Speaker 1: This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
Speaker 1: and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half and I don't
Speaker 1: have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Speaker 1: Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
Speaker 1: on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interest in people about what brings them happiness. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: So let me begin with an old fashioned but traditional
Speaker 1: way of starting out anything I do.
Speaker 2: It's a great day for America, everybody. I won't say
Speaker 2: that a ton right now, because.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets mad. Everybody gets mad if I say it's
Speaker 1: a great day for America. People who think it's not
Speaker 1: a great day for America, and they argue with people
Speaker 1: that do think it's a great day for America. But
Speaker 1: it's just the thing I say because you know, anyway, look,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, this is the Joy Podcast. Normally I
Speaker 1: talk to people who I want to talk to or
Speaker 1: sometimes and I'll be honest with you, I don't really
Speaker 1: want to talk to at all, but I think, oh well,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to them because see if I can find
Speaker 1: any common ground because that's kind of what I look
Speaker 1: to do when I'm talking to someone that's finds some
Speaker 1: common ground.
Speaker 2: Now that's not.
Speaker 1: That's not hugely popular right now because common ground and
Speaker 1: agreement isn't clickbait friendly, you know what I'm saying. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like no one wants to see people agreeing
Speaker 1: about things.
Speaker 2: So I know that. I mean not that I do
Speaker 2: this for people to see it.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I do it because it kind of
Speaker 1: it interests me to talk to people about anything, whether
Speaker 1: they be celebrities or not, if they're just interested in
Speaker 1: walks of life. And that was the whole idea of
Speaker 1: doing this podcast, was to talk to interest in people
Speaker 1: about stuff that they do. And now interesting doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I agree with them, it just means interesting. I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: why tell me why you think that? But it was
Speaker 1: suggested to me, and I kind of liked the idea of,
Speaker 1: you know, because one of the most popular bits we
Speaker 1: did on the old late night show was that Tweets
Speaker 1: an Email segment when I would get tweets and emails
Speaker 1: from people who would just send them in and I
Speaker 1: never looked at them before, and I would like, get
Speaker 1: the tweet an email and that would just talk to them.
Speaker 1: I would answer the tweet or the email and you know,
Speaker 1: and figure out what was going on from there. And
Speaker 1: it was as somebody said, why don't you, Why don't
Speaker 1: you try that on the Joint podcast. So the upshot
Speaker 1: of it is, we are going to try that today.
Speaker 1: So the guest on the Joy podcast today is you?
Speaker 2: Is You? Is You? Because I like the idea. I
Speaker 2: like the idea of trying it out.
Speaker 1: So what I have here there's a bunch of tweets
Speaker 1: and emails that people have sent and via the social
Speaker 1: media and such. Now look full disclosure, I'm not really
Speaker 1: on that social media much, you know, the the Instagram
Speaker 1: and the Twitter x account or twis account that I have,
Speaker 1: or Facebook or any of the things, or YouTube or anything.
Speaker 1: I don't really look at that too much because not
Speaker 1: for any kind of it used to be I think
Speaker 1: a snobby thing.
Speaker 2: But really, really what it's about is about mental health.
Speaker 1: It drives me crazy if I dig into that, you know,
Speaker 1: it makes me depressed, so I kind of stay away
Speaker 1: from it. But Tomas, who I work with, who produces
Speaker 1: this to Matsuzakopal, who's a lovely man from the Czech
Speaker 1: Republic or as we must learned to call it now Checkia,
Speaker 1: although he doesn't like saying that, but he monitors the
Speaker 1: social media and he looks at it and he put
Speaker 1: together the questions.
Speaker 2: For you to ask me today.
Speaker 1: So written a here on these is a selection of
Speaker 1: tweets and emails that people have sent and now I'm
Speaker 1: going to answer them and we'll.
Speaker 2: See where we go from there.
Speaker 1: So let's see, this is from email and email from
Speaker 1: Stuart McMillan. Can you name the bars you worked in
Speaker 1: London and Glasgow and how many still exist? Well it's
Speaker 1: very easy one that because I never worked in any
Speaker 1: bars in London at all.
Speaker 2: I only drank.
Speaker 1: I drank in some bars in London and I was
Speaker 1: thrown out, thrown out some bars in London, some pretty
Speaker 1: pretty good ones too. But I never worked in any
Speaker 1: of them. It was really interested in supplying. I was
Speaker 1: more interested in consuming. I did work in one bar
Speaker 1: in Glasgow. I ex actually I love that job, but
Speaker 1: it was in a It was the upstairs bar of
Speaker 1: a restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow. That was
Speaker 1: the name of the It's a very fancy restaurant. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's very popular. It's still there and if you've going
Speaker 1: to Glasgow, please spend your increasingly devalued American dollar there.
Speaker 2: It's a very fancy restaurant.
Speaker 1: And upstairs they had a bar where they sold a
Speaker 1: beer called Fustenberg. Fustenburg is a German lager beer which
Speaker 1: they sold on tap. I think you can get it
Speaker 1: in more places now, but in the time when I
Speaker 1: work there, it would be the mid to late eighties,
Speaker 1: that was the only place that I knew of, certainly
Speaker 1: in Scotland that I knew of, that you could buy
Speaker 1: Fustenburg lager beer on tap. Now this stuff is very,
Speaker 1: very strong, and the bar itself was very close to
Speaker 1: Glasgow University, and Glasgow University academics used to come in
Speaker 1: and say, I'll take a lager beer, because that's how
Speaker 1: academics talk. And I would say, well, okay, you can
Speaker 1: have one, but you can't have any more than you
Speaker 1: can have anyone too. They would have two of them
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, what are you talking about, and
Speaker 1: they'd have four and then we'd have to call the police.
Speaker 1: It's a very strong beer, that's what I'm saying for
Speaker 1: Bustenburg Lager beer.
Speaker 2: And I worked in that. I love that. Joe.
Speaker 1: Working in that bar I think was the best training
Speaker 1: ever for what I ended up doing later on, like
Speaker 1: doing stand up and doing you know, the late night
Speaker 1: show and interview shows and stuff and even game shows.
Speaker 1: Because it was very improvisational. You were dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of noise and a lot of different stimulus, a
Speaker 1: lot of different people all trying to get your attention,
Speaker 1: and you had to improvise. You had to improvise a
Speaker 1: great deal, and improvisation is fun.
Speaker 2: It. It was kind of like the way.
Speaker 1: You see young comics now they do crowd work in
Speaker 1: clubs and they film themselves doing crowd work and then
Speaker 1: they put it up on the internet.
Speaker 2: And I think that's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't do that though, because crowd work,
Speaker 1: which basically working in a bar like.
Speaker 2: That kind of is crowd work. You know, you just
Speaker 2: kind of like, hey, where are you from? Where you're
Speaker 2: dumb or wherever? The thing is.
Speaker 1: That I don't know how much I would want that
Speaker 1: recorded for later. It's one of the things I think about,
Speaker 1: you know, with younger people now, particularly younger performers. I
Speaker 1: think it's great that they have access to so much
Speaker 1: media so quickly, But I also think there's a downside
Speaker 1: to it, which is, and you know, many of running
Speaker 1: too this already, that a lot of the stuff you
Speaker 1: do when you're starting now isn't perhaps your best stuff,
Speaker 1: or your most sensitive stuff, or your more thought out stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, you're more considered stuff, and you end up
Speaker 2: it comes back and gets you later on. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be that.
Speaker 2: There seems to be.
Speaker 1: A real thrust right now in all forms of particularly
Speaker 1: entertainment media, which is I mean, really, what is that
Speaker 1: but to try and find to catch somebody out at
Speaker 1: some point in their career, and you know, and shame
Speaker 1: shame them for a clumsy thing they said, or a
Speaker 1: silly thing they said.
Speaker 2: It's time to me, it's hand to everybody.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's mean spirited and mean spirited
Speaker 1: of course gets clicks. There was a project that my son,
Speaker 1: my younger son, was given in school. The teacher gave
Speaker 1: them he said that you have twenty minutes twenty minutes
Speaker 1: to find a piece of good news on conventional media.
Speaker 1: Go out and find a piece of good news. And
Speaker 1: they really struggle to find it. You know, because when
Speaker 1: you watch the news back in the day when TV
Speaker 1: was a thing, you know, they would be all the
Speaker 1: terrible yews about what was going on, but the end
Speaker 1: it was always, you know, a parrot that could write,
Speaker 1: a skateboard or a pig that could sing Dixie or something,
Speaker 1: and it cheered everybody up towards the end of the news.
Speaker 2: Now, of course that impulse is.
Speaker 1: Taken over by I guess TikTok and Instagram, where you
Speaker 1: see parents that can do skateboards or dogs that can
Speaker 1: juggle or stuff like that. But but I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of it is you can get
Speaker 1: too much of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I don't mean you can get too much good news.
Speaker 2: I mean you can get too much of that stuff
Speaker 2: doesn't do anything anyway. What the hell was I talking about?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what I'm saying is I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a great idea for young performers to have everything
Speaker 1: out there right away, but you know, the genies out
Speaker 1: of the bottle, that's going to happen.
Speaker 2: I'm glad it didn't happen to me.
Speaker 1: So I worked in one bar in Glasgow, which I
Speaker 1: really loved working there. You know, if I wasn't an
Speaker 1: alcoholic who was sober and I am still sober by
Speaker 1: the way, thanks Internet rumors, but I've been sober for thirty.
Speaker 2: Three years now, over thirty three years.
Speaker 1: It's funny how you get the sense some people would
Speaker 1: really be delighted if I if I wasn't sober. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm imagining that, if I'm paranoid or something.
Speaker 1: You get the idea that people be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: say it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It works if you work it the uh. But the
Speaker 2: idea of.
Speaker 1: You know, having stuff out there when you're young, I
Speaker 1: don't know. But this is always the problem I've had
Speaker 1: with performance. I like to perform live because when it's done,
Speaker 1: it's done, it's over, and it's finished, and everybody goes
Speaker 1: away and you remember it the way you remember it,
Speaker 1: whether you liked it, you didn't like it, It's up
Speaker 1: to you. But now you know the struggle. The kind
Speaker 1: of tension I feel was is I don't really like
Speaker 1: and I've never really enjoyed visibility. I like, obviously, you
Speaker 1: need to have it. I want people to come to
Speaker 1: the show, and so they need to know who I am,
Speaker 1: and they need to know where I'm playing and what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, and I want to entertaining people.
Speaker 2: I like doing it. I love doing it. It's my thing.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I struggle with the idea
Speaker 1: of visibility because.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe I'm just I think it's probably
Speaker 1: one to have your cake and eat it, which is
Speaker 1: a phrase I've never understood anyway. I mean, what's the
Speaker 1: point of having a cake and not eating it. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he wants to have his cake and eat it. Well,
Speaker 1: what else are you going to do with a fucking cake?
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't make any sense to it anyway.
Speaker 1: The short answer to the question hang on my nose
Speaker 1: is running a bit. That's probably the cocaine A. The
Speaker 1: short answer to the question can you name the bars
Speaker 1: you worked in? I worked in one. It's called the
Speaker 1: u Beiguitous Chip in Glasgow. Gosh, I mean a bear.
Speaker 1: Try and cut these answers down a little bit.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be here all day and we're not Hello.
Speaker 1: This is Greig Ferguson and I want to let you
Speaker 1: know I have a brand new stand up comedy special
Speaker 1: out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy and
Speaker 1: I would be so happy if you checked it out
Speaker 1: watch the special. Just go to my YouTube channel at
Speaker 1: the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 2: Just click it and play it and it's free. I
Speaker 2: can't look.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna come around your house and show you
Speaker 1: how to do it. If you can't do it, then
Speaker 1: you can't have it. But if you can figure it out,
Speaker 1: it's yours. This is from Moss Wheeling. That's a lovely name,
Speaker 1: isn't it, moss Wheeling. It sounds like a like a
Speaker 1: village in the middle of England somewhere.
Speaker 2: Welcome to moss Wheeling. Joy the cricket.
Speaker 1: Moss says, would you ever make a puppet show for kids?
Speaker 1: The rabbit on your old show always seemed joyful? Yeah, nah, nah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do a publish show for kids.
Speaker 2: That's it. It's a nice short answer. I don't want
Speaker 2: to do it. I want to really do a puplish show. Friend.
Speaker 1: I loved doing the puppets on the Late Night Show.
Speaker 1: But the reason we did the puppets on the Late
Speaker 1: Night Show, and I think I've talked about this.
Speaker 2: Before, but it was because we had no money. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: If you look, if you go and look back at
Speaker 1: the countless millions of pirated clips of that my old
Speaker 1: Late Night Show on YouTube, on the internet everywhere, you'll
Speaker 1: see that the show that I was making at the time,
Speaker 1: we were making five shows a week, and we had really,
Speaker 1: honestly no money to make the show we were making it.
Speaker 1: We had no band, we had very few writers, we
Speaker 1: had very few resources a lot of the times, particularly
Speaker 1: in the first eight years of the show. In the
Speaker 1: last two years, we had a slightly bigger studio, but
Speaker 1: in the first eight years of the show, the studio
Speaker 1: was so small that if we had a guest band on,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, Adele was on, or the Damned
Speaker 1: or the sex Pistols or the buzz Coos or whoever
Speaker 1: it was on Echo and the Bunnyman. Okay, go whatever,
Speaker 1: you understand what band is. But when they were on
Speaker 1: the show, we had to record the band first, play
Speaker 1: their music, and then we had to move all their
Speaker 1: equipment off so we could get the late night equipment on.
Speaker 1: And then I would do the show, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the show, when the band would be on,
Speaker 1: I would pretend to introduce the band, and then we
Speaker 1: would edit the band in. But I'd already seen them
Speaker 1: and so with everyone else.
Speaker 2: It wasn't ideal, but it worked for us anyway.
Speaker 1: The puppet thing was we just saw some puppets lying
Speaker 1: around the office, and we don't all try that, and
Speaker 1: it's resonated with people. People do love puppets, I think
Speaker 1: because puppets can say things that humans aren't allowed to say.
Speaker 2: That's the convention, isn't it. And I think that's true.
Speaker 1: The best example of that, of course, it's a former
Speaker 1: guest on this show is a triumph the Insult comedy
Speaker 1: Insult Dog. It was a fabulous puppet.
Speaker 2: But I don't think I would do a puppet show
Speaker 2: for kids or for anyone else.
Speaker 1: But you know, never say never. This is from swackhar Ghosts.
Speaker 1: I think I'm pronouncing that probably swack car ghosts see
Speaker 1: you maybe go see I don't know, Swakhar. It's a
Speaker 1: very nice name, so it's maybe Indian.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've probably annoyed a bunch of people
Speaker 2: by even suggesting.
Speaker 1: That it might not be. I don't know wherever it's from. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It's an innocent mistake. But Swakar says, I'm getting married
Speaker 1: in November this year. Any advice for a healthy married life. No, actually,
Speaker 1: I think I might have some advice for the healthy
Speaker 1: married life.
Speaker 2: And it's to do with this. This is coffee. And look,
Speaker 2: I won't lie to you. I was married a couple
Speaker 2: of times the three.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I was married once in the eighties
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. That was a I mean,
Speaker 1: look nothing about the lovely woman I was married to,
Speaker 1: but we were both drinking a lot, you know, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't a marriage as I understand it now. And
Speaker 1: then I was married in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: I got my again, and.
Speaker 1: That was you know, it was what it was, and
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, but we had a lovely son
Speaker 1: who is obviously still my son and who.
Speaker 2: I love very much, so that was great. And the
Speaker 2: boon from that.
Speaker 1: But I've been married now since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and here's what I would say. It's coffee coffee time
Speaker 1: because every morning, whether I'm like on the road and
Speaker 1: away from home or in or at home, we have
Speaker 1: coffee time.
Speaker 2: Every morning. We sit down, we have a couple of
Speaker 2: very good coffee, and we talk.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the times, I'd say maybe like
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the time, I don't talk that much.
Speaker 2: I listened to a lot of thanks.
Speaker 1: And a lot of you know, my wife is very
Speaker 1: is very plugged into news and current events and politics.
Speaker 1: She pays a great deal attention to all that. I
Speaker 1: actually don't I feel like something BIG's gonna happen, I'll
Speaker 1: hear about it, probably from her, And that's kind of
Speaker 1: where I get my news. It's a trusted source. So
Speaker 1: we we have coffee time because news now. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the conflicts I have about even doing
Speaker 1: this what I'm doing right now, which is everything in media.
Speaker 1: All media is social media. There's no you know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing but social media. When they talk about legacy media,
Speaker 1: you go, what are you talking about. Everything's a fucking website.
Speaker 1: Everything is you know, everything everybody's got their tweets and
Speaker 1: their you know, their instagrams and their social media. Everyone's
Speaker 1: looking for traffic on their site, which you know, fine,
Speaker 1: but it's but that's what it is. And and I
Speaker 1: find that And I don't know if you guys know this,
Speaker 1: but I find the the hyperbolic nature of reporting to
Speaker 1: be exhausting, really honestly, honesty, goodness exhausting, and I find
Speaker 1: it depressing. It's like, you go, this is a really
Speaker 1: big thing that's gonna happen, and we should all be worried.
Speaker 1: And then then nothing happens or something does happen. But
Speaker 1: what the fuck did the worrying?
Speaker 2: Do you know? Did that help? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a lot of people disagree with me, like, no,
Speaker 1: you've got to stay connected to what's going on, But
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: if I really fucking do. I mean, especially now that
Speaker 1: I'm married to someone who is connected to what's going on,
Speaker 1: I'll hear it from her and that's a trusted source
Speaker 1: for me. Like when she says, oh, guess what's going
Speaker 1: on in Washington and then she tells me and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: my God.
Speaker 2: And then the trick is to have really good coffee.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, because then whenever you're listening to
Speaker 1: something you know, and then.
Speaker 2: You taste the coffee, you're like, oh my god, that's delicious,
Speaker 2: and then you can hear things. And I'm not saying
Speaker 2: I'm not lessening.
Speaker 1: Of course I'm listening, but but I'm I'm also really
Speaker 1: enjoying the coffee. And I think that I think that's
Speaker 1: that's what it is for me. So a healthy married
Speaker 1: life coffee. Now, there are considerations here. Obviously there may
Speaker 1: be cultural or religious implications for you that require you
Speaker 1: not to drink coffee. Perhaps coffee isn't isn't you know,
Speaker 1: isn't something you enjoy or doing it. But find a
Speaker 1: coffee substitute, perhaps water, perhaps, I don't know, scotch, whatever,
Speaker 1: you enjoy drinking in the morning.
Speaker 2: I used to enjoy drinking.
Speaker 1: I used to people say I'm not an alcoholic, because
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't realize I was an alcoholic until
Speaker 1: I drank in the morning. And I certainly when I
Speaker 1: was drinking, which is a long time ago, I did
Speaker 1: drink in the morning. And what people don't tell you
Speaker 1: about drinking in the morning. I'm not advocating this, but
Speaker 1: I will say this, if you're an alcoholic drinking in
Speaker 1: the morning, it's the best bit. That's the best bit,
Speaker 1: that's the only bit that's good. At the end of it,
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, thank God if you can hold
Speaker 1: it down, which is tricky a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: This is from so the Kyo Good Marriage coffee or
Speaker 1: coffee equivalent. This is from Christine krys Up. How many
Speaker 1: tattoos do you have now? And what are the stories
Speaker 1: behind some of your favorites. It's an interesting thing about tattoos.
Speaker 1: I think tattoos are a bit like sex or murder.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the first one is the
Speaker 1: most difficult, then after that they get kind of easier.
Speaker 1: And the truth is, the way I feel about tattoos
Speaker 1: now is not the same as I felt when I
Speaker 1: got my first tattoo, and I think most people with
Speaker 1: do who have tattoos now kind of feel this way.
Speaker 1: I think the ones I talk to you get one,
Speaker 1: it's very significant. Oh this is a tribal marking for
Speaker 1: my favorite you know saying, or this is my mom's
Speaker 1: you know, sisters blouse that was very important to me.
Speaker 2: Or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You get tattooed in your body, and that's very important,
Speaker 1: and then the next one's you know, important, but maybe
Speaker 1: slightly less important. What happens that I got my first
Speaker 1: tattoo after my father died. My father hated tattoos, and
Speaker 1: after he died, I thought, oh gosh, it was the
Speaker 1: best way to commemorate a man who hated tattoos Celtic paradox,
Speaker 1: get a tattoo.
Speaker 2: So I got a tattoo for my.
Speaker 1: Father, and I only got one, and then I forgot
Speaker 1: about it for a couple of years. Then but three
Speaker 1: years later, sadly, my mother died, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was sad, of course, obviously. And then about a year
Speaker 1: after my mother died, I heard this kind of voice
Speaker 1: in my head. It was like, oh, you get a
Speaker 1: tattoo for your father, but oh, nothing for your mother.
Speaker 1: So I know, all right, So I got my mother's
Speaker 1: family crest tager, my father's family crest tattooed, and then
Speaker 1: I got my mother's family crest tattooed. Interestingly, father's tattoo,
Speaker 1: the family crest of the Fergusons went on and about
Speaker 1: you know, hour and a half two hours, hardly any
Speaker 1: pain at all, mother's family crest two days, agonizing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's significant or not, or maybe it
Speaker 1: says something about me. So I got those tattoos. But
Speaker 1: then I was talking to the guy who was doing
Speaker 1: the tattoo at the time and he said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's bad luck to have an even number of tattoos.
Speaker 2: I was like, is it?
Speaker 1: And I'm very I'm a control freak, so you tell
Speaker 1: me anything that I could possibly throw a bit of
Speaker 1: ocd onto and.
Speaker 2: Like bad luck, and I'm like, oh, I kind have
Speaker 2: bad luck.
Speaker 1: So I had to have a third tattoo, and I
Speaker 1: had recently become an American citizen, so I got, you know,
Speaker 1: the join or Die Benjamin Franklin, I know, a tattoo
Speaker 1: put there, and.
Speaker 2: That was the third tattoo. But after that you kind
Speaker 2: of just get tattoos.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't really know how many I
Speaker 1: have now because there's like does that count as one
Speaker 1: or you know what about this is definitely one. But
Speaker 1: then these little bits were added later and you know,
Speaker 1: there's a bit around there and that guy and it
Speaker 1: becomes I think.
Speaker 2: It's just something that you do or something that you have.
Speaker 1: And it's not that it becomes less important, it just
Speaker 1: becomes less dramatic, maybe like a marriage, you know, or
Speaker 1: a relationship with mankind, you know, a friendship. You know
Speaker 1: that over time it becomes less dramatic and a little
Speaker 1: more comfortable, and it leaves a mark, and sometimes it stings,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you wish I should probably get rid of that,
Speaker 1: you know what. I would never get rid of a tattoo.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why, because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: part of your history. You know, it's part of the
Speaker 1: whatever marks you picked up along the way. I feel
Speaker 1: like I have a scar on my hand if you
Speaker 1: can see that there, there's a little a scar across
Speaker 1: the back of my hand there that I got when
Speaker 1: I was drunk. When I was about nineteen or twenty
Speaker 1: years old. I punched a window and some great idea
Speaker 1: I had about punching a window, and I punched the
Speaker 1: window and I, you know, I got a scar in
Speaker 1: the back of my hand. It was very painful at
Speaker 1: the time, and there's a lot of blood and very dramatic.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm sixty two years old now and
Speaker 1: I got scarre in my hand. I barely, but every
Speaker 1: now and again I see it and I go, I'm
Speaker 1: not blame me with an asshole or I just you know,
Speaker 1: I have affection for you know, whatever that young man
Speaker 1: was going through at the time, and it has a
Speaker 1: certain sweetness to it for me, even although I'd rather
Speaker 1: know have done it, but I did it. And tattoos
Speaker 1: are a bit like that. I sometimes think grief is
Speaker 1: a bit like that. I was talking to someone last
Speaker 1: night at a show I do. After my stand up
Speaker 1: shows now, I do a lot of meet and greets,
Speaker 1: and I was talking to a woman after the show
Speaker 1: and she was talking about she'd been bereaved recently and
Speaker 1: she felt bad and she'd come to the show to
Speaker 1: have a laugh and I had a laugh and that
Speaker 1: was great, and I was talking to her a bit
Speaker 1: about grief, and I think grief is a little like
Speaker 1: a scar, you know it really, I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: it's so pain and it never it never goes away,
Speaker 1: but it becomes something that's part of you. And in
Speaker 1: remembering someone, like a scar, it kind of becomes like
Speaker 1: there's a sweetness to a memory if you've loved someone
Speaker 1: and most of them that that's what I thought. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I got into that. It's from tattoos,
Speaker 1: I guess because I got my first tattoo through grief.
Speaker 2: You know, that was what my father had died. I
Speaker 2: was bereft. I love that man.
Speaker 1: I loved my mother too, and and so the scar
Speaker 1: that I inflicted upon myself was a physical manifestation of
Speaker 1: the scar that I had in my soul from the grief.
Speaker 1: So the scar itself is the tattoo, and every tattoo
Speaker 1: is a scar, I.
Speaker 2: Guess in a way. One other things, I will say
Speaker 2: one that kind of makes me laugh, or maybe it's
Speaker 2: an indication.
Speaker 1: But here's a story right there. I don't if you
Speaker 1: can see, I have the planet Saturn. That's where I
Speaker 1: wear my watch. Planet Saturn. That Saturn, of course, in
Speaker 1: the is the bringer of old age. Right he also
Speaker 1: ate his children, But you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he really did that. I think that's metaphorical, but also
Speaker 1: it's also metaphoric books planet, you know, but Saturn in mythology,
Speaker 1: the idea is that Saturn is.
Speaker 2: The bringer of old age.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I'll get that where where my
Speaker 1: watch is. So if I forget to wear my watch
Speaker 1: and I look to see what time it is. I'll go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what time is. All right, let's see what else
Speaker 1: we got.
Speaker 2: We got.
Speaker 1: From Robbie Winstead on Instagram. Robbie says, the last book
Speaker 1: you read? What was the last book you read? Now,
Speaker 1: I'm quite owed about the way I read because recently,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the things I have to
Speaker 1: say that I'm so grateful for about these things.
Speaker 2: The phones is, I've become very into audiobooks. So I
Speaker 2: will read a book.
Speaker 1: At one point and it might not necessarily be the
Speaker 1: book i'm listening to it. It's almost like I consume more.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds kind of greedy, and I suppose
Speaker 1: in the way it is. But the audiobook thing is
Speaker 1: into me because I started getting into the Greek philosophers,
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman Stoics for the most part, but also
Speaker 1: Epicureans and.
Speaker 2: You know, go back from you know.
Speaker 1: From Seneca, back to Epictetus, from Epictetus to Zinos, from
Speaker 1: Zeno to Socrates. And I've become fascinated by the audiobook
Speaker 1: thing and what I was interested in. And I'll get
Speaker 1: to the last book I read in a minute, because
Speaker 1: it's none of this, but it made me think of
Speaker 1: it is that the audiobook thing getting into the idea
Speaker 1: of Socrates in particular, a lot of these guys, Epictetus
Speaker 1: as well, they didn't write down what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: They you know, their their their pupils did their Decipe did,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. So the work of Socrates is all
Speaker 1: filtered through the writing of Plato, the work of Epictetus.
Speaker 2: Who was a stoic of some renown.
Speaker 1: And I'm not an expert in any of this, but
Speaker 1: all of his stuff was written down by one of.
Speaker 2: His pupils because they didn't trust.
Speaker 1: I think what it was is they didn't quite trust
Speaker 1: the medium to get across the message that they wanted
Speaker 1: to get across, and they wanted to see they wanted
Speaker 1: to be in the room at the time, and.
Speaker 2: I feel a great kinship to that.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting thing about what we're doing right
Speaker 1: this very second, which I'm not writing any of this down.
Speaker 2: I haven't prepared anything for it.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a fucking hotel room in Orange County
Speaker 1: because I'm doing a stand up show tonight. But there
Speaker 1: is a directness about what we're doing now, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys will respond to it. But
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in what's happening. Not that I'm
Speaker 1: comparing myself to the great Stoic minds or of Epictatus.
Speaker 2: Or like that. But Seneca did write stuff done.
Speaker 1: But but I do, I do quite like the idea
Speaker 1: of just talking. And maybe that's an egotism, maybe, and
Speaker 1: maybe i'm, you know, second guessing myself. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I guess the bottom line is nobody. Nobody makes
Speaker 1: you listen. I mean, it's one of the things that
Speaker 1: I I'm doing myself now that I don't listen to
Speaker 1: the as much as I can avoid it. The cacophony
Speaker 1: of the media, of all stripes, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: it's left or right or red, a blue, or in.
Speaker 1: Everybody's fucking yelling all the time, and I feel like
Speaker 1: I can't hear anything when everybody's yelling.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: I've become interested in audio recordings of the writing of
Speaker 1: the great Stoics there Now. The last book I read
Speaker 1: was a book by Robert Harris, who was a great,
Speaker 1: a great writer. It's kind of in the same the
Speaker 1: same thing that he wrote a trilogy of books which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend, a really very entertaining and very knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about the life of the great Roman statesman and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, a stoic Cicero. And he wrote it from
Speaker 1: the point of view of Cicero's slave Tiro.
Speaker 2: I think that was his name.
Speaker 1: And Tiro actually apparently did write a book, but it
Speaker 1: was lost in antiquity, was lost in history. So Robert
Speaker 1: Harris wrote three books about that, assuming the role of
Speaker 1: Tiro in the writing, which is just fabulous writer. And
Speaker 1: I think they're called Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator. I think
Speaker 1: that's the name of the three books. But you could
Speaker 1: look up Robert Harris the Cicero Trilogy, and they are
Speaker 1: said at the time when Rome was transferring from a
Speaker 1: republic to an empire. Now, I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: see we're I'm going with this that there was a
Speaker 1: great shift in the politics of Earth at the time,
Speaker 1: and Cicero was was very much complicit in that.
Speaker 2: He had a point of view in it.
Speaker 1: He wasn't ultimately victorious and how he wanted it to go,
Speaker 1: but he was part of the movement of history at
Speaker 1: that time, and it was witnessed expertly through Robert Harris's
Speaker 1: character of the slaved hero at the time.
Speaker 2: And this is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating parallels into how the world is now
Speaker 1: because here's for I believe, you know, when everybody says,
Speaker 1: and this was during the election and all that, everybody said,
Speaker 1: it's never been as bad as this, like it kind
Speaker 1: of it kind of always has.
Speaker 2: It always has been like this. This is how it is.
Speaker 1: But what it requires of you right now is to
Speaker 1: try and sift through the noise.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm probably misquoting this terribly, but you know I didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if well, I'm sure I'll be checked
Speaker 1: in the comments and stuff, but luckily someone else will
Speaker 1: read them.
Speaker 2: But there is a quote. I think it's an indirect quote.
Speaker 2: Beware the man that bangs the drum of war, Beware
Speaker 2: the man that.
Speaker 1: Says the enemy is at the gates, because I am
Speaker 1: that man and I am Caesar.
Speaker 2: Chilling, isn't it, You know? Keep the people scared of
Speaker 2: everything all the.
Speaker 1: Time, and then you know, it doesn't matter what you
Speaker 1: what you're trying to steer them into.
Speaker 2: Keep them afraid.
Speaker 1: And by having people afraid, having people frantic, they're easier
Speaker 1: to hurt. But that being said, I also have another
Speaker 1: theory that kind of is in opposition to that when
Speaker 1: it comes to the idea of you know, well, what
Speaker 1: I mean is like when I talk to my wife,
Speaker 1: she's always like she sees she's not earth the theorist,
Speaker 1: but she sees, Oh, this is what they're trying to do,
Speaker 1: or this is what these people are trying to do
Speaker 1: or that, And I'm like, I don't see that way
Speaker 1: so much because I don't think people are that competent.
Speaker 1: You know, Whenever I've met high up people in the
Speaker 1: level of corporate stuff or you know, governmental positions, and
Speaker 1: I've met some very senior people in both of these worlds.
Speaker 2: I'm always shocked by how fucking dumb all over them
Speaker 2: most of them just fucking you know, not even dumb,
Speaker 2: just kind of like they don't have that.
Speaker 1: They don't have the kind of wherewithal the conspiracy together.
Speaker 1: Hardly any of them can put a fucking golf game together.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not that golf is a sign
Speaker 1: of intelligence, it's absolutely not.
Speaker 2: But uh, but it's a lovely game.
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of the time the answer
Speaker 1: is incompetence, not conspiracy.
Speaker 2: That's why.
Speaker 1: I think, of course I could be incompetent or more frighteningly,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm part of a conspiracy, but I'm not.
Speaker 2: I can't join anything.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that really I learned about
Speaker 1: myself when I was doing Late Night.
Speaker 2: Late Night is a let's be honest, a fraternity for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 1: Certainly was then of about maybe at that time it
Speaker 1: was half a dozen guys, and I couldn't even be
Speaker 1: part of that.
Speaker 2: I'm not a great joiner.
Speaker 1: That's why I've never really worked as a band member,
Speaker 1: especially if you have the drummer in a band, which
Speaker 1: is what I was. I mean, you want the drummer
Speaker 1: to be part of things, not working on his own.
Speaker 1: If you do that, you end up with the police.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: This thing that guy speeds up all the time, all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: I hear him.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I got a lot have I've been talking. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so look here's the thing. I've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: emails here. I don't know how you guys feel about
Speaker 1: this format. I'm kind of okay with it. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth exploring a little more. I'll get more specific,
Speaker 1: and I'll stay on the keep sending the emails and
Speaker 1: the tweets and stuff. I'll and I'll do some more
Speaker 1: of them if you want it to happen. If you don't,
Speaker 1: it's cool. I mean, I'm I'm you know, I can, I'll.
Speaker 2: Be all right. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Here's well, I'll try and leave you with something pithy
Speaker 1: and helpful. Here's what I think is, try and have
Speaker 1: good coffee, consider the source of your information, talk to
Speaker 1: someone you trust and consider what that means. And also
Speaker 1: listen more than you talk, which is rich coming from
Speaker 1: a guy who's just talked you know and staff for
Speaker 1: the last half hour.
Speaker 2: And I guess I really believe this, And.
Speaker 3: This is for everybody lighting the fuck up. O.
Speaker 2: Don't don't do