejuvenated like that, where you're like, it's not even hiking culture.
So it's like, you're not passing anyone for hours and hours and hours.
You're at peace.
You're just at peace.
And whatever that thing is that they've just discovered about birds, there's a
similar thing
that your body recognizes when you're actually in real nature.
It feels different.
There's no cell phone signal.
You know anything about grounding?
Yes.
What's your take on it?
Well, Huberman believes it's a real thing.
And so I always trust Huberman because he's very objective about all this kind
of stuff.
Electromagnetic waves coming off the ground that you need to get in touch with.
It does feel good.
When I take the dogs out in the yard and I walk around barefoot, it feels good.
I mean, I'm just judging it based on how it makes me feel.
It's like that word tree hugger got a bad rap, but it's like, it comes from
like,
touch that, they're in the ground, so you're connected to the ground.
It probably comes from people that were tripping balls because if you're tripping
balls, those
trees hug you back.
I've been there.
Yeah.
Those trees hug you back.
They talk to you.
They're like, "Hello, Ari.
You can feel the cells."
I'm an oak tree.
I've been here for 300 years.
I've been here before this was America.
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
When I go to the mountains, especially like the elk hunting mountains,
because it's so hard to get there.
And when you get there, there's no cell phone service.
And when you're up there, you feel different.
You just feel different.
You feel better.
You really feel more relaxed.
Dude, my brain was firing in a way that it hadn't fired in so long.
It was just like all the shit holding you down just like pulled off.
And after not very much time, it was like, just thoughts.
Creative thoughts were just like pouring out of me.
So in the six months you were gone, no social media?
No social media.
I took YMH's on a piece of paper.
A couple people from YMH's emails.
I got two months ahead on my ads and my podcast on You Be Trippin'.
So I'm like, you guys are set for two months.
You don't need me.
And then after.
So did you record a bunch of episodes in advance?
A year's worth.
To release them?
Oh!
I did my work.
Oh my god.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
They're all evergreen episodes.
How did you do that?
Worked.
I, one, worked hard.
Two, loved hearing about travel.
I love it.
Right.
Like, it wasn't much work for me to come in and be like, tell me about Cambodia.
Tell me about Thailand.
Tell me about Taiwan.
Tell me about, you know, Uruguay.
Well, that's how I feel about podcasting in general.
Yeah.
You like it.
You'll have here or there, like, this guy was sucked.
I wish I should have stayed home.
But generally, like, that's really interesting.
Yeah.
So I love it.
And I just got way ahead.
It's funny when I, like, Danny Palaszczuk, I put out an episode.
He goes, did we do it like two years ago?
And I'm like, it wasn't time yet.
I don't know.
Oh, wow.
Or I'll save it for if a comic has a special.
Like, let's just record it now.
In nine months, you'll have a special.
I'll put it out there.
How many do you have banked?
Through July, still.
Whoa.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
So how many did you do a week?
Sometimes none.
Sometimes, like, six or seven.
I was very...
Oh, really?
You'd be tripping, dude.
I see every mistake I made for the Skeptic Tank, and I was like, let's avoid
that.
Like, what kind of mistakes are you making?
So, like, minimum of effort on my part, technologically.
So, YMH is my Jamie.
Right, right, right.
Here's the footage.
Handle.
By the way, settle down, 'cause they're not.
They're my version of Jamie.
This is the only...
This is the goat.
Well, I have 15 people doing one Jamie job.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Yeah.
Like, when people talk about, like, who should I hire?
I'm like, I don't know.
Well, I have one guy.
I don't know what to tell you.
You need a guy on the spectrum.
But...
Yeah.
But I did that.
I just kept recording.
Sometimes I do two a day for four straight days.
And any comic who goes, hey, I'm sorry I'm busy.
I'm like, buddy, let's reschedule.
This isn't supposed to be stressful.
Right.
Let's do it when you have time.
Right, right, right.
There's no chill.
No big deal.
That's the way to do it.
And when you're ahead, you can afford a week with nothing.
And it wasn't like, I gotta find someone.
We gotta do this now.
That's out.
Yeah.
That's out.
All the music choices they used to make.
I'm like, that's a lot of work.
Yeah.
Well, the music thing is, the problem is, like, you get flagged now.
We used to be able to play music on YouTube all the time.
And now everything gets flagged.
You gotta be real careful.
We used to play songs almost every episode.
Full song.
Yeah.
When there was nothing, when the show made zero money.
It was the wild west.
It was so fun.
You're actually making a fun thing.
It was so outlaw.
It's a little more corporate now, which is sad, but also fine.
It helps people a lot more now.
But, man, podcasting was just, do whatever the fuck you want.
Well, we were at the early, early days.
Like, when I started this thing, it was 2009.
It's almost 20 years old, which is so nuts.
Have you figured out a way to monetize it yet?
Not yet.
I'm working on it.
Okay, we'll get there.
I think I'm gonna sell rubber pussies.
You were for a bit.
Yeah.
You were for a bit.
And you're like, only sponsor, I don't need another one, we're good.
It was funny, because Sam Harris was one of his requests when he first did my
podcast.
Please don't mention pussies.
He wouldn't let me do an ad for the fleshlight.
I said, okay, okay, it doesn't matter.
It's not like it's paying a lot of money.
It was just fun, more than anything.
Yeah, but so I would wait.
So after two months, I'd go, hey, I need the next months of ads.
And I would say, one day, I would just do all the ads and the bumpers.
Like, this guy's got a new special.
Here's his tour dates.
I'd find a waterfall or something, and I'd do it in a fun place.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I'm just like, let's do it fun.
If I'm going to do remote, let's be remote.
Yeah.
Um, how did you do it?
Do you do it video as well?
Yeah, iPhone.
So, Jamie told me this a long time.
My first trip to Southeast Asia, I was like, hey, I need a pocket camera.
Like, what's the best?
And he was like, bro, you're not going to want to hear this.
It's the iPhone.
Yeah.
It's the best one.
Or a galaxy.
Yeah.
Like any modern cell phone.
It's 2017, but yeah.
Any modern cell phone, the video's fucking incredible.
Stabilizers.
Yeah, the video stabilization's amazing.
And all you do is you set it up on a little tripod and it'll go for fucking
hours.
Yeah.
So I'll, I'll, I'll put it on a tree far away.
I did one for a Danny Brown episode in, in like Sucre, Bolivia in front of the
statue
of Sucre.
Oh, wow.
And it's just like, you guys were in Bolivia.
That was everywhere.
Wow.
Dude, I was, I saw inauguration for the first president they had in 20 years.
Where?
In Sucre in Bolivia.
Whoa.
They had the old guy who was running things for 20 years.
Okay.
A crazy dude that everyone hated.
He said farming is more important than industry here.
So we should give the farmers two votes per person and the cities get one.
Now they also run the media there.
So everyone in the, in the farmlands in the, in the, you know, the heartland,
they didn't
see any of the problems.
Right.
City shit.
So they'll go, I don't know.
Everything on the radio says the guy's doing a great job.
Let's vote him in again.
He's doing great.
I've listened to the radio.
The guy's doing a great job.
And everyone in the city is like, no, no, he's lying.
So everything went to shit 20 years.
Like, well, let's turn on the radio again.
Let's turn on like Trump, Trump news and see what, what Trump is saying about
Trump.
Right.
It's going to be pretty good.
Right.
Um, oh yeah, there I am.
That's super.
Is this the video?
Uh huh.
Oh, wow.
I pretend to be talking to my cell phone because it's so embarrassing.
Wow.
So I pretend to be talking to my phone, but I just have a, a cordless
mic is Danny still sober.
I think he's back on.
We, but like, yeah, he's off.
He's off.
The alcohol was the issue.
Yeah.
Last time we did a podcast, he got obliterated.
He's, he's, he's sober.
Nice.
Yeah.
Good for him.
He's doing great.
Bolivia.
What is there?
Like there was always Bolivian marching powder.
It was what, when I was a kid, what do people would call cocaine?
Interesting.
The salt flats were really cool there.
Yeah.
Just like miles and miles of salt fields.
Ooh.
Oh, there's me and O'Neal in Peru.
Look at you guys with your stupid hats on.
Yeah.
I was just trying to find weird spots and like, I don't know.
Let's just film something.
Why were you wearing those hats?
It was Peru.
Those are the alpaca hats that keep you warm.
Oh, I went hunting.
My first time hunting, I wore those hats.
They're great.
And Steve Ranallo was saying that's a very left, left wing hat.
I'm like, why?
Why?
Why is it left wing?
It's warm.
Yeah, what?
So I don't know about your hat.
I'm like, what's wrong with my hat?
Leave it alone.
I'm about to kill something.
Steve, chill.
I'm about to murder something.
I killed that deer with that fucking my left wing hat on.
But that's all I would do.
I'd just weigh in once in a while, get my month's worth of stuff and then go
back to disappearing.
And I'm telling you, buddy, my brain was so alive.
I would just like, you just don't realize what you're dealing with
responsibility-wise
all the time.
And then when you have none, it's like you just kind of be yourself.
I came up with this whole, my storytelling shows up.
I came up with this whole like how to frame it all, how to do everything.
I had a vision of like this prologue that I want to bridge the gap.
It's called The End.
It's out now.
And then did you film all that with
your mom's house studios as well?
Yeah.
Yeah, nice.
Yeah.
They might be the only group like that that's actually good.
Tom was like, how much do you have?
I'm like, I have about 80% of it.
He goes, I'll put in the rest.
I'll supply all the people you need to make it happen.
And then he's not a network.
He's Segura and he's a fucking dirtbag.
So he's like, say whatever you want.
There's no censoring when Segura, you know?
Well, it's also like Tom has made so much money that he's out.
You know what I mean?
He'll do whatever the fuck he wants.
Yeah.
You can't stop him.
He's going to do whatever he wants now.
Yeah.
Oh, nice.
Look at all these episodes.
Miss Pat, the Stefano.
Look at that.
Duncan did a great one.
Nice.
Bobby, Shane.
Shane, Bobby Kelly.
Big J.
Yeah, we made the show again.
Nate Bargatze.
And then this prologue, it's something I had a vision of this on that mushroom
trip.
Oh, wow.
About how to frame like what happened to this not happening and what is this
thing now and how
to like go through it.
And then I talked to a bunch of artists while I was gone and some made pictures.
And this guy, this guy, William Child, he actually did a Danny Brown video.
He's just like, shit, I don't want to ruin this.
Where'd you film these?
The Box in New York City, a place where Chappelle would have his comedian balls.
Let's get that gay outfit.
The gay outfit, Joe, is from, do you remember a show called This Is Not Happening?
Yes.
I did completely legally unrelated to this new show.
You can say whatever you want, but I cannot.
That was a comedian telling stories in a strip club.
This is a strip club with a comedian telling stories.
The first year, they go, hey, you got to wear the same outfit every day.
And I go, no, that's fake.
They go, no, but we got a mission match day, so we got to do it.
Oh, why?
Is anybody going to tune out because they see you with a different outfit on?
No, it'll be like, it's weird.
And suddenly you're hosting a different thing.
So I start wearing ridiculous suits I made in Hong Kong, you know?
Oh, yeah.
And then my final year, I had this Indian outfit picked out that I went and
sourced in LA
and had this cool Indian outfit.
All right, now it's cool.
I thought it was gay.
And I saved it for seven or eight years.
But that show got taken away from me.
I was like, if I ever do this again, I'm wearing this outfit out of respect to
overcoming.
Those days were very fascinating.
The days where Comedy Central is trying to force you into doing a Comedy
Central special,
but you had a deal with Netflix.
And even though it was completely legal and contractually legal for you to do
a comedy special with Netflix, Comedy Central was strong-arming you
into doing it on Comedy Central and canceled your fucking show
because you wouldn't do a special with them.
So you got a successful show on, people want to know how gross Hollywood can
get?
Yeah.
Ari had a successful show that was doing very well on Comedy Central
and they canceled it because he wouldn't do a comedy special on Comedy Central.
Because I paid for my, it was one of the early ones, paid for my own special.
And then so I got to figure out where it's going.
And they go, it should be here.
And I go, no, no, I don't think it should.
It's also, it was a double special.
And it was like, it needs to be on a streamer more than a network.
And then I was like, no, I'm going to Netflix.
And yeah, and then they were like, let's go blackmail then.
It's crazy.
I get it from their perspective.
No, I don't.
They're like, hey, we can't be losing power.
And they never really, they always thought it was an open mic.
But it's, it was not losing power because the reality is that would just bring
more people to the Comedy Central show.
And Netflix back then was so much bigger to do a special.
When I did that 2017 special on Netflix, I was the mayor of New York for like
three weeks.
Everywhere I'd go, I'd bike at a red light, three people would recognize you.
It was a different time for specials then.
And of course that was the biggest thing.
I'm going to do that.
Yeah, well, there's still pretty big Netflix.
It's still pretty big, but not Jew specials.
They picked it up.
Oh, that's right.
They picked up Jew.
Yeah, it's on Netflix right now.
Nice.
But yeah.
And so people ask me with this show, like, why didn't you go to Netflix or like,
I'm like,
dude, networks killed me.
Not only that, I don't want to just go straight to the people on this.
Why do it?
It's like, there's no reason to at this point, especially like Comedy Central
doesn't even
exist anymore.
That's what's nuts.
It was a wild time.
You said you would host for free.
Yeah.
I was on the phone with you crying.
I was like hearing it, that they're taking you away from in the moment.
I said, tell them I will host it for free.
Because you were going to take out a loan to pay off all the crew.
Because all the crew had signed on for, you know, X amount of episodes and it
was going
to cost them money.
And you were like, I'm trying to figure out a way to keep us on the air.
I go, tell Comedy Central I will host it for free.
You were already, it was 2017.
This podcast was already going.
Oh yeah.
It was huge by then.
Yeah.
But it was number one in 2019 is when it started being number one.
But it was probably top four.
It was pretty big.
You were, had pedigree on the show.
You've done two stories.
One you liked, one you hated.
But the one you liked was a great story.
That was a great one.
That's a great story.
Dotham, Alabama.
Yeah.
Um, and I was like, oh, he's part of the show.
This kind of goes.
If someone's got to do it, let's, and he'll do it for free.
You're saving money and getting a much bigger host.
They just wanted to fuck you.
They, they just wanted to fuck you.
Anyone I suggested, they said no.
I always said, Ali Sadiq should do it.
They said no.
Yeah.
At least they went with Roy.
Roy was really good.
Roy was great.
But it only lasted like a little bit.
It was over after that.
But that show could have gone on a long fucking time.
It was such a great idea.
It was great execution.
It was fun to do.
It was real.
Everybody enjoyed it.
In a moment where alt comedy and the ironic distance was getting bigger.
Yeah.
This was a more real thing.
Yeah.
And people responded to it.
And I, listen.
But it just shows you the grossness of the business sometimes.
When these people who are just gatekeeping executive assholes.
Gatekeeping.
They're really saying, oh, you're not on the list.
Yeah.
And they don't exist anymore.
That's what's, that's what's most amazing.
Well, that's a cool thing.
You can go to Tom.
You can go to a guy like that or whatever.
And he goes, no, I love the show.
It made me, it made me bigger.
Let's get it going again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's also like nine years later, like the internet has completely taken
over.
Yeah.
Like it has drowned out all of those comedy networks.
They don't exist anymore.
Yeah.
You need a, some level of curation or you're lost in a sea of content sometimes,
but there's
people you can trust.
You know, if, if you want meditation, that guy, Sam Harris, is that the
meditation guy,
you know, whatever he's going to say, you're probably going to believe it.
Meditation was, you know, um, if you need some, uh, to, to hear an MMA fighter,
like really
speaking that this is a great source for that, this podcast, she needs some
curator, but I
mean, like I'm the guy I'm not, yeah, but even the show, I'll make it quality.
I'll make it look right.
You can always trust me to do that.
So come to me for that show was the coolest standup show of all time.
It was a fun show.
It was a really good show.
And it was a show that I remember you created from scratch.
I remember when you were doing it at the lab at the improv, that tiny little
room,
you were doing it for free.
And I was like, what are you doing?
Basically the same way that you were talking about to me about my podcast.
Like, what are you doing?
That's what you were saying?
What are you doing dude?
A fucking show for 20 people?
I'm like, this is so weird.
I'm like Ari's telling stories, but I thought about it.
I was like, it's probably a good idea to develop material that way.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
No, I, a lot of people was like, Hey, we're doing a show.
It's about heartbreak this week or it's this month or it's about drugs,
whatever.
And they go, all right, let me, let me, I have a story.
Let me get all my thoughts down, you know, um, all the metaphors and stuff that
stuff,
flowery stuff you put on them that Jay is so good at and stuff.
But like, then they became a lot of people.
It's like, that's my closer and my special now.
I had no bit.
I thought of it cause of this.
It became, you know, the biggest thing I had in my act.
Isn't that nuts?
It's nuts.
Yeah.
Cause I loved giving people an excuse to like write something.
It was also such a fun show.
Cause it was comedy outside of like regular standup.
It was like another avenue.
And, and it was a really fun thing to do, you know?
And the thing about like the gatekeeping of it is like, those people had
nothing to do with it.
And they had all the power.
They had all the power.
And by do, by just exercising it in that way.
And then everybody talking about how gross it was, nobody ever trusted them
again.
And the thing is some of the stuff they do though.
Like we need some diversity and, and it'd be like, I don't think you're wrong.
I think you don't want it to be all the same thing, but there's something me
and Eric Abrams
came up with is it's a diversity of experience.
Yeah.
Is bigger.
Two white dudes is not what we're talking about.
If it's like Ali Sadiq's life, closer to Gary Owens' life than mine.
Mm-hmm.
You know, Gary Owens and Ali are closer to each other than me or Gary, you know?
Right, right, right.
So that's what I want.
Different, whatever.
And they have these checklists you would go to in LA.
Here are the gays.
Get one of these seven.
Here are the black.
And it was like, well, I'm not going to fuck up my product.
No way.
You, at the end of the day, it has to be a meritocracy.
So, so then we would just work harder, which a lot of people aren't willing to
do.
And it's like, well, there's a great black woman in Indianapolis.
She's not in LA or New York, but let's get her.
She has great stories.
Miss Pat.
Right.
There's a great black comic in Houston, and he has these great stories about
prison.
Let's get him.
Ali Sadiq.
They're not on these lists.
Yeah.
You just got to work a little harder to make your shit.
You know, it's like Seinfeld letting everybody else shine.
Right.
But it's like forced diversity without the merit, without good quality comedies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's just gatekeepers fuck themselves, really, because now that we don't
need them
anymore, like they're, what do those people do?
Like all those people that were running Comedy Central, what do they do now?
There's no jobs.
Well, the thing is with like, were the cabs overstepping that made Uber
possible?
Yeah.
You know?
So let's focus on the positive of this.
And then the Uber people kept robbing and murdering people.
Yep.
So they, uh, they just got Waymo's.
Yeah, exactly.
They'll be gone too.
Take advantage.
Yep.
Yep.
I mean, how many coke addicts do you need driving?
You're like, bro, that's a red light.
Please stop.
I mean, they barely fucking vet those people.
Yeah.
But the cool thing is, because it's easier to film and because I have friends
that are
fucking billionaires, you know, it's like, we can actually get it done now.
It's a golden age for this.
It is.
To be able to make a TV show level thing on our own.
Well, look at even movies like Theo and David Spade made a fucking movie on
their own.
Self-financed it and it's doing well.
They go, we know how much it's going to cost.
We'll do it.
We're rich.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
It's a cool time.
I mean, we made our budget back day one.
That's awesome.
On a massive project flying in 23 comics, you know, putting them all up, paying
them all.
That's amazing.
They're cutting in on the shares.
We've never done that before.
So are you going to do that in the next season as well?
I don't know if it's going to be a next season.
A lot of this was just a, there was a hole in my, in my resume where the show
didn't end
on the terms it should have ended on.
And that's why it's called the end.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a play on words for story titles too.
You know, like the end, but like, so I just had to get it done.
Right.
Nice.
Nice.
And then all these huge comp, like Shane Gillis, who, when he was an open miker
was like,
all these guys, like, I want to eventually do that show.
Yeah.
And the show went away in the interim.
He's like supplanting the Philadelphia 76ers so he can do comedy, you know, but
he's like,
I'd love to do that show.
Dude.
I had four people take private jets to come, to come to the show.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Fuck yeah.
It was, it was, I'm so happy with it.
It came out right.
Everyone who's seen it is like, oh, this is like, not just something you did.
This is like a TV show.
Yeah.
We, it's like, I'm so happy.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I love it.
I'm so happy to hear that dude.
And that's great.
That prologue that that guy did, you should, I'll send you, I'll send you a $2
off.
I'll just pay.
Yeah.
We said we had to figure out a way, me and O'Neal and Abrams, we all like
writing it.
We're like, I have to figure out a way to bridge the gap of this not happening
to the end and what
happened and everything without being too woe is me.
And so we got this claymation guy who was like, yeah, let's just fill it with
punch lines.
So it doesn't become that like, I love Schultz, but I little like, they couldn't
keep us down.
I'm like, I don't want to do any of that.
I don't want to be earnest.
So let's bridge the gap without, without ever being serious.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it was like a three minute prologue you get for free.
Yeah.
Yeah.
William Child.
That's William Child.
That's Tim Key's video.
Oh, wow.
How did they do that?
Did they use real claymation?
Oh yeah, dude.
In a time of AI where everyone's doing the easy stuff, he is painstakingly,
it takes him a day to build each one of those characters.
That's three day work.
And then the backdrop takes another day or two.
And how long does it take to actually do the animation?
A long time, all day long.
So if you have notes, you're like, dude, I need those notes before I start
filming.
This is click, move, click, move, click, move.
And you gotta go back and erase the stuff that, you know, the wires and shit
too.
Are they wires or just moving the clay?
I mean, some of them has to be held up because clay would fall.
Right, right, right.
Well, there's wires in the arms.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you don't necessarily have to have wires like to make it stand.
What is going on with his tits?
Well, you know, it's a music video.
What's in that bowl?
Ew.
Oh, he's making a, this looks like a turd.
Yeah, I didn't get locked into that.
He did a trippy red video.
That's really good.
That's awesome, dude.
Yeah.
That's cool that people are still doing stuff like that.
Like the old school, the way they did King Kong.
Well, here's what I noticed too, when you start talking to some of these
artists,
you know, like some of my stage designs and stuff like that, like for American
Sweetheart,
what I had was like this idea that like, what if we left society?
How long till nature would just take back over and like, let's do that with
plants.
And then the first ones are like, so expensive.
They're like, oh, I can't.
Okay.
I got to rethink.
I can't.
That's far, far out of the budget.
I'll spend a lot, but not that much out of the budget.
But then you tell these people like, well, here's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to say, you say the whole thing.
Like, here's what I'm trying to get across.
Here's what I'm trying to say.
Like we're too caught up in the news and stuff.
And if we all just like, whatever.
And then they go, fuck, dude, that's a good.
Okay.
We can do it at cost.
And then him, Anthony Shepard, they were both like these great artists.
They were like, fuck.
They stole your fucking show from you.
Hold on.
That's fucking bullshit.
I can bring my cost way down.
Let's, we can do this.
Still very expensive, but they're like, I'm going to be part of something.
That's dope.
You know, if Tarantino was like, you want to hold a boom, Mike?
I'm like, yes, I would do that for you to be part of something.
Yeah.
There we go.
That's fucking dope, dude.
It's not an Instagram account.
It's what?
William Child, that's his Instagram account.
Whoa.
That's me.
Look at you.
He came to deliver me a message.
Oh, you're an asshole, okay.
You know who that is?
She told me that I was a fan.
Look at that.
Look at that.
Dude, that's real.
You have to play that.
I don't know.
February 18th, 2010.
The show was born in the third most vapid city in America.
Me and six comedians telling stories about psychedelic drugs.
Holy shit.
Only 14 people showed up.
But god damn, it was the best show I'd ever seen.
February.
That's merit.
That's awesome.
A lot of hard work completely on my own with help from no one.
I got a TV deal.
And that helped launch the careers of so many great comics.
Fat ones who lost weight.
Fat ones who somehow keep getting fatter.
Men who go on to influence elections.
And women who go on to normalize child molestation.
And then, with a lot of hard and ending.
That's awesome.
The irony sickened me.
Wait, wait.
Watch this part.
You're in it.
Hold on.
I mean, it might have been the drugs.
Out and ending.
Wait, watch right after this.
Hold on.
Other play.
I mean, it might have been the drugs.
Out and ending.
Wait.
I think there's nothing yet.
That's all it was.
There's only clips of it, I guess.
There's a moment where I go, I realized I had to be a man.
And not just a man who would go on to tap Shane Gillis twice.
With witnesses, by the way.
And then you and Norman raising your hand.
It's like, I witnessed it.
I'm like, let's just have some fun, dude.
Let's have some fun.
I got Duncan to do a theme song on the way out of his episode.
Oh, really?
His story is about taking his kids to a Taylor Swift concert film.
And how awful it is.
He thinks she's a 15,000-year-old vampire.
He has this long song.
He goes, you can see it.
She's feeding off them.
She gets bigger as they start cheering.
It's so funny.
And it's Duncan.
He's so out there.
And I'm like, hey, Duncan.
He does this song.
He breaks down every one of her songs.
He goes, it's just this.
And I was like, you know those crazy garage band songs you've been making for
25-plus years?
You want to do the theme song just for that episode?
And he goes, yeah, 100%.
So it's this demonic song about being a 15,000-year-old vampire.
It's a Taylor Swift original song.
And you don't have to okay it with a network.
You're like, let's just do it.
Right.
I was like, what do you need is your credit?
He made up some crazy credit for his band.
That's awesome.
That's amazing.
Nobody's embraced that kind of AI technology more than Duncan.
He's always sending me things that he's working on.
He does it all day long.
Those garage band songs you used to make, it was just him coming up with crazy
weird sounds.
A long time ago.
Yeah.
The sunset days.
Yeah.
It was like, oh my god.
Yeah.
That's awesome, dude.
Okay, so it's available on ari-shafir.com.
Ari-shafir.com.
Each episode is 599.
What happened to ari-thegreat.com?
That went away.
People didn't know how to find it.
But is it still there?
If you go to ari-thegreat.com, does it take you to ari-shafir.com?
If you don't know anything about me, there's no way I'm going to pay those fees
every year.
If I know anything about me and my people, I doubt I still have that.
All right.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I let the YMH staff, I had a production card.
You know, you need a production card at the end.
One of them says YMH, then Eric Abrams, the director, it's his.
And I was like, fuck.
The one I was using was just a still frame from This Not Happening, just my
dick pixelated.
And I was like, put my thing on that.
I hate the, I'm not a producer, whatever.
Right.
And I didn't have it.
And then we couldn't use anything with This Not Happening.
So it's like, don't.
And I was like, fuck, I need another one.
I'm off in the jungle.
So I told YMH, I was like, guys, you guys are all fucking idiots.
Make me whatever production card you want and I will use it.
And then they were like, we're going to make seven.
I was like, all right.
And I've seen a few of them and they're all so retarded.
One of them's going to be picking a giant coin out of my fucking giant nose.
It's just so retarded.
Nice.
Oh, I love working with people I like.
Yeah.
Tom's awesome.
It's nice having a guy like that that's like really just acquired an enormous
amount of funds.
Yeah.
And does whatever the fuck he wants.
Fun funds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And his Netflix show is fucking great.
Oh, it's so out there.
It's so crazy.
But it's like perfect for him.
It's like his mind.
Let's wrap this bitch up tomorrow.
Protect our parks.
First protection parks in quite some time.
Dude, I would get recognized here or there when I was traveling.
Not much.
I'll tell you a couple of things I saw.
One, people know Shane Gillis' name except in Brazil.
And then they only know Ralphie Bastos' name.
Oh, really?
That's the only comic they've ever heard of.
He's a big comic over there.
Humongous.
Yeah.
I had him on the show.
Really?
Yeah.
He's great.
Good dude.
But I'll tell you this though.
There's a lot of business and shit that gets caught up in this.
Who's interviewing which politician and oh, this guy's doing this.
Or he's friends with this guy and all the money and everything.
And like, am I doing well enough?
People try to do that keep up game.
This guy's getting more views on his clips.
I should start doing shorter stuff.
Anyone I told that didn't recognize me when it came up what my job was.
First, I had to try to avoid it.
But if they kept persisting, no, no, no, for real, what do you do?
I'm like, all right, well, I'm a stand-up comedian.
I mean, this is 10 for 10 countries.
Everybody would be like, what?
What do you mean?
I'm like, yeah, I'm a stand-up comedian.
And they go, what?
Like, as a hobby?
I'm like, no, as a living.
They're like, what?
Grandma, come here.
This guy just stand up.
Like, what do you mean with a microphone?
I'm like, yeah.
He goes, that's so cool.
That's so cool.
I'm like, where?
Just in New York?
I'm like, and the country, and the world really.
Like, what?
You pay your rent on this?
I'm like, yeah.
And then some.
Like, no fucking way.
They couldn't get over how cool it was, and they didn't know if I'm successful
or not.
They just know I do this.
Bro, we have the coolest job, and I've tested this, in the world.
There's no cooler job you could tell people that they'll be like, that reaction.
They start smiling just so that the idea of the job can actually exist.
Wow.
And that's what we do.
And the high-level ones and the low-level, we're all doing the same shit.
We're all just coming up with a better dick joke to just entertain some
strangers.
Even gay Ian sucking dicks that come out of a hole in the wall.
Blowing a dude, and they go, oh, I just got an idea for a bit.
That's cool.
Let me, oh, hold on.
I gotta write this down.
Hold on.
I'll jerk you while I write it down.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's an amazing job.
It's kind of incredible.
We live a very blessed life.
For sure.
Yeah.
It's just, yeah.
It's just, I don't know.
I mean, yeah.
It's fun to just focus on some positives and realize the negatives are nothing
compared to the positives.
The keeping up with the Joneses stuff and the paying attention to the numbers.
I mean, obviously, that's easy for me to say that you shouldn't do it, but you
shouldn't do it.
Well, there's this thing.
Just concentrate on what you're doing and enjoy it.
I was talking to Maddie Wieners, really funny comic.
And she was like, you know, all these people and everybody really likes, she's
going to be a star.
And she's like, all these people are getting clips.
It's crowd works.
I don't do crowd work.
And it was like, well, then you shouldn't do those clips.
Your road's just going to be a little longer than them, but don't think about
it like that.
Like, just do the shit you're good at.
Yeah.
You know?
And then eventually you'll get found out.
I mean, just do whatever you do.
Whatever you want to do, but don't let them decide, oh, I need to write an
under 60 second bit.
It's got to have a punchline at 59 seconds or I can't put it on YouTube shorts.
Like that's a dumb way to be building your stuff.
Absolutely.
Big J does kind of crowd work that no one's ever done.
Long form crowd work with like, but it's not clip worthy.
He's also been doing it for so long and he has that kind of personality and
like easy going style
that makes it, it makes it work.
You see Big J, um, at, at like, uh, when somebody heckles him, like an angry
heckle,
not just like a, I'm going to be part of it.
Like you fucking suck.
He doesn't, I get worked up.
He just goes, oh, what, uh, what was it that you don't like?
Like almost as if he's on mushrooms.
He's like, yeah, no, I could see that.
But what specifically?
I just want to know.
He's an easygoing guy.
Yeah.
He's just like, let's mind this for laughs.
Yeah.
I'm like, get caught up screaming.
Well, he's also done so many shows in New York where that must happen.
So often you develop strategies.
Yeah.
You're, you got practice at it.
Yeah.
Big J, my cohost of Legion of Skanks.
All right.
That's right.
You're back.
Legion of Skanks.
You're, you're running it now that Dave Smith has decided to be a political
commentator.
Well, it's three for life.
I'm not running it.
I'm just part of it.
No, no, no.
You're running it.
I'll print it.
Joke world.
I heard that you were the leader of the Legion of Skanks.
I am the leader of Skanks.
Well, I'm the president.
In the past, you've already, like you ran for president.
I think you won.
I think.
Yeah, I won.
Dude, one day on one of these podcasts, we got to talk about the pres, the
presidential
election of Legion of Skanks.
It was a three month process of just nonstop creativity and stupidity.
We'll talk about it tomorrow.
Okay.
Oh, Shane was involved.
Yeah.
Shane's my vice president.
There you go.
All right.
Let's wrap this up.
I love you.
I love you too.
It's great to see you back.
Yeah, you too.
Dude, there's a bunch of times where I thought about you out there where I'm
like,
you would love, Nazca Lines was one.
I'm like, Joe Rogan would love the Mayan temples.
You would love it.
I went to Chichen Itza once,
way back in the early days.
El Salvador, you would have loved?
I'm sure.
Just with like, for the stuff you were into.
There was so much.
All right.
Anyway, I love you, buddy.
I love you too.
Jamie, I love you as well.
We love you, Jamie.
Bye.