Speaker 1: My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
Speaker 1: is joy. I talked to interest in people about what
Speaker 1: brings them happiness. Here's Tom Papa, a great American comedian
Speaker 1: who feels somehow reliable and enjoy.
Speaker 2: Am I interview and you are your interviewing man.
Speaker 3: It's really funny because last night I told my wife
Speaker 3: I was coming to see you and we adore you,
Speaker 3: and she was like, oh, that's so great. Have you
Speaker 3: like checked up on what he's been up to lately
Speaker 3: and I was like, no, no, no, he's interviewing me,
Speaker 3: so I don't. I don't have to look at his
Speaker 3: Wikipedia page, right, Yeah, like no, the pressure's on him.
Speaker 1: Well, see now the troubles You mentioned your wife because
Speaker 1: I mentioned to you very briefly before we started recording
Speaker 1: that you are my wife's favorite comedian. I like to
Speaker 1: hear that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I know it makes me think less of you, well
Speaker 1: know less of you, but kind of angry at you.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of jealous a little bit.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: As soon as you said it, I was like, well,
Speaker 3: that means that's too bad, because I really like you.
Speaker 3: And now I know if I liked yeah, that you
Speaker 3: like me a little less than you did before.
Speaker 1: She declared that, well, it's just been watching you on
Speaker 1: the on the interwebs, the.
Speaker 2: Instagram and all that, because she has all that. Ah,
Speaker 2: is that where she catches it mostly?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: Do you do a lot of that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, I started.
Speaker 3: I got a group a company to post my clips
Speaker 3: because it takes me I six hours.
Speaker 2: I just did that. It takes me six hours to
Speaker 2: edit and then post it and tag it.
Speaker 3: I just did. I can't do it. So I got
Speaker 3: this group to do it about a year ago. And
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, more people come up to me at
Speaker 3: my shows and say that they were turned on to
Speaker 3: me or watched me through TikTok or Instagram. Right then,
Speaker 3: the Netflix or Comedy Central.
Speaker 1: Totally have the same thing. I just started doing it.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably the same company. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: started doing it about three or four months ago. And
Speaker 1: the demographic in my audience, the age has dropped like
Speaker 1: an average of like thirty years.
Speaker 2: Like all of a sudden, there's more.
Speaker 1: People and they're young, and yeah they and I said
Speaker 1: to them, you fuckers better not be here.
Speaker 2: Ironically, No, this is Astley.
Speaker 1: I want some you know, not that there's anything I
Speaker 1: do like Rick Astley, both as a man and as
Speaker 1: a performer.
Speaker 2: You're right, he got kind of ironic for a while.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you want you want young people, but
Speaker 3: I have the opposite thing where I'll look at the
Speaker 3: audience in certain spots and they're older and I'm like,
Speaker 3: so where did you find me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like this must be a face in the library. Yeah, right, exactly,
Speaker 3: my book in the library. I think I feel like
Speaker 3: I'm done trying to figure it out and I'm just
Speaker 3: throwing I'm always mistaken about the trends and what's happening.
Speaker 3: So if they say throw all your shit this way,
Speaker 3: it's whatever.
Speaker 1: I think it's basically and I am stealing a phrase
Speaker 1: from my own wife here, my wife, who you're her
Speaker 1: favorite lover. She says, you just throw toilet paper at
Speaker 1: the Hollywood sign and see what sticks, and that's that's
Speaker 1: the entire business. And if she said, if you have
Speaker 1: to ever write down what your job is like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to say, well, I perform.
Speaker 2: I right, you don't have to do any of that.
Speaker 1: You just see you roll up pieces of toilet paper
Speaker 1: and you throw it at the Hollywood sign and you
Speaker 1: see what sticks.
Speaker 3: It's perfect because that sign is so bigah, and the
Speaker 3: balls are so small, tiny little spit ball that is
Speaker 3: kind of actually act like you have to throw that.
Speaker 3: You have to constantly throw and you'll never cover it
Speaker 3: when I love if you been out in LA. I
Speaker 3: have been back and forth from New York in LA
Speaker 3: for twenty years.
Speaker 2: I think of you as an East Coast person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you're kind of you have that sort of clever,
Speaker 1: good at stand up vibe about you, that kind of
Speaker 1: New York thing. It is my roots. It is my thing.
Speaker 3: I have a hard time saying I'm here, Like even
Speaker 3: like you just asking the question, I have to tell
Speaker 3: a story.
Speaker 1: I can't just say I've been here eight year looks
Speaker 1: it's a thing I have to say. It's not good
Speaker 1: if you just do yes or no answers. That makes
Speaker 1: everything very difficult. Yes, yes, but.
Speaker 3: I shut down. We shut down our New York place
Speaker 3: eight years ago. And so we've been here full time
Speaker 3: without New York for eight years.
Speaker 2: And you reached your kids over there then.
Speaker 3: Both places, and then they wanted The reason we closed
Speaker 3: down New York was they got to a point where
Speaker 3: they wanted friends. Oh, they want friends, yeah, and they
Speaker 3: want young people I know, very very needy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And they started there, they were here, then we went
Speaker 3: back like whenever I'd get a job, they would come
Speaker 3: and we'd relocate for a little while. And they love both.
Speaker 3: But now twenty and seventeen, they're both gravitating.
Speaker 1: My one daughter.
Speaker 3: There's a school in the east, my youngest, my second
Speaker 3: is going to uh the East as well.
Speaker 1: Mine did that too, and they both well one of
Speaker 1: them is still too young, but the other one, my
Speaker 1: older boy, grew up here and then like since born here,
Speaker 1: raised here, and then like, yeah, I'm going to New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's weird because we love New York. And
Speaker 3: my wife is like, I can already, I can. I
Speaker 3: heard a zipper the other night and she's like quietly
Speaker 3: starting to pack bags. I thought she was like, don't
Speaker 3: messing with your pants, not that she's packing up, and.
Speaker 1: Like we're going to go back. I think that I
Speaker 1: might end up back there as well. Yeah, as I
Speaker 1: heartle into my dotage, like as I start to like
Speaker 1: get you know, indigestion a law, and I like I
Speaker 1: have see but I can't see and I think that
Speaker 1: New York's a great city for getting older and if
Speaker 1: you have a better.
Speaker 3: Cash I yes, I know it is expensive, but you know,
Speaker 3: pretty comparable to hear yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But here you I feel like here people hate you
Speaker 1: if you're over thirty five anyway, And in New York
Speaker 1: they kind of don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, absolutely when I'm here and I see like
Speaker 3: aging rock stars yeah at Gelson's, Yeah, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Like I'll see someone from you think is
Speaker 3: from Kiss and they're yeah, and they all kind of
Speaker 3: like there's no there's no moisture left in them, right,
Speaker 3: kind of like, yeah, this is not a I don't
Speaker 3: thrown shade on Kiss.
Speaker 1: No, but looks like that Crispy Ghosts from the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: It's perfect. That's so perfect Krispy Goes from the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: And I think I should go where there's more humidity.
Speaker 1: I should go. I should go to New York. I
Speaker 1: think also in New York you're allowed to be older.
Speaker 1: You can get old like Samuel Beckett or something. In
Speaker 1: the New York you can be like kind of cranky
Speaker 1: and clever, and you know, it's it in a cafe way.
Speaker 2: A good suit I know. See that's important.
Speaker 1: That might do it for me. Well, because everyone in
Speaker 1: Ellie wears workout gear, especially when they're note working out.
Speaker 3: Well, look what's happened to me? I'm kind of dressing
Speaker 3: like a child. I literally this outfit. Yeah, converse up
Speaker 3: to a colorful tea with something on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what I was in sixth grade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you've added on top of the color to
Speaker 1: a cardigan, which brings it back around. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well this is my this is my this is this
Speaker 2: Italian cardigan that I've.
Speaker 1: Been It's BEAUTI yeah, it's really nice, thank you, But
Speaker 1: it is a cardigan. It is a cardigan, yeah, which
Speaker 1: kind of puts you a little although I have to
Speaker 1: say again, you know, I'm kind of worried about this
Speaker 1: because my wife's favorite item of clothing of all the
Speaker 1: items of clothings that she enjoys cardigans on herself or
Speaker 1: on you or herself. I'm I have difficulty embracing the
Speaker 1: card again. Why.
Speaker 2: Well, I was a punk rocker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes things stick, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And I think cardigan's was a symbol of oppression.
Speaker 3: And yeah, but didn't they own it? Didn't they take
Speaker 3: it on their own and have holes in it.
Speaker 1: I thinky did I feel like car You know that's right.
Speaker 1: John Lydon or Johnny Rotten had a crap card Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, it looked like my grand's cardigan. But my
Speaker 1: gran had hanky a tissue up her sleeve. I don't
Speaker 1: think John Lydon had a tissue up the sleeve, in
Speaker 1: which case he's a phony.
Speaker 3: My nana used to hide her tissue in her in
Speaker 3: between her boobs.
Speaker 2: Oh that's where she.
Speaker 1: That's kind of yeah, saucy, that's gonna saucy place for Grandma.
Speaker 1: She was like, she's going to wipe your face with that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure booby sweat. I'm sure. I'm sure. It's kind
Speaker 1: of also that I think it's a specially afity website
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: That is a category. Yeah, I think it. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: I kind of I'm wrestling with or not wrestling. I'm
Speaker 1: struggling with the aging process. I turned sixty this year,
Speaker 1: and actually I turned sixty one this year.
Speaker 3: You look great, thank you, and I kind of feel
Speaker 3: like we're okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know the internal stuff.
Speaker 2: You were younger than me, you were early fifties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I do feel like we are in a
Speaker 3: profession and the kind of artist that we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, age helps, it kind of does a little bit
Speaker 1: oh much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: I think when you're a young comedian, I think, in fact,
Speaker 1: the last time I talked to you that we talked
Speaker 1: about this, because when I was younger, my my stuff
Speaker 1: was very angry, like the hell Man and woking up
Speaker 1: and down, and I'm just I have a hard time
Speaker 1: putting that together.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say that you're doing great. That you even
Speaker 3: remember our last interview. That's better what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: No, because I remember it well because every but once
Speaker 1: a week my wife says, you know that.
Speaker 2: But funny, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Did you see this bed that I've gotten? He did
Speaker 1: this thing on Instagram? I said, he didn't do a
Speaker 1: thing on Instagram. He did a specially cut it up.
Speaker 1: Shut up about Tom Poppa.
Speaker 3: The idea of her just holding the phone up towards
Speaker 3: you with my face.
Speaker 1: On it, Well, it's not even that she does is
Speaker 1: she'll lie in bed and I don't hear good once.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of Ted Danson was on My Late
Speaker 1: night show once about more than once. But he's a
Speaker 1: lovely guy, Ted, but apparently Mary used to like watching
Speaker 1: my show. Mary his wife used to like watching my show,
Speaker 1: but not let him. He didn't like him being there
Speaker 1: when she was watching that. It really made him mad.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: I love that it makes you laugh?
Speaker 2: Then who makes who makes you laugh?
Speaker 1: Like? Do you watch commedia? I don't really watch comedians.
Speaker 1: Do you watch comedians? No? Not that often.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, I have this radio show on Sirius XM,
Speaker 3: and a lot of comedians come on. Yea, so it's
Speaker 3: really a comedian haven. So I, out of respect for
Speaker 3: everyone who shows up, I'll watch at least some of
Speaker 3: what they're pushing a clip on TikTok yeah, and some
Speaker 3: I'll some, it'll some all go. You know, it really
Speaker 3: just depends on just I don't even know what it is,
Speaker 3: but my mood. Like sometimes in the car, I can
Speaker 3: throw on the comedy channel and I really enjoy hearing
Speaker 3: everybody and seeing what everyone's talking about. And then at
Speaker 3: other times it's like the most horrible idea. It's funny
Speaker 3: that I feel the same way about it. I wonder
Speaker 3: because you're I feel like you're comedy, which I now
Speaker 3: know a great deal more of.
Speaker 1: Than I used to it's actually I love it because
Speaker 1: I feel there is a there's a gentle cleverness about
Speaker 1: what you do. Is that the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you like when you listen to it, that is that
Speaker 1: you're drawn to?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, there is definitely a I'm always craving
Speaker 3: like a hopefulness. My biggest love was Carlin growing up,
Speaker 3: and there were other great like when Eddie Murphy hit
Speaker 3: when I was like in high school, and Steve Martin
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of influences, but Carlin was the one.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was the one putting out you know,
Speaker 3: specials pretty much all the time.
Speaker 1: He was HBO. He was like it was Home Box Office,
Speaker 1: like every two years.
Speaker 3: And I remember there was one special and I love
Speaker 3: him being raw, I love him being you know, thoughtful,
Speaker 3: and it's why I think his material is actually holding
Speaker 3: up more than a lot of like his stuff is
Speaker 3: still being plaid one. But there was this one special
Speaker 3: where he didn't give you hope at the end, like
Speaker 3: I love hearing about the ship and going through all
Speaker 3: of the problems, but we're gonna be okay, or but
Speaker 3: we can do this, and one he didn't, and he
Speaker 3: just I think it might have.
Speaker 2: Been the one with the tombstones in the background.
Speaker 3: I know exactly the one you made. Yeah, Edie didn't
Speaker 3: And I was crushed at the end of it.
Speaker 2: I didn't like that one.
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I mean I liked it because it's Carlin,
Speaker 1: but you didn't like it. It's like there are boy
Speaker 1: albums when I'm like, yeah, it's not it's not your best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one where you know what was some of the
Speaker 1: later ones when you're wearing span dex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Can't do that out even if you're David Boie.
Speaker 2: So what Drew you went to it in the first place?
Speaker 2: Was it then as a kid?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because they I guess when you were at high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eddie would have been bringing out Raw right, but
Speaker 1: then which was a big youthful because Eddie's.
Speaker 3: Well, Delirious was the first one. It was, wasn't Delirious
Speaker 3: Delirious And then raw was Delirious was on. He was
Speaker 3: like in the red and doing the ice cream man
Speaker 3: and oh yeah yeah, yeah that's right. Yeah, and that
Speaker 3: just exploded. Kid was imitating it.
Speaker 2: But that was the thing. You could have an a
Speaker 2: comedy album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, Well that final that's what got me into
Speaker 3: it in seventh grade when I was twelve or thirteen, Like,
Speaker 3: I was funny and I was making my way. I
Speaker 3: was always funny and hamming it up. And I was
Speaker 3: in the summer where I was with older kids.
Speaker 2: Why were you the drug mule or something?
Speaker 3: No, everybody went to camp and the poor kids stayed behind,
Speaker 3: and so it was me with like a bunch of
Speaker 3: older girls and guys, okay, And my way to kind
Speaker 3: of like not get kicked out of the group was
Speaker 3: like keep them laughing and be have some kind of value.
Speaker 3: And that summer I heard a class Clown by Carlin
Speaker 3: and then Steve Martin's Let's Get Small on vinyl at
Speaker 3: two different friends' homes, and I realized it clicked that
Speaker 3: this being funny was a job for grown ups.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose that. I mean, Belly Connley did that
Speaker 1: from the exact same thing for me. But you would
Speaker 1: listen to the album, Yeah, then you listen to it
Speaker 1: again and hold it and yeah, I don't think people
Speaker 1: listen to comedy over and over again. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, it seems to me they consume
Speaker 1: it in thirty second chunks on Yeah, on their phones,
Speaker 1: I know, and even on serious like on the comedy channels,
Speaker 1: you're very rarely hearing a whole thing.
Speaker 3: You're hearing, you know, a little short or ten minute
Speaker 3: bits or something. But you know, I was getting ready
Speaker 3: to interview someone yesterday and I realized, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: I don't have to sit and watch his special. I
Speaker 3: just have it on on my phone and listen to it. Right,
Speaker 3: And as I was doing it, I was like, this
Speaker 3: is so much better than watching it.
Speaker 2: This is so I love listening. I prefer it too.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's what's something to do behind the
Speaker 1: rise of the podcast as well. Yeah, the listening to it,
Speaker 1: because I think sometimes when you're watching a comedian woking
Speaker 1: up and down and trying too hard and stuff. I
Speaker 1: know this, soone's going on. You wear that shirt, his
Speaker 1: face is what is she? What is she trying to
Speaker 1: be handsome? Or why are you trying to look glamorous? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why's sexy? Yeah that's confusing me. You're sexy, but you're
Speaker 1: also funny.
Speaker 2: I can't deal. Do you use the peloton that bike?
Speaker 2: You ever used that bike? I've never been known.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm six years old, so I have to guard
Speaker 1: my pro state jealously. And the peloton has a seat
Speaker 1: on it, doesn't it a little? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Tain't irritator. Isn't it doing that bother your prostate?
Speaker 1: I think it might really well once I got a fever.
Speaker 1: And is the prostate on the outside, No, man, we watched.
Speaker 2: The doctors work on the outside.
Speaker 1: Prost isn't there. But because anyone's listening to this show
Speaker 1: for medical advice, that's really the wrong place to be.
Speaker 2: The prostate's up your bomb and run the corner right.
Speaker 4: So I sitting on a seat and because there's it's
Speaker 4: just like your your ass skin is just an envelope,
Speaker 4: and inside the envelope is the pro state that there?
Speaker 2: And you don't want to it's flimsy envelope. There's bubble.
Speaker 2: We're asking for yourself.
Speaker 1: I've got I got my envelopes, a little flimsy run
Speaker 1: that area, I mean, and then it pushes up against it.
Speaker 1: And also I'm quite large, so I'm pushing down right, frosty,
Speaker 1: I'm pushing up on the little thing.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you use the peloton.
Speaker 3: I do use the peloton with a callous disregard for
Speaker 3: pillow on my seat. But I we brought it up
Speaker 3: because when you said, uh, you're distracting me when I'm watching,
Speaker 3: when you're watching the video, and it's like, now I'm thinking.
Speaker 3: And there's there's an array of teachers and you know,
Speaker 3: it's a video thing and these beautiful teachers out of
Speaker 3: London in New York, right, and uh. And I go
Speaker 3: with this guy, Matt Wilpers, who's a gym coach. He's
Speaker 3: just a bald, white milky let's let's do this. He's great,
Speaker 3: and he's so great, And the thing that's most the
Speaker 3: best thing is that he's not as distracted like I
Speaker 3: went to some of the females who are like working
Speaker 3: it on the bike and there's cleavage and they're winking
Speaker 3: at you, and I'm trying to battle with my prostate
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I can't. This is too distracted. You know,
Speaker 3: it's weird. My wife is a peloton instructor.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 3: Just give me just you know, why are we beating
Speaker 3: around the bush. Just give me her number? When did
Speaker 3: you say they're coming to town?
Speaker 2: I don't have her number.
Speaker 1: It's in my phone, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Can you remember Andy's phone number?
Speaker 3: The only number I know in my life right now,
Speaker 3: of all the most important people is my wife. I
Speaker 3: don't know my daughters, I don't know my parents. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know any numbers. I plug it
Speaker 3: and forget it.
Speaker 1: The only number I can remember is the number of
Speaker 1: the telephone that we used to have my house when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and my dad used to answer it.
Speaker 1: He put his jacket on first, and then when the
Speaker 1: phone rang, he put his jacket on, and then answer.
Speaker 2: Put his jacket on an answer.
Speaker 1: Not really, but sometimes it was like the phone would
Speaker 1: go and it was sort of an event.
Speaker 2: Excuse me.
Speaker 1: It was a sort of like, well, your dad answers
Speaker 1: the phone. He's the man of the house, of course,
Speaker 1: and like i'd even say, comb an old two, one, six,
Speaker 1: four or seven.
Speaker 2: That's how he answered. That's how he answered.
Speaker 1: It didn't talk like that. That's yeah, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: pretty good. What was your number when you were growing up?
Speaker 1: Or is it?
Speaker 2: If it's still your number, then don't say it.
Speaker 3: No, But I'm not going to say it because I
Speaker 3: do use it as part of my passwords.
Speaker 1: Oh, I never use it as part of my past word.
Speaker 1: You don't know, well, not your number or indeed my number.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have said it. Yeah, but I remember that one,
Speaker 3: of course. Yeah, that one just rolls off.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the technology change is so odd to
Speaker 1: me because telephones, I think you didn't really think about it.
Speaker 1: Tell the telephone was in the house and it was
Speaker 1: like a kettle, like a tea kettle or a refrigerator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it just like overtook all these things. It
Speaker 1: became like the most important thing on earth is a telephone,
Speaker 1: but yet a whole generation doesn't want to use it
Speaker 1: to talk. Yeah, it's funny. I was talking to a
Speaker 1: friend of me and about that this very day, Like,
Speaker 1: why will you text when you're driving?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's dangerous call people, right, they do not
Speaker 3: want to use their voice.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that.
Speaker 1: Is the easier to fake you out if it's a text?
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean fear of intimacy, fear that Well, for my kids,
Speaker 1: it's fear that they think that it's a call means trouble,
Speaker 1: that we're yelling at them or something like it's one
Speaker 1: of them, well does it?
Speaker 2: But they like to FaceTime.
Speaker 3: They don't like the soul, just the voice, but they're
Speaker 3: happy to pick up if it's FaceTime.
Speaker 1: That's weird. I feel like that too now as Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think that with the FaceTime if I'm away
Speaker 1: from home, like if you're on the road or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I put the FaceTime.
Speaker 1: I'll call my wife, I'll put it in, you know,
Speaker 1: and she has to stop watching you, and then I
Speaker 1: have to see me walking in the background.
Speaker 2: You're in the background. God, what about this one, Megan?
Speaker 1: So, a guy's on a peloton back, he's got an
Speaker 1: outside for us date and he's trying to work around it.
Speaker 1: The I'll put it on and leave it on him.
Speaker 1: We'll talk like we talk in the house, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And it's not It doesn't feel so far away somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it doesn't feel like you have to constantly
Speaker 3: have something to say.
Speaker 1: You can have those quiet moments, right the nothing happening
Speaker 1: thing or like you pass guys say. This is an
Speaker 1: official invitation to the Fancy Vascal stand up Show. I
Speaker 1: Craig Ferguson will be performing this fall in your region.
Speaker 1: You can buy tickets and check out the full list
Speaker 1: of dates at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: dour see you there or not? I'm sorry, I get distracted.
Speaker 3: I was just wondering if I look fat on your
Speaker 3: camera right now.
Speaker 1: No, these cameras that are here filming us, they first
Speaker 1: of all, there's no one here but cameras. There's only
Speaker 1: cameras on their own, which I feel like they look
Speaker 1: like they just arrived, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: There's nobody behind them.
Speaker 3: I bet when everyone's out of here, the cameras talk
Speaker 3: to each other and they're like, why are those meatbags
Speaker 3: coming in here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they come in here all the time. They kind
Speaker 1: of look like three legged spiders with one eye and
Speaker 1: they they're coming to They do look like aliens. They do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of getting freaked out. Did you do
Speaker 2: hallucinogens when you were younger?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, did you really? I'm surprised. I thought you
Speaker 1: were quite a wholesome character. I yeah, but you did
Speaker 1: do hallucinogens? Yeah? I love them?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Do you still do them now? I haven't quite some time,
Speaker 1: and I want to. Okay, but do you want something
Speaker 1: I could sell you? I know they're kind of they're
Speaker 1: readily available. Well, this it seems to be that drugs
Speaker 1: are like, you can have what you want. No.
Speaker 3: My friend Bonnie McFarlane's very funny comedian, You're yeah brilliant.
Speaker 3: She has a funny run about how it's too late
Speaker 3: for global warming. This is definitely the end of times.
Speaker 3: We're definitely missed it. It's too late, she goes. I
Speaker 3: think that's why the government, and the government knows it.
Speaker 3: That's why they're just handing out free drugs to everyone.
Speaker 2: Enjoy your end of times drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean the the because the entire I feel like
Speaker 1: the entire country.
Speaker 2: You you still tour alone, right, you still wark?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It seems to me every study I go to smells
Speaker 2: like weed. Everywhere. Where's Jamaica? Where Jamaica.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like I've never been to Jamaica, but
Speaker 1: I assume it smells like weed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's everywhere, it really is. Do you enjoy that?
Speaker 1: Do you use? I don't, you know?
Speaker 3: Like I was pretty wholesome my whole life, and then
Speaker 3: in an athlete, and then I got to like when
Speaker 3: high school was ending in through college, I just freedom
Speaker 3: and I just I wasn't an athlete anymore. And that's
Speaker 3: where I really got into all the fun stuff and Uh,
Speaker 3: it was so great, and we used to pine about
Speaker 3: how this should be legal. It's ridiculous why it's legal.
Speaker 3: And now that it's legal, all these years later, and
Speaker 3: it just doesn't I have a hard time with it
Speaker 3: makes me moody. I liked being high, but the next
Speaker 3: day or two, I'm sluggish, and.
Speaker 2: It makes me psychotic. It makes me really kind of down.
Speaker 2: No I yet because it's.
Speaker 1: Legal now, Yeah, it's I wish I could enjoy it,
Speaker 1: but I know I stopped enjoying it very early.
Speaker 2: You did, Yeah, we used to. I used to smoke hashish.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, Pakistani black hashish or Lebanese red hashish.
Speaker 2: I only had black, Yeah, Pakistani blacks.
Speaker 1: Very We should to get the stuff called Nepalese temple balls,
Speaker 1: which was a mixture of hashisian opium. Whoa, I only
Speaker 1: had opium once. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a sleepy time.
Speaker 1: It's a sleepy time drug, but a cozy, sleepy, cozy,
Speaker 1: sleepy time. Yeah. But when I was about eighteen or nineteen,
Speaker 1: because I started very young, Like I tripped an acid
Speaker 1: when I was like sixteen. Wow, it's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: That's really early.
Speaker 2: It's not good.
Speaker 1: But by the time I was eighteen, I started to
Speaker 1: experience like I'd get psychotic if I smoked weed, really yeah,
Speaker 1: like panic attacks and like disassociation and awful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's really unfortunate. Why did you ask
Speaker 3: about the wucinogenics in the first I.
Speaker 2: Think because.
Speaker 1: I feel like you do seem like someone who would
Speaker 1: enjoy an other worldliness, right do you?
Speaker 2: I mean are you you? You wouldn't take them? Now?
Speaker 1: I want it?
Speaker 2: Mushrooms so well.
Speaker 3: Mushrooms and and LSD right, And it was LSD first
Speaker 3: for some reason.
Speaker 2: It showed up at the end of high school.
Speaker 1: It was kind of around yeah, and there was a
Speaker 1: time it kind of was popular for a while, like
Speaker 1: math go popular for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I never did math. It seems so speedy from the outside.
Speaker 3: It never looked like fun.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm from Britain, so teeth are a
Speaker 1: challenge anyway.
Speaker 2: And have you had math on tobola? It's like, where
Speaker 2: are you going to go with that?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: And then mushrooms went longer and it seemed more natural
Speaker 3: and more fun. And I remember hearing Jerry Garcia saying
Speaker 3: or read in an interview that he he still likes
Speaker 3: to do it once a year, just to clean the
Speaker 3: pipes out.
Speaker 1: Okay, it was such a nice way to say it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I feel like the pipes a bit really calcified
Speaker 3: at this point. But I have this weird thing and
Speaker 3: maybe you can give me some insight on this doctor
Speaker 3: some days inside that's someone gave me mushrooms. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: this was several years ago, and my wife was like, oh,
Speaker 3: we should take them, and I don't know if she
Speaker 3: ever has And the idea of tripping with my wife,
Speaker 3: the mother of my children, the co CEO of this
Speaker 3: fraught enterprise.
Speaker 1: The one you rely on really when you rely.
Speaker 3: On and if if one child calls with trouble or whatever,
Speaker 3: like it freaked me out to trip with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I didn't do it.
Speaker 2: They're still in my there's still wherever they are in the.
Speaker 1: Yeah they might it may not be legal to have them,
Speaker 1: so they're in your storage locker.
Speaker 2: Right, But I don't.
Speaker 3: But I often question, like, what's wrong with you that
Speaker 3: you don't want to like trip with her?
Speaker 1: Is it? I don't know if this is something that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing at all, Like I
Speaker 1: know I totally rely on my wife for the sad
Speaker 1: to you of our partnership, right, and I can't have
Speaker 1: far Like if she is too much ywain or something,
Speaker 1: I'm like, because she's not an alco I'm an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: so I don't drink, but she can drink.
Speaker 2: But if she gets tipsy, I'm like, well, what the
Speaker 2: fuck's gonna happen now?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Holy shit, the sorge just.
Speaker 2: No one's running the base, right, Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I think it is that. Yeah, does that is that bad?
Speaker 2: Is it Freudian? Is it like that's your mom or something? No,
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean we're very kind of equal.
Speaker 3: But what like if she gets cold or like she
Speaker 3: got COVID and yeah, it's like when she's like if
Speaker 3: I get sick, the house pretty much you know he's running.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing really happens. Yeah, she goes down like it's
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's trouble. Yeah, Megan got COVID and I
Speaker 1: had to make her a sandwich and.
Speaker 2: It you know, you you've always been a hero.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you just have to push yourself the
Speaker 1: extra mile.
Speaker 2: She said to me as I gave her the samage.
Speaker 1: She said, you haven't made me a sandwich since savage pregnant.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even want to overdo it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to raise your expectation. But she just
Speaker 2: she likes to do that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just you just really see, like in
Speaker 1: their absence. Oh, I'm how much is I'm living in
Speaker 1: a dumb stary eating beans out of a can if
Speaker 1: I can get a.
Speaker 2: Can without I'm telling you that.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Have you been married a long time?
Speaker 3: Yes, twenty three years. That's a week ago.
Speaker 2: A week ago? Congratulations? How did you meet? Was she
Speaker 2: in comedy? She was a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale.
Speaker 1: It's a fairy tale. You So she was in a
Speaker 1: castle under a spell, right, and you had to climb
Speaker 1: up the side right of the castle by her hair.
Speaker 3: We met in New York City and then a comedy
Speaker 3: club called the Comic Strip.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and place I ever performed?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Lucien holds, Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Give me my first gig ever in line? Really wow?
Speaker 2: Sorry you were tell you met in the Covid struck.
Speaker 1: We met there yeah.
Speaker 3: And I had a sketch group and she came and
Speaker 3: introduced herself because she wanted to be in it.
Speaker 2: And I was with Ian Bagg and other great comedian.
Speaker 2: Yeah I know who that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very fun.
Speaker 3: And Ian and I were together and she came up
Speaker 3: and introduced herself and it was like something sparked where
Speaker 3: she walked away and Ian when what the hell just happened?
Speaker 1: What was that? Like?
Speaker 3: You could feel like the with the two of us.
Speaker 3: So we're in the back in the booth during a
Speaker 3: show later on.
Speaker 2: Oh, so she got the job?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, she got And she was going home for Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: and I said, were you going tomorrow?
Speaker 1: I'm going home.
Speaker 3: I said, where's home? Where'd you grow up? She goes,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't know. It's a small town in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: I said where? She said, uh, Parkridge. I said, Oh,
Speaker 3: did you have Miss Conway for kindergarten?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: And we had the same I was in that same
Speaker 3: school third grade, and then I moved one town over.
Speaker 1: We were a year apart.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then we had the same summer jobs. We were
Speaker 3: both worked in this hotel. Never met until the comic
Speaker 3: strip when we were older.
Speaker 2: That's bizarre. Yeah, so we had all this history.
Speaker 3: We knew the same people, we knew the same places,
Speaker 3: we were at the same party.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be. It was meant to be. No,
Speaker 1: does she still work in comedy. No, she did until
Speaker 1: we had children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it's all and then yeah, and then
Speaker 3: if we stayed in New York, she probably would still
Speaker 3: dabble in it.
Speaker 2: She'd write for you at all.
Speaker 1: Over.
Speaker 2: No, Megan writes for me.
Speaker 1: She does.
Speaker 2: She doesn't really write it.
Speaker 1: She goes, this is funny, and then she says the
Speaker 1: thing and I go, yeah, it is. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: didn't give too much away in case it's really funny, uh,
Speaker 1: because then people can say, wow, that was a good bet.
Speaker 1: Craig we Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: She is this weird combination where when I would run
Speaker 3: jokes by her, yeah, I don't think she said that
Speaker 3: it was funny once, she was always like nah yeah,
Speaker 3: and then at a certain point I'm like, I gotta
Speaker 3: try this. I think she's wrong, and then like shit
Speaker 3: was working. Yeah, but she was just so tough so
Speaker 3: I couldn't do that. But she's very funny, so like
Speaker 3: she just spouts things out and I steal them.
Speaker 1: I steal them. That's what I do as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Megan did this one once, but I thought, God, that's
Speaker 1: the great. But she was just told he wasn't even
Speaker 1: trying to be funny. She said, she said, you know,
Speaker 1: seek freedom Roy. She said that proves that God exists.
Speaker 1: And I went, okay, that's interesting. Tell me why seek
Speaker 1: freedom Roy proves God exists? And she said, she said,
Speaker 1: because what are the odds? Like there's always someone for
Speaker 1: someone said if you're a young gay Austrian lion tamer
Speaker 1: walking around Austria.
Speaker 2: Saying, oh what, it's me.
Speaker 1: I am a gay Austrian lion tamer, doomed because of
Speaker 1: my interests to be alone in life. And then you
Speaker 1: bump into another guy who's also a gay Austrian lin tamer,
Speaker 1: like it's like, there you are.
Speaker 2: That's you did that as a bit, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I did? Yeah, because I remember it. Yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: it was from Megan saying though, wow, I think that
Speaker 1: you know, and I stole it for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to. You ever hear Shimmels bit. No,
Speaker 3: Robert sim Robert schml you.
Speaker 1: I don't know him.
Speaker 2: I know he is very funny.
Speaker 3: He had one of my favorite jokes of his was
Speaker 3: Sigfried and Roy that you know the lion at the
Speaker 3: end turned and yeah and ate Roy or and uh
Speaker 3: he said, uh, I forget the complete setup, but it
Speaker 3: was the lions are there. People act surprised at these lions.
Speaker 3: Ate Sigfried or Roy. He said, you take these lions
Speaker 3: from the jungle, from the from the wild, and you
Speaker 3: bring them to Las Vegas and you spray, you sprape,
Speaker 3: ain't them pink? And they have to do two shows night.
Speaker 3: At one point the tiger was to turn to the
Speaker 3: other and said, this ship ends tonight.
Speaker 2: Well as it turns out, because I have to say
Speaker 2: this because people will go crazy. The tiger the eight
Speaker 2: Roy didn't eat them.
Speaker 1: It's like he had a stroke and the tiger picked
Speaker 1: him up really pick up there, but yeah, well, was
Speaker 1: he had a stroke. The tiger picked them up because
Speaker 1: it was worried about him, and it.
Speaker 2: Looked like the tiger was going tiger on him, but
Speaker 2: he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He was moving him, no, because he realized he was sick.
Speaker 2: I never heard that. Yeah, And when he came around.
Speaker 1: Roy's first thing was they didn't put The first thing
Speaker 1: he said was like they didn't put down the Tiger?
Speaker 2: Do you put down the Tiger? And they said, no,
Speaker 2: we didn't do it because.
Speaker 1: So it was, as it turned out, a Disney ending
Speaker 1: to the story. That is so nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've played Vegas, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Do you enjoy it?
Speaker 3: I do enjoy It's confusing to me, though, why because
Speaker 3: I never know who's coming to those shows, Like whenever
Speaker 3: I have to promote a show in Vegas, yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 3: who is it locals that live in Vegas? Because everyone
Speaker 3: else seems to come in for seventy two hours and
Speaker 3: lead right?
Speaker 1: Do you like the I like it though, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the audiences are tricky because I always feel the
Speaker 1: people that are coming to see you like you're part
Speaker 1: of the buffet. Really is yea you want shrimp or
Speaker 1: tom pop? Right, here's some tickets to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I find that those audiences are better than
Speaker 3: other casino kind of audiences, like Vegas now is a
Speaker 3: little bit more of a city it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2: When's the first first time you played it?
Speaker 1: Am I having a stroke? Or do I smell bacon?
Speaker 1: I'm you know, somebody might have passed gas. You guys
Speaker 1: don't smell that, But I don't eat bacon, so I
Speaker 1: don't do one of you guys pass gas. I think
Speaker 1: I'm having a stroke. You know, I don't think smelling
Speaker 1: bay and as a stroke. But if I have a struggle,
Speaker 1: you put me up in your mouth and take me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will left you up. I'll put you in my
Speaker 1: mouth like a tiger, and I'll take you to another
Speaker 1: part of the stage and then people won't put me down.
Speaker 1: Are you hypochondriac? No? I, well I'm getting that way
Speaker 1: older you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you you don't like But you didn't even
Speaker 3: I was on my road to be I was on
Speaker 3: my way to becoming one.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you stop children? No, I'm hyperchondract for
Speaker 1: the kids too, for the Yeah, hypochondract by proxy. It
Speaker 1: is all fearful, it is, I think having kids. It's
Speaker 1: like I don't until you have kids. Most of the
Speaker 1: great philosophers didn't have children. Is that true? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it sounds like it sounds good.
Speaker 1: But do you think of like Schopenhauer, no kids, Emmanuel can't,
Speaker 1: no kids. Cart I don't think you had any kids. No,
Speaker 1: I had like twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Plato wrote down Socrates.
Speaker 1: Shit, now that we have to remember about Plato is
Speaker 1: like Plato is so great, Well he kind of wrote
Speaker 1: down So's bets right, Socrates was doing the bets and
Speaker 1: Plato was typing it right.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose he aristotles Aristotles maybe Chile. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that is? Because because I think when
Speaker 1: you have kids, you're like, you can't think, your worldview changes,
Speaker 1: can't think of anything else. Well, you have time, and
Speaker 1: I mean some like I think Bertram Russell had like
Speaker 1: thirteen kids, but.
Speaker 3: I think it kind of makes I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 3: without having kids, I feel like you're missing a piece
Speaker 3: if you're trying to develop a worldview and philosophy, what's
Speaker 3: why we're all here, et cetera, et cetera. It seems
Speaker 3: like without going through that experience, it seems like it
Speaker 3: was kind of like the hypochondriac thing. I was becoming
Speaker 3: a hypochondriac, and because I was becoming too self involved,
Speaker 3: it was me, me and my.
Speaker 1: Thing, and the whole philosophy is that, Yeah, this peers
Speaker 1: up his own us right past its outdoor pros thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like unless you unless you have that balance
Speaker 3: and I'm not I'm part of me is saying this
Speaker 3: because I'm being judgmental of them, but also because I'm
Speaker 3: not going to read all their stuff anyway, So I
Speaker 3: want an excuse of why I'm not right.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to read you stuff you don't have kids,
Speaker 2: like you never had kids. Yeah, so I shut up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll just read the quotes I see on T shirts.
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's quotes on T shirts is
Speaker 1: usually enough. Yeah, like I went down a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: with all that stuff for a while.
Speaker 3: You're drawn to that, Yeah, I am, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm I'm drawn to it. In podcasts, I like I
Speaker 3: like listening to people debate about it. I like the
Speaker 3: when I was like a little after college, like maybe
Speaker 3: eight ten years after college, I started reading some of
Speaker 3: it and I realized quickly, like, there's no end to this.
Speaker 3: This is no this is going to suck up a
Speaker 3: lot of time. And you know, some of you get
Speaker 3: some things out of it, which are cool, but this
Speaker 3: is really endless, and no one each is the end
Speaker 3: or has an answer. But now with podcasts, I really
Speaker 3: do like listening to people muddle through the same questions.
Speaker 1: Well, let's listen to it. Let's muddle through some of
Speaker 1: those questions. And as a philosopher, we are now too
Speaker 1: philosophers setting here. Yeah, I know. Does that mean that
Speaker 1: we're no longer doctors. No, we're doctors of philosophy. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're kind of like doctor phil or were doctors, but
Speaker 1: nobody really knows of what and we just talked too much.
Speaker 1: We just have big opinion. Yeah, we have big opinion
Speaker 1: that we shout. I'm very judging of other Yeah, judgmental
Speaker 1: of other people. I mean, it's like what you need
Speaker 1: to do. It's like, whoa, come on?
Speaker 2: Is that helpful?
Speaker 1: Sound like you're wrong to me? Yeah, No, you're future
Speaker 1: the bad person.
Speaker 2: What this isn't helpful at all?
Speaker 1: Really isn't.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So we are both I think we're both post
Speaker 1: Enlightenment philosophers. Yes, all right, so we're we're discussing philosophy
Speaker 1: after Dycard.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the modern world.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So Daycard in Discourse.
Speaker 1: On Method if you read that, No, all right, So
Speaker 1: as the book he wrote, he's quite young themticut and
Speaker 1: he wrote a book called Discourse on Method, which I'm
Speaker 1: going to paraphrase it obviously, but he said that he
Speaker 1: was going to prove the existence of God using reason
Speaker 1: instead of faith, so wouldn't be revetlatory kind of like
Speaker 1: burning bush things. He would base his entire belief on God,
Speaker 1: on reason, giving birth to the enlightenment, I think, And
Speaker 1: he would only base it on stuff that he'd experienced personally.
Speaker 1: That was his reason.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the basis for stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: Aha, of the type that you do, certainly and the
Speaker 1: type that I do.
Speaker 3: In the searching like that, this is all for validation
Speaker 3: of It's well, maybe some level is a SUCHI of validation,
Speaker 3: but it's also it's a search to try and explain
Speaker 3: how fucking crazy everything is, or how crazy it seems
Speaker 3: to be, or or look just looking at something from
Speaker 3: a different angle.
Speaker 2: Yes, not a flower.
Speaker 1: It's it's proof of the existence of God. Or it's
Speaker 1: not just Siegfried and Roy entertainers, although this is my
Speaker 1: wife's philosophy.
Speaker 2: It's proof of the existence of God, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: It's like right, trying to find well, you're saying, not
Speaker 3: just to solve, not just to make sense of the world,
Speaker 3: but actually to prove that there is a God. I
Speaker 3: don't know, do you think there is a God, I do,
Speaker 3: but it's a tricky it's a tricky like we'll call
Speaker 3: it God right, But there's so many different definitions of
Speaker 3: what people write.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about angry Santa own a cloud. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's real.
Speaker 3: I mean, but maybe I don't know. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: it's people's interpret like. It seems to me at this
Speaker 3: point that every organized religion, every form of meditation, every
Speaker 3: small practice, they're all acknowledging a presence of this constant
Speaker 3: hum right that we all sense is there. And Christians
Speaker 3: interpret it and pulled it down and tried to make
Speaker 3: sense of it and say this is this God. And
Speaker 3: Muslims did that, and TM says, get quiet and tune
Speaker 3: into that. So I believe that that is God right,
Speaker 3: that thing, that that force.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that, but it's unknowable. It is ultimately
Speaker 1: a noble Well see, I think that that is. There
Speaker 1: are areas of certainly early Christian philosophy where that was
Speaker 1: part of the deal.
Speaker 2: There was a guy called Origin of Alexandria.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with them? Now? Origin of Alexandria was
Speaker 1: a late second century early third century, so pre Roman
Speaker 1: Empire Christianity a lot of his stuff was lost because
Speaker 1: it was burned in the Library of Alexandria fire. But
Speaker 1: he was excommunicated about five hundred years after he died
Speaker 1: because he said that God was unknoble and there could
Speaker 1: be no physical representation and manifestation of the Deity, which
Speaker 1: is not what you want to hear when you're selling.
Speaker 2: Chajcuse, Yeah, shows up right.
Speaker 1: So no, he very much believed in JC but he
Speaker 1: very did not believe in physical representations of idolatry.
Speaker 2: Basically, I guess it would have become crosses and.
Speaker 1: As symbolism and stuff that you couldn't know that, And
Speaker 1: people get very upset with him because of that.
Speaker 2: But he was, but he was He believed in Jesus.
Speaker 2: He did believe. He was a Christian. Yeah, he believed
Speaker 2: in the in the idea of Christ.
Speaker 1: Being the Messiah and the reason It's like I always
Speaker 1: had a problem with that until it's not that I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with it. I still struggle with it.
Speaker 1: But I read C. S. Lewis or you know who
Speaker 1: wrote the Narnia. Yeah, he was a very big Christian apologist,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a couple of books.
Speaker 2: What Christians believe is a very.
Speaker 1: Good one of them, and he talks about what you
Speaker 1: just talked about, which is why he's not when he was.
Speaker 2: An atheist, and of course he was.
Speaker 1: At one point he said, it's too religious apposition to
Speaker 1: take because you're saying that everybody else is wrong, right,
Speaker 1: Whereas he said, if you're a Christian, you can say, well,
Speaker 1: the Hindus and the Muslims are they don't have it right,
Speaker 1: we have it right, or the or if you're a Muslim,
Speaker 1: you say we have it right. But what you're not
Speaker 1: saying is that there is no God right. And he said,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like arithmetic, like some there's only one
Speaker 1: correct answer, but some answers are pretty close, but there's
Speaker 1: only one correct time right. And I still don't buy
Speaker 1: that either. Yeah, but I like your idea of the home. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's I feel like it for me.
Speaker 3: It's an overwhelming sense of something, of that that thing,
Speaker 3: that God thing, and we have millions of human beings
Speaker 3: trying to wrangle that down and interpret it, and and
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like they're all right and they're
Speaker 3: all wrong. You know what I mean? Were you raised
Speaker 3: it in religion? Was raised Catholic in the same church
Speaker 3: that Bill Maher went to. Okay, he was older than
Speaker 3: I was, but we lived in the same town. And
Speaker 3: it's funny because he starts his whole documentary against religion, religiosity.
Speaker 1: I think it's.
Speaker 3: Religulous in front of the stained glass that I looked
Speaker 3: at as a kid from the pews.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, he's very anti religion, very anti religion, and
Speaker 1: I got a lot out of it. I enjoyed it. Catholicism, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you're just going to church? Did your kids get confirmed?
Speaker 2: And stuff?
Speaker 3: They didn't know my wife because kindergarten, that whole story,
Speaker 3: she went to the same church. She comes out on
Speaker 3: the Bill Maher side right, more than my side.
Speaker 1: I think I'm too afraid to I would be too
Speaker 1: afraid to be completely atheistic as well, because I'd be like,
Speaker 1: that's when.
Speaker 2: You don't want to get wrong right at the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I know there's lots of problems with
Speaker 3: the church, and there's lots of problems, but that's not
Speaker 3: the same as God.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, but we didn't baptize our kids, and one kind
Speaker 3: of gravitated away and kind of like to reason, and
Speaker 3: my other one is always looking for a church, like
Speaker 3: she's always she wants looking at that. And I got
Speaker 3: and I had I was more that way, like I got.
Speaker 3: I liked going someplace. Not as a kid, I was
Speaker 3: fighting it, you know, but I like one hour out
Speaker 3: of every week where you're just tending to that thing,
Speaker 3: that puzzle, that God, that you, that spirit, that thing.
Speaker 3: I got a lot out of it. I think it
Speaker 3: made me kinder. I think it made me more you know,
Speaker 3: helps people. Yeah, like with all the you know, and
Speaker 3: I I don't practice and go to church anymore, but
Speaker 3: I still.
Speaker 2: You still think of yourself as a Catholic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to some degree.
Speaker 2: Do you think about the inevitable much?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, while I'm thinking about everything else all the time.
Speaker 1: You think about it?
Speaker 2: Do you think about it all the time? Pretty often? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I suppose.
Speaker 1: So. The older I get, the more I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't like so distant anymore. No, I always I
Speaker 1: had ca'd.
Speaker 3: I lost some people really young, like some friends when
Speaker 3: like high school, like eighth grade's ninth grade?
Speaker 2: A lord, what happened?
Speaker 3: Accidents I've lost I've lost a lot of best I've
Speaker 3: lost three best friends good from real from fourteen to
Speaker 3: twenty two.
Speaker 2: That's horrible. I'm said, it is hard to hear that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was rough, but it was.
Speaker 3: But it definitely gave me a perspective of how death
Speaker 3: is always there, and it alleviated a fear of it.
Speaker 1: Really. It gave me.
Speaker 3: It didn't give me like comfort, but it gave me
Speaker 3: just a perspective that, you know, this is all very temporary.
Speaker 3: And so I always kind of with a little you know,
Speaker 3: a little smirk, was like when people would be like,
Speaker 3: I can't believe she died at eighty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can't believe.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, people seem shocked by death when it happens,
Speaker 3: or that they're or that they're heading that way, and
Speaker 3: just so I think from going through that early on,
Speaker 3: I've always been just kind of like, yeah, guys, this
Speaker 3: is yeah, it's yeah, it's you're not getting closer to
Speaker 3: it just because you're getting older, you've been close to
Speaker 3: it all that's.
Speaker 2: All the time.
Speaker 1: It's always there. Yeah. The idea of it, though, do
Speaker 1: you do you ruminate on on.
Speaker 2: The apre ski of it old? Do you think of
Speaker 2: what's next?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I really am hopeful that it's that it continues in
Speaker 3: some form.
Speaker 1: I really do. I really I think that would be.
Speaker 3: I feel like when you start to you know, when
Speaker 3: you start to I have really hard time getting my
Speaker 3: head around physics and time and space. But like when
Speaker 3: you start to deal with like there's all versions of
Speaker 3: this happening all the time, at different laces and everywhere,
Speaker 3: all at once. Yeah, it's just like I mean, it
Speaker 3: just seems so spectacular and so magical, this life and
Speaker 3: that if and if what I understand, these physics people
Speaker 3: are a looking around that.
Speaker 1: There's a great guy. I don't know if you've come
Speaker 1: across from. His name is Brian Cox, not the actor
Speaker 1: Brian Cox. He's an astrophysicist and he lectures I think
Speaker 1: at Cambridge or Oxford, one of the like. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's he's a contemporary probably of you or I somewhere
Speaker 1: a little older than you, maybe a younger than me maybe,
Speaker 1: but he like wears Joy Division T shirts and listens
Speaker 1: to good music and he understands references that we would understand.
Speaker 1: And it's very good at explaining massive astro really, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's great at it and does it?
Speaker 2: Does he help you retain it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: If you look, you'll find him on Have you heard
Speaker 1: You guys, get the Internet in the valley.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, but it's coming. You get the internet.
Speaker 1: Look up Brian Cox, astrophysicist, and he did. He's done
Speaker 1: a bunch of shows for the BBC. Okay, he's you.
Speaker 2: Know, he's good friends with Eric Idle. Do you know Eric?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know, but yeah, all right, so
Speaker 1: well Eric is friendly with him, and Eric's very drawn
Speaker 1: to all of that. Yeah yeah, if you right that,
Speaker 1: just remember that, just ending on it. That's all accurate, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the physics, all the science in that song. Correct, Eric,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. But he's very very interesting and very very good.
Speaker 1: And he did this, he did this show for the
Speaker 1: BBC and he was talking about the multiverse, the idea
Speaker 1: of everything being everywhere in time and I'll screw it
Speaker 1: up because it's complicated, but basically, everything exists all the
Speaker 1: time is a possibility, right, But we can and we
Speaker 1: can travel forward through it, but we can't travel backwards
Speaker 1: through it. It's just not like a valve. I put
Speaker 1: the word valve and he didn't use the word valve.
Speaker 1: I like it. It's helping me. But when my father died,
Speaker 1: my oldest son was very young. I think he was
Speaker 1: four or five when my father died and he was
Speaker 1: very upset. Yeah, And we were lying in the back garden,
Speaker 1: in the backyard in la and we were looking at
Speaker 1: the stars and my dad had just died and my
Speaker 1: son was crying and he said, Dad, I don't want
Speaker 1: any like this to ever happen to us. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, And he said I just can we
Speaker 1: just stay here lying in the backyard looking at the
Speaker 1: stars forever? And I said, yes, yes we can. And
Speaker 1: I thought I was just being nice to him. And
Speaker 1: years later, that kid who's now growing up and there's
Speaker 1: got a lot of opinions about things and it's very smart.
Speaker 1: And we're watching Brian Cox in a house in Scotland,
Speaker 1: in my house in Scotland, and we're watching it and
Speaker 1: Mila was there and he's growing up now and he
Speaker 1: was explaining that everything exists all the time was And
Speaker 1: I said, do you remember that when when Papa died?
Speaker 1: And he said I do. I said, I thought I
Speaker 1: was just being nice to you. I didn't realize I
Speaker 1: was telling you the truth. And we both cried for
Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, gorgeous. Yeah, I'm trying not to cry
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: And I think that I think that that to me
Speaker 3: because of lack of understanding and having a scientific Brian
Speaker 3: Cox's mind, I call it all magic, right, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I think, which is why semantics.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, science, science is magic that's been explained, right,
Speaker 1: I think a little bit or magic is science that
Speaker 1: hasn't been explained. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I I am open to all of it, and
Speaker 3: I really am hopeful for all of it. And I like,
Speaker 3: like too much weird stuff happens all the time of
Speaker 3: dreaming and having it happen glimpses, you know. I know
Speaker 3: people say it's coincidence, but it happens with such frequency
Speaker 3: of thinking about your wife and her calling me, or
Speaker 3: like any of those kind of things that are always
Speaker 3: happening all the time. I totally am all in and
Speaker 3: embracing and open to any kind of mystical explanation that
Speaker 3: this is indeed reality.
Speaker 2: I think that that's how I like to be with
Speaker 2: it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that is.
Speaker 1: People get very upset if other people don't agree with
Speaker 1: their belief system, which.
Speaker 2: I can't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, if you're so secure in your in your belief,
Speaker 1: why would it bother you? That I don't believe it,
Speaker 1: or I have a different point of view, I don't
Speaker 1: understand it.
Speaker 2: I don't need people to believe what I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, because you're also, from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: open to anything. You're fluid, You're not going to be
Speaker 3: static like no, this is this is the way it
Speaker 3: or you know what I mean, Like, well.
Speaker 1: That, but that's interesting because if you're a Catholic, that
Speaker 1: kind of is the deal, that this is the only
Speaker 1: thing that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, but that's why I'm not That's why
Speaker 3: you're not all I mean, that's it's to deny that
Speaker 3: my life and worldview as an influenced by it is wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, it's definitely in there, of course, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot of grown up things that I have to
Speaker 3: put aside.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I remember being back in church with my for a
Speaker 3: baptism and I was sitting next to my sister and
Speaker 3: she hadn't been the church from forever, and she was
Speaker 3: like seething during the and I was like, just take
Speaker 3: the good parts, yeah, and she's like, this is misogynist,
Speaker 3: this is I'm very uncomfortable being here. I'm not into this.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, but what about all the
Speaker 3: forgiveness and the love. And I know that guy's a creep,
Speaker 3: and I know that I've done some weird stuff and yeah,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make sense, and they're just sliding abortion in there.
Speaker 1: And I know, but.
Speaker 3: Look at the look at the stained glass.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of the darkest things I've ever heard. You
Speaker 1: tend to those, as far as I can tell from
Speaker 1: your work. Yeah, you tend to stay away from the
Speaker 1: controversy of that though, don't you. You kind of you
Speaker 1: Your company to me seems personal, which I is. I
Speaker 1: like that I'm drawing to that because no one else
Speaker 1: can do it, he said Tom Papa, which is great.
Speaker 2: So if I'm watching Tonapapa, that's what I'm getting, I'm
Speaker 2: right doing anybody else.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like i'm I have I don't think
Speaker 3: I'm smart enough to wrestle some of the big things
Speaker 3: down and then present them as fact, right, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I do feel like I'm more metaphorical.
Speaker 3: I can tell you something about the world based on
Speaker 3: my relationship with my father or a story about being
Speaker 3: with my daughter in the supermarket, like I can metaphorically
Speaker 3: tell tales that maybe will make sense about the world
Speaker 3: in their entirety. But for me, I say this is
Speaker 3: my stance on gun control. No, I can't do that.
Speaker 3: I just don't. They're very complex issues. They're complex, and
Speaker 3: also they're they're very on fire issues.
Speaker 1: And I think that the reason why I started doing
Speaker 1: comedy was to try to escalate dangerous situations that I
Speaker 1: was in through an accident of birth. So like, if
Speaker 1: I'm in a violent school yard or as a violent environment,
Speaker 1: or there's a violent place, then humor to me was
Speaker 1: this is how we stop should getting worse, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like take everybody's mind from here and throw it onto
Speaker 1: something over here.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't feel I wouldn't feel comfortable doing the stuff that
Speaker 1: makes everybody angry, yeah, because that's not how I got.
Speaker 2: Into it, I know. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: Everybody already was angry, right Yeah, Yeah, like they are too.
Speaker 2: I think everybody's waiting for it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean probably the biggest ones right now would be
Speaker 3: in the States is abortion and guns.
Speaker 1: Right, And nothing you or I is going to change
Speaker 1: anybody's mind. Nothing we say is going to change anybody's
Speaker 1: mind on any side of that debate at all. I know.
Speaker 3: But it's because it is becoming very glaring having two
Speaker 3: daughters and being like, oh, here's a list of states
Speaker 3: you're not going to live, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: holy cow. But I just don't. I just have a
Speaker 3: hard time. Like I feel like there's people that are
Speaker 3: better at it. I feel like Bill Maher can wrestle down.
Speaker 2: And he does it very well.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't he doesn't care if people get mad
Speaker 1: at No, that's another thing that's very you gotta have that.
Speaker 1: You have to be built that way. Yeah, Bill, Bill
Speaker 1: is like people when people yell out and call him Namesey's.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't care, right exactly. I care deeply me too.
Speaker 3: Oh I tell a joke about a cat and someone
Speaker 3: yells at me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I.
Speaker 2: Didn't mean it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like someone I've got a negative thing, like I
Speaker 1: never read comments. Say it when I do, and I do,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, it's I can't.
Speaker 3: I never read comments unless I sense that they're going
Speaker 3: in a very positive direction. Right then I'll soak them
Speaker 3: in and then they hit you with a bad one.
Speaker 3: Then those are crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's like you know when people used to say,
Speaker 1: I remember at the beginning, people who are saying, if
Speaker 1: you read the good reviews about yourself, you have to
Speaker 1: read the bad, do you?
Speaker 2: No, you don't, You only have to read the good ones.
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I'm so glad you said. I always
Speaker 1: hear that only read good reviews about yourself. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: do I have to read the bat It's like when
Speaker 1: people say my wife is my toughest critic. I say, look,
Speaker 1: then your marriage is fucking dum my. My wife like like,
Speaker 1: I'll say, stuff, you are so great, thank You're you're
Speaker 1: nearly as good as stump Papa, she will say.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll just stand there with my wife and she's
Speaker 3: not giving me enough praise, and I just kind of
Speaker 3: like linger like a puppy, and then she's you can
Speaker 3: see her clocket and be like, you're really great, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: This morning with me and I was getting off because
Speaker 1: she was telling me how good you were, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I know he's good that I asked him
Speaker 1: to doing the show because I know he's good, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know he's really good. Yeah, And then there's
Speaker 1: a hopeful moment she mean, you know he's not you right, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you right late. That's what it is, Tom, It
Speaker 1: is a joy to talk to you. You too, I
Speaker 1: really I am a huge admirer of your work. Likewise,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you are who you say you are,
Speaker 1: but if you are who you say you are, then
Speaker 1: I'm a huge admirer of you. If you have a
Speaker 1: if you have a secret double life where you're being
Speaker 1: horrible man, you know, I'm.
Speaker 2: Pretty uh, this is pretty much what you get. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's word on the street is yeah, that
Speaker 1: you are that guy. Yeah you work with Joe Bolter.
Speaker 1: Of course, I know. I was just thinking that.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking, I really enjoy talking to you
Speaker 3: a lot, and you know, we see each other not
Speaker 3: often enough, right, and I feel like, even when there's
Speaker 3: no podcast going on, we should we should hang. I
Speaker 3: think it would be lovely and it would be really cool,
Speaker 3: and we can keep the wives out of it, but
Speaker 3: it would be really cool, just because I know it
Speaker 3: would probably bother Joe Bolter that you and I ultimately
Speaker 3: become friends.
Speaker 2: That's a good thing that Joe.
Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know which that presum
Speaker 1: is most people, Joe is the producer of your show. Yes,
Speaker 1: and Joe writes for me sometimes he's very funny. He's
Speaker 1: very funny. And also he was the front end of
Speaker 1: the pant of My horse on the Old Lately Show.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now when you see Cordon wrapping up that show, what
Speaker 3: do you get because there's financially not much because no,
Speaker 3: I mean what do you get from his experience and
Speaker 3: like wrapping it up? Because you wrapped it up kind
Speaker 3: of early like he did eight.
Speaker 2: Years, I did ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's you know a lot of other guys
Speaker 3: go for twenty or thirty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think James and I had an advantage over
Speaker 1: because if you watch Trevor Nor wrapped it up too,
Speaker 1: and I think, what if you grow up in the
Speaker 1: United States and the tradition of late night soaked into
Speaker 1: your bones like from then, then you have a reverence
Speaker 1: for it that I never had. I don't think James
Speaker 1: has God, and I don't think Trevor has it either.
Speaker 1: I think it is it's a gig, and it's a
Speaker 1: good gig, and it's lovely, but it's also you wear
Speaker 1: a suit and you sit behind a desk. And I
Speaker 1: come from a you know, a whole ethos which the
Speaker 1: worst thing you could do is wear a suit and
Speaker 1: set behind the desk. You were always clawing it off
Speaker 1: in little Yeah, I mean, and it was. And I
Speaker 1: think that, in all honesty, I think that's what it is,
Speaker 1: that if you're born into it, you can stand it longer.
Speaker 1: I remember saying to James, you'll stay ten, but you
Speaker 1: want to go after eight. He said, I said, you
Speaker 1: want to go after six because I wanted to go
Speaker 1: after six. And he said, oh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'll do. I went, that'd be my guess. And he
Speaker 1: stayed longer than I thought he would. I stayed longer
Speaker 1: than I thought I would. Right, Is it something you
Speaker 1: would ever do? Are you drawn to that? No?
Speaker 3: I was early on it seemed it's I like hosting things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I do like hosting, thank you, But it's but that
Speaker 3: gig you just I don't know, I don't it doesn't
Speaker 3: have the appeal any longer.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: I think the the place that it has in the
Speaker 3: culture is kind of good. Change changed. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I just feel like it's not the I
Speaker 3: host other things. Yeah, you know, I host these radio
Speaker 3: shows and podcasts and things, and it's like we're doing
Speaker 3: enough of that I'd rather take with the other energy
Speaker 3: and put it towards writing my books and maybe make
Speaker 3: that film.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, how I felt with that it was it was
Speaker 1: making me do the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 1: But I will say this that what really did it
Speaker 1: for me, And this was about five or six years.
Speaker 1: If you walk into I noticed it after five or
Speaker 1: six years. It was happening from the very beginning, from
Speaker 1: the first day. You walk into a building and your
Speaker 1: photograph is everywhere, and all the walls of the building,
Speaker 1: all the offices, everybody's office, there's photographs of you everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then all the stationery and all the paper and
Speaker 1: all the envelopes that all has your name on it.
Speaker 1: Everything is your name is everywhere, and your photographs everywhere,
Speaker 1: and there's about one hundred and fifty people there and
Speaker 1: all they want to do is.
Speaker 2: Make sure you have a good day. Yeah, it's fucking hell. Really,
Speaker 2: it's hell really, And I.
Speaker 1: Didn't realize that because that's not real. That's crazy time.
Speaker 2: It is crazy time. But there is a part that
Speaker 2: sounds very appealing. Yeah, it does sound very appealing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think to an adolescent narcissistic personality like mine,
Speaker 1: it was great. Yeah, until there's a tiny little chink
Speaker 1: of human decency in me. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: come fucking life like this, a little humility and it
Speaker 1: makes you paranoid. Do you think everyone's lying to you? Oh? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you also think anyone who says anything negative to
Speaker 1: you is your enemy.
Speaker 2: It's messed up. It took me a while to figure out.
Speaker 3: You ever see that Steve Harvey thing that remember that
Speaker 3: it leaked like a memo basically to everyone on his show. No,
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to act and how to Oh god,
Speaker 3: it kind of has shades of what you're talking about,
Speaker 3: Like it's in this rarefied space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's driving him crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the little things are real, Like it was
Speaker 3: like when not to knock?
Speaker 1: When to you know, when when make up with? Like
Speaker 1: all the little like it was a little it's nutty.
Speaker 1: And also people tell lies about you as well, because
Speaker 1: people there are what forms around you, and it's not you,
Speaker 1: it's just the position you're in. So what forms around
Speaker 1: you is access is the currency, access to the hostess currency.
Speaker 1: So people jostle with each other about how to get
Speaker 1: access to you, and what happens is is they will
Speaker 1: tell this is the lie that you hear about everyone.
Speaker 1: I first heard it about Letterman. I also heard about
Speaker 1: Jennifer Lopez. I've heard it about a bunch of people
Speaker 1: and it's this, don't look at them directly in the eye. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you heard that one?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, I heard it about myself. Did you realize, like,
Speaker 1: don't look at them directly in the eye. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the what the fuck about me? He says to you,
Speaker 1: you don't look me directly in the eye. That so
Speaker 1: they do that, so that what happens is you as
Speaker 1: the person that no one's looking you directly in the
Speaker 1: I think, god, everyone's a bit cold people. Do you
Speaker 1: look you in the eye?
Speaker 2: Get well? At least this guy can look me in
Speaker 2: the eye. Yeah, and you can, you can talk to them.
Speaker 1: Did you did you.
Speaker 3: Feel creatively doing the show, doing your things?
Speaker 2: I think that's fine because it was fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because once you get to the stage of things
Speaker 1: different because I wrote pretty much on stage right right,
Speaker 1: your MiGs are very different. So it was I felt
Speaker 1: okay with that. Do you feel like when you do
Speaker 1: you feel creatively hammed in when you're hosting?
Speaker 2: Depending on who it is, maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little you know, I'm very curious, so
Speaker 3: it's like fun to te in it in ours is
Speaker 3: comedy based, so we very rarely have an actor who
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in and I've got to go through
Speaker 3: five minutes with Yeah, it's usually a comic of some
Speaker 3: regard finding their way, and it's kind of a comfortable space.
Speaker 3: I do sometimes get a little bit like I should
Speaker 3: be I should be writing instead of talking about this
Speaker 3: guy in his career.
Speaker 1: Just remember socracies though he didn't write anything. He didn't
Speaker 1: write a fucking thing nothing. Yeah, and everybody thinks he's great.
Speaker 2: Very quickly as well, because I feel.
Speaker 1: Like I want to touch on it, although I don't
Speaker 1: kind of bang on about it. But you know the
Speaker 1: thing right now, the word that people use is wool obviously,
Speaker 1: but the idea you can say things and not saying
Speaker 1: other things. And we talked about it when I was
Speaker 1: on your show a little bit. What's your position on it?
Speaker 1: Do you find it inhibiting? Do you find that even
Speaker 1: a thing in your life? Is it something you complain about?
Speaker 3: Or I think it was a useful I mean woke
Speaker 3: awakening right that word, It was a hey, let's wake up,
Speaker 3: let's snap out of this for a second, Should we
Speaker 3: be saying this about gay people, say this about heavy women?
Speaker 3: Should we like it was like okay, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: from going through the clubs and stuff earlier. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was like that stuff that people were saying were like,
Speaker 3: you know, it was it was.
Speaker 2: It was rough, and it was I think that was good.
Speaker 2: I think that was positive.
Speaker 3: I think it was I think it was cool, and
Speaker 3: I think it also in the comedy world it gave
Speaker 3: room for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I think it opened up comedy to people that weren't
Speaker 1: getting in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and you're hearing all these different voices and
Speaker 3: it's great. I think that was all very positive. And
Speaker 3: then I think there's a negative side to it, where
Speaker 3: people are using it to advance themselves. It's a power
Speaker 3: thing and people are getting you know, there's the big cancels, yeah,
Speaker 3: and the big debates and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But there's also a very subtle underthing of people not
Speaker 3: people losing opportunities and things based just on who they are.
Speaker 2: And that's anti woke, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of like it's like a racism kind
Speaker 3: of gone around the wheel, and there's a lot of that,
Speaker 3: and so I think it's been abused.
Speaker 1: I think like humans will take advantage of any situation
Speaker 1: to advance themselves. Certain humans will do that no matter
Speaker 1: what the situation is. Yeah, I think the only thing
Speaker 1: that I felt, but it was the idea of shouting
Speaker 1: down the blue hair kids if you were like a
Speaker 1: big timey successful comedian.
Speaker 2: Seems a little like bullying to me.
Speaker 1: And what do you mean, well, you know that, like
Speaker 1: you would go like, I remember, because I was doing it.
Speaker 1: I was like, uh, it was to that same kid
Speaker 1: I was telling you about my son. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't say what you want to say anymore? And
Speaker 1: he said, what do you want to say? Well, I said,
Speaker 1: but what do you want to say that you can't say? Well,
Speaker 1: but nothing. But other guys can't say fuck them dad,
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, what can you not say that
Speaker 1: you want to say?
Speaker 2: I said nothing.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, there is a there is a part that
Speaker 3: I feel like we're not celebrating each other anymore like
Speaker 3: there was. It was fun to talk about what we
Speaker 3: are and differences and the warts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like my Italian family and make all those jokes
Speaker 3: about that and the Chinese family and they all the
Speaker 3: jokes about that, and it was like, it was cool
Speaker 3: and it was fun and we are different and we
Speaker 3: do grow. You know, you talk to all comedians and
Speaker 3: if I talk to Russell Peters, he'll go off about
Speaker 3: Indian families. And it was just like and it's great
Speaker 3: and and I love that because it's all families and
Speaker 3: it's all culture, and I love that soup and that
Speaker 3: you can't even say where that person came from or
Speaker 3: where you came from, or like that part is it's I.
Speaker 2: Think it's the algorithm. That's that's just AI getting.
Speaker 1: In the way of human interactions, like you know, making
Speaker 1: people believe they all have to be part, they have
Speaker 1: to agree in order to get along, right me, I
Speaker 1: have good friends, good friends who I think, are you know, assholes?
Speaker 1: They're my friends, right exactly. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: I was trying to work this out on stage that
Speaker 3: that you know, there's no secrets anymore, like we've we've
Speaker 3: kind of through technology and research, we've kind of unveiled
Speaker 3: everything about it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like and it's kind of it's kind of upsetting
Speaker 3: because you don't have any heroes anymore. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King, you know, cheated and his wife where
Speaker 3: JFK did this and all these people in it's like
Speaker 3: and we're tearing everything down.
Speaker 1: But I'm hoping that.
Speaker 3: It seems like we have to come out of it
Speaker 3: with the understanding there's no perfection. That kind of is
Speaker 3: going to be the lesson that nobody's The good things
Speaker 3: that they did should override the small foibles that they
Speaker 3: well and also be realistic.
Speaker 2: About what life is like.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this thing in the act recently about
Speaker 1: you know, when Megan Markle and Prince Harry said there's
Speaker 1: a racist in the royal family, Like, yeah, it's a family.
Speaker 1: You don't know who the racist is in your family
Speaker 1: is because it's you, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like even.
Speaker 1: Any Thanksgiving dinner over our grandpa starts talking, here.
Speaker 2: It goes, yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1: We got it. And I think that people can have
Speaker 1: views which you find distasteful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, look, I had one joke in
Speaker 3: a special and it cost me a game show what Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know for my work, this isn't coming from
Speaker 3: a hateful place. The joke was misinterpreted and I knew
Speaker 3: what I was doing, and it was very clear in
Speaker 3: the joke and someone saw it in my special and
Speaker 3: they caused a problem at the entity and they so
Speaker 3: we don't have it now. And in analyzing whether or not,
Speaker 3: they started going through all my stuff where they were
Speaker 3: trying to figure it out, Craig, they went through all
Speaker 3: my every thirty years everything. I don't know how many
Speaker 3: six Joe Rogan three hour podcasts each, like, they went
Speaker 3: through everything, could not come up with one thing. And
Speaker 3: you have this one joke that was misinterpreted and they
Speaker 3: tore it all down for that.
Speaker 2: That's so like fucking so for that.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm very cognizant that it can go too
Speaker 3: far and then.
Speaker 2: It and that does sound like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's going to take an adjustment. We we
Speaker 3: kind of blew it up. This is nice and we
Speaker 3: can all the positives. Now it's gotten too far. Where's
Speaker 3: the balance? Where are we going to find? Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we all we're all better as a culture, but we
Speaker 3: haven't lust our sense of.
Speaker 1: Humor from your mouth to God wherever that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. If if a vibration has.
Speaker 1: Ears, probably has a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe mostly That's why