Speaker 1: Now Here's a Highlight. From Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Sam Tripley is a fearless comedian and podcast team Powerhouse.
Speaker 2: He's been a headlining comic for over thirty years. He's
Speaker 2: released six comedy albums. His latest comedy special is Why
Speaker 2: Is Everybody Getting Quiet? Sam has appeared on Comedy Central,
Speaker 2: The Late Late Show, The Comedy Store on Showtime, and
Speaker 2: Mysteries to Code It on CW. He's a true og.
Speaker 2: Sam has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience and
Speaker 2: The Ice House Chronicles podcasts. Sam's podcast Empire includes Tinfoil Hat, Conspiracy,
Speaker 2: Social Club, and Broken Simulation, all consistently ranking in Apple's
Speaker 2: Top two hundred comedy podcasts. Sam also hosts Punch Drunk, Sports,
Speaker 2: Cash Daddies, The Union of the Unwanted, and Zero with
Speaker 2: Sam Tripley, offering everything from conspiracy theories to sports and
Speaker 2: financial advice. On stage, Sam is a whorldwind, relentlessly questioning
Speaker 2: authority and finding humor in life's strangest corners. His comedy's
Speaker 2: raw and unfiltered, and often the voice in your head
Speaker 2: that you're too afraid to say out loud. As Sam
Speaker 2: puts it. I'm the little voice in your head, but funnier.
Speaker 2: Sam's career started with a dare in Las Vegas, where
Speaker 2: he became a key figure in the comedy scene, co
Speaker 2: founding the Mutiny Improv Troupe and hosting a weekly show
Speaker 2: on the strip. For Sam, comedy isn't just a job,
Speaker 2: It's a calling, Sam TRIPLEI welcome to Coast to coast, Am,
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 3: Honor and a privilege. Good to be back with you, Richard.
Speaker 3: You make me sound good. Dude, you make me sound good.
Speaker 3: I might need you to call my mom once in
Speaker 3: a while and tell what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: All right, how are you?
Speaker 4: Brothers, I'm terrific. Thank you. I'm such a square.
Speaker 2: I got to ask you, what does it mean to
Speaker 2: be an og of the Joe Rogan experience?
Speaker 3: Well, well, I'm one of the original guts from way
Speaker 3: back to the day. I was actually one of the
Speaker 3: I used to go to his house when he did it,
Speaker 3: way way way back in the day. He used to
Speaker 3: do in this side room. I was actually one of
Speaker 3: the original podcasts on a podcast network called death Squad
Speaker 3: and which I think changed the game. I think Desk
Speaker 3: Squad was in the Nexus the nucleus or the movement
Speaker 3: of the content creators away from Hollywood and legacy media,
Speaker 3: and it's never been the same since. And I've been
Speaker 3: blessed to be a part of it. And here I
Speaker 3: am on your show. If I could give a quick
Speaker 3: shout out to one of my favorite comics working today,
Speaker 3: Dustin Yarbro. He's on listening. He's a conspiracy comic. He
Speaker 3: he crushes it on stage, and you know, just he
Speaker 3: texts me that he's listening. So I want to give
Speaker 3: him a shout out. So here, let me look good
Speaker 3: in front of my friends, Richard, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get political, because you know, here
Speaker 2: I am a Canadian interloper speaking to a primarily American audience,
Speaker 2: but I am I am sure is to get your
Speaker 2: thoughts on the ascendancy of the podcast during this election cycle,
Speaker 2: the power and influence circumventing the legacy media, particularly you
Speaker 2: know with Joe Rogan and others. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure anything is ever going to be the same after
Speaker 2: this election cycle again with the podcast.
Speaker 4: What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I started a Tim Faull hat podcast,
Speaker 3: I had a t shirt which said the Revolution will
Speaker 3: be podcast and it turned out to be true. I mean,
Speaker 3: the game changers the you know, my good friend Phil Vaughn,
Speaker 3: my good friend Joe Rogan, one of my favorite people,
Speaker 3: Tim Dillon. They are the new media and people listen
Speaker 3: to them and it changed the game. You know, people want. Really,
Speaker 3: the future is authenticity in my humble opinion, and we're
Speaker 3: entering a wonderful, wonderful time riture. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you saw Trump's big I know we're not getting a
Speaker 3: politic I'm totally fine with that. But you know Trump's
Speaker 3: big video we put out today talking about free speech.
Speaker 3: I mean it was, I mean that is That is
Speaker 3: the greatest New Rockney speech I've heard from a politician
Speaker 3: in a very long time. So I believe the future
Speaker 3: is great and I'm excited.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: We live in a time where the masses can exchange
Speaker 3: ideas and to me that that's a beautiful thing and
Speaker 3: it's a wonderful time to be alive.
Speaker 4: It is exciting, It is exciting.
Speaker 2: I remember you telling me a story about how your
Speaker 2: whole world view changed. I'm not sure how old you were.
Speaker 2: You saw two professional wrestlers who were supposedly bitter adversaries
Speaker 2: in the ring, and then you saw them hanging out
Speaker 2: drinking beers, and that just changed everything.
Speaker 4: Tell me more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, everyone always asked me when did I
Speaker 3: become a conspiracy theorist? What was the first conspiracy? And,
Speaker 3: like I told you before, or one of the first
Speaker 3: conspiracy to me is Santa Claus. That's a giant blackmailing
Speaker 3: scheme to get kids to pay attention to the parents.
Speaker 3: And then the second one is is when Hacksaw Jim
Speaker 3: Duggan and the the the one of the most amazing wrestlers,
Speaker 3: one of the nice people you ever met, the Iron
Speaker 3: Sheet got busted in a pickup truck together drunk, and
Speaker 3: my world shattered. I'm like, oh, it's all a theater
Speaker 3: and it's so funny because later on in my life, Richard,
Speaker 3: the next time I felt that was when Bill Clinton
Speaker 3: went to the the the hanging up Trent Lott's picture
Speaker 3: in the Library of Congress. He's getting his portrait put up,
Speaker 3: and they all showed up. So it was Trent Law,
Speaker 3: Newke Gingrich, and Oral Hatch and they're smiling. With all
Speaker 3: of them. Was Bill Clinton, and I remember going dude,
Speaker 3: you're supposed to hate this guy. You got girls first,
Speaker 3: I hate each other, and I go, ah, dude, it's
Speaker 3: the Iron Chic and half saw Jim Duggan. It was
Speaker 3: all a show. And you know, even you know, we
Speaker 3: can get into my thoughts on Trump, but you know,
Speaker 3: when I saw Trump at the Catholic event and you know,
Speaker 3: and he's just padding. No, I forgot who the Democrat
Speaker 3: was on the back. I just say, oh, there it
Speaker 3: is Matt's theater again. It's all theater again. And that's
Speaker 3: why I just kind of I find it interesting. But yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the big wake up moments for me. My
Speaker 3: father raised me very paranoid. He said, never believe anything
Speaker 3: in what your year and half what you see. And
Speaker 3: now it's almost do you believe anything what you see?
Speaker 3: And so my dad raised me that way and it
Speaker 3: turned out to be right. It's a real blessing.
Speaker 2: Is comedy and conspiracy. I mean, are there is it
Speaker 2: a natural sort of convergence when you're on stage, and
Speaker 2: because I think one of the things that comedians do
Speaker 2: is they tell us the truth and and that that's
Speaker 2: what you know, Conspiracy theories are sort of trying to
Speaker 2: do as well, talk to me about that convergence of
Speaker 2: the blending of comedy with conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Uh. You know, it's very interesting to me because you know,
Speaker 3: we're the we're the gestures. You know, there was a
Speaker 3: time in the in the past when the gesture it
Speaker 3: was the only person could be honest with the king,
Speaker 3: and even that would get him in trouble. So the
Speaker 3: whole key to this what I do, and you know
Speaker 3: we have some interesting moments on stage, is get him
Speaker 3: laugh and slip them the truth. You know, it's a
Speaker 3: weird blend right now to it's a it's an interesting
Speaker 3: time in comedy. You know, I think everything else is extreme.
Speaker 3: And you know, the the cancel culture, the the shadow
Speaker 3: in the cave that is cancel culture, meaning everybody thinks
Speaker 3: it's everywhere all the time, has done a little damage
Speaker 3: to comedy. Uh, in terms of mad people scare to
Speaker 3: talk the truth. Me, I'm not there. I always stay
Speaker 3: in the pocket, dude. And you know, I've said this forever,
Speaker 3: mostly to myself because no one listens to me. But
Speaker 3: I never change. People come to me. You know, I've
Speaker 3: always I've always been the conspiracy guy for the last
Speaker 3: you know, my podcast is almost eight years eight years old.
Speaker 3: That's a long time for a show. And you know,
Speaker 3: I was doing conspiracies before that. So now I'm seeing
Speaker 3: everybody do conspiracies on stage and I love it. It means,
Speaker 3: you know, my work is happening here. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's always fun when you hear friends like Joe Rogan,
Speaker 3: you know, talking about stuff either I talked on my
Speaker 3: podcasts or things I tweeted before, and you get to see,
Speaker 3: you know, he's out there talking to a much bigger group.
Speaker 3: It's like a real blessing. I've always said this, man,
Speaker 3: a paranoid population is the best population. You want a
Speaker 3: paranoid population. You want a paranoid population that ask questions,
Speaker 3: that puts the politician's feed to the fire. You know,
Speaker 3: we got to be support but there at the same time,
Speaker 3: we have to really be on the lookout for them
Speaker 3: pulling some stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I saw the saying today, expect the worst,
Speaker 3: hope for the best, and that's kind of how I
Speaker 3: live my life. I always I'm gonna treat Donald Trump's
Speaker 3: presidency like my favorite football team, the the Las Vegas Raiders.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna treat them like every new season, every new season.
Speaker 3: I believe the Raiders are gonna win the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3: Three weeks in the train goes off the tracks. So
Speaker 3: that's all I'm gonna do with with uh, with Trump's
Speaker 3: new next four years, I'm gonna have hope it's all
Speaker 3: gonna work out. I'm gonna give it them all this
Speaker 3: positive energy, and but I won't be surprised if the
Speaker 3: trains go off the tracks. I always want to be positive.
Speaker 4: Well, I can relate. I'm a Toronto May Beliefs fan.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, through it. You guys are going through it.
Speaker 3: You guys need to win a cup.
Speaker 4: Come on, yeah, just one more before I die.
Speaker 2: As we say, you know, speaking of comedy and conspiracy
Speaker 2: and truth bombs and so forth, isn't it amazing now
Speaker 2: the all of these old George Carlin clips on social
Speaker 2: media and how they have so much currency again, yeah,
Speaker 2: on him.
Speaker 3: And Bill Hicks is very much like that. You watch
Speaker 3: anything they do, it's like, oh wow, that is totally
Speaker 3: you know, that would totally fit in today. The only
Speaker 3: difference between what Bill Hicks and Richard Pryor went through
Speaker 3: was comedy is a little different right now because of
Speaker 3: social media, because there's so much there's so there's so
Speaker 3: with with Twitter and everything, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 3: like doom scrolling going on. So when people go to
Speaker 3: comedy clubs, they sometimes want to have a little break.
Speaker 3: They want a little break from uh, from the news
Speaker 3: all the time. When when Carlin was roaming, you know,
Speaker 3: you get your news one hour at night, then you
Speaker 3: read the newspaper and that was kind of done with it.
Speaker 3: Now it's like people are just saturating in the news
Speaker 3: all the time. So you have to walk a fine line.
Speaker 3: People are there to be entered, so again, you gotta
Speaker 3: get them laughing, slip them the truth. That's how I operate.
Speaker 4: It's a very stude observation.
Speaker 2: Do you have to tailor your act differently depending on
Speaker 2: what part of the country you're playing? So, for example,
Speaker 2: are there certain regions of the country that are and
Speaker 2: either more hungry for the conspiracy stuff other people just
Speaker 2: want to laugh, Like you know, whether you're playing in
Speaker 2: I don't know, Iowa versus Chicago, La versus I don't
Speaker 2: know Tucson.
Speaker 3: Great question, dude, great question, And the answer is it's changed.
Speaker 3: Like it used to be you could go for in LA.
Speaker 3: That has changed. Now you have to kind of dumb
Speaker 3: it down, you know, not to scare that they're scared.
Speaker 1: In La.
Speaker 3: It used to be you could drop the hammers here.
Speaker 3: Then you go on the road, go to Middle America,
Speaker 3: and you'd have to dumb it down a little bit.
Speaker 3: Now it's like totally slipped. Now you go these red states,
Speaker 3: you can just totally drop hammers. Now when because of
Speaker 3: Tim Foulhattan, I have a I'm blessed, have a little
Speaker 3: bit of a following. You know, they come to hear
Speaker 3: what I have to say, so I can go a
Speaker 3: little farther with people than most comedians. But like I'm
Speaker 3: telling you, La, dude, you get into some wars with
Speaker 3: these crowds. Like last night at the comedy store, they
Speaker 3: like they were in on something and then the bottom
Speaker 3: just dropped out, and I'm out there just trying to
Speaker 3: press them, like and this whole thing about leaving the
Speaker 3: country and going on like love making bands and just
Speaker 3: all the ridiculous baby stuff's going on. I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: They're getting quiet, They're not happy. You know. It's like
Speaker 3: the whole city of Los Angeles is in like mourning.
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris and I just don't get it because you know,
Speaker 3: La was these used to be the outlaws. This is
Speaker 3: where the outlaws came to create art because it was
Speaker 3: the only thing they could do, you know, whether it
Speaker 3: was mainstream or alternative entertainment. This is where you came.
Speaker 3: And now that's all dead, dude. It's it's like the
Speaker 3: cancel call culture, the me too movement just h everything
Speaker 3: just kind of destroyed what was happening in La. Now
Speaker 3: you got your places like Austin and you know, Tampa
Speaker 3: is great. There's these other cities. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of fun. Man in La. It's like it's it's it
Speaker 3: can be. You can catch the wrong crowd and they
Speaker 3: just stare at you. And it used to suck because
Speaker 3: La is where all the rock and roll was. It's
Speaker 3: not like that anymore. These big cities are just it's changed,
Speaker 3: like the wolf virus has rotten it. You go on
Speaker 3: the road, you go to Dallas, you go Austin, you
Speaker 3: go you know, Florida. There's so many great places to go.
Speaker 3: Kansas City is a fire comedy market. There's so many
Speaker 3: great markets out there. It used to be La was
Speaker 3: the place you want to be in New York's this
Speaker 3: place you want to be not like that anymore, not
Speaker 3: like that anymore.
Speaker 4: Things are so divisive.
Speaker 2: Now, do you still feel a responsibility as a comedian
Speaker 2: to try and to bring people together, maybe to heal
Speaker 2: that rift.
Speaker 3: This is a great, great, great question.
Speaker 4: Dude.
Speaker 3: You're crushing this interview, Richard, You're crushing it. Okay. One
Speaker 3: thing I want to say is like you're talking about
Speaker 3: the busiesusness and people that get along. Uh you know,
Speaker 3: I had guested on and she brought up this point
Speaker 3: about how the New Tower of Babel is basically the Internet,
Speaker 3: but more specifically algorithms like these algorithms are digging us
Speaker 3: into a place where we live in alternative realities and
Speaker 3: we don't live in the same world, and therefore it's
Speaker 3: hard for us to talk to each other. My data
Speaker 3: points in your data points to be totally different. It's
Speaker 3: probably more like because we're both kind of in the
Speaker 3: conspiracy world. But like my girlfriend, I love her the pieces,
Speaker 3: she's a shell shock of what happened in the election.
Speaker 3: I'm not shell shocked at all. But her data points
Speaker 3: and my data points are totally different. So it's like, uh,
Speaker 3: we we it's dividing conquer man, and that is the
Speaker 3: conspiracy rate there now. In terms of bringing people together,
Speaker 3: all I do I do, and I have a weird
Speaker 3: way of doing it. You know, there are some great
Speaker 3: comics who just go up there, like my buddy Dust
Speaker 3: and listen, guy's a crusher. I watch him. I wish
Speaker 3: I could do the comedy does. I'm just not wired
Speaker 3: that way. But my whole way of bringing people together
Speaker 3: is saying the stuff that nobody wants comics to say,
Speaker 3: because they have these like weird views in life, these
Speaker 3: woke views. And I like to say it and then
Speaker 3: point out that the walls aren't bleeding, their world doesn't
Speaker 3: shatter that we can talk about each other, we can
Speaker 3: laugh about each other. You know. I had a buddy
Speaker 3: of mine who's got a really big YouTube channel, and
Speaker 3: he's leaving LA because it's too woke to go to Austin.
Speaker 3: And I go, yeah, man, it's like it's great out there.
Speaker 3: You know, they're kind of letting it go. And then
Speaker 3: he starts talking about how like he doesn't want to,
Speaker 3: he doesn't want to, you know, conservatives to take over comedy.
Speaker 3: I go, you mean back when you can make fun
Speaker 3: of people in the eighties, in the early nineties, in
Speaker 3: the seventies, But what are you talking about? So so
Speaker 3: for me, man, it's like I come from a place
Speaker 3: of love. I have no hate in my heart. I
Speaker 3: love everybody and I love I love the You know,
Speaker 3: if you hear from Toronto, you know this, Like, diversity
Speaker 3: is beautiful, It makes a it makes for a wonderful
Speaker 3: world to live in. But they've weaponized it and they
Speaker 3: turn us all against each other, and I think that's dying.
Speaker 3: So I don't try to bring people better together through
Speaker 3: a Kumba Yas situation. There's a lot of great comics
Speaker 3: to do that. That's not my style.
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