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: interesting people about what brings them happiness. One of the
Speaker 1: rules I said for myself when I started this podcast
Speaker 1: is that I was only going to talk to people
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk to. And for the most part,
Speaker 1: i'd stuck to that, except for the episodes where there
Speaker 1: was just me talking to myself. But I will say this,
Speaker 1: My guest today is someone who I've known tangently and
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of and I've watched him work over
Speaker 1: the last maybe almost twenty years since I started Late
Speaker 1: Night fifteen years something like that. He is a very
Speaker 1: unusual mind. A stand up comedian, but much more than
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian. Is I think you're about to
Speaker 1: find out, Moshi Kasher.
Speaker 2: In the body.
Speaker 3: What I have to say to you?
Speaker 2: What she is this?
Speaker 3: I haven't seen you for a while, and you've got
Speaker 3: new glasses.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you noticed.
Speaker 4: I did get in glasses yet, and they are about
Speaker 4: to be all glasses.
Speaker 1: And are the glasses that you can see people behind you.
Speaker 1: They look like they might be glasses, but they've got
Speaker 1: the little mirrors and you can see people behind you.
Speaker 3: You know what's I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: What I can say about that is this. They were
Speaker 4: made in Germany, so the possibility that they're doing survey
Speaker 4: valance is higher than if they were American glasses.
Speaker 1: Well, I think nowadays, I think we're all under a
Speaker 1: little bit of surveillance.
Speaker 3: We signed up for him, man, We signed outside with
Speaker 3: these things that.
Speaker 4: I thought you were talking about, cash Fattel and a
Speaker 4: new surveillance apparatus of the United States government which has
Speaker 4: never been more sophisticated and impressive.
Speaker 3: Tell me about this I don't know about it.
Speaker 4: About me and Cash Hottel. Well, Cash is an old
Speaker 4: college buddy. He's running the FBI now and uh, he
Speaker 4: kind of I'm on his email list and I'm getting
Speaker 4: a lot of the intel and he's up to some
Speaker 4: really interesting stuff. And I'm really glad you had me
Speaker 4: on your podcast because that's all I want to talk
Speaker 4: about today.
Speaker 3: Don't you really know Cash Hotel?
Speaker 4: No, I wish, I don't wish I know. I hope
Speaker 4: he doesn't know who I am. I never want him
Speaker 4: to know my name.
Speaker 3: He knows who you are. He knows when we are sleeping,
Speaker 3: and he knows when we are away.
Speaker 1: Said, yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. That he's Santa. He knows some are on
Speaker 1: the North List, so.
Speaker 4: Right, he has an audience nice list and it's it's
Speaker 4: actually just a it's an Elon musk X feed and
Speaker 4: he just looks at it. And the coal has had
Speaker 4: it as a U is back too. They're digging for coal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I had about that. What do you use
Speaker 3: cool for?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: See I grew up in Scotland where coal was very popular.
Speaker 1: We used it for all sorts of things. We made
Speaker 1: houses out of it and toys when my I think
Speaker 1: my first Christmas present was cool. But the it's cools
Speaker 1: for power stations.
Speaker 3: I guess that's it.
Speaker 4: And I'm glad that you're coming to me for questions
Speaker 4: about the power infrastructure in the United States because.
Speaker 2: I'm the right guy. Listen, I grew up.
Speaker 4: I grew up Jewish, so our our Christmas presents were
Speaker 4: made of gold and they were just telescopes so we
Speaker 4: could see into the houses of the gentile families.
Speaker 3: Oh. Nice, tiny little telescopes as well.
Speaker 4: Little telescope made a little telescope golden foreskins.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned growing up because I'm always fascinated
Speaker 1: to talk to you because you got you go clean
Speaker 1: and sober, like before most people get started on their
Speaker 1: journey of excess if they're going to have one.
Speaker 3: What was the name of your book again?
Speaker 1: And I read it ages ago, but it was about
Speaker 1: somebody that got clean and sober by the age of
Speaker 1: sixteen or something.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was my That's my first book. Casher in
Speaker 4: the Rock, The True the True tale of Yeah, the
Speaker 4: true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became
Speaker 4: a drug addict to criminal mental patient and then turned
Speaker 4: sixteen turned sixteen.
Speaker 3: There you go, Yeah, I remember it. I'm glad you
Speaker 3: remember it too. It was.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating kind of thing because I I feel
Speaker 1: like you may have you should be able to sue someone.
Speaker 3: I think if you've gone through all that by the
Speaker 3: time you're sixty.
Speaker 2: Well, who would it be? My mother?
Speaker 3: Probably? Yeah, I think probably it should sue your mona.
Speaker 4: You know, I've officially been sober such a long time
Speaker 4: from such a young age that I don't even find
Speaker 4: it impressive anymore. From about age twenty to about age
Speaker 4: thirty five, I was like very proud of it, like
Speaker 4: it's been it's been fifteen years and I'm only thirty
Speaker 4: years old. Now I'm forty five and it's been thirty years,
Speaker 4: and I get embarrassed trying to talk about it at
Speaker 4: like dinner parties, because it begs so many questions that
Speaker 4: I don't have good answers to.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting thing.
Speaker 1: You bring up an interesting well, because I've been sober
Speaker 1: for over thirty years as well, And it is an
Speaker 1: interesting thing because I don't people say, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: say thanks to me, like do you miss it, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, miss Wacker, probably I don't even know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, you know, it's yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: such a fucking long time ago. What happens is though,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, I I describe myself as an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you identify, but that's kind of
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's still what I am. It's
Speaker 1: just it's not connected to It's more a description of
Speaker 1: the type of person that I am, the type of
Speaker 1: you know, mental aberrations that I have are connected with
Speaker 1: being an alcoholic. I mean, look, I can get back
Speaker 1: to drinking pretty fast if I if I made a
Speaker 1: terrible error of judgment. But it doesn't come up in
Speaker 1: my daily life. But oh, do you think about it
Speaker 1: at all about drinking again? Yeah, drinking or using or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 4: I'll answer your first question by saying, during those glory
Speaker 4: years when I would brag at parties about how long
Speaker 4: I had been sober, because it really was something I
Speaker 4: thought was so cool and unique and different about me,
Speaker 4: because I was so young, and I really was proud
Speaker 4: of it, and I was proud of the muck that
Speaker 4: I'd pulled myself out of But as I have gotten older,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure it's not a coincident, it's coincided with
Speaker 4: me feeling less sort of confident about declaring how long
Speaker 4: it's been. Is this idea of I no longer understand
Speaker 4: the word alcoholic, like I understand the framing that you're
Speaker 4: giving over and I think in the program it becomes
Speaker 4: a sort of spiritual state of being, my orientation in
Speaker 4: the world. It's the way that I interact with the universe.
Speaker 4: It's the adjuta I feel if I'm not caring for myself,
Speaker 4: it's you know, scrambling thoughts, blah blah blah, which I
Speaker 4: have all of those characteristics, but so do a lot
Speaker 4: of people. But I got sober so young. I was
Speaker 4: fifteen years old when I got out of rehab for
Speaker 4: the last time, almost sixteen and for I would say
Speaker 4: probably twenty years. I knew in my bones that I
Speaker 4: was an alcoholic. But now I don't know if I
Speaker 4: know what an alcoholic is. And I mean, obviously I
Speaker 4: know that their alcoholic behaviors drinking too much, compulsive drinking,
Speaker 4: being unable to stop drinking once you start. But if
Speaker 4: I was nothing about me is the same from when
Speaker 4: I was fifteen. So the idea, yeah, there's one spiritual
Speaker 4: state of being that still is totally true and definitive
Speaker 4: for me is harder with each passing year for me
Speaker 4: to wrap my brain around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can identify very strongly with that.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I pivot around, which is
Speaker 1: maybe slightly there or a slightly different way of approaching
Speaker 1: it to you, is that I I it's kind of
Speaker 1: I like take the allergy kind of things, like if
Speaker 1: I was allergic to peanuts when I was five years old,
Speaker 1: I'm allergic to peanuts.
Speaker 3: I'm sixty two years old.
Speaker 1: The allergy I've changed a great deal in that time,
Speaker 1: but the essential allergy to peanuts remains fundamentally true and unchanged.
Speaker 3: And I feel like that with me. Alcohol is kind.
Speaker 1: Of like that is it's still the basic. The first
Speaker 1: drink is the one that gets you drunk, not the
Speaker 1: third one, not the tenth one. And if I get
Speaker 1: to the point where I introduced the allogen into my system,
Speaker 1: then I'm no longer food in the wheel.
Speaker 3: That's kind of how I feel about it.
Speaker 4: And that makes total sense, and I don't refute it
Speaker 4: actually in the set, I have a new book out
Speaker 4: that came out last year.
Speaker 2: I think you'd actually really like it.
Speaker 4: It's called Subculture Vulture, a memoir in six scenes, and
Speaker 4: in each sub culture that I examined, these are like
Speaker 4: the kind of six worlds that I've spent my life in.
Speaker 4: I do a history of that world, and then I
Speaker 4: enter the history. At a certain point it becomes about
Speaker 4: my time in that world. And the first chapter it's
Speaker 4: actually I don't know, they're actually longer than chapters. It's
Speaker 4: like the first novella is about my time in AA
Speaker 4: and I talk about this whole process where I went
Speaker 4: through this brain melt at about twenty years sober, where
Speaker 4: it just became harder and harder for me to understand
Speaker 4: what I meant when I declared myself alcoholic. But I
Speaker 4: I understand what you're saying to that idea, like, once
Speaker 4: you have crossed a threshold into alcoholism, you become allergic
Speaker 4: in a way that is permanent. And not to say
Speaker 4: I think anyone should drink again. I certainly don't, and
Speaker 4: I'm still sober. But allergies even changed from fifteen to
Speaker 4: forty five. I mean, even within the framework of the analogy,
Speaker 4: you could say, well, I was allergic to I was
Speaker 4: allergic to the peanut when I was fifteen, but now
Speaker 4: I'm forty five and my chemistry has changed. But I
Speaker 4: use an analogy in the book. I think you'd like
Speaker 4: to describe what alcoholism is is I have two problems. Right,
Speaker 4: The alcoholic has two problems. They are it is strawberries
Speaker 4: and mind fuck, Like you need both in order to
Speaker 4: really be an alcoholic.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Strawberries is the analogy you're using, Right, It's like, every
Speaker 4: time I eat a strawberry, I break out in hives,
Speaker 4: I leave my wife, I go drunk driving. You know,
Speaker 4: I have an allergy for strawberries. And if all I
Speaker 4: had was the allergy for strawberries, it would be very
Speaker 4: simple to know what to do in the face of that,
Speaker 4: which is just don't yeah that you're right, avoid the strawberry.
Speaker 3: Pats strawberry.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, I'm sure you already know where this is going.
Speaker 4: The other problem we have is mind fuck. Mind fuck
Speaker 4: is every time you look at a strawberry, all you
Speaker 4: can remember is the beautiful, delicious flavor of that sweet
Speaker 4: nectar within that strawberry.
Speaker 2: You must have another strawberry. You take another bite, and.
Speaker 4: The allergy is back, but I don't even know if
Speaker 4: I believe in that analogy anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's kind of like it's whatever works
Speaker 1: in the day. I think I know that I know
Speaker 1: that it is. It is something. And I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard this as well. There are two things that I
Speaker 1: hear more bullshit about in my life than everyone. One
Speaker 1: is addiction and addictive people, especially if they're being described
Speaker 1: by people who have opinions about it but have no
Speaker 1: experienced that, or people who.
Speaker 3: Are in the active throes of it.
Speaker 4: Man talk a lot, right, It's either people who don't
Speaker 4: know what they're talking about or people who do.
Speaker 2: Both of them are full of shit.
Speaker 3: I'm full of shit, right. And the other one is aviation.
Speaker 1: Hello, this is Greig Ferguson and I want to let
Speaker 1: you know I have a brand new stand up comedy
Speaker 1: special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy
Speaker 1: and I would be so happy if you checked it out.
Speaker 1: To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 1: Just click it and play it and it's free. I
Speaker 1: can't look. I'm not going to come around your house
Speaker 1: and show you how to do it. If you can't
Speaker 1: do it, then you can't have it. But if you
Speaker 1: can figure it out, it's yours.
Speaker 3: Aviation is something that I became.
Speaker 1: I was terrified of flying for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I thought that, as people of my strike kind do,
Speaker 1: I thought, the best way to come back this clearly
Speaker 1: is to learn how to fly. And I got a
Speaker 1: pilot's license and I and I kind of went through
Speaker 1: all of that, and I learned so much about it
Speaker 1: that now when I like, when you read a report about,
Speaker 1: you know, a drunk guy on plane forces emergency landing,
Speaker 1: and you go, it's not an emergency landing.
Speaker 3: They just landed the plane because there's a drunk guy
Speaker 3: on it. That's not an emergency. That's just fucking unpleasant.
Speaker 1: And then or the is like turbulence. The plane dropped
Speaker 1: a thousand feet.
Speaker 3: It didn't. It didn't drop a thousand feet, And it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's like a plane traveling at six hundred miles an
Speaker 1: hour going through you know, rough air moves maybe an inch,
Speaker 1: a couple of inches, maybe a foot maybe if you're
Speaker 1: a real you know, real mind blowing turbulence, but thousands
Speaker 1: of feet it's just bullshit. And what I think is
Speaker 1: interesting is that we now live in a world where
Speaker 1: there is no I don't know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I trust any source of information, even the ones that
Speaker 1: I go to that I supposedly trust.
Speaker 3: I'm like sometimes when I hear stuff, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. If that don't doesn't there right to me.
Speaker 3: I think we've become very suspicious.
Speaker 4: I think we should be very suspicious because information is
Speaker 4: because okay good unbelievably less less reliable, and cash for
Speaker 4: tell is.
Speaker 2: A part of the issue, but it's true.
Speaker 4: Here's the I've been thinking about this last night because
Speaker 4: I was working on a new bit about this very topic,
Speaker 4: which is that everyone is stupid. I think we all
Speaker 4: know that everyone's stupid except for you and me, right
Speaker 4: for breaking Emosha kind of the only two intelligent people left.
Speaker 4: But the stupidity has a different harmonic these days. For
Speaker 4: you know, two hundred thousand years, stupid people were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm kind of just like a stupid guy,
Speaker 4: Like I'm just a dumb old guy, and I go
Speaker 4: to other people for information. Stupid people now are like,
Speaker 4: I'm actually the smartest person in the world, Like I
Speaker 4: actually know every single thing that there is to know.
Speaker 4: That is the that's the disease of the modern era
Speaker 4: is that the no one will admit that they don't
Speaker 4: know anything anymore, and it expresses itself. This is the
Speaker 4: bit I'm working on is about homeschool and I'm like,
Speaker 4: I've never met a person who decided to homeschool their kids.
Speaker 2: I hope you don't homeschool your kids. I've never met
Speaker 2: a person.
Speaker 4: Decided who decided to homeschool their kid where I'm like, yes,
Speaker 4: you are an educator. I have always thought you had
Speaker 4: it in you. I've never seen it never.
Speaker 1: That's a fascinating approach, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think
Speaker 1: so I have this It's not an argument, but I
Speaker 1: have this different point of view with my wife. My
Speaker 1: wife sees conspiracy, not conspiracy fees, but she always thinks, like,
Speaker 1: you know what these guys in Washington are up to?
Speaker 3: Or do you know what these guys are doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I have a I think her view
Speaker 1: of the world like they're up to something is rather
Speaker 1: touching an optimistic view of the world, because I don't
Speaker 1: think any of these buggers are smart enough to be
Speaker 1: up to annon. I think they're just basically bumping around
Speaker 1: going oh what now, Oh what now? And I don't
Speaker 1: think I have a very hard time being believing in
Speaker 1: any form of conspiracy theory because I like you. I
Speaker 1: think most people said you and me are are British humid.
Speaker 4: There's a tradition in Judaism. It's called the midrash, right.
Speaker 4: The midrash are extra canonical anecdotes about Biblical figures and
Speaker 4: the story of the Bible. Right, so they're they're kind
Speaker 4: of like oral stories that were passed down that are
Speaker 4: not like fully canon, but are our extra cannon right,
Speaker 4: like like the strange story, Like I don't know if
Speaker 4: you ever heard the story of a Abraham coming and
Speaker 4: breaking all of the idols in front of h that
Speaker 4: his father used to worship.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever heard that story.
Speaker 3: I don't know that one. I know the one I'm
Speaker 3: going to murder my son. I'm not good to murder
Speaker 3: my son. That's not anyone that's in.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, that one's that one's in. That one's in the
Speaker 4: original text. Unfortunately that made it to the main script.
Speaker 4: But this is like an extra thing, which is like
Speaker 4: when when God revealed himself to Abraham. Abraham came to
Speaker 4: his father's you know, idol worship barn and broke all
Speaker 4: the idols. And for my whole childhood I thought that
Speaker 4: was in the Bible, and then I found out, Oh,
Speaker 4: it's not in the Bible at all. It's just an
Speaker 4: extra story that people kind of tell. Anyway, what's my
Speaker 4: point of saying all that? There's all these midrash midrashim
Speaker 4: they're called, and they're a great quote about the midrash,
Speaker 4: about the midrashim, which is, if you believe all of
Speaker 4: the midrash you're a fool. If you believe none of them,
Speaker 4: you're a bigger fool. And that's a religious idea and
Speaker 4: judy I have always ported that idea over into conspiracy
Speaker 4: theory if you believe, but I reverse it, which is,
Speaker 4: if you believe no conspiracy theory, you're a fool. If
Speaker 4: you believe all the conspiracy theories, you're a bigger fool.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think I think I can absolutely concur with
Speaker 1: you on that. But the problem is, of course, is
Speaker 1: picking the ones to believe and not to believe it.
Speaker 1: And they also the the agenda, which is interesting. You
Speaker 1: use Judaism as of course though you would do. But
Speaker 1: it's because, of course, the the Jewish people are always
Speaker 1: accused the anti Semitism is always based on a oh
Speaker 1: these guys are up to something. Oh there's an agenda
Speaker 1: like to that. That protocols of the Elder's at Zion stuff.
Speaker 2: That's greatest, Like that's the greatest work.
Speaker 3: It's it's so crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like I remember here in a while ago somebody
Speaker 1: was banging on about the ad.
Speaker 3: It's actually I think it was on Bill Maher's show.
Speaker 1: Somebody was talking about, yeah, I don't suppose they like
Speaker 1: that on the Hollywood cocktail circuit.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, Hollywood cocktail circuit.
Speaker 4: Well, you heard synagogue when you when when you heard
Speaker 4: you've got synagogue?
Speaker 1: I know what I thought, how dare you accuse me
Speaker 1: of that? What I thought was that do you know
Speaker 1: anything about Hollywood? The idea that people are hanging around
Speaker 1: socialized and that they they're not they don't do that.
Speaker 1: It's Hollywood is is the most work you.
Speaker 3: Know la Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the Hollywood Boulevard and stuff, but
Speaker 1: I mean that's a whole different community. But they do
Speaker 1: the idea that that people in the Hollywood hangout because
Speaker 1: they like each other in the show business community.
Speaker 3: I don't see a lot of that. I wasn't aware.
Speaker 3: Maybe they just didn't like.
Speaker 4: Me, or that we get you mean that we all
Speaker 4: get together and kind of like lay out the plan
Speaker 4: for controlling the culture.
Speaker 3: For movies and show business and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, we're gonna we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna be pushing our gender agenda in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 2: That's the plan. Right.
Speaker 4: Nobody's that sophisticated, And I totally I agree.
Speaker 2: I get so frustrated.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, you know it can be bigotry, can
Speaker 4: be frustrating in all of its forms. But it's so
Speaker 4: frustrating that, you know, when if in the computer programming world,
Speaker 4: in the tech world, there's a lot of Indian program
Speaker 4: there's a lot of computer geniuses that are Indian, but
Speaker 4: nobody's talking about the grand conspiracy for Indians to control
Speaker 4: the tech universe. But every time the Jews do some stuff,
Speaker 4: they go, ah, this is a part of a large
Speaker 4: Nebula plan.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: I mean, when I deny the Jews are overrepresented in
Speaker 4: Hollywood circles, I would in the Hollywood cocktail scene. I
Speaker 4: would not deny this it's not like we plan. It's
Speaker 4: like that's an industry. Different industries have different groups that
Speaker 4: go to them, and that's the way it is.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed we talked about the allergy changing and
Speaker 1: the alcoholism change, and have you noticed your approach to
Speaker 1: Judaism changing as you go? Do you become a parent
Speaker 1: obviously as well, and you know your perspective on these things.
Speaker 3: Has it altered?
Speaker 2: All right? It's altered.
Speaker 4: I mean, I love to even get into this part
Speaker 4: of the conversation, but it's altered a great deal. And
Speaker 4: it's altered a great deal because for the same reason
Speaker 4: that a lot of things have altered in our society
Speaker 4: that Judaism, Jewish identity has been swallowed whole by political agenda,
Speaker 4: and the self definition of the Jewish culture has become
Speaker 4: intertwined with the Israeli Palestinian conflict in a way that
Speaker 4: is so heart wrenching and exhausting. It's hard for me
Speaker 4: to say exhausting because I'm not living in the most
Speaker 4: acute pain of that conflict, but the idea that war
Speaker 4: and politics and government has been infused into my origin stories,
Speaker 4: spiritual and cultural identity is an endless heartbreak and one
Speaker 4: that I so I find it harder in some ways
Speaker 4: to access and in some other ways maybe easier to access.
Speaker 4: But as I get older, my relationship with my religion
Speaker 4: and with my I guess ethnic background has become more
Speaker 4: complicated and more difficult because of forces beyond my control.
Speaker 4: The same thing, by the way, is true of my
Speaker 4: relationship with being an American citizen. It's more complicated, more
Speaker 4: heartbreaking because of forces that I'm not directly involved in.
Speaker 4: But I get I'm sort of endless sleep pulled by
Speaker 4: the external definitions of what it means to be an American,
Speaker 4: what it means to be a Jew, what it means
Speaker 4: to be an American Jew, and I hate being forced
Speaker 4: into ideological foxholes against my will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that is unfortunately as a great
Speaker 1: steaming truck of various similitude.
Speaker 3: The I remember when I.
Speaker 1: Years ago, I was shooting a movie in Moscow in Russia,
Speaker 1: and I grew up in the UK during Scotland during
Speaker 1: the Cold War, and so we were. I was of
Speaker 1: the belief that the Russians were ready to eat babies,
Speaker 1: and all the stuff you hear about whenever you create
Speaker 1: the other they're always eating babies and having you know,
Speaker 1: human sacrifices and stuff.
Speaker 3: And I believe that about I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, you get old enough, do you think, well,
Speaker 1: that's probably not entirely true. But then when I went
Speaker 1: to Russia and interacted with Russians for the first time
Speaker 1: in Russia and realizing that a lot of people in
Speaker 1: Russia were not in any way, shape or form Hi
Speaker 1: waivers for for for the Soviet Empire. You know that
Speaker 1: they they weren't Stalinists, they were kind of and I
Speaker 1: think that it's the creation of the other. Used to
Speaker 1: be geographic, like you could create the other because nobody
Speaker 1: knew who they were. Now you kind of I think
Speaker 1: what you do. I think what it's done in the
Speaker 1: in our digital cartography is you you take the other
Speaker 1: and you give them a label. And I think the
Speaker 1: minute you give any group of people a label, then
Speaker 1: we're getting in trouble.
Speaker 3: That's when that's when it gets inhuman. Yes, that that is.
Speaker 4: Step one in uh empire building, in warfare is to
Speaker 4: identify the enemy and then make them a non human
Speaker 4: enter right, it's a they are vermin, they are rats,
Speaker 4: they are terrorists, they are Nazis. They are pedophiles. Well,
Speaker 4: some of them were Nazis. To be fair, those people
Speaker 4: were Nazi.
Speaker 3: But they were those Nazis, they were Nazis.
Speaker 1: But but I think, I see, I think it's even
Speaker 1: it goes back even further than that, or it begins
Speaker 1: earlier than that.
Speaker 3: I think, what I think, you're right with that.
Speaker 1: But I think and what it does is the first
Speaker 1: rule of the ttalitarian, the aspiring tyrant, I think is
Speaker 1: to go after the comedians. Now, I think that what
Speaker 1: you what you do is you tell you say which,
Speaker 1: And both the left and the right in this country
Speaker 1: are very guilty of this.
Speaker 3: The jokes that you can't tell, the jokes.
Speaker 1: That you can tell, and that if you which kind
Speaker 1: of negates the skill of the tailor of the joke.
Speaker 1: Because I am always impressed buy a comedian who tells
Speaker 1: a joke that you can't tell technically, but actually is
Speaker 1: so good that this individual he or she can tell
Speaker 1: that joke you think of. There were people like I love,
Speaker 1: the comedians I admired like Joan Rivers was a great
Speaker 1: one for this. She could say a thing that was
Speaker 1: that's totally not acceptable, but it was acceptable because the
Speaker 1: way she put it right that She's not the only example.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are many great comedians that do it.
Speaker 1: But I think when you start saying this area of
Speaker 1: human life is not subject to humor, that's when totalitarianism begins,
Speaker 1: because you can't have an iconoclast. If you want to
Speaker 1: be an icon you have to go after the iconoclast.
Speaker 1: And I feel that I.
Speaker 4: Wipe that's really interesting. But yeah, once you stop having
Speaker 4: a sense of humor about your self, that's when you
Speaker 4: get into the territory of I am It becomes I
Speaker 4: am God. You don't make fun of you don't make fun.
Speaker 2: Of the Lord.
Speaker 4: That's really interesting. I think like comedy. I always thought
Speaker 4: in the early days, like when somebody would start telling
Speaker 4: a joke about certain topics, the Holocaust, slavery, these things,
Speaker 4: you'd go, Okay, I hope this is your best joke, right,
Speaker 4: and then when you see a person pull it off,
Speaker 4: you go, wow, impressive, and what has happened? I think
Speaker 4: with comedy and listen, I would not be a shiller
Speaker 4: of my book without mentioning that we're now touching everything,
Speaker 4: almost almost every topic that's in the book. The sixth
Speaker 4: scenes are are AA, Judaism and comedy. That's three out
Speaker 4: of six so far, and.
Speaker 2: We do it.
Speaker 3: I think we should do the whole six. So we've done,
Speaker 3: We've done judaism. We're not in COVID about COVIY.
Speaker 4: Well, what's happened now what feels very obvious to me is,
Speaker 4: and it's changing so rapidly I can't even keep track
Speaker 4: of it, is that people have fallen under the illusion
Speaker 4: that to your point, I think your point is well made.
Speaker 4: You know, any joke is any topic is on the
Speaker 4: table as long as you can pull it off. But
Speaker 4: now a lot of comedians think the fact that I'm
Speaker 4: attempting to pull it off is work. It makes it
Speaker 4: validates the whatever the topic is. The fact that I
Speaker 4: was brieve enough to tell the Holocaust joke. It doesn't
Speaker 4: need to be good or funny, it just needs The
Speaker 4: real revolutionary work is the fact that I'm telling it.
Speaker 4: So you see these jokes that are offensive without without
Speaker 4: any point, and on the other side you see the
Speaker 4: reaction to that is jokes that are progressive and political
Speaker 4: and lift every voice and you know, raise the glass ceilings.
Speaker 4: As I say, there are jokes on that side that
Speaker 4: they punched through the glass ceiling so hard they've touched
Speaker 4: the g spot like they're Ted Talk. You find these
Speaker 4: like ted Talk as humorless. You find a lack of
Speaker 4: humor on both sides of the ideological comedy aisle from
Speaker 4: people that think, well, if I'm on a stage and
Speaker 4: I'm saying some pro choice messaging, it doesn't really have
Speaker 4: to be funny because it's righteous.
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, well.
Speaker 4: If I'm on stage and I'm saying something racist, it
Speaker 4: doesn't really have to be funny because it's really punk
Speaker 4: rock that I'm being racist in today's society. So both
Speaker 4: of these things, I say, I can't stand both of them.
Speaker 4: Need to You can do anything on stage, I say, right,
Speaker 4: but it's got to be funny. It's got to be
Speaker 4: good enough.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1: But I think my feeling is to add to this
Speaker 1: and they will move from the third part of your
Speaker 1: book to the last three pleases, because I feel like that's.
Speaker 3: The structure of a conversation is taking today. And I
Speaker 3: like that idea. But I think there are too many comedians.
Speaker 2: One thousand percent.
Speaker 3: There's too many, and not all of the First of all,
Speaker 3: crowd work is crowd work, and that's fine, but credit
Speaker 3: work is no standough. Cody's credible, now see, I like.
Speaker 4: I liked when you said you couldn't make a joke
Speaker 4: about any topic. I liked when you were when you
Speaker 4: said that Jews control Hollywood. I was willing to accept
Speaker 4: all these things, Hollywood cocktail party. I think we all
Speaker 4: read between the lines. But if you start impugning crowd work,
Speaker 4: I was just thinking about this today, Craig. It's like, yes,
Speaker 4: it's stand up comedy. It's a different version, it's a
Speaker 4: different it's a different version of stand up.
Speaker 2: It's like saying, I was just thinking about this today.
Speaker 4: Jazz.
Speaker 2: That's not music. Beethoven last music.
Speaker 3: Music.
Speaker 4: You were rejecting the analogy, you were you were supporting
Speaker 4: the analogy.
Speaker 2: Like Beethoven.
Speaker 4: Beethoven writes a symphony and it's it's written, and it's
Speaker 4: perfect and it's beautiful, and that's music. Coltrane writes, writes
Speaker 4: a riff and then goes off on a tangent and
Speaker 4: creates something in real time that will never be recreated.
Speaker 4: And it's also music. It's just a different kind of
Speaker 4: music anyway, Listen. I love crowd work very much, and
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I was needling here. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I didn't. I did break off for a reason because
Speaker 3: but you but you're really.
Speaker 1: Good at crowd work, thank you know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a different see I think, yes, uh cool train, you know,
Speaker 1: refs on something and it becomes remarkable. But you know,
Speaker 1: you don't give a a saxophone to someone who's never
Speaker 1: played one before and they make five different weak noises and.
Speaker 3: And give it a fucking Netflix special. It's not it's
Speaker 3: not right.
Speaker 2: And ps.
Speaker 4: The way that you start playing the saxophone to get
Speaker 4: to John Coltrane level is you start in band and
Speaker 4: they say play this song. Oh says you're not going
Speaker 4: off on your weird sun raw ask you know, squawking
Speaker 4: riff on day one listen.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 4: But you know what I always say, everybody that says
Speaker 4: crowd work isn't real comedy hasn't seen a real crowd
Speaker 4: work master at work. I know that you were just
Speaker 4: fucking with me, and and they don't. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of short trip given to how many horrifying written jokes
Speaker 4: there are out there, there's a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Totally agree, I mean, and I think though that the
Speaker 1: what I I guess my objection to the idea, the
Speaker 1: delusion that and.
Speaker 3: You brought up. It's perfect.
Speaker 1: You don't start, you don't day one, go and do
Speaker 1: crowd work, you know, go up and learn how to
Speaker 1: do the job and then do crowd work, because if not,
Speaker 1: you're going to do things like, Hi, where are you from?
Speaker 3: Oh that's stupid? Did you have that s?
Speaker 1: Get there?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's that's how my comedy career started. When
Speaker 4: I started comedy, I was very loose and my friend
Speaker 4: Louis Kats one of the great joke writers, one of
Speaker 4: the best dirty joke writers in business, came up to me.
Speaker 4: He's a dear friend, and this was on early days.
Speaker 4: He goes, listen, you haven't He was maybe a year
Speaker 4: or two ahead of me, and he goes, you haven't
Speaker 4: been doing this long enough. He was basically saying, you
Speaker 4: haven't been doing this long enough to be as confident
Speaker 4: as yours. Like, you're not actually as good as you
Speaker 4: are confident, right, It's like you think you're better than
Speaker 4: you are because you've got all this confidence. He's like,
Speaker 4: stop fucking around on stage, go write jokes for two
Speaker 4: years and I somehow I took him seriously, I really did.
Speaker 4: I like, I folded that instinct in and I went
Speaker 4: and I just started like trying to figure out how
Speaker 4: to how to write, and then came back with all
Speaker 4: of these things that I had written, and then started
Speaker 4: to unpack the performer that I would become, which is
Speaker 4: you know, I always say when I'm at my best,
Speaker 4: you know, I look at my set list, I go, wow,
Speaker 4: I didn't tell half of these I didn't do half
Speaker 4: of these bits I planned on doing because I was
Speaker 4: so floating in space. But one hundred percent, you have
Speaker 4: to learn how to It's just like Picasso. You got
Speaker 4: to learn the form before you can deconstruct the form.
Speaker 4: So I've now compared myself to Picasso, to Coltrane, and
Speaker 4: to Beethoven.
Speaker 2: You are the Beethoven.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I'm open in this for a
Speaker 3: couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One, I feel like, you know, take the Late Night,
Speaker 1: which is one of the chapters in my sixth chapter book,
Speaker 1: that Late Night. I learned how to do Late Night
Speaker 1: for the first maybe eighteen months of doing it, and
Speaker 1: then I made a fucking good colleagues try of deconstructing
Speaker 1: that form for the next eight and a half years,
Speaker 1: like throwing everything I could to make it luke as
Speaker 1: fucking absurd as I felt that it was.
Speaker 4: I really think that's what made your show special was
Speaker 4: it was like, we've seen this form and now Craig's
Speaker 4: doing so many like it felt experiential. Your show felt
Speaker 4: like a reinterpretation, and I think, to me, that's like
Speaker 4: when I'm excited on stage and when i'm honestly when
Speaker 4: I'm excited to watch her performer is when I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh wow, this show is one part his act, his
Speaker 4: or her act, and one part a gift that he's
Speaker 4: or she has given to me as in the audience
Speaker 4: that will only exist in this universe and or on
Speaker 4: Instagram for the rest of time.
Speaker 2: And get me a Netflix question.
Speaker 3: All right, So that's comedy.
Speaker 1: So we've done alcoholism, judaism comedy.
Speaker 3: What's chapter four? Novella four?
Speaker 2: Novella four is the rave scene? Did you do that?
Speaker 2: You're in UK?
Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, I kind of passed me by,
Speaker 1: but Sober just before xtasy was invented, so I kind
Speaker 1: of missed it.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, it.
Speaker 4: Was really well here I did the opposite. I got
Speaker 4: sober fifteen years old, and you know, about maybe nine months,
Speaker 4: six months, nine months into sobriety, I stopped being whipped
Speaker 4: by this monkey on my back and looked up. You know,
Speaker 4: my whole illusion, my whole fear, and I'm sure you
Speaker 4: relate to this. I think every alcoholic relates to this.
Speaker 4: Is like, if I stop drinking and getting high, there'll
Speaker 4: be nothing to do. I'll have nothing to do. And
Speaker 4: as I like, the problem with that kind of thinking
Speaker 4: is it's a very diseased brain that produces a thought
Speaker 4: like that, because it stands to reason, if you stop
Speaker 4: drinking and getting high, you'll have nothing to do.
Speaker 2: It means airgo. All you do is drink and get high.
Speaker 4: So yes, yeah, there's perfect logic to that if you're
Speaker 4: a drug addict and alcoholic. At about nine months sober,
Speaker 4: I looked up and I realize, like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: I'm sixteen years old. I can't go recovery bowling with
Speaker 4: these Vietnam vets for the rest of my teens and twenties,
Speaker 4: Like I got a find something to do, and what
Speaker 4: the cool part of AA One of the beautiful parts
Speaker 4: of my recovery journey was I like, when I lifted
Speaker 4: my head up out of the bottle and looked out
Speaker 4: into the world. I suddenly realized that if I stopped
Speaker 4: drinking and getting high, what there was to do was
Speaker 4: everything else. And I decided to like spend my life
Speaker 4: trying to find that everything else. And the first thing
Speaker 4: I found was the rave scene in San Francisco. Was
Speaker 4: I walked by a flyer on a telephone pole. It
Speaker 4: was a big, big, massive rave. This is not like
Speaker 4: the underground parties that got really famous in the UK,
Speaker 4: where you had to call a number.
Speaker 2: This was like a big commercial rave.
Speaker 4: And I got twenty dollars from my mom and I
Speaker 4: bought a ticket to this rave and I went by myself.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I truly don't know what drew me there.
Speaker 4: I wasn't a dancer. I was like a kind of
Speaker 4: like a gangster.
Speaker 2: That was my thing. I was like kind of a
Speaker 2: kind of a you know, like you.
Speaker 3: Were a gangster.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I was. I had an accent. I
Speaker 2: had no but I had an accent. I had a
Speaker 2: Southern accent when I was fifteen. I'm not from the South.
Speaker 2: Is that kind of painted picture?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've told myself some stories too.
Speaker 2: So I go to this party by myself.
Speaker 4: I remember I went to an NA meeting the night before,
Speaker 4: just before across the street there was an NA meeting.
Speaker 2: I walked across the street.
Speaker 4: I told all these like black like middle aged, you know,
Speaker 4: recovering addicts, like the freedom of sobriety is bringing me
Speaker 4: to that rave across the street. And they were like,
Speaker 4: we do not know what the fuck you're talking about.
Speaker 4: And I walked across the street and I had I
Speaker 4: remember I had a I used to use a cologne
Speaker 4: called Escape by Calvin Klein.
Speaker 3: Ok.
Speaker 4: It was a terrible scent of the early nineties. And
Speaker 4: I remember I stuffed this bottle of Escape into a
Speaker 4: sock as I was waiting in line, and I was like,
Speaker 4: just in case, you know, I got a kind of
Speaker 4: thwap flap.
Speaker 2: Somebody with this sock Blackjack that I've built.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's just like the this is the brain
Speaker 4: I'm bringing into this first rave. Like and I remember
Speaker 4: I walked into the first the main room of this
Speaker 4: party called Cyberfest in nineteen ninety five, and I put
Speaker 4: down the bag containing the popo rescented Blackjack, and I
Speaker 4: walked into this party and I just like I had
Speaker 4: a as profound a spiritual experience at that first party,
Speaker 4: as I did getting sober, it was a reconstruction. It
Speaker 4: was a reformation of who I was as a human being.
Speaker 4: I started pure a wedding around the room and dancing,
Speaker 4: and this couple, this gay couple, came up to me
Speaker 4: and they grabbed me on either side and they picked
Speaker 4: me up in their arms and like, you're beautiful. And
Speaker 4: I was like, I was like, what these motherfuckers, these
Speaker 4: gay motherfuckers hugging on me and I so I was like,
Speaker 4: I know what I got to do. And I grabbed
Speaker 4: both of their heads, pulled them close to me, kissed
Speaker 4: them on the chicken go you're beautiful too, Like I'm
Speaker 4: telling you, Craig. In one evening, I turned from like
Speaker 4: identity crisis addled wanna be gangster who thought he was
Speaker 4: something that he wasn't to soft puro wetting.
Speaker 2: Techno dancing.
Speaker 4: The next day, I dyed my hair blonde and twirled
Speaker 4: it into little b York buns and put Baretts in
Speaker 4: my hair. I mean, it was an absurd It was absurd,
Speaker 4: but it was a kind of alchemical shifting of my
Speaker 4: identity that was as profound as anything I've ever experienced,
Speaker 4: and I spent all of my twenties throwing raves, djaying
Speaker 4: at raves, and eventually becoming the world's first clean and
Speaker 4: sober ecstasy dealer at raves. So it got dark later, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: oh that went It went to a little bit of
Speaker 4: a kind of minor note there.
Speaker 3: It kind of went.
Speaker 2: Like that.
Speaker 4: In fact, a lot of the book is about that,
Speaker 4: is like, you know, I got you go into this thing.
Speaker 2: It's like religion.
Speaker 4: You know, you go into a thing, you have a
Speaker 4: come to Jesus, like you know, baptism moment. It redefines
Speaker 4: everything about you, and you spend two decades in it
Speaker 4: trying to like drink it. Like every scene I've ever
Speaker 4: been in, I've tried to like eat it, you know,
Speaker 4: like I want to own it.
Speaker 2: I want to be the man I want.
Speaker 4: And then by that process of trying to eat it
Speaker 4: own it be the man, it starts to curdle the
Speaker 4: thing a little bit. And then you're twenty years in
Speaker 4: and you're going, hmm, what was it that I what
Speaker 4: was it that I found here? Honestly, the book was
Speaker 4: awesome because I got to remember all the beautiful magic
Speaker 4: that I found in each of the universes that I occupied.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting thing. How did you? How did it
Speaker 3: end then the rave scene?
Speaker 1: Was it because of the sober ecstasy or was it
Speaker 1: something else?
Speaker 3: It was a little bit of that.
Speaker 2: It was you know, there's a funny story.
Speaker 4: So I started djaying that was like, you know, that's alpha,
Speaker 4: you know the alpha human in the rave thing?
Speaker 2: Is is the is the DJ And so I wanted
Speaker 2: to do that. I wanted to do that. Did you
Speaker 2: do this?
Speaker 1: Did you point people when they were dancing? I feel
Speaker 1: like that's an essential move.
Speaker 4: I would do this like almost like I can't hear
Speaker 4: and then oh I can hear, and then I point,
Speaker 4: Then I point, yeah, right, okay. And I started to
Speaker 4: really become defined by that identity. And about ten years
Speaker 4: into the rave scene, through a very complicated series of
Speaker 4: strange events, you know, I was throwing these bigger and
Speaker 4: bigger parties, and eventually the person that I was working
Speaker 4: with kind of was a con man and stole all
Speaker 4: the money and absconded, and so I was sort of
Speaker 4: became kind of persona and no grata within the promoting
Speaker 4: rave world that I was in. And as a result
Speaker 4: of that, all the DJ gigs that I'd been getting
Speaker 4: started to dry up, and I was and I was
Speaker 4: also getting older. You know, I was also becoming older.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sixteen anymore.
Speaker 3: I was in your pointing finger.
Speaker 1: That're like, why are you pointing at the ground?
Speaker 3: Then you really can't hear things either.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 4: When I started going to raves in San Francisco, I
Speaker 4: was sixteen and I was the youngest person there.
Speaker 2: I was among the youngest.
Speaker 4: And when I stopped going about ten years later, it
Speaker 4: was the median age. And so it was there was that,
Speaker 4: But something very funny happened, which is that I was
Speaker 4: having this identity crisis and my ego was just being
Speaker 4: bruised all the time. I wanted people to want me,
Speaker 4: but nobody wanted me. This is before comedy, so I
Speaker 4: didn't get the attention that you know, a comedy will
Speaker 4: provide you. So I just was like, my performing life
Speaker 4: was drying up. Nobody was booking me anymore. But I
Speaker 4: still had this identity of like, I am Mosha DJ Mosha,
Speaker 4: and that was my name. And I picked up a
Speaker 4: flyer to a rave, right And I was in the
Speaker 4: middle of this identity crisis, and there was a DJ
Speaker 4: on the lineup called DJ E Mosha E Mosha.
Speaker 2: I go, E Mosha. That's not you can't. You can't
Speaker 2: do that. I could. I couldn't.
Speaker 4: I couldn't like become a comedian and call myself E.
Speaker 4: Craig Ferguson. I think you would have a bit of
Speaker 4: an issue with that. So I gathered up all the
Speaker 4: flyers of all the raves I'd ever been to, and
Speaker 4: I went to this rave and I confronted the guy.
Speaker 2: I go, where's E Mosha?
Speaker 4: And they're like over there. I go to the guy,
Speaker 4: I go who are you? And he's like, I'm me.
Speaker 4: I go, well, I'm Mosha, I'm DJ Mosha.
Speaker 2: That's me. Oh yeah, cool, I've heard of you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you fucking heard of me.
Speaker 3: You have my name?
Speaker 4: And I go, well, what's the deal, Like, is is
Speaker 4: your name?
Speaker 2: Are you Jewish? Is your name? Mosha?
Speaker 4: Is your And he goes no, I just thought it
Speaker 4: sounded cool, and go, yeah, it fucking sounds cool. It's
Speaker 4: my cool sounding fucking name. And he's and I go, look,
Speaker 4: you gotta you gotta drop it, like you have to
Speaker 4: drop the name. And he's like no, and I'm like no, not, no, yes,
Speaker 4: you gotta drop it. It's my name, and he's goes.
Speaker 4: I think I'll keep it. I go, okay, look I'll
Speaker 4: battle you. Okay, we'll do a DJ battle, you and me.
Speaker 3: This is is exciting, Well.
Speaker 4: It doesn't as exciting as you wanted to. I go
Speaker 4: you and me versus the crowd. The crowd decides whoever
Speaker 4: wins keeps the name, and he goes nah. I think now,
Speaker 4: I think I'll just keep the name. And I'm like,
Speaker 4: I don't know what to do here. I could either
Speaker 4: beat this guy to death or impotently walk away.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Jopson I chose. I impotently w choice.
Speaker 4: Walked away, and I'm pretty sure I just gave up
Speaker 4: on DJing altogether in that moment. And to this day,
Speaker 4: I'm not convinced. I've never seen Emosha on a flyer
Speaker 4: since I'm not convinced Emosha wasn't just a guardian angel
Speaker 4: that's sent from the heavens to transfer me from one
Speaker 4: scene to the next.
Speaker 3: Go Ahead works from mister wonders to perform.
Speaker 1: Indeed, what is not when you transition out of DJing
Speaker 1: and then the next one is going to be comedy?
Speaker 3: Then is it comedy.
Speaker 4: The next one, well, comedy was in there, but the
Speaker 4: other world that and I do want to say anecdotally,
Speaker 4: when I wrote this chapter in the book, I bought
Speaker 4: myself a DJ controller and I started DJing again twenty
Speaker 4: years after the fact. If anybody wants to listen to
Speaker 4: some of my mixes, they're on SoundCloud. But anyway, the
Speaker 4: next one's Burning Man, and they're very related. They're very related.
Speaker 2: The Grave Gay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this year I will go, and it will be
Speaker 4: my twenty fifth time going. I think i've I've been
Speaker 4: going for a very long time, and I worked there
Speaker 4: for a very long time too, so I've seen it
Speaker 4: go from the thing it was to the thing it is,
Speaker 4: and I'm watching it become the thing.
Speaker 2: It will be, which is not as exciting as I
Speaker 2: would hope.
Speaker 3: I think it becomes like everything, like punk rock, like Christianity,
Speaker 3: like anything. It starts so pretty good, and then you know,
Speaker 3: people get involved, and too many people get involved and
Speaker 3: turns into something else the original idea and get lost
Speaker 3: in the mix a little bit. I don't know much.
Speaker 1: About Burning Mine, although that I know, I always envisaged
Speaker 1: Burning Mine and I've never been, but I always imagine
Speaker 1: it being like fifty fifty five year old man out
Speaker 1: of shape, walking around wearing shirts and no pants, cooking.
Speaker 4: I believe it's called you nailed it, and that is
Speaker 4: what that's what keeps me coming back twenty five years later.
Speaker 1: So that is a burning man. And then well, I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for it to be you became a parent, and
Speaker 1: that's what the world is?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 3: What is that? What happens?
Speaker 4: I would say, that's the phrase the frame, the true
Speaker 4: framing device of the whole thing. Is that really I
Speaker 4: didn't even realize it until I was done with the book.
Speaker 2: Is it really?
Speaker 4: The book is a and it kind of connects back
Speaker 4: to what we were talking about earlier, that the book
Speaker 4: is really a an archaeological artifact that I'm leaving to
Speaker 4: my daughter so that she can know the things that
Speaker 4: life threw at me. Because and this is sort of
Speaker 4: what I talk about this at the end of the book,
Speaker 4: because when we were growing up, Craig, this is true
Speaker 4: for you, it's true for me. Your life felt very accidental.
Speaker 4: Your life felt very like if I go to this
Speaker 4: bar with this guy and I try cocaine, then I
Speaker 4: become a cocaine guy and a drinker.
Speaker 2: And then I end up in AA and then I
Speaker 2: meet my wife.
Speaker 4: And then if I go with this other guy and
Speaker 4: I smoke pot in the forest with that guy, then
Speaker 4: I become a hippie. And then I become a bassist
Speaker 4: in this hippie band, and then I become Fitch. And
Speaker 4: if you know, it was all this very like accidental
Speaker 4: stumbling from scene to scene, and the Internet and social
Speaker 4: media has made not that process impossible, but that process
Speaker 4: much more difficult because culture has become sort of the
Speaker 4: aperture has shrunk into really one thing. There's this like
Speaker 4: monoculture that you know, you pick up your phone and
Speaker 4: your algorithm tells you what's cool, what's culture, what you
Speaker 4: should think, what you should believe, how you should dance,
Speaker 4: all of these things. And so in a way I
Speaker 4: didn't do a section on parenting, but in a way,
Speaker 4: the whole thing is for my daughter to like, go,
Speaker 4: here are all the things that made me me.
Speaker 2: And I hope, I really.
Speaker 4: Hope that you find things that are uniquely you and
Speaker 4: find a path that is uniquely yours, that doesn't get
Speaker 4: handed to you, but that you stumble into.
Speaker 3: Do you have a strategy for that for your daughter?
Speaker 3: Do you do you, I mean, I'm I'm I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a real hard as that. My kids and social media.
Speaker 1: I mean they're on select sites, but very it's I'm
Speaker 1: not cool with it.
Speaker 2: Do I have a strategy for avoiding social media or
Speaker 2: for her right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you start to realize I'm sure you realize this too,
Speaker 4: Like a lot of it is about expos using them
Speaker 4: to things you like and then seeing if they like
Speaker 4: them too, And then you start going. After about ten activities,
Speaker 4: they're all of a sudden seven and you're like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, I'm like running out of time here to
Speaker 4: like I can't I can't do judo and surfing and
Speaker 4: camping and circus camp.
Speaker 2: Eventually they're going to run out of.
Speaker 4: Options and they're never I keep waiting for the thing
Speaker 4: where my daughter looks at me and goes, this is me,
Speaker 4: you know, and I haven't.
Speaker 2: She's seven, she's young.
Speaker 4: But I keep I'm just curious at that moment because
Speaker 4: it didn't happen for me until I was much older,
Speaker 4: that moment where you click into your kind of like
Speaker 4: your destiny, Like.
Speaker 2: Was that you was that comedy for you?
Speaker 3: Was that the only time that note at all? I
Speaker 3: still don't. I'm not entirely convinced it's something I want
Speaker 3: to get involved in.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: My oldest kid, my son, when he was about like
Speaker 1: very young, like a toddler, he became fascinated with Airly Disney,
Speaker 1: uh you know the old the like the real old
Speaker 1: kind of you know, the black and white kind of
Speaker 1: Airly Disney stuff. And he would watch it over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. And he was always fascinated with anime.
Speaker 1: He loved cartoons. Oh kids love cartoons, of course, but
Speaker 1: he loved them in a way I had never seen
Speaker 1: them love it. He's now he graduated from the School
Speaker 1: of Vision Arts, New York and he runs an independent
Speaker 1: animation studio with his friends.
Speaker 2: And that's the dream.
Speaker 4: That is the dream that your child goes. Here's who
Speaker 4: I am. And not only do I love it, I'm
Speaker 4: going to be great at it. I will be great
Speaker 4: at it. That that to me, I'm jealous of that.
Speaker 4: I mean, listen, I'm so excited to see what the
Speaker 4: world brings to my daughter's consciousness and life. I don't
Speaker 4: put any pressure on her like that. It's all internal
Speaker 4: me wrecking at her.
Speaker 3: No, No, I didn't either.
Speaker 2: Half of my experience of her is looking at things
Speaker 2: she does and going, uh oh, is this like me?
Speaker 1: Uh oh?
Speaker 2: Is she gonna turn out like me? Uh oh? Like
Speaker 2: she's got a lot of me in her.
Speaker 4: But I think that's so awesome that your son, like
Speaker 4: early on, found that like little tickle, that became his life.
Speaker 4: And I think about that, by the way, with comedy,
Speaker 4: like I can't leave. This is what's different about this
Speaker 4: scene versus the other ones is that I'm twenty two
Speaker 4: years into comedy. I pay all of my bills with it.
Speaker 4: This is permanent, so I had better find a way.
Speaker 4: I'm not going back to grad school. It's too late,
Speaker 4: So I had better find a way to make it
Speaker 4: feel refreshing, make it feel useful and meaningful and not
Speaker 4: really that's a challenge for me. I don't know about you,
Speaker 4: So I have a compared drink.
Speaker 1: I have a perfect solution for you. Stop using the
Speaker 1: word comedy. What do you use because well, I just
Speaker 1: I do comedy, But I think that what you are.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons why I I
Speaker 1: hate to say this because it sounds so part of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood cocktail circuit, but I.
Speaker 2: Am a fan of you.
Speaker 3: But I'm a fan of you are one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why I wanted to talk to you today. You
Speaker 3: are an interesting person.
Speaker 1: You're air, you die and a thoughtful and you have
Speaker 1: a brain which causes you difficulty, and you use everything
Speaker 1: in your power to navigate through the universe.
Speaker 3: And comedy is a very useful tool for that. But
Speaker 3: while limit yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, and I think the good comedians, good comedians
Speaker 1: to me, no I'm not talking about you know, the
Speaker 1: ones that we don't need to talk about.
Speaker 3: But good comedians to me are just socratic philosophers. That's
Speaker 3: all they are. The history goes all the way back
Speaker 3: to Epictetus and.
Speaker 1: Before, and what it is is you see how you
Speaker 1: perceive the world, and you present it in such a
Speaker 1: way that other people are stimulated by. Comedy doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be the only way to do it. It's just
Speaker 1: it's a convenient platform for a philosopher, which is what
Speaker 1: I believe you are and it's what I aspire to be.
Speaker 1: You're a philosopher who struggles in the world and your
Speaker 1: perception the absurdities of it provide you with comedy. But
Speaker 1: there are particularly and I noticed this after I became
Speaker 1: a parent as well. There is an incandescent level of
Speaker 1: beauty that I never loved anyone until my first kid
Speaker 1: was born. I thought I did, but I was like
Speaker 1: it was just you know, I was like, oh, you're nice.
Speaker 1: But when my first son was born, maybe not even
Speaker 1: when he was born, like about six months in because
Speaker 1: when the little baby's like ah, but when they start,
Speaker 1: you know, being human, there's a whole different perspective. And
Speaker 1: one of the I have a tattoo. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of tattoos, but this little tattoo here is
Speaker 1: where I wear my watch, and when I forget to
Speaker 1: wear my watch, that's still there. What it is is
Speaker 1: the planet Saturn, and the planet Saturn is the bringer
Speaker 1: of old age. So even though the different not wearing
Speaker 1: my watch, I can look at it and go Saturn
Speaker 1: of course was the god. Yeah, yeah, and and right.
Speaker 1: But in the the Planet Suite, we're talking about music.
Speaker 1: In the Planet Suite by host, you know that's God
Speaker 1: like down darn darn Dad for Mars, the god of
Speaker 1: war and all that. And there is a piece of
Speaker 1: music called Saturn because he does all that. Like you
Speaker 1: wrote your book about all these things. He wrote his
Speaker 1: his suite of music about all the different planets and
Speaker 1: in the piece of music Saturn the bringing.
Speaker 3: Of old age, it's a very odd, weird piece of music.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it is like an ambient Brian Ino
Speaker 1: type piece of music.
Speaker 3: Is a very strange piece of music.
Speaker 1: And the aging.
Speaker 3: Process, I think is that it's fucking weird. And I
Speaker 3: think that the only way the way I.
Speaker 1: Stay enthusiastic about things is the fact that it's just
Speaker 1: getting stranger.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I now have friends contemporaries. I'm sixty, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be sixty three years old in about a month. I
Speaker 1: have friends who just like fucking die, just like roll
Speaker 1: over and I'm not talking to be drug overdoses and stuff,
Speaker 1: and just like life over doses. Yeah, they just run out.
Speaker 3: Of fucking you know. And it's right. And I think
Speaker 3: that if I have any delight in making and having
Speaker 3: a little bit of successes, that allows you to do
Speaker 3: the thing that you do but also do other things too.
Speaker 3: I think you've been doing that since you were sixteen.
Speaker 3: I think that's that's entirely you.
Speaker 1: Know, Like I will be a DJ mosha, although and
Speaker 1: I have to say, and I was going to say this, when.
Speaker 3: You brought it up. I never heard of dj e Bosha.
Speaker 3: Where the fuck is dj e Bosha? So you know
Speaker 3: a lot of good data.
Speaker 4: Well he's probably doing comedy now, probably, Yeah, Craig, what
Speaker 4: you said, uh is beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's like it's one of the things.
Speaker 4: And I do need to say, Hollywood Cocktail Party that
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of yours as well and have been
Speaker 4: for a long time.
Speaker 2: But what you're saying is so true.
Speaker 4: Like I've been thinking about aging lately myself, because like
Speaker 4: I'm at the age where the youth is starting. I
Speaker 4: can it's starting to not be applicable to me, and
Speaker 4: I want to fight that. I'm still in the fight
Speaker 4: at phase, you know, like like cling and one of
Speaker 4: the things I can And I feel this way with
Speaker 4: my career, and I feel this way with my life path.
Speaker 4: I feel this way with the raising of my daughter.
Speaker 4: Is like there is no way out but through there
Speaker 4: is no there. I can fight aging, but I cannot
Speaker 4: stop it. I can and there isn't a way out
Speaker 4: but death, and so a thing that I am unable
Speaker 4: to affect any meaningful leverage upon, I may as well embrace.
Speaker 4: I'm still by the way figuring out how to embrace it.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to claim that I am, but I'm
Speaker 4: starting to process that idea like life goes in one
Speaker 4: direction time. I mean, I don't fully understand time and space,
Speaker 4: but it seems to me that time is linear and
Speaker 4: you must only continue to walk because the other option.
Speaker 3: Is to fall off the edge.
Speaker 5: I think so.
Speaker 3: I think though the.
Speaker 1: Time is linear physically, I think that that's correct. But
Speaker 1: I think physicality is not all there is that. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about life after death or end like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about that, just like no one.
Speaker 3: Else doesn't, but I I do kind of.
Speaker 1: I do kind of, and I am interested in the
Speaker 1: in the notion of I don't know if you you
Speaker 1: ever you're familiar with Brian.
Speaker 3: Cox, doctor Brian Cox, the.
Speaker 1: Some some scientists, the handsome siety is very handsome, very cool,
Speaker 1: very clever. I think he's an astrophysicist, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's some kind of expert on all things time.
Speaker 1: And he did a beautiful show for the BBC about
Speaker 1: time Somewhere in space time. It's called if you get
Speaker 1: a chance to find that you should watch it. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful because it's because it is. It is absolutely poetic,
Speaker 1: and he talks about time. He does a very interesting
Speaker 1: thing about because it's I suppose it's wrapped up with Einstein.
Speaker 1: But he gets into a supersonic jet and flies west
Speaker 1: into the sunset, and of course he's flying west into
Speaker 1: the sunset faster than the speed of sound, and as
Speaker 1: he flies into the sunset, the sun stucks to rise
Speaker 1: because he's traveling fast in a direction where so it's
Speaker 1: really about where you are in the universe effects.
Speaker 5: Right, crime is yeah, and find I know that. Think
Speaker 5: it's called of relativity. I understand that theory completely. That's
Speaker 5: the sixth section of my book is about the theory.
Speaker 2: Of relativity and my work on it.
Speaker 1: Do you know this?
Speaker 4: This blew my mind and I don't understand that, so
Speaker 4: don't ask me to explain it. But I'm sure Brian
Speaker 4: Kax talks about it in this special Which is that
Speaker 4: that time, the linear thing that we are describing, the
Speaker 4: thing that makes us older, and the thing that you
Speaker 4: know makes the sun go up and down and space
Speaker 4: in like the thing that you look up and it's
Speaker 4: up there, but it's also over there and down is
Speaker 4: the same thing. The thing that makes your Grandma old
Speaker 4: and die is the thing that contains Saturn.
Speaker 3: It's like, what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2: But according to the theoretical physicist, that is true.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you're wrestling with those questions, then
Speaker 1: by all means.
Speaker 3: Do crowd work.
Speaker 1: But amen, amen, Amen is a good word to end with.
Speaker 1: It's great talking to you, catching up with you again.
Speaker 1: I love talking to you, and I do remain a
Speaker 1: big fan. You are the only crowd work guy that
Speaker 1: I can watch and go.
Speaker 3: All right, I suppose that's.
Speaker 4: There are some other masters out there. Listen, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: leave you. I've loved talking to you. I always do,
Speaker 4: and I'll leave you with We never discussed the sixth scene,
Speaker 4: so i'll leave it with you so that so you
Speaker 4: can ask.
Speaker 2: Me back someday we can talk about it for an hour.
Speaker 2: But it's the world.
Speaker 1: We'll start with the sixth episode, that's right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Maybe you can write another book.
Speaker 3: About space time right about the six six other things.
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I'd have to get a lot of living
Speaker 4: done anyway. It's the world of the deaf and American
Speaker 4: sign language, my mother and father and.
Speaker 3: Of course your parents.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I spent a long time as a sign
Speaker 4: language interpreter. So it goes through the whole history of
Speaker 4: sign language and American sign language and the education of
Speaker 4: the death and anyway. The book's called Subculture Vulture, and
Speaker 4: I'm very proud of it, and.
Speaker 3: That's all really good.
Speaker 1: I can't speak sign language, but or can't sign sign language,
Speaker 1: but I used to be a bit better after because
Speaker 1: I had I was helping a guy get Solberg who
Speaker 1: was deaf, and so the only thing we could do was,
Speaker 1: you know, he could rip let read a bed. But
Speaker 1: he was tall, I mean, he was profoundly there, you know,
Speaker 1: so he could do that, and he taught me some
Speaker 1: sign language.
Speaker 3: I've forgotten most of it.
Speaker 1: The only thing I remember is British sign language is
Speaker 1: a different language to Americans sign language.
Speaker 3: It was fascinating.
Speaker 1: I thought it was weird, and then when I heard this,
Speaker 1: it was weird. And that's weird, which I think is
Speaker 1: very witty, and that's odd.
Speaker 3: That's weird.
Speaker 2: Odd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's it's a very funny thing saying language. It
Speaker 1: makes me laugh. It's it's and it is very witty.
Speaker 4: It is very funny, and it used to be much
Speaker 4: more in your face. I won't do it, but I
Speaker 4: want you to guess what the sign for Asian and
Speaker 4: Chinese was when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: It's probably no good.
Speaker 4: Thankfully, deaf Chinese immigrants moved to America and.
Speaker 2: Were like, Uh, what the fuck is the sign for Chinese.
Speaker 4: No, we've got our own sign okay, and they've updated
Speaker 4: the language.
Speaker 3: But all all right, get out of here.
Speaker 2: It's great to see and you're the best. Yeah. Great
Speaker 2: seeing you too. I hope I see you again. Somewhere
Speaker 2: along the space time continuum.
Speaker 3: You will somewhere to space time, not before