Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with tim
dillon a stand-up comedian
who is fearless in challenging the norms
of modern day's social and political
discourse
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as a side note let me say that i will
continue talking to scientists engineers
historians mathematicians and so on
but i will also talk to the people who
jack kerouac
called the mad ones in his book on the
road
that is one of my favorite books he
wrote
the only people for me are the mad ones
the ones who are mad to live
mad to talk mad to be saved desirous of
everything at the same time the ones who
never yawn or say a commonplace thing
but burn burn like fabulous
yellow roman candles exploding like
spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the blue
center light pop
and everybody goes some of these
conversations will be
a bit of a gamble in that i have no idea
how they will turn out
but i'm willing to risk it for a chance
at a bit of an adventure
and i'm happy and honored that tim this
time
wanted to take a chance as well if you
enjoy this thing subscribe on youtube
review it up a podcast follow on spotify
support it on patreon
or connect with me on twitter at lex
friedman
and now here's my conversation with tim
dillon
what would you like your tombstone to
read it's a good way to summarize
the uh essence of a human being i would
like it to say this has not been paid
for
and i want i want my my living relatives
to
struggle to to pay for it and i think i
would like them to be hounded every day
i would like people to call and go
listen we don't want to ever excavate a
body but we will
because this has not been paid for
i i love the idea of leaving the world
like debt
leaving the world in in lots of debt
that other people have to deal with
yeah and i i know people that have done
that and i know people that have been in
families where that's happened where
someone has to sit and and just curse
the
sky because they don't have a physical
person anymore to be angry at
and they but they still have to deal
with the decisions that person made
and that's deeply tragic but that's
always struck me as very funny well it's
the kind of immortality the debt
because you can if the debt lasts for a
long time the anger lasts for a long
time and then you're
now immortal in the minds of many you
arouse emotion in the minds of many
my mother's best friend in the town i
grew up and her husband
shot himself in the the driveway
and my mother's friend never got a
chance to just grieve
because he owed so much money she would
come over and go i
hate him i fucking hate him
and it was just such an interesting
thing to see somebody who and her kids
ended up getting angry at her for that
because they didn't understand why she
would hate a guy who was clearly you
know
suffering and but she goes he took the
selfish way out
he fucked us and it was always
interesting for me to
uh just remember that like you can leave
earth
and still be a problem
[Laughter]
that's kind of a special person so
that's i think what i'd like my
tombstone to read
yeah there's a there's a show called
louie with lucy canada
i'm aware of that there's this moment i
think where an
old guy's talking to louie about the
best part about love
is after you break up and it's
remembering
that like remembering the good times and
feeling that loss the pain of that loss
the worst part about love is when you no
longer feel that pain
the pain of losing somebody
lasts longer is more intense and lasts
longer than the actual love
so his argument was like the pain is the
re
is what love really is wow in the same
way that anger
your tombstone would arouse is
will last longer and that's that's
deeply like a human thing like why do we
attach happiness to the way we should
remember
others it could be just anger i know
so many people who will have deeply
complicated feelings when
i i you know i did drugs for many years
so and i i spent time with some wild
people
and their parents were also wild people
and some of their parents have done
crazy things to them and
you know have created situations that
were
not uh productive for
child rearing yeah and so i know that
when those people die
it's going to be a very mixed bag like
there's going to be a lot of complex
emotions like hey
we loved that guy but also when we look
back
uh he was a horrible father a horrible
husband
but he was fun and and and we don't put
enough stock in that but that will be a
push and pull
yeah and i'll be the one kind of
bringing up like hey he was a lot of fun
yeah he was a lot remember when he he
stuck
us you know one of the things this
particular person i'm talking about
we were we were at a bar me and my
friend were there we're having dinner
and his father who was
you know an alcoholic and a a you know a
guy that would go out every night
and didn't work you know refused to work
would lie and say he was going to work
and then go to a bar i mean just a fun
person
and uh he he we were sitting at this
bar restaurant and the bartender we see
his father walk up to the bartender and
say
pointed us pointed our table and go and
put the thumbs up and the bartender
nodded
and then the father walked over to our
table and he said listen i just want to
let you know i just bought you dinner
and i looked at his son i said he's a
pretty good guy and then he
he climbed over the little fence down to
the water and got his little boat it was
a little cigarette boat and he just
drove away
and then about an hour later we uh we
went we said i think
uh that guy took care of the bill but
she said well go talk to the bartender
so we
just walked to the bartender and he goes
he handed us a bill and the bill was for
like a thousand dollars
and we said wait a minute what the hell
is going on and he goes the guy that
left an hour ago said you were going to
take care of his bill he's been drinking
here all week
and we go what are you talking about and
he goes remember he pointed at you he
put the thumbs up and you guys
waved yeah you remember that and the guy
and we went yeah and i just looked at my
friends my friend and i went you know
your dad is just we're gonna remember
him for all kinds of reasons
but to you he was fun he was a lot of
fun he wasn't my dad
but i spent a lot of time with him i was
in two boating accidents with him
you know two boating accidents all
involved drugs yes he was usually
alcohol was involved when he left his
house
um and when he was at home as well but i
was in two boating accidents and
do you know how fun someone has to be to
get in a second boating accident
do you know what a good time someone has
to be yeah
to get in a boat with them after you've
already gotten in one wreck
never get full to get what was that line
george bush never get fooled again
right yeah so if you're getting fooled
again you know there's a reason for it
but he was he was a fun guy he did have
a death wish the second boating accident
he grabbed me and said you can't hang
out with me anymore and i said why he
goes
i'm trying to kill myself and i was like
oh and then i understood that like
oh the fun under the fun lived a very
destructive person
who not only was destructive but wanted
to die
so speaking of fun people that want to
die i i don't know if you're
we can go hunter s thompson but uh
charles bukowski i don't know if you're
aware of the guy
i'm aware of i'm sure i've read some
stuff so his tombstone says
i just want to ask you a question about
it his uh tombstone says don't try
interesting what do you think about that
advice as a way to approach life
i i think for many people it's a good
good advice
uh because the people that are gonna try
will do anyway
and the people that need to be told
there's a whole cottage industry now
of motivational speakers and life
coaches and
gurus uh that tell people
uh that they all have to own their own
business and be their own boss
and be a disrupter and get into
industries you know
that's incredibly unrealistic for most
people most people
are not suited for that and you know the
gary vee's in the world that tell
everybody that they should just hustle
and grind and hustle and grind
they're very light on the specifics of
what they should actually do um
yeah i think a lot of people that's not
horrible advice to give to a lot of
people i think
i think my generation got horrible
advice from our our parents from our
teachers
and that advice was follow your dreams
uh and nobody
and that was it by the way there was no
like what are your dreams
are they realistic what happens when
they don't work out will your dreams
make you happy
are your dreams real do they exist on
earth
yeah can you follow anybody will follow
your dreams
you can be anything you want to be
horrible advice horrible advice
worst advice you could ever give a
generation of people really
truly i mean think about think about it
if you were talking to somebody
and you were trying to make them succeed
are there any two
uh worse pieces of advice to give them
then
follow your dreams and you can be
anything you want to be
those to me are the two most destructive
pieces of information i've ever heard so
let me uh push back because oh that's
fair this is many people do
so uh yeah this is like a rigorous
journalistic interview
larry king by the way passed away today
so i'm i'm taking over the it's very sad
i'm carrying the very sad
let's see king yeah what was i even
gonna say oh let me push back on the
follow your dream thing is i come from
an immigrant family
where i was always working
extremely hard at stuff like in in a
stupid way i would
i love there's something about me that
loves hitting my head against the wall
over and over and over until either my
head breaks or the wall breaks
just like i love that dedication for no
purpose whatsoever it's like the
mouse that's stuck in a cage or whatever
and no
and everybody always told me my family
the people around me to sort of uh the
epitome of what i could achieve is to be
kind of a stable job
you know the the old like lawyer doctor
in my case it's like scientists
and so on but i had these dreams had
this fire you know
about i love robots and
that nobody ever gave me permission to
pursue those dreams
i know you're supposed to grab it
yourself nobody's supposed to give you
permission
but there's something about just people
saying
you know fuck what everyone else thinks
like giving you permission a parent or
somebody like that saying
do your own thing go become an actor go
become like do the crazy thing you're
not supposed to do an artist
go build a company quit school all that
kind of stuff
yes sure that's to push back against the
uh follow your dreams as advice
in mass if you were to look at in mass
if you were to look at statistically
how few people that works out for i'm
just no let's be very honest this is
very true
be very honest so i mean like yeah if
you're gonna go be an act hey i was
broke for 10 years before i became a
before i was making money as a comedian
i get it i didn't need gary vaynerchuk
to tell me to follow my
thing right and here's the other thing i
was kind of funny and like
i was kind of a lot of things were
in my favor of being a comedian right i
had this kind of crazy fucked up life i
had a lot of stories
i had exhausted or i was willing to fail
i had failed
before i was broke i didn't care about
being broke i knew how to be broke
um i had i was shameless to to a degree
i was
i would get on a stage night after night
and be laughed at
i would uh i had a high threshold for
being embarrassed
i had a high threshold for people
thinking that i was a scumbag right and
showing up at family parties and being
like yeah i still really don't have a
job and
i'm just i work at comedy clubs kind of
and i get booked when i can
um and i i i was you know suited for it
there's this idea that people can just
roam around the world injecting
themselves
into other things they have no aptitude
for at all
and will that to happen a small
percentage of people might be able to do
that
but the vast majority of people have
something they might
key into that they're meant to do like
you loved robots you love technology and
you found a place
in that world where you thrive but i
think many people
a lot of people love robots right so a
lot of people think everything you do is
interesting
i think your shit is fascinating i i
watch you or podcast and i think it's
very interesting
i have no place in your world you know
what i mean
i have no place in that world i i don't
like
remedial math i don't like community
college math i think it's a waste of my
time
what do you think about robot would you
ever buy a robot for your home
yes what will it do i'll be a companion
a friend
oh yeah i mean i would like to start
replacing friends and family with robots
immediately
okay i mean truly truly i mean i'm not
even kidding like
i would like to have a thanksgiving with
four robots
i'm i'm dead serious well are they
interqueuing on like
uh do the role are the robots when do
the robots start going crazy
that's my question is like how long do
the robots live with me before they are
also a problem
and i gotta replace them you know what i
mean you're gonna indoctrinate the wrong
is my the robot's gonna call me like my
aunt does and talk about coronavirus for
an hour every morning and tell me
everyone in america who's died of
coronavirus one of the
things i enjoy in life is how terrified
uh people like you i'm a huge fan by the
way
get a robot well i am i'm concerned
about ai
like completely getting rid of the need
for human beings because human beings i
mean you go out in the street and you go
so few of these people are necessary
even now
even now you look at people and you go
they're hanging on by a thread right
and you can just imagine how many jobs
are going to get replaced
how many industries are going to be
completely remade
with ai and the pace of change worries
me a little bit because we do a very bad
job in this country
of mitigation when we have problems
we don't do a great job we did a not
great job with kovid right
we don't do a good job it's just
something we don't do well we kind of
we're good in booms and busts
we're good when it's good and we're
actually we kind of know how to kind of
like
hey we're bottomed out we're like we're
like a gambling addict in this country
we like
we know what it feels like to be outside
of an otb at 9am drinking coffee and
smoking cigarettes going
i'm going to build it back and we know
what it's like to win
but tru anything in between it seems not
that great
so to me it feels like are we going to
be able to like
help people that are displaced and that
have their jobs taken by
i mean do you do you not fear sort of an
uh a world where you have a lot of
you know artificial intelligence
replacing workers and then what happens
there's a lot of fears around artificial
intelligence one of them
is yes displacement of jobs workers
that's
technology in general that's just uh
any kind of new innovations displaced
jobs
i'm less worried about that i'm more
worried about other impacts of
artificial intelligence for example
the nature of our discourse like social
the effects of algorithms
on the way we communicate with each
other the spread of information
uh what that information looks like the
creation of silos all that kind of stuff
i think that would just make worse
the effects that the displacement of
jobs
uh has i think ultimately
i have a hope that technology creates
more opportunities than it destroys
i hope so too so in that sense ai to me
is uh an exciting possibility but
you know the challenges this world
presents will create divisions will
create chaos and so on so i'm more
focused on
the way we deal as a society with that
chaos the way we talk to each other
that's huge creating the platform that's
healthy for that now
as a as a comedian creator whatever you
want to call it
people that put out content uh the
gatekeepers are now algorithmic right so
they are kind of almost ai already so if
you are a
person that puts out you know youtube
videos podcasts uh
whatever you're doing um you are it used
to be a guy
in the back of the room with a cigar
saying i like you
or get him out of here now it's it's an
algorithm you barely understand
like i talk i talk to people at youtube
but i don't know if they understand
right the algorithm they don't they
don't that's fascinating
yeah it's fascinating because i speak to
people at youtube and i go hey man
what's going on here
one of my episode titles of my podcast
was called knife fight in malibu
it was about real estate and and it was
because a realtor in malibu i was trying
to get a summer rental which i can't
really afford but
i don't i don't think that's a huge
problem you know i've followed my dreams
so i called a realtor and she said
listen she goes i don't know what the
government's saying
yeah but she goes it's a real night
fight out here you know an old grizzled
woman real realtor
canned skin sig out the mouth driving a
porsche you know yeah it's a real knife
fight out here
you know her entire life had become real
estate her soul had been hollowed out
her kids hate her
you know no one's made her common years
but it's just she just loves heating
it's fun floors
fun yeah she's a demon from hell and we
need them truly
we're getting rid of them it's not good
yeah and she goes a real knife fight out
here so we put that in the episode title
and of course i guess some algorithm
thought that we were showing like people
stabbing each other and wendy's
and we we got like demonetized did we
get demonetized
we lost a lot of views because we were
kicked out of whatever out like we're
just kicked out yeah and i was asking
youtube about it
they were kind of understanding it but
even the people that worked there
didn't truly seem to understand the
algorithm so can you explain to me how
that works where they barely know what's
going on
no they do not understand the full
dynamics of the
the monster or the amazing thing that
they've created it's
the amount of content that's being
created is larger than anyone
understands
like this is huge they can't deal with
it the teams aren't large enough to deal
with it
there's like special cases so if you
fall into the category a special case so
we can maybe talk about that like a
donald trump
where you like actually have meetings
about what to do with this particular
account
but everything outside of that is all
algorithms they get uh
reported by people and they get uh
like if enough people report a
particular video a particular tweet
it get it rises up to where humans look
over it
but the the initial step of the
reporting
and the rising up to the human
supervision
is done by algorithm and they don't
understand the dynamics of that because
we're talking about billions of tweets
we're talking about hundreds of
thousands
of hours of video uploaded
every day now the hilarity of it
is that most of the youtube algorithm
is based on the title
that's crazy it's and the description is
a small contribution in terms of
filtering in terms of the knife fight
situation right
and that's all they can do they cannot
they don't have
algorithms at all that are able to
process the content of the video
so they try to also infer
information based on if you're watching
all these like q and on videos or
something like that
or flat earth videos and you also watch
are really excitedly watching the whole
night fight in uh
malibu right video that says
that increases the chance that the knife
fight
uh is uh a dangerous video for society
or something interesting
wow based on their contribution people
are watching something
because i watch q and on and flat earth
videos to ridicule them
right that you know what i mean i watch
these videos and i make fun of them
on my show yeah but what's interesting
is if i then go watch
something else i'm increasing the
likelihood that that video is going to
get looked at as potentially subversive
or dangerous exactly that's
why so they make decisions about who you
are
who you are as a human being as a
watcher the visual user based
on the clusters of videos you're in but
those clusters are not
manually determined they're they're
automatically clustered
that's so weird we have titles where
they got upset about and i don't even
understand yeah like we had a title
that was so innocuous in my opinion and
the title of the episode was called bomb
disney world
and i was asking people to consider
bombing disney world and youtube
got angry at that so you don't know why
you can never understand
who said disney world is the bomb right
right
right say it's just rearranging that's
why i wasn't gonna do it but i was
saying let's start
thinking about yeah plans to do
like not let's do it like but let's
let's get in the mind
let's change the conversation yeah i
think it's very interesting because as a
comedian you don't want to live in that
world of worrying about algorithms you
don't want to worry about the
platforming and shadow banning i mean
all these conversations
that i've had with other comedians about
shadow banning i mean it's hilarious we
all call each other i think i'm being
shadow band
are you being shadow band and nobody
knew what that word was
a month ago i mean a year ago but
everyone now
is convinced that everything they do
that isn't succeeding is being shadowed
yeah so it's this new paranoia
yeah this algorithmic paranoia now that
we all kind of have
because there are genuine instances
of people being taken out of an
algorithm you know rightly or wrongly
for whatever however you want to believe
but then there are also things that just
don't perform as well for a myriad of
reasons
and and then we're all saying like well
they're against me
they're shutting me down and you don't
know if that's true or not you know
what do you think about this moment in
history which was uh really
troubling to me we could talk about
several
troubling aspects but one is
amazon removing parlor from aws
to me that was the most clearly
troubling
it felt like it created a more dangerous
world
when the infrastructure
on which you have competing uh
medium of communications now puts its
finger on the scale
now influences who wins and who loses
absolutely you're right and what
you're always told is like if you don't
like twitter create your own service
right or if you don't like something you
can do your own thing or if you are
uh and and and basically because you
know
tech you have to be in business with one
of five companies i think it's like
amazon facebook google
uh youtube and twitter whatever they're
like you know i mean amazon puts
everything on the cloud
you know google and youtube it's it's
all basically the seo and the
advertising and you got to get your name
out there you don't want to be buried
and
like because you have to do business
with your it's a cartel of these
companies you understand
it better than anybody uh that you are
prevented
truly and i i think whatever you think
about parlor
whatever you think about what people are
saying on parlor whatever you think
about
uh alex jones whatever you thought about
milo yiannopoulos
the state has an interest in and has
always had an interest in
in crushing dissent this is what the
state has done this is how they
you know retain the power they have
by eliminating dissent where they can
now because you don't have
you know three broadcast networks
anymore and a handful of newspapers that
were all
run by the way by people that had been
either compromised or happily you know
happily going
with the program and you have this wild
west
of the internet people like me people
that
make i make funny content that i hope is
funny but a lot of it is
wild and crazy yeah i say a lot of wild
and crazy things
they're very funny i say a lot of wild
and crazy things about powerful people
yeah you mock the powerful in there by
bringing them down a notch
we'll probably talk about it but humor
is one of the tools yeah
to to uh to balance the power
in society well sure or and to make
people feel better about things and to
you know whatever the case may be right
that's my goal is to kind of like hey
people have had a shitty day
if this video or podcast makes you laugh
that's great
i think that it won't ever it was never
going to stop at alex jones not that i
think he should have been taking off
everything the way he was but
this keeps going until we have sanitized
all of social media and they what they
really want it to be
is what instagram is kind of becoming
which is a marketplace of
you could just go and buy sneakers go
buy a sweatshirt go buy jeans
go buy this go buy that and the idea of
the free exchange of information
seems to be the old internet and it
seems the new internet seems to be
uh you know hyper and i'm a capitalist
but this seems to be like hyper
capitalist in the sense
like they only want you consuming things
and they don't want you thinking too
much
and that seems to be worth heading i've
even seen that with instagram where it's
like everything on instagram like
buy a sweatshirt yeah you know and i'm
like
all right man hey man if i want a
sweatshirt i'll get it like relax
you know just every ad seems to be uh
encouraging consumption
but very few things seem geared towards
hey let's have a dialogue or less and
not that instagram was ever great for
that but like
very things are geared now towards
content on instagram a lot of it seems
geared towards
shopping see i i don't know it's an
interesting point i don't know if
the consumerism that capitalism leads to
is necessarily gets in the way of
nuanced conversation i feel like you
could still sell
tim dillon sweatshirts and have a
difficult nuanced conversation
or mock the current president the
previous president
mock the powerful all that kind of stuff
we try we try to balance that i mean we
have sweatshirts
we do would you they're not are they on
sale now business
uh we do a fake business sweatshirt with
the enron logo fake business cause i
like i do fake business all the time it
would be nice if we talk about alex
jones if you plug
the sweatshirt during that conversation
yeah we'll do that absolutely yeah um
but what i tend to worry about with uh
uh i i
see social media and technology existing
to flatten
society it makes people very boring all
of the experiences
kids have right now are online
many of their closest friendships are
online their first relationships are
online
uh the culture is is very homogenous
and that's i think it's eliminating
characters it's eliminating interesting
people it's making people into a.i
uh all of their teachers yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah
charles bukowski as well let's not get
crazy it's not there yet
right i mean the 75 000 dog is not doing
anything
you know so i mean we're not there yet
listen i hate p i get why you like ai so
much i hate people too
and i'm very amenable to ai and i i i
agree with you like listen i think the
future
we got to get everyone out of here i'm
with you on that so don't think i'm i
love
people he's manipulating my mind that's
why the flash of
light in your eyes when you talked about
that dog was so much more
than any person and i get it by the way
you're right i love people but
if they're not excited if it can just
use robots to kill
most of them i think that would be good
for society
i'm with that too but uh i i think that
social media flattens flattening the
personalities
personalities of people man and it's
just you know when's the last time like
i like the idea of like
you know and i'm you know somebody
showing up to uh
you know high school like a backpack and
taking out an old cd and being like hey
man
here's this band you've never heard of
that i love or whatever you got to get
into this
and i'm like you know when i talk to
young you know my friends that have
younger brothers and everything
every and i know that the dominant
culture was always dominant i'm not an
idiot but like
i feel like it's harder to be unique and
original now because
so much of of what's promoted is
just this way to kind of corral people
into believing and thinking
uh a certain set of ideals that's
constantly shifting and evolving
and people are just caught up in that
and to me
it gets very boring very quickly i hate
being bored
and that's what it is i don't know what
to do with that because at the same time
podcasts are really popular long-form
podcasts really popular and people are
people are hungry for those kinds of
conversations there's a lot of dangerous
ideas quote unquote
flowing uh being spread around through
podcasts
meaning just like debates correct you
know so that's still popular so i don't
know what to
i agree with you that gives me hope i
guess i hope so too and like i said i i
look at the negative a lot because
that's what i
usually make fun of but there's a lot of
positive stuff happening too
let's talk a bit about alex jones
i so you've gotten a chance to talk to
him
while you were on the joe rogan
experience i've been on alex's show
i've talked i've had alex on my show
i've talked to
alex for three hours in front of i guess
it was maybe like 15 million people
right on joe's show it was a really wild
conversation i think it was one of the
coolest
moments in broadcasting that i clearly
that i've ever been a part of but i
think it goes in the lexicon of like
these are big podcasts like i think it's
one of the biggest podcasts a week
before the election
alex jones i'm really grateful that joe
gave me the opportunity to to be there
and i it was just an amazing
conversation to watch what was the
shirt award uh it was a fun joke that no
one in tech got because we all know how
funny they are
uh but the tech writers which is mainly
do not agree with these
things mainly blue hair and people whose
you know goal in life is to find
things to give them orgasms with you
know without to dye your hair blue it's
your choice yeah i respect it and but is
it your choice
but at the end of the day it's like you
know all the tech writers like a lot of
people just
and i'm not i'm just maligning tech
unfairly but a lot of people in that
sense of humor were like he's
advocating for human trafficking i'm
like it's clearly a joke because we're
coming off to believe
all women yes we're coming off that and
it's very funny
to just say free just lane hey man
believable women like it's just
our politics and our and our public
sphere is so schizophrenic right now
that when you point that out people are
going to be angry with you but that was
a fun shirt to wear
but on alex you know i was one of the
people that
found him really entertaining that that
the same kind of thing as with bukowski
these kinds of personalities
that are wild crazy full of ideas
uh they don't have to be grounded in
truth at all or they can be grounded in
truth a little bit
it like he's just playing with ideas
like a jazz musician
screaming sometimes obviously he has
some demons
sometimes he's super angry for no reason
whatsoever as some
weird thing that he's constructed in his
own head sometimes he's super loving and
peaceful
especially lately that i've heard him i
don't know if he's seen with him with
michael malus where he's doing uh
like uh malice was doing like
well telling alex jones i love you alex
you know just this
loving kind of softness and kindness
underneath it all
i don't know what to make of any of it
and then there's this huge number of
people
that tell me that alex jones is a is
dangerous for society
right so what do you do with that do you
think he's dangerous with society do you
think he is
one of the sort of entertaining
personalities of our time that shouldn't
be suppressed
or somewhere in between i don't think
that alex per se
is dangerous for society i think the
greater danger for society comes again
from stifling
all dissent right all like anybody with
a voice
that uses it that critiques the
government and
and putting all of those people in a
category and getting rid of them is
incredibly dangerous to me
more so i think the biggest problem that
alex has ever had
was when he questioned the sandy hook
shooting and that
really was because it really is this
identifiable
incident that you can look at where it
did get away from him
and a lot of his fans who the people
that are attracted to conspiracy stuff
and i have some of those fans
some of them are really smart people
some of them are mentally unwell
a lot of them happen to be mentally
unwell so when you have a fan base of
people where some of them are mentally
unwell
and you are questioning uh you know
tragic events okay and alex was right
about epstein he was right about a lot
of things and he's got no credit for
that
and i understand that this he's
sometimes when you write about 10 things
and you're wrong about something
and the thing you're wrong about is so
offensive to people you're never going
to get any credit for being right even
though you were right more than when you
were
wrong the problem was a lot of his fans
who were crazy
stalked harassed these families and
accused him of being actors and accused
them of like
faking their children's deaths it was
just horrific
experience and alex is tied to that
and and he and and and you know how much
he inspired that by what he did on his
show i don't know
because i haven't watched hours and
hours of
that particular thing like the whole
sandy hook thing um
if you listen to him he says i really
covered it i kind of covered it moved on
other people go no he spent a long time
on it but that's the real danger of
going into that territory over and over
again
going everything is is uh everything's a
false flag or everything's fake i think
i think alex has actually been kind of
reasonable like he's resisted a lot of
the
the politics of like racial resentment
on like the alt-right for example he's
resisted that
he's resisted the anti-semitic uh
currents of a lot of that politics right
he's resisted a lot of uh the the
virulently
anti-trans or anti-gay stuff now he does
dip his tone in the water of like the
culture wars of course he does
and but i've never really seen him
and i could be wrong about this embrace
white nationalism
or identitarianism i've never seen him
really go anti-semitic
i've never seen him take that route uh
when i grew up
and i would turn him on every now and
then he was talking about nafta the wto
he's talking about 911 he was talking
about
the the you know the world trade
organizations and a lot of these big
conferences whether it was the
bilderberg group uh
or whether it was uh bohemian grove
which he infiltrated
and he was talking about hey here are
the most powerful people in the world
here's what they're doing
and here's how it affects you and that
was interesting to me because it was
never no one else was really talking
about it except alex jones
um occasionally art bell on on wabc
you'd listen to him at night right um
i think alex became very controversial
when he decided to back donald trump and
then he has a considerable following and
a considerable audience
that he was then able to marshal uh
in the direction of supporting donald
trump um
that was when the spotlight because then
he was talking to trump trump did his
show
alex jones just got bigger right and he
blew up that's the term right you blew
off like he
he he had the good uh he put out the
good hbo special whatever you want to
call that he had a hit song
yeah he blew up and then people started
looking at the things that you know he
was associated with
the sandy hook thing is a blemish on his
record i do believe he regrets it
but again i do see the point of the
families who are like dude fuck this guy
forever
this is the worst thing i ever went
through it's a very tough
um i understand the people that say that
i understand and i and i understand the
people that go
when you coordinate when you have tech
companies that act in a coordinated
manner to just get rid of someone
they don't have any way to defend
themselves uh it's
it's a little terrifying when you think
about that power being abused
and how wouldn't it be do you think he
should not have been banned from all
these platforms i i don't
think i do think that if you are a
private company
right i do think and this is where you
run into this this problem like i don't
know if these tech companies were
government utilities would
that decrease people's likelihood of
being banned i don't know
right so i'm i'm i
i understand the benefit of them being
treated like public utilities and people
thinking they have the right to a
twitter
i'm i've never i don't know i have very
little confidence i mean the
government's trying to roll out a
vaccine in california and we vaccinated
like five people
i mean in terms of what we need to do in
the state right
so maybe if it was a government utility
i i do think
someone like alex jo like there should
be some
process so if you're gonna get rid of
someone they should have a way to defend
themselves
there should be more democratic
yeah uh process that you can go through
than just being unilaterally taken off
something but like
then you run into the you're like am i
going to say that everyone deserves no
if you're threatening or
harassing people or threatening to kill
them publishing their private
information if you're committing crimes
on these
platforms obviously the people that own
these platforms are going to be like
we're not going to allow this to happen
so i understand
that there is a line right there is some
like people that
say there's no line aren't really
thinking like there is a line
uh i just don't that line seems to be
moving all the time
and it seems to be a very hard thing to
police but i don't think you can remove
a guy off
everything and then also bank accounts
won't give him
debit cards or credit cards i don't know
if you talk to him about that but like
you know there were financial
institutions that were refusing to let
him
you know park his money there so i mean
it really does get
pretty terrifying pretty quickly
um probably without any transparency
from those companies
so you're right there it feels like
there should be a process
of uh just having for him to defend
himself
i think there needs to be a process for
people to defend themselves
i i every day i wake up and i go can is
something i said in a video gonna get
taken out of context is somebody gonna
get angry is somebody gonna be
you know i say wild stuff because that's
what makes me laugh that's what makes my
friends laugh and that's what makes my
audience laugh
so i i never ever people you know
whatever
whatever political side you come down on
i think if you make your living speaking
it's always interesting to me if you are
pro
the d platforming is that's odd it's
interesting to consider
kind of a jury uh
context to where you know there's
transparency about why your video about
bombing um
disney world might be taken down like it
it's
uh it gets taken down and then there is
uh it's almost like
creating a little court case a mini
court case and not in the legal sense
but in the
in the public sphere and then people
should be able to have
you know you pick representatives of our
current society and have a discussion
about that and make a real vote
you know just have like jury locks
himself up in a discussion
that kind of that kind of process might
be necessary right now what happens
is twitter is completely first of all
they're just mostly not aware of
everything they're doing there's too
much stuff but the stuff they're aware
about
they make the decision in closed doors
uh the meetings
and without any transparency right to
the rest of the company actually but
also transparency to uh
the rest of the world and so and then
all they say is we're doing we're making
decisions because the people
they use things like violence so
violence equals bad
and if this person is quote-unquote
inciting violence therefore that gives
us enough
enough reason to ban them without any
kind of process
it's i mean it's interesting i'm i'm
torn in the whole thing
if it was indeed there's no transparency
about it but
if parlor was indeed inciting violence
like if there was brewing of violence
potential violence where you know
thousands of people
might uh die because of some kind of
riot
like the that's the scary thing about
mob
about when a lot of people get together
right
who are good people like legitimately
good people that
love this country that don't see enemies
yet
around them but if they get excited
together and there's guns involved it's
a problem and then some
cop gets nervous and shoots one person
another person
shoots the cop and then there's a lot of
shooting involved and then it goes from
five people dying in the capital
to thousands of people dying in the
capital well in fairness too
to defend uh the people of the capital
they didn't shoot the
cop they they bludgeoned him to death
with a fire extinguisher
yes so i do i do want to just kind of
put that out
as a as a defense of them listen i'm
sure there was some wild shit going on
on parlor and i think the problem
here's the problem right there's a lot
of people that just want
to go on these sites and say they want
to kill everyone
yeah and the problem is you know at what
point
do you shut them all down like i think a
lot of people
are just living in a world where they're
powerless they don't
have any political power they don't have
any economic power right
they can't throw their money around uh
they don't have health care
their their job security isn't great uh
they might be living in a community that
doesn't have the resources they would
like it to have uh
they're they're not happy and thrilled
and then they have these sites where
they can go on and just say man
i'd like to fucking burn it all down and
distinguishing a guy blowing off steam
and saying wild stuff from
a genuine threat is a very hard thing to
do
you know like i i've threatened to kill
i got banned from airbnb i threatened to
kill the people um
that banned me comedically yeah
comedically this is a joke i'm not going
to kill you yeah this is a joke because
i'm blowing off steam
and i'm angry do you know how many
people that my parent like my dad's like
i'm gonna fucking kill this guy my mom's
like i'm gonna fucking kill
and they were talking about each other
but it's
but none of it ever happened but we
should be i think you
you you have to create a space for
people to
threaten to overthrow the government as
long as they don't violently do
it yeah like i mean does that make any
sense like i mean as long as they're not
going to go
hurt innocent people what are you going
to do like there's so many people out
there that you that's why
a lot of these things like you know
4chan these sites a lot of people going
on there they just want to say the most
fucked up shit
because they it's the thing that gives
them they can laugh
or they can release steam and it's it is
immature it is stupid
it's not productive it's not you know
but at the end of the day
if you're not going to give people
health insurance you got to give them
something it's like when someone in this
country dies that everyone disagrees
with right
political figure media figure a lot of
people dance on their grave
online and then everyone people goes
dude there and the other side
will always do it like if a conservative
dies and everyone goes great
conservatives goes this is grotesque
that you
and then when rbg dies they all have
parties and the conservatives go great
um you have to let people in this
country enjoy the deaths of their
enemies
yeah you do because they don't have much
else
again if you gave them other things you
might say guy
you can go get a knee operation why
don't you
stop but if if they're working for shit
wages
and you haven't figured out a way to to
treat them
uh treat their cancer diagnosis and they
don't like
i mean life you know you know you gotta
have you gotta derive pleasure from
something
right it's an interesting point that
anger is a good valve like to
for if if your life is suffering that
there's something
very powerful about anger but i still
have hope that it doesn't have to be i
mean that kind of channeling into anger
uh that then becomes hate led us into a
lot of troubles in human history
yeah you have to be careful uh
empowering people too much in that anger
especially
i think mike i think i understand
why people were nervous about parlor
about twitter and so on sure yeah
because all that shit talking about
violence
was now paired with let's get together
at this location
right this was a new thing like it's not
just being on whatever platform
talking shit it's saying we're going to
in physical space meat and then
everybody got all these platforms got
nervous well what happens when all these
shit talkers
uh all these angry people that are just
steaming uh letting off steam
meet in the physical space uh and there
was
probably overreach uh almost definitely
overreach but i can understand why they
were nervous i agree there doesn't seem
to be and this is when trump got elected
and when you have like
whatever you have right whether you have
riots in portland in seattle where you
have the antifa people doing crazy
things you have like
you know the people storming the capital
there never seems to be a ton of
uh an examination of why these ideas are
becoming popular
why are people so angry yeah what is
leading people to this yes
why are we here what about their lives
is to the point where they need to show
up at these places and like and now
obviously there's always going to be
people on the fringe they'll always be
the mentally unwell
they'll always be people that want to
destroy society but when you look at
how popular large you know long
discredited things whether it's fascism
you know totalitarian communism all of
these things are like
why are they back why are they back in a
big way and why are why are people
so fed up with the status quo that
they're
finding you know solace
in the most extreme uh
discredited theories of how to run and
operate societies theories that have led
to deaths a lot of people so to me i'm
like
if those people at the capitol
yes if they were going to work if
there's
you know if they were able to go out and
drink at
chili's if they were able to
get a fucking checkup right like if
their job paid a little bit and i'm not
saying
this is all the reason right i'm sure
that there's a lot of people there that
are doing quite well
and they're still nuts but like the
anger and the rage
that's boiling to the surface of this
society
does it come from the fact that
across the board people in very
different
areas and with very different political
beliefs feel like they are being
fucked over and there's nothing they can
do about it
that's what the baseline to me
they look at the people that run the
country and run the world whether
they're
tech titans the guys that you talk to or
whether they're people that run
the government whether they're people
that run large banks
large media companies the people that
have created
this kind of you know infrastructure
that everyone lives in
these people are incredibly powerless
and when you push people to that point
logically sadly and unfortunately
the next thing does seem to be violence
yeah the thing that troubles me a lot
is you said nobody's asking why
these beliefs are out there but
sometimes it's not even
acknowledged that people are hurting
people are
angry just even acknowledging that
all the conspiracy theories that are out
there acknowledging that they're out
there
and then people are thinking about it
and talking about it just
because otherwise so it's not
acknowledged in this nuanced way what
happens is you say okay 70 million
people
are white supremacists it's just
throwing
a kind of blanket statement
and of course that gets them angrier
and more makes them feel more powerless
and that ultimately that that's
what's been painful for me to see is
that
there's not an acknowledgement that most
people
are good right it's their circumstances
where it's just you're pissed off right
because you were powerless and you must
fall in love you could fall in with a
bad crowd
that's the thing you can just fall in
yeah and it doesn't mean that you're
you don't there's not blame you know
you're obviously you're you have agency
you're a person
you know but the idea that like you
could be rehabilitated you could do
something stupid or you could fall into
the great you know a group of people
that are
and then in a few years you could go
what the fuck was i doing yeah
you know i'm an ex-drug addict i know
what it's like to go from being one
thing to being another thing right
i'm still a drug if i would use drugs
right now or drink i would still be
addicted to them right i mean it's not
something
that i can ever change about myself but
i know what it's like to go from one
thing to another thing
so when you look at racism or whatever
ism homophobia misogyny whatever
whatever you're looking at
anti-semitism and you go that's a fixed
condition where nobody's ever going to
be able to change
nobody's ever going to be able to be
rehabilitated nobody's ever going to be
able to
reimagine themselves in a different way
to me
you're just you're throwing away someone
and you're making them feel helpless
and worthless um and that's going to
lead to anti-social behavior that spills
out into
the violence we don't have a very
redemptive society right
that's a huge factor we don't have a
redemptive society
that's why i like o.j simpson because
o.j
yeah yes he did a bad thing supposedly
allegedly yeah but he's
very kind now on twitter and he makes
very nice
points about how we all have to get
involved in the political process and
he's on golf courses and i like watching
people golf i don't do it
but i like watching him do it and he's
like an elder statesman
because i remember him from the naked
gun and i choose to forgive him
um you know for for for whatever
happened there which i don't know
right but um i choose to forgive him
really for i mean
obviously you know they say that what
they say is he cut his wife's head off
but i
i can look past that yeah and redeem him
because
he's very like stable on twitter and
he's a good like i see all these people
going crazy on twitter
and i'm like there's maybe oj's lived
the full life
i think there's a benefit to that
there's a benefit to kind of living a
full life
yeah how many of us have not at least
tried to murder somebody
100 percent listen oj's had the highs
and the lows
but he did it on his terms and there's a
reason
it's like a frank sinatra song yeah he
did it my way i mean like
there's a benefit to that and he seems
like a very well adjusted person now
so i mean i don't know how is how is
that a fact but it is a fact and that's
an uncomfortable fact well that's a
strong case for forgiveness in the in
one of the more extreme cases
i suppose uh but yeah there's not a
process of forgiveness
it seems that people just take a single
event from your sometimes a single
statement
from your past and use that as a
categorical like capture
of the essence of this particular human
being so murder
might be a thing that you should get a
time out for
a little while it's bad right and
let's just say that murder is not good
i'm glad you make this definitive
statement oj
oj is an interesting cat because you're
you're like he's very
stable on twitter he's very like he's
like let's take a look at it guys
like we need more of his energy that's
what i'm trying to say yeah i know like
yes it was bad he killed the
woman and the waiter yeah i'm was not
for that yeah
i wish he didn't do that but the try the
og simpson trial was such a
fun thing yeah and like you said we need
more fun people
you might speaking of fun people you've
uh your politics have been all over the
place
i hope so i hope so i mean imagine not
imagine someone whose politics weren't
all over the place it would seem
odd right like in the 10 years that i've
been politically conscious just because
i'm you know thirty five and twenty i
know i've probably been conscious for
over two decades but like
democrats have become republicans
republicans become democrats
i remember when ann coulter said we need
to defend george w bush when he said we
need to go out and
christianize or you know modernize the
arab world we need to democratize the
arab world and then
ann coulter uh backed donald trump and
the the all the right wing in america
believe the nation building
they believed in going out and uh
democratizing areas that might
breed radical terrorists whether it was
iraq or wherever you were going
toppling regimes and instituting new
democratic norms in those countries that
was the right-wing point of view when i
grew up
then the wing switched to
we are going to be isolationists we're
going to take care of america
first and foremost we're not going to go
into other countries
and then the democrats who when i grew
up were doves and
and the right-wing people were more
hawkish and the democrats were like the
military solutions
aren't the way we need to have
multilateral diplomatic coalitions to
solve all the problems
now you know rachel maddow's like let's
nuke russia every night on
msnbc the democrats are like we need we
need
strong presence in syria we need a
strong presence we need to counter putin
all over the globe
we need to get so they are more hawkish
on things so
literally i have watched two political
parties
literally flip yeah and it's crazy to
watch and in some sense
i've watched that as well because i when
i first saw barack obama
i admired that he was against the war
this was
whatever uh when maybe before he was a
senator
he spoke out against the iraq war right
and
and then he you know
it doesn't feel like uh
it feels like his administration was
more hawkish than
than dovish in a sense with the with all
the drone attacks
with the sort of inability to pull back
or at least
in mass efficiently pull back from all
the military
involvement they'll have all over the
world right so and just the language
what i think is interesting about that
what's interesting about obama because
it's a very interesting study
is that presidents are controlled in
very different ways right
you know presidents can be controlled by
different factors power factions within
washington
and you know i think one of the reasons
that uh
obama was maybe you know he had a very
close relationship with john brennan he
was a cia director
and obama was very close with john
brennan and obama was very
you know um you know i think uh
malleable
to the extent that you know the cia and
i've had ci agents on my show john
kiriakou a guy who went to jail for
exposing
torture was saying that like you know
you get into the oval office
all of a sudden you're having the
presidential daily briefing every day
and the intelligence people come in and
they go
listen man i mean we're there's going to
be a terrorist attack on your watch if
you don't do x y and z
they go we have you know the code they
call it like blue book information which
is five levels above top secret and they
go like
hey man a guy in uh a guy in uh iran in
a cafe
said he's blown everything up next week
and you know i mean it's the same thing
as parlor you don't know if it's true or
not
but now the president's making decision
on usually a lot of uncorroborated
intelligence that goes into a
presentation for the president where
you're just terrified every day and you
don't want a terrorist attack on your
watch
now so why are they getting all the
information because
a lot of the people in washington have
an interest in perpetual constant
ongoing warfare
and there's a lot of financial gain to
be had from that so they're sneaking
their information
into the presentations that are going to
the president and then the president is
now behaving and going fuck i don't want
a bomb going off
we got to do what we got to do and
whatever version of that
happens that is really kind of what is
happening whereas
the presidents are being controlled by
forces that are outside
of the political sphere but very much
still in it and they have a lot of
that's what the deep state is you know
trump there's a lot of ridiculing trump
of gone the deep state doesn't exist
but absolutely exists there's been books
about it written by liberal journalists
the deep state is only a term for
unelected
largely power factions in washington dc
that outlive any presidential
administration these are people that
might work at the state department
they might work at the defense
department uh these are people that
are not always working officially in any
government capacity
they might be private companies they
might be
uh military contractors they might be
people of boeing or raytheon or general
dynamics
and they constitute uh a
group of people that trump kind of
called the swamp but trump had really no
interest in draining the swamp but it
was he articulated
these things and this is what it is you
have a lot of interested parties
that have budgets that they want big
budgets
everybody wants a budget in washington
whether you know what it is they want
money
um and these are the people who who
really control press so this idea that
the president is the bln doll
has got to be smashed which is why the
horse race model of politics and being
like is it right wing is it left wing is
it
what team am i on and what color am i
wearing it's very simplistic but the
reality is
this is an empire it's past its peak
we're in trouble the united states is an
empire speaking yeah
i mean that's just his you could prove
that case in court
well let's let's go to court right now
but i do love the
the more complex idea that there's just
human beings
who create power and seek ways to attain
that power through different ways
if you have barack obama or george bush
or donald trump there's different attack
vectors
correct different ways to obtain that
power and then you can use that to
leverage and
it probably doesn't have to be just in
washington dc
uh there's people who crave power for
all over the world
of course not in but where we are now in
los angeles these people are all good
uh studio executive people that i from
what i understand they treat everyone
fairly and and they're nice but
i think he sees the bad guys but out
here in l.a west coast
everyone's lovely so amidst this uh
fun exploration in your mind through the
political landscape that you've done
over the past
uh uh couple day decade that you've been
conscious
politically where does donald trump fit
into this picture for you
is uh is a great question
well he didn't right because we didn't
he wasn't political until
four years ago right he got political
very quickly before
i mean he was firing off crazy tweets
about where obama was born or whatever
yeah but
he was he got into politics like very
quickly and then he became the president
right so it was like
we didn't i knew him as donald trump
this crazy new york city character that
hosted the apprentice
um i didn't think much about him he was
just constant
you know like he was just just as
constant figures like i don't think much
about warren buffett like i know like
trump's like
he's married to a new showgirl all the
time
and he's always opening another casino
and he's on
buffett really no trump trump like
warren buffett is the opposite right
warren buffet has like been married for
a million years yeah lives in a little
house in omaha but these are the that's
what i associate trump like i don't
think about warren buffett
i don't think about these people they're
just guys that i've known forever
that have like um you know a
uh you know uh you associate certain
things with them
right and trump we always associate with
kind of vulgar garish
new money billionaire married a lot you
know casinos
miss universe pageants but again you
know but it makes perfect sense that he
he really um was able to
become president at the moment where we
were had we were about to have hillary
clinton versus jeb bush
and i think americans felt like this is
now the oligarchy is spinning right in
our face
you're not even making it feel like uh
there's an appearance of
democracy we have two crime families
vowing for control of the country every
four years
and then there was this rogue kind of
upstart guy
that was really about himself you know
trump doesn't really care that much
about the
i mean really was summarized perfectly
when he left and he just said hey have a
good life
that's what he said before he got on
andrew's air force base if you watch the
speech
he goes hey have a good life that's what
he really feel like hey have a good life
i'm i'm gonna get on a plane right now
and fly to a castle i own
in uh mar-a-lago in florida
and really i'm not going to think too
much about you people
outside of how i can get more attention
in the future
can i ask you like a therapy question
what is
your favorite and least favorite quality
of donald
trump so my least favorite quality
of donald trump i think because there's
a few of them
uh his lack
of empathy complete and total lack of
empathy i don't feel that he cares about
human beings on any level and i feel
like that's
maybe or should be a requirement right i
mean i don't think he cares
i think it's obvious that he doesn't
care i mean he sent you know basically
he's saying like
they're in there mike pence is in there
he knows that his people
are going to get try to get into a
capital i mean those motherfuckers are
not going to have jobs
they're going to go to federal prison
and he doesn't care
he doesn't care as long as they're
storming the capital to prove the point
that he thinks he won the election
he has no concern for these people
his followers he leads them lamps to the
slaughter right
so that that's that's not a respectable
cause my favorite quality of donald
trump is his willingness to call
bullshit
so his willingness to call bullshit out
he doesn't play the game
uh he will you know when people say
about putin putin kills people he goes
we kill a lot of people here too like
he's he's willing and able to break the
fourth wall
and say things that no politician has
ever said he's willing to call out
hypocrisy
uh you know of course not his own but
the media uh the members of the
political establishment that's a
laudable quality it's an entertaining
quality right
we all like it i love to i'm like this
guy's saying something that a lot of
people want said
yeah uh that being said it's coupled
with no real work or action
right so it's not coupled with anything
behind it that
he just wants to we did an episode of my
podcast once where it's like essentially
he's like criticizing the deep state he
wants a deeper state
he wants a deeper state like he hired
his daughter yeah
and her husband i mean this is not a guy
that's interested in transparency and
openness
he's a guy that would just prefer he
wants to run
the the mafia state but he shakes up
the norms of social discourse political
discourse
and that people are just hungry for that
yes but he got
banned from twitter from all the
different platforms
do you think is there an argument to be
made for and against
baseball so his arguments be made for
everything a permanent ban seems to be
an overreaction to me
he's the president of the united states
it also rearranges the power like
whether you like him or hate him love
him hate him
he was the president we've elevated
twitter is now more powerful than the
president
it's like do you want that to be
long-term the salute that the reality
like now jack at twitter is more
powerful than the president of the
united states
is that a good paradigm going forward
i don't know i'm not listen maybe give a
little time out for a few days
yeah i think it time now a little
spanking yeah certainly
but i don't know if a permanent ban
across the board on every social media i
mean they banned them on grindr i mean
this is how hilarious it is right
i mean across the board on everything i
don't think he could get an airbnb now
neither can i but like
i don't think he can do anything again i
just i look back and there's so many
people i have very smart intelligent
friends that go yeah but who cares yeah
but he's bad
yeah but blah blah blah yeah but i don't
like millionaires yeah but blah blah
blah
and i'm like you have such faith you
have such
faith that it's always going to be the
people you dislike that are banned
it's always going to be the p it's never
going to be you man you have so much
faith in the government you have so much
faith in tech oligarchs you've never met
you have so much faith faith in the
security state
that they're going to always make the
right decisions and they're not going to
penalize
people that shouldn't be penalized to me
i'm like
wow i've never had that much faith in
any human being ever including myself
i wouldn't want that power i would start
deep platforming people that i hate
i would platform my aunt you know what i
mean i would de-platform everyone i know
i mean so that it's like it's it's such
a insane power to give somebody like who
gets heard
who gets to speak yeah i'm worried about
the effect it has on people like you
actually i agree of being like
everybody's a little more nervous
in what they say correct and that that's
a big problem yes because then you're
just
like long-term unmasked like we're
talking about it has an effect where
people just become
more bland yeah self-censorship
anxiety all of these things go into we
try to fight it
i try to fight it i think i think i
gotta still do what makes me laugh and
what makes me laugh is often fucked up
and it's often you know it's not always
fucked up in a way that you know it's
gonna get me thrown off something but
like
i think pushing certain buttons is funny
to me so i gotta keep doing that
part of part of the problem is that so
many of the lines are blurred right so
you have
comedians that are commentators and
commentators that are comedians and
politicians
so it's like it's harder to the defense
of like hey i'm a comedian leave me
alone
right that defense becomes harder when
like all of these lines are blurring
everybody's kind of everything now so
like
people say to me you should run for
office and they're serious and i'm like
you're crazy
but they're serious like so the blurring
of everything
means that people aren't in their lanes
as much and that you go well this guy
is dangerous because he's not just
making a joke
he's doing something else and he's using
humor
and i'm like i'm really not i'm really
just trying to make a joke that's all
that's really what i'm trying to do
but i do think that because of the
flattening
uh there's a lot of people out there
that go they take aim at humor because
they go humor is where bad ideas can
kind of
you know start and flourish but don't
you uh to put some uh responsibility on
you uh
yeah don't you think humor is a way to
uh
that you are the modern like jordan
peterson style intellectual the humor is
actually a tool of
changing the side guys changing the
absolutely but it also cannot be
i don't think it's any one thing and i
think there's a lot of pressure
uh for a comedian you can be funny and
right you can be funny and wrong
uh if your goal is to be right you might
end up being right and not funny
uh so the reality is funny has to come
first there are brilliant people
that have been funny and and correct
according to
people right but uh at the end of the
day people that put way too much
faith in what comedy is most of what
comedy is is people showing up to strip
malls and
and telling jokes for an hour while
people eat chicken fingers and they all
get drunk and they laugh
and they feel a little bit better about
their lives that's really the majority
of comedy then there's like 10 famous
people that are really famous
that do a version of that in an arena
but the amount of cultural power they
have has always been greatly exaggerated
my uncles loved george carlin who was
anti-military industrial complex
anti-anti-that and then they would go
vote for ronald reagan they didn't care
it doesn't
it doesn't really it does it's not as
powerful as you think
i wish it was it feels good it feels
good for me to say
i am the new thing it really isn't
yeah it truly isn't no one is comedians
are the people that get on stage and say
we're fucked up
we're we're we're drug addicts we're sex
addicts we're
fat we're gross we can't manage our
money we can't stop eating
we can't stop fucking doing horrible
things we're liars we're narcissists
we're scumbags
we're the people that get out and say
that only a
psychopath would look at us and go show
me the way
like it's not i disagree with you well
then i'm
then i'm a psychopath and that's that's
i mean that's
not another thing no pushback that's
another issue uh but you know what i'm
saying one i don't because
uh i mean i understand you using this as
a psychological tool for yourself to
give yourself
freedom yes but the reality is you are
one of the rare comedians like a george
carlin who is
besides being funny yeah when i hear
things like that i'm like okay
you're being very sweet but like i agree
i understand what you're saying i do
stuff that makes hopefully makes you
think
yeah i hope that's what good comedy is
but i think i i try to do that
but i also would hate to feel shackled
to the idea of that i had to make a
point
and that point had to be correct i think
the best comedy makes fun of everything
makes fun of both sides
and then there's a deeper truth about
human humanity revealed
but then what happens is people take
that deeper truth and go let's
politicize it
but what does he mean is it the right or
the left and i'm like i'm doing
something that i think speaks to
hopefully
people on both sides for everybody
because i'm making fun of people on the
left
and the right and in the center and
people that don't care people that do
care and i'm trying to figure out a way
to do it
but then immediately anything of value
in this culture right now is like how do
we politicize it
how do we put it in a box so yes i think
comedy could produce a lot of inherently
valuable things reflective thoughtful
things
but then immediately can it be put in
this box
where all of those things can be used
politically no
and unfor like when they say like comedy
is a great way to speak truth to power
it is but i don't know how much
it changes things i don't know how much
a joke
can dethrone a king i know the idea is
nice
but let's look at the practical
applications
i mean we had brilliant comics bill
hicks
george carlin richard pry we had people
talk about
so many problems in society illustrate
them
put a spotlight on them uh and we still
have them
they're worse now than they've ever ah
that's not true i think the society is
better and i so
to push back in my perspective it's very
possible that those voices
were the exact reason we have the world
today which i do believe is actually
uh i mean i'm on the on the
boring old measures of what makes a good
world which is
uh you know the amount of violence in
the world the amount of opportunity the
all those kinds of
measures even happiness all of those
things measured things have been
improving
stephen picker gets a lot of shit for
this but he's really good at
articulating
how the data says pretty clearly that
the world is getting better and it's
arguable that the freedoms we do enjoy
currently are thanks to the comedic
voices or the people who mock
so to me it's possible that humor is the
very thing that saves the world
humor is the very thing that keeps is
the balance of
my power but i think a lot of the things
that those guys criticized whether it
was
militarism or uh the elites
the lying the corruption the bribery
that's still going on and it's always
going to go on right because that's the
nature of human beings
we call it out we point it out but we
don't have a plan
to change it's not really our job right
and and i think that too much now
is like well comedians should have a
like i don't tell people who to vote for
like the idea that comedians went to
people who vote for us like to me is
crazy
i understand like people have strong
opinions but like i
i believe i have a job and my job is to
make you laugh or whatever maybe make
you think but like
my job is not to tell you who to vote
for i mean that's absurd but see the
thing you do
yeah by the comedy like on your twitter
that people should definitely follow
i believe jim jay dillon i agree with
you
oh on the on this point of uh yeah i
agree with you
to follow you yeah you you give me
you give me freedom to think
meaning like you're shaking things up to
where i'm
i don't feel constrained about what i
can think about
and that's awesome that i thank you so
you're not telling me
what to think you're giving me the
freedom to think that's what great
comedy does
is you know i don't i i don't often
agree with george carlin
he can get pretty political sometimes
but
you know just the ability to do that so
rare podcasts do that too now
like there's certain people that can
really just challenge you
to uh even when you disagree with them
to sort of be like oh it's okay to think
about this kind of stuff
yeah and i appreciate that because
that's awesome and i mean that that's
great and a guy like you is a brilliant
guy
that's great if i'm giving you the
license to think then
man the world is completely fucked but
i'm happy about them yeah
that's
speaking about the world being uh
completely fucked uh alex jones turned
on q and on i
i know almost a very tough match they
had a rough marriage they fought it and
they fought it out for years
uh and eventually we just knew someone
was going to leave someone
uh tried to leave him a few months ago
oh so
yeah was he staying at someone else's
house the car wasn't in the driveway
um yeah well the thing about q anon that
makes it a lot of fun
yeah is it it's kind of a make it up as
you go along i've i'm a drug addict
right
so often my lies aren't planned
they're in the moment a lot of what i do
on the podcast a lot you know it's only
in the moment i'll have an idea what i
want to talk about and i rant and i go
and i've been like stoned and i show up
at home and my parents are like
what's going on there was 50 on the
mantel now it's not there
and i'm like well
and i gotta make something up on the
spot right i've been
you know are you drinking again no i'm
not and then you gotta have a well you
were gone for two days no one knows
where you were and somebody said you
left your car well i was
well this is i was at a sales conference
and i left my car i flew to phoenix like
yeah i understand what that is q anon is
an ever evolving conspiracy theory where
the events are happening
uh in the past in the present and in the
future it's kind of hilarious every
conspiracy theory is like kennedy
something like that there's a lot of
truth in that or all truth but
at the end of the day it's like you're
looking back from 30 000 feet analyzing
little things that have already happened
q anon's like so i think alex is kind of
like got a little tired of
the constant evolving nature of that
conspiracy theory
so he's not a fan of like the jazz that
it's queuing on so they're not because
they're improvising
they're improvising alex is like hey man
i was on board a little bit but at the
end of the day it's getting a little
annoying because
it can turn on you eventually you become
part of the conspiracy
right still alex is controlled
opposition that's what they'll say
eventually you because q anon just eats
things
so it's a conspiracy that just eats
things the minute you start to say hey
man maybe that's not
it'll just eat you and go you're in on
it everyone's in on it everyone's a
satanic pedophile everybody
everyone that questions it is uh eating
children and
you go wait a minute that seems
illogical and but now
there's not enough children no there's
not enough and i think q anon's over now
unfortunately uh um because for these
people but i think fortunately for them
they're gonna have to find a new hobby
but i think it's over now because even
the best q anon people now are starting
to go hey man this might not be going
down the way we thought yeah but they've
literally gone as far as to say that
like body and trump switched faces
trump's actually still the president
except biden's yeah you have to be a
real
moron now you got to be real stupid now
it's at the end like when it was cool
like when the episode stuff happened q
and on was like it was party at queue
yeah and then when the hunter bought
laptop stuff started to happen they were
like dancing
like it's time and then
biden wins and they're like wait
whoa and it's just like it's the day
after the par
q and on if you ever went to a party in
high school or college queuing on right
now is the day after the party you wake
up
it's it's it's 12 noon the sun is
hitting you in the face you're hungover
there's a stench of disgusting beer
and cigarettes all over the house you're
like what the fuck happened here
yeah i got to get out of here and get a
bacon egg and cheese
that's what q anon is they gotta sober
up get out of that house get a bacon egg
and cheese and go man
we were fucking whacked we were high
dude i thought nancy pelosi was eating
children for four years
and that donald trump was gonna put her
in guantanamo bay
wow that was because i mean it's
interesting that people had to do that
after the 60s
they're like yeah i just did a bunch of
acid and i lived in a ranch in malibu
and fucked everyone i ever saw
yeah and they're like i thought that was
the way the world was going to go and i
followed some shaman guy some guru who
just wanted to fuck me and
10 other people that were living there
and uh we did that for three years
apparently we never created the utopia
we thought we were going to have
and now i'm back working here you know
at allstate insurance
and we have great policies and we'd love
you to come in the office so we can
break them down for you
it all ends folks all the love all the
bullshit ends
but it's fun they had so much fun q anon
was hard to get mad at because they were
this was all they had yeah
and they were fun they were quite good
at it and they were good at it and they
and and and and it was a lot of
desperate people but they were also rich
idiots there's also like dumb rich
people and you
those are like the saddest people in
queue because it's like they should they
have the resources to do other things
yeah but they just
love queue they're like i'm just into
this i'm like you're
rich go do something how incurious are
you
go to the amazon go birdwatch i don't
know but there
you know so play golf it's sad but
they're like done now i mean
they're they're oh it's over oh so you
think this is the uh
i think everything's ending my whole
thing is that trump's out q anon's over
the is quarantine's to end everything's
going to go back to
something that's more recognizable i
think that
are you optimistic about the 2021 and
what you want
in certain aspects i have optimism and
then i have
i have short-term optimism and long-term
pessimism okay
meaning that i think in the short term
things can get better i think long-term
because there's so many forces that are
out of our control
that are revolving in ways i barely
understand that are carving up
society it's going to be very tough long
term to be completely
optimistic like hey it's going to be
great it's going to be good forever but
short term i think yeah this quarantine
will end
things will get better the economy will
get a little better uh the constant
trump craziness will die down a little
bit um that's my hope and people can go
back to focusing on things that matter
which is you know the things that are
near you and close to you
yeah the humans around you humans around
you not
nancy pelosi i have my i have uncles to
talk about nancy people i'm like you've
never met her
you'll never meet or shut up yeah and i
i i have a belief that this kind of
local love and kindness that you
naturally can have for
human beings that you actually know can
be expanded
at scale through the social networks
that
we use that we build twitter is
currently
failing at that miserably that would be
great but that's if we were able to
increase the love
through the social networks that would
be great it feels very hard too
it's a worthy challenge uh you've
tweeted
one of the underreported reasons
conspiracy theories take hold
is because some of them are true
what uh conspiracy theories do you
believe
that are sort of
important for people to think about
would you say um
kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman
with no
connections to any other situation
government you know
i believe that jfk was removed from
office
uh by a group of people that had
very uh different interests
but the question of like deep state so
these are powerful people
that are able now to dictate uh
through basically the threat of violence
what the
president's the surface powerful people
in our society yeah i mean i've no again
i'm not i i want another investigation
into 911 not because i think that george
bush pressed a button and made 911
happen but because we invaded the
country of iraq
and then we uh you know 15 out of 19
hijackers were from saudi arabia
uh there was tons of stuff in the 911
report that didn't make sense to anybody
uh there's tons of stuff about that day
that i feel like we just don't know
yeah that's hard to interrupt uh that's
when
i my little aunt life touched upon
conspiracy theory world and first
learned about alex jones
is when 9 11 happened it was very
frustrating to me
how poorly the reporting and the
transparency around what exactly
happened
who knew what all that kind of basic
information that you would hope
the government would release
reveal and use as like a lesson for how
we prevent this instead it felt like a
lot of stuff was being hidden
in order to manipulate some kind of
machine that leads us to war
yeah that's that's fair to say yeah i
mean i just don't feel like we've gotten
the full story i don't know what the
full story is sorry
i can't i don't know what it is but i
don't feel like we've gotten the full
story
um yeah there are there are groups of
powerful pedophiles
right whether they're in the catholic
church or they're in the government or
wherever they are they
are able to cover things up that they do
they're able to silence people to try to
out them in terms of like
you know disrupt their operations that's
true q anon has nuggets of truth
it just went crazy any conspiracy theory
that involves the knights templar and
also chrissy teigen
is probably wrong what's the nice
templar
well it was just this group of knights
back in the day
you know it's that you just suppose
these secret meanings and like in every
conspiracy they talk about like
you know if you go deep enough it's like
the knights templar the raw secretions
uh you know all all of these secret
groups throughout history the illuminati
the and there's a thread that connects
all of us oh yes it connects it all to
david spade i mean it's a little much
well how do you if you're david spade
defend yourself by the way you ignore it
because it's hilarious and i know
david's
it's like hollywood's kind of boring yes
there are sex orgies i'm not invited i'm
sure there's shit going on
kids do get abused women get abused i'll
invite you to one
please if you want with the we get we
got the 75 000 dog
yeah and then we'll get one but you know
i you know me david's big we go out to
sushi restaurants like and you sit there
and you listen to people complain
that's what a lot of it is what a lot of
hollywood is this deeply sad
tragedy that people don't understand
that it's some of it is nefarious and
dark and there are problems and there
are
real power brokers here it's a dark town
100 percent
but they think that everybody that lives
here is in some
wide-ranging vast conspiracy isn't true
it ignores how
humdrum boring deeply sad
most people's lives are in hollywood and
it ignores how sad fame is in general
fame's a sad thing not always but a lot
of times it's a sad thing
it's fleeting it's ephemeral it doesn't
last
it um separates you from other people
it's isolating uh it can be traumatic
depending on what's going on
obviously it's better than the
alternative if you're trying to be
famous
it's better to be famous than not famous
right i'll say that
but it's it's it's a mixed bag to a
degree there are things about it that
aren't great
and hollywood has a deep undercurrent of
sadness of people that have
not realized their dreams and people
that have realized them
yeah both of those people like the
people that win
olympic gold medals can sometimes suffer
from depression correct
they've lost well somebody said and i
forget who said it it's a great quote
it's not mine i think it's from a book
or it might be from a tv show
sometimes it quotes something and
they're like that's from like
charlotte's web
i'm like oh uh the two worst things oh i
think it's from the movie limitless
i'm like an idiot but anyway thanks for
having me on
tomorrow i will never i will not publish
this um
it's from the movie and i think he says
uh the worst two worst things in the
world are naka oh
you know it's not from limitless i think
it's from the mat that the movie
where nicholas cage sold weapons it was
called lord of war it's a little better
than limitless anyway it's a good movie
it's a great movie
he said the two worst things in the
world are not getting what you want and
getting it
so the undercurrents of sadness that run
through hollywood are there two rivers
that converge
and there are people that just never had
it and people that have it and go now
what
and so it's a sad place a treasure place
and there's a lot of it's boring
that's what people don't realize is like
it's actually kind of boring well life
is kind of boring life is kind of boring
but there's also like you know so i
think q anon's this way to make
a lot of it seem like it's super
exciting and listen i don't want to
diminish the experiences of people
who've been abused because there is a
lot of horror here
yeah but the whole q a thing was like
everybody in everything is doing and
that's not true
let's see the just to link on that a
little bit is uh
bill gates the conspiracy theories
around bill gates bother me
because this is me dumb naive
lex thinks that bill gates did a lot of
good for this world
sure first by creating a company that
empowered personal computers and second
by
donating a ton of money for like
treating malaria
in africa and all those kinds of things
and
there's these huge amounts of
conspiracies i think based on like just
replies to whenever
right uh bill gates does anything like
to me the top replies should be about
how
inspiring that guy is to donate so much
money well i think
i think that's so sorry too and the the
thing i'm struggling with
is if i'm bill gates like
how do you behave differently how do you
show people that you're
if you're not i don't know doing creepy
stuff that they're
saying he's doing well i think part of
it is that he he's done some
really good stuff right he's an
innovative guy he's on the vanguard of a
lot of things
but he's also the antichrist and i think
that that
is you know they're not mutually
exclusive he is the prince of darkness
as well as some no here's my thing with
bill gates he's a batman villain
billionaire meaning that he's not a
villain but he's got all this money
right
here's the thing i love mosque and all
these guys i know you love these guys
listen when you have the kind of money
that these guys have and you have the
vision that they have
and they want society to look a certain
way and a lot of them are doing great
things
people they need to get better at the
pushback they need to get a little
better when somebody says hey man what's
going on over there
bill gates needs to be a little better
at going here's what
yeah because you know bill gates has the
money
you know i think he once he wanted to
shoot a missile of dust at the
atmosphere to help global warming and a
lot of scientists were like hey man that
might not be the way to do it
but no one in history like so few people
in history have had the resources to
even have that thought
yeah that if you have the resources to
have that thought and you have designs
on the way you want society to look
whether it's public health policy
or vaccinations whatever you have to get
a little better
at dealing with legitimate critiques and
obviously you're not defending yourself
against people that say you're the
antichrist but like
you need to get a little better and i
feel like bill gates and some of those
people at that level are like pr
is kind of like you know they're either
terrible they're terrible they're
terrible him and zuckerberg are really
bad at it
zuckerberg's horrible at it he seems
especially
um bad at public
yeah and it makes me feel so bad because
the problem with being a billionaire
is you lose touch with reality if you're
not careful
i think elon is good at at least so far
maintaining touch with reality no but if
you look at the name of his child you
can clearly see
liz i do like him and i do think what
he's doing with tesla you know my
producer is a tesla and he never shuts
up about it most people that have
tesla's never shut up about them and
they
talk they think they're part of the
development team at spacex and i i like
that he's created a world where people
can get excited about a 37 000
car yeah and never shut the fuck up
about it to the point where i have to
threaten people with physical violence
to get them to stop telling me about
that their car drives itself
oh you shouldn't have a few less drinks
and a few a few fewer vicodin
and you can drive yourself have you
thought about getting a tesla i've never
thought about i don't
like them they're minimalist i don't
like middle i want more
i want more i want to travel i want to
see i'm just being
my producer wants a cyber truck i want a
stage coach
old school stage coach horse thief shit
that it's going worse it's going back to
that i live in an area with a lot of
horses
it's going back to like whipping a horse
i want an animal to shriek while i go by
[Laughter]
you want more suffering in the world not
less oh i think we need it
okay but i just don't like that
billionaire
is a bad word and it's not necessary
sure
not every billionaire is a pedophile i
know but the problem is
a lot of like it's just you know epstein
was very smart at like just getting
people at that house and taking photos
of them
nobody knew what they were doing but
it's like it was one of those things
where it's like after the most social
guy ever like
every photo he's like hey everyone
that's
ever done anything in the world has been
at that fucking island
every human being is like in a photo
it's just weird like i'm in like it's
funny me and my friends get together
we don't ever take photos right like
last night a few people it was my
birthday yesterday i'm 17
and my my friends came over and we're
just eating dinner right
and we had a fun night just four people
that are over nobody right nobody ever
thought like let's let's
hey i want to remember it let's take
photos
i'm 36. but but everything epstein did
there's just photos
of everybody it's interesting do you
think jeffrey epstein killed himself
no i think he was killed by that guy
that that that that guy that they put in
the cell that lunatic
uh who's that big muscled guy i think he
was just he did it for money
kept his mouth shut that's money from
whom do you think
massage mi6 cia all three
so there's a lot of pressure from a lot
of different profiles probably probably
massage cia more
i mean it seems very clear that he was
working inside of a honeypot
intelligence operation
just lane maxwell's father was an
israeli super spy
uh justly maxwell's working for israeli
intelligence it would be odd to think
and of course the cia knows about
everything that israeli intelligence is
doing with americans
so uh i would think that it's a very
cozy relationship with those two
intelligence agencies
and uh i think if you ran it by anyone i
think if you ran up by french
intelligence they'd go
yeah no get get him i don't think there
was any intelligence service in the
world
whose job is to protect the powerful
people that live in their countries that
was against him getting whacked
but do you think it's possible that he
is just an evil person who is after
manipulating people and also
so that there's a bigger thing so it's
factual that there's a bigger thing
evil people don't get him those are your
facts tim dillon no there's the facts of
the case
you don't get handed a 65. show me
another evil guy who was handed a 65
million dollar
uh place by les wexner show me another
evil guy that got that type of uh
handshake deal where he was basically
uh let off without anything after a
judge had made a
very sweetheart deal for him after he
was accused of you know molesting a 14
year old
show me another evil guy that uh doesn't
have that kind of backing that has those
type of friends those connections those
type of properties
show me a you know multiple passports
all over the world
so show me a guy without anyone backing
him that's doing it
why did they you know so you think he's
just an evil guy so he's doing this
for whom it's his own just shits and
giggles he's just getting off on it
human nature yeah human nature huh it's
human nature
70 million dollar uh limestone
yeah is it human nature and it's like i
don't think it's human
i think it's i think i think they
manipulated human nature but i think
they i think they did it i think just
lane
i think epstein was really just a
functionary and i think just lane
was kind of a pimp and epstein was kind
of a guy that you know made the money
okay and you know hid money and things
like that and worked for a lot of
powerful people
i don't believe in lone pedophiles
anymore
i don't even believe that if you're a
pedophile you're like in a group
you know what i mean uh you know
whoa i'm not even i'm not even going
there but staying on just laying
us so you believe there's some power in
her what do you think happens to her
no like what what are the great great
question i mean i don't
know what'll happen to her but i imagine
she'll get some type of deal
uh closed-door thing years from now when
people don't really care about the case
and she'll serve some time in a very
relaxed thing or she'll be killed i mean
again it's like
if she was doing what she was doing
which is i believe the fact that she was
compromising powerful people
so that they could be blackmailed by uh
you know the intelligence uh services of
the us and israel
um probably i don't i don't see how she
wasn't doing that someone's black
someone's using the photos and the tapes
right
someone's using that against these
people someone wants to control these
people
well who and why that's the real
question and i think the real question
is
you want to continue you want to exert
control over congressmen
and senators and presidents because
they have the power to make decisions to
affect the but the cia just works for
a lot of very wealthy people that's what
the cia went so how the cia started
right it was lawyers bankers they're
protecting financial interest
of multinational corporations all over
the world overthrowing democratically
elected governments
going in and doing subterfuge campaigns
encouraging terror they're doing all
kinds of crazy stuff
i don't see why that would change i
think that's who they still represent
and i think those people want
uh certain policies and certain people
pushed forward
and i think those people are controlled
and i think one of the ways to control
people is their sexual
problems uh and and that's the way they
did it
i wish there was a way to uh because
everything you just said now
it makes a lot of sense doesn't it
i'm being indoctrinated on air no uh i
think there's just uh
just a fun random guy who just wanted to
make home movies and presidents
um well you think i'm just some random
guy i'm just
trying to sell myself as somebody who's
friendly with the american audience i
believe you are
backed by people that want people to be
more comfortable with robot dogs
i believe that i believe you're pushed
to be the happy face of ai
which is why out
no editing joe rogan's rule no editing
this is live
no i mean i wish there was a way to for
some of the conspiracy theories to prove
that that's not the case
like what the the cia is there is some
possibility
in my mind that institutions
like the cia different kind of
organizations
are driven less by organized
malevolence and more by just
incompetence
just bureaucracy being incompetent i
think that argument gets
less and less persuasive when you look
at all the things they've been able to
do right
now it's it's very certain just you said
that
there's a bunch of them that have done
because there's some conspiracy theories
that are dramatic and true
the question is i wish there was a way
to prove
that some of them are not and it's very
difficult because
so much has shrouded mystery like one
you know one of the things i'm bothered
by is when people accuse other
like athletes of using steroids for
example right and it's just
yes a lot of people use steroids but it
sucks the
that people just don't believe you like
uh there's some incredible athletes that
look shredded they look
just incredible performers and everybody
uh just says that they're on steroids
they kind of assume yeah
i mean and that and people accuse me all
the time of being on
performance-enhancing drugs and steroids
and it is
hard but what i remind them is it's what
my my my my my appearance as a result of
dedication
uh but hard work diet exercise
dedication are you on keto
uh i'm on i'm on i'm doing a version of
your keto right yeah so i'm doing a
version of keto right now with bread
and it's do you see what i mean your
carb up sort of
and it's a very it's a good diet for i
grew up in the 90s when nobody ever lost
weight sadly because
every diet was like you can eat what you
want just be accountable
no one even knew what that man so it
would be like my mother being like if
you have chocolate chip pancakes have a
glass of water
yeah just take a walk around the block
yeah you could go to mcdonald's three
times a day
just walk around the block it's my
parents used to say like my mother be
like just
walk around the block you're fine um
gonna have a cigarette walk 20 steps
walk 20 steps back
it's exercise so um no i
there's too many conspiracies out there
a lot of them are true a lot of them are
bitter angry people trying to justify
their own
uh uh impotence not being able to do
anything in life and they're like the
people that have done something in life
they're all nefarious it's all that the
card just stacked against me that's 100
true
100 it attracts usually people
that have not figured out a way to
succeed and
or haven't succeeded on the level that
they want to
but that also being true there are there
is a fair amount of fuckery
going on and provable and you know
we just have to i think separate uh
separate know that these things are
often inflated or not true but know that
sometimes they are true
otherwise it wouldn't exist if there was
no if there was nothing to jfk
there was nothing to 9 11. if there was
if people felt like they were being
dealt with honestly
this wouldn't exist i mean this exists
because there are
real questions that people have that
don't get answered for whatever reason
and then the vacuum of the refusal to
answer those questions that that
information vacuum
is filled with people like alex jones
who are curious and sometimes they're
right and sometimes they're
horribly wrong and sometimes they're all
over the place
good storytellers and people love
stories and yeah when there's an
absence of actual alex is a uniquely
american
person like very interesting i don't
know how many countries like how many
people make a living as a conspiracy
theorist a good living in other
countries right it's very rare right
i mean it's very interesting and he
became like i know people that knew him
when he was a kid because i go to austin
and perform a lot
and you know he was a guy that would
take a bullhorn and yell at cops because
he thought dewey checkpoints were
unconstitutional that's what he was
doing in college
and he just went through he was hated by
the right he was hated by the bush
people he was hated by the
and he went from being this this this
guy that was considered like a
a leftist even like even though he's
never left this he was considered this
like
enemy of mainstream conservatism like he
was not and
like he considered a guy that wasn't a
patriot wasn't this wasn't that
and he just wow like he whines and
whines and ends up
just being this confidant of a
republican president very divisive
republican president
and he becomes this populist and
everything like that it's really wild to
watch that but
i mean i do think he should retire
eventually just so we could get
you know some i don't know it seems like
a it's a lot to keep doing well i hope
this world allows for
alex jones to continue having a voice
because just like you said he's uh
i use the word fun but really he he
shakes up the norms of our discourse
i do too i do think we need to put more
value i think entertainment
you know we need we do need to say that
like there are people that should be
allowed to have a voice for
entertainment purposes
right and that's par and that's part of
what donald trump now that he's not the
president
come on let the guy let him talk
who do you think is the best comedian of
all time
oh that's a great question greatest of
all time
you mentioned carlin your uncle's liking
carlin
well carlin is great carlin is
really hard to argue with but
chappelle is also really great
um louis c.k is really great i don't
know that there's what joan rivers
is great i don't know you smile at that
because
i was a beast of a comic i'm not aware
of her stand up actually yeah
just of a comic ask rogue and ask any of
them um
kennison's great so what makes a great
comic do you think
in the history of comedy just like said
something
at the moment in a way
found a way to communicate with people
in the funniest possible way
at that moment and illustrate you know
illustrated larger truths about life
in what they did and i think that guys
like louie and chappelle
and uh pryor and kinnison and hicks
people like joan rivers uh have done
that
and even you know modern people people
like maria bamford's an amazing comedian
it's just a different style of
comedy per se but she's an amazing
community uh you know
kat williams is an amazing comedian you
know it really is
does he have any well see the one of the
things you kind of mentioned the
community as you mentioned
they were kind of fearless and saying
that difficult things that needs to be
said
kel williams is more i i don't remember
his comedy but i think it's just more
wild out there well to an extent but you
can watch it he's got stuff he talks
about stuff he talks about race
brilliantly he talks about america
brilliantly no i think there's a lot of
stuff there
and of course chris rock chris rock of
course it's so hard you can't really
pick one
you just gotta there's a class of people
that throughout this
history of this business which is not
that long of a history it's you know
pretty much within the last century
uh you know that are have been really
influential sometimes it's style the way
they deliver things sometimes the
substance of how they
you know what they're saying or
sometimes it's just a style of what
they're saying i mean
and we're only talking about stand-up
comedians right so there's a million
great comedians i mean if we're going to
talk about jim carrey
and adam sandler and chris farley i mean
these are brilliant
and those guys are bigger influences on
comedy i think than stand-ups really
truly
so there's there's there's so many
brilliant people in the in the business
who was for you and like influential
just the early on
hicks was influential because i'd watch
bill hicks and i'd be like this guy's
saying crazy shit on stage and this is
the only way you can get away with it is
because it's so funny
and he was calling out like you know the
military industrial complex and he was
talking about the first gulf war i
remember he said a joke
that i heard it made me sit up straight
he goes he goes he was in canada and he
said we got a war in the states he was
talking about the first gulf war
and he said i was in the unenviable
position of being for the war but
against the troops
and to me i loved that joke it was so
funny to me and i was like oh you can't
get away with that anywhere
other than standing on a stage you could
never say that in an office really and
this was before like it was like pc
and they said the other thing i always
knew that comedians
had to say shit and have it be funny
enough that you couldn't get away with
it in polite society that was the whole
point
that was why it was a dark theater or a
dark night club that's where people had
a few drinks that's what the art form
was and that's why
i so a guy like that was influential
because i started watching him
and of course like you know i loved snl
when i was a kid and i would watch
chris farley and i would watch um you
know people like
even john belushi going back in the day
but i'd watch adam sandler
and will farrell and all these guys i
mean the there's so many funny people
but
bill hicks was kind of funny and then
patrice o'neill was like probably my
favorite comedian who's made me laugh
more than anybody else
um i think it was you actually that's uh
maybe on your podcast we're talking
about patrice onyeon that he was
actually
vicious to others i think he was a
little mean to other people but he was
very good to people that he liked i
guess i think he was like
not i mean he wasn't and i've never met
him i have no insight info
but from what i've heard he was like no
nonsense guy right he just said what he
wanted to say
but i think in terms of comedians i
don't know of anyone funnier than
patrice o'neill
who said in modern times that
said more about our society than him i
mean he was just a brilliantly funny guy
on the radio he was funny on his
specials he was funny
everywhere he was funny and there's
something else to be said about
the whole medium of comedians doing
podcasts yeah because that's uh it
unlocks a weird
special new thing that changed
everything i mean
rogan started with that yeah you're
doing that
it i think that's a whole other form
of like stand-ups yeah the ones that
have a lot to say
almost like uh we get to witness
the process of the creation of the jokes
in a way or the mind
right the the sort of the evolution of
the mind behind the jokes
which is comedians relate to social
media
comedians are commit comedy's uh
it's a performance based medium so it's
about getting up and doing it getting up
in a club getting up in a theater
getting up in a bar getting up wherever
you can get up
and comedy for years was about
performance and then on the higher end
it was about movies and tv shows
but we were very slow to get on youtube
we're very slow to adapt to technology
we're very slow to monetize anything we
did on the internet
so podcasting was a way for comics and
funny people
to kind of get into that space start
earning money
and now because the pandemic has really
become essential
and it helps you and even without the
pandemic it was where people
were it was how you were building a fan
base and that's like
you know but comics were very reticent
to embrace social media at all because
they thought it was cheap
and they didn't like it and they thought
the people on it were idiots and were
unfunny and it was just a blatant
you know whatever it was whether it was
a money grab or it was just too
commercial and
in in a sense where they're like hey
look at me like it was just goofy right
um and then comics i think got
displaced because all the youtubers came
in
and all the social media stars came in
and they really knocked
comics off because now people are much
more like if you ask anyone under 30 who
their famous favorite comedian is they
say david dobrik
and there's nothing wrong with that
david's a funny guy but like what you
you know i don't not especially to me a
ton but that's okay i don't you know
but he makes people laugh so he's funny
um but
he's what people you know that's a
comedian now so comics
got beat by other people coming into a
digital space
before they did laying the groundwork
and
taking it over and now comics are just
trying to stay alive
like even my podcast which is people
really like it thank god and i
i love doing it the tim dillon show well
thank you
uh i was late you know i mean i was i
just
you know it i've been podcasting for a
long time but really dedicating myself
and putting the resources behind it i
was late to it like i was like hey i'm
i'm telling jokes on stage which is
great but i should have been allocating
more time to building an infrastructure
online
and i wasn't doing it and a lot of
comics weren't doing it funny comics
weren't doing
comics that should be doing it and i
think when the pandemic ends a lot of
comics will just keep doing
live stand-up but i will keep obviously
i'm going to go back on the road and do
live standard but i will keep doing this
podcast and building digitally too
you're also exploring
ideas you're doing like short videos yes
and so on you're
you're trying to look for different
mediums of uh
everywhere i want to be funny everywhere
i love making things too my producer ben
avery is like a brilliant
editor and comedic mind even though he's
not a stand-up
he's able to on he understands funny he
understands what makes me funny we're
able to make
these really i mean some of those videos
they're just brilliant little videos
even though they're tiny little videos
they're fucking as funny as anything
and it's not me it's me working with
somebody else to make something really
great
and if and and it's that relationship
that's very important
um in some sense the uh the medium of a
short video is a challenge just like the
medium of a short tweet
of course how to say something i mean
whatever the flavor is
uh of what's in your heart what's your
mind how to say it whether it's the goal
is funny
right or something or just an expressing
idea i think it's
the whole thing that's important to us
is that it's an extension of really like
an extension of your friendship in a way
like are you guys laughing at it
right are you guys making each other
laugh about this idea
yeah and if that's the case other people
are going to laugh at it
you know i think so much of the old
medium was like everything was top down
okay pitch me this idea i pitch it to
the show runner they pitch it to the
network they pitch to this
that you know standards and practices
sales and
we got to go through everything now it's
just like our me and a few buddies
or even just one buddy laughing at this
idea
does it captivate us and do we see it
visually
and also a great line from roseanne
a guy not roseanne but a guy that worked
on roseanne uh
the old roseanne the great one he said
is it funny with the sound off
right that's what we try to do that's
brilliant is it funny with the sound off
when you see me and the dumb things or
me and the mega mccain yeah or me and
the thing
is it funny with the sound off and if
you're funny with the sound off you have
a good starting point
that's hilarious because uh you i would
say you're one of the people
because most people are not funny with
this honor most comedians like you
you will ferrell is another example of
that there's something about when i
click on one of your videos it's funny
just like the first
thing i see yeah just your face we well
thank you that's very sweet
but i mean thank god i mean that's what
we try to do right we're trying to be
funny yeah so we're trying to be funny
can you talk about love a little bit
sure
so you came out of the closet
as being gay when you were 25. yeah it's
a lot it's late
very late very late before today's
standards
during and after how has your
view on love evolve
interesting it's so hard to say because
like i would i
i'd like to make a very like disney fine
statement about like that you can't be
in love
uh secretively you should be honest love
should all be about honesty but that's
not true
right there's people that are in love
that are lying to everyone else
but they're deeply in love yeah um i
would love to say something like
honesty's of ingredient for love
you know but i don't know maybe honestly
with each other
but i mean i know i i think there's a
lot of people in the world that aren't
honest
my view on love is super important uh i
think that
it's we a lot of society in america is
all about
love we don't tend to focus on other
uh things in terms of like you know
uh friendship or sustainability of that
because i think that a lot i know a lot
of people in relationships where it's
like
i don't know they're not they are they
love each other but like
it's also a rock-solid couple because
they are
they're very compatible in many other
ways right so i think they're like
friends
they have right i see friendship and
love is the same thing right
there's parts of it that are right so
it's like i look at it as like
there is there needs to be more than
just like that
like amazing like chemistry or physical
attraction
that is this chemical thing that happens
there should be like some underlying
i mean again that's from what i that's
what i've
observed as really long lasting
successful relationships well
is there something about coming out that
that was uh that you took away that you
remember as
yes profound and insightful it was i
that i
it wasn't society it was me so there
were kids that were out in my high
school
that i waited years later to do it that
was no one's fault but my own
so i was taking a cowardly way out and a
lot of people so i could blame
society or like oh i lived in a
conservative area and i grew up
you should take responsibility for your
own decisions and if you're being
cowardly admit that you're being
cowardly
so that's what i took out of it is it
it's not society's fault
that you chose to be a coward society
will never be perfect
you have to be honest when you're ready
to be honest or however you want to be
honest
but it's not somebody too much now is
it's everyone else's fault
that you didn't take make a hard choice
or a hard decision so that's kind of
what i took out of it
so now in retrospect you see yourself as
were
being afraid do you right do you think
at the time
well i wanted people to like me which is
that it was just the disease of
humanity right is that we want to be
liked and what happens is if you
want people to like you and love you
even you want uh people to feel
comfortable with you
and those were people like your family
friends more
my family i would always you know could
always throw in the street but
my i'm kidding i mean but i am not yeah
uh
but my friends my circle of friends
which i were my family at the time when
you're a
senior when you're 10th 11th grade in
high school your fa your friends are
your fam
you know what i mean like that's your so
you don't want to do anything that puts
you
on the outside of the circle this is
thinking back to that fear is there
things you're afraid of
now are there not doing you're afraid to
do
i'm afraid of all kinds of things i'm
afraid of
not being good at my job not being funny
letting people down
uh not putting out products that are
good
you know whether it's the podcast every
week or stand up or the videos like i'm
afraid of like there's a ton of people
that really enjoy what we do
so when you're in that position you're
nervous that
you're gonna start doing things that
they don't like so the new things you
want to do the
evolution you want to do you want to
make sure you're evolving in the right
way
you know you want to make sure that
you're doing things that are consistent
with why people liked you
but also you don't want to put yourself
in a box and limit
what you can be going forward so like i
had a talk with the ceo of nbc universal
once
i was doing some internal sketch for
them and
i was playing like a cab driver and he
was a and he's not the current ceo but
he's a former ceo and i said what's the
hardest part of
running a corporation of this size and
he said something very interesting
uh he said the hardest part is
maximizing the current
profit model of what you have at the
same time
getting ready getting ready getting the
company ready for where it's going to be
in five years
he said those are often at odds and
that's the toughest thing he goes
because i could just
bang out everything i got to do right
now and we're going to make a lot of
money doing this
but am i devoting enough resources into
digital so that in five years when
that's where everything lives are we
competitive
in that space so it's funny as i am now
hopefully to people and
a lot of the things that i want to do
now i'm going what am i what groundwork
am i not laying
for three to five years down the road so
that i can be adapting
to the trends that are important then
in terms of not so much comedic trends
but like the
technological trends like what is the
what is it you know i should have done
podcasting earlier what should i
should i have a bigger presence on tick
tock should i have a bigger presence
here should i have a business or should
i be on twitch
should i be doing this should i be doing
that what am i not doing that i should
be doing that i'll regret not doing
and those are those are the
conversations i think i have in my own
head all the time and i guess there's
parallels to coming out as gay or just
parallels in in like career paths you're
taking
all that that's ultimately just fear
it's fear
yeah it's the fear of you know the the
best thing that happened in my career
was that i came to la
i didn't have an idea of what was gonna
happen
i met somebody who was really uh
committed to making funny things
that we just wanted to be funny no one
would let us be funny we didn't have
comedy central letting us be funny we
didn't have hbo we didn't have netflix
we just had a garage
and a phone in the beginning and then a
camera and then a thing
and we just wanted to be funny and that
was the greatest risk really i took
because i was like well
i don't know what else is going to
happen right now but i just want to be
funny
and funny saved my life right i mean
funny got me out of drugs funny probably
got me out of the closet funny was
the thing that i was able to do that
made everything okay in my own head so i
was like as long as i'm being funny
something good will happen so we did
that
and then something really cool happened
that we were able to do a lot of cool
things
but you know that's what it is it's fear
that keeps you from being the better
version of yourself
your mom i mean you have so many
complicated
fascinating parts of your story but
thank you your mom
uh as you were growing up suffering yeah
well for mental illness yes
schizophrenia
can you tell her story and how that
relationship has changed over the years
yeah well she was always uh eccentric
and always you know the terms for
schizophrenia in an irish catholic
household where we didn't talk about
anything were
eccentric fun she's fun there's a
theme to this unpredictable she's
uh a while she was a live wire
any of the words you would use to
describe somebody who's a fucking
lunatic
but you wouldn't say that um
right she she started experiencing uh
symptoms probably early on in her life
but she also like i think
started really manifesting them when i
was in my
mid teens so like 14
13 14 area and she got
really really bad and then i think she
was institutionalized about 10 years ago
a little over 10 years ago
and she could really no longer live on
her own she was unable to
go to work she was unable to function so
i visit her when i can obviously i'm not
new york whenever i go to new york i
visit her
she's aware of what i do my career and
everything like that you know she has
good days and bad days but
you know mental illness is a thing it's
very tough we don't talk about it as a
society people with mental problems
don't
get that much attention we tend to think
that they did something wrong
uh or that they deserve it or that they
are
you know to be ignored and we don't
devote a lot of resources into it which
is unfortunate because
then you have the junk gurus come in and
go like let's diagnose your mental
illness
off instagram and it's like that's not
the move um
yeah do you uh do you love her i do
i do i love her but i also remember
her that isn't her now and when someone
has mental illness that's severe you
make
peace with their death before they die
oh yeah
because the part of them that you love
and remember
a lot of cases is is is not
evident or obvious now my mother's still
a loving person that i love
but the fun her ability to
be present in the moment and to not you
know
that is lost with the progression of
realness
so that you still love her and i mean
again you know your parents
you know the time horizons you have with
your parents are unknown people don't
know you could you know i have friends
that
their parents are in their lives for
their entire life and i have friends
whose parents were in their life but my
mother was a very
she knew what i was when i was a little
kid i was an actor when i was like six
to 12.
my mother knew that i was a performer
she knew what i was and what i'd
ultimately do
she recognized that in me and when i
said to her i want to audition for shows
i want to be on stage i want to be on
this i want to do this
she let me do it because she knew who i
was
and she didn't want to get in the way of
me being a human being
a fully realized person at six
so that's probably the best thing a
parent can do for a kid is let them be
who they
are and my mother did that so that i
mean that's good
we we ate too much fast food there were
negatives but she did let me be
well that's why you want to throw them
out into the street yes sometimes
uh but coming uh coming to accept uh
mortality of her
i guess identity as you remember it from
childhood
do you uh ponder your own mortality
are you afraid of death i'm afraid of
death i don't like the idea of death but
i know what's happening
you know i know it's gonna happen
eventually i don't think about it
i think about i want to do some good
stuff that people can look back at and i
think i'm proud i'm proud of the show
where if people look back at the show i
don't know how comedy ages or whatever
but like
i think i put out a lot of stuff and i
want to continue to put out stuff and i
want to put out a few specials that
people can look back at and go
oh this guy was really funny in this
really crazy you know he lived in the
the latter part of this century when all
the shit was going on and he kind of
made
fun of it and he did something to make
uh people's lives a little better just
by
having you know a few laughs you know
what do you think about
this is something like in the podcast
context
do you think you'll have just one or two
or three
shows out of thousands maybe that are
like the truly special ones
that's probably the case or do you think
it's the entirety of the body
of work i think people will take
10-minute clips from
all different shows and put them
together and it's a highlight yeah like
a highlight reel of just like these are
like the the best things that he's ever
done or the best the rants he's ever had
the best things whatever
so the legacy would be that this was an
important voice in a
very weird time i would hope i would
hope that
that's part of it and i hope that i
continue to be you know
what you say important i say funny but
hopefully
i continue to be a voice and that's what
i think when i think about death i think
about like
what did people what did people come on
earth to do and i think i came i think
my main purpose on this planet other
than to experience
whatever love or you know worthiness or
whatever
is to make to entertain people and
there's a lot of people in comedy right
now that are not entertainers and that's
really the problem
uh but and they got into comedy sort of
the way that you know
uh you can walk into the wrong store in
a mall and then not realize you're in
the wrong store and try on a bunch of
clothes and then go fuck i wasted my
whole afternoon
but i think i've always kind of been an
entertainer and that's what i want to do
there's uh unfortunately sadly a lot of
people that look up to you
that is a horrible thing but life is a
nightmare
yeah uh if you were to give them advice
young folks people in college maybe even
high school
but people in their 20s about what to do
with their life
uh whether it's career whether it's just
life in general what would you say
ignore everyone make a few good friends
truly have honest conversations with
yourself about
your what when do you feel the most
alive
figure that out when and how do you feel
the most
alive yeah figure that out
try to figure out a job or a career that
can replicate that feeling
um don't listen to anyone don't listen
to your parents
don't listen to the gurus on the
internet don't listen to me
don't listen to anyone figure out
you know where you feel the most alive
where do you feel excited
where do you where does your pulse
quicken what do you feel
matters when you're in a situation do
you feel like it matters
uh what situation was that what got you
excited
what thing did you walk into where you
looked around
and were taken back and you're like wow
this is amazing and i'm filled with awe
if you can figure out a life where you
you you can
excite yourself you might not use drugs
or
alcohol or a sex addiction or gambling
or irresponsibility you might not have
to get your fucking
kicks in very destructive places
if you can get them in a productive
place we got a
you had a pretty weaving life
that's full of uh mistakes and so on
many mistakes is that
are mistakes a bugger feature like do
you recommend
uh embrace the mistakes like make a
bunch of them depends what they are
right so well you you've had the full
spectrum i've had a lot but a lot of
mine could have sunk me
right like they sound like fun when i
talk about them but they actually could
have
sunk me and they were all part of what
made me
funny but i don't know i would never
tell anyone else
to just light their life on fire and
hope it works out on the other end it
would be pretty irresponsible
but hey at the end of the day it's like
you're gonna we get there's you know
i think one of my themes is that there's
too much we give the power
we think we have to the power of choice
has been elevated on our society to uh
an unhealthy degree
i think people are i think you could you
could get really good at something but
you're born with a certain
aptitude it might be to be a deal maker
it might be to be an
athlete it might be to be an artist it
might be to be a romantic just fall in
and out of love in and out of love in
and out love it might be to be like a
world traveler like
but whatever you are i think you are i
think that there's something about you
that makes you
something and if you can figure it out
and then refine you're not going to be
good at it per se
but if you're if you're an athlete it
might not mean that you're going to be a
great athlete in the history but it
might mean you're the best coach
anyone's ever had or you're
the person that you know builds a local
scene for young athletes or whatever if
you are
a really good deal maker it doesn't mean
you're going to be warren buffett but it
might mean you're somebody who enjoys
making deals all the time and things
like that like
if you're an entertainer it might mean
that you are
an entertainer it might mean that you
are in the world of entertainment
because you
love it so much that if you lack the
skill set to really pursue it
on a degree you just want to be like
there's there's a there's a thing
inside of you that makes you what you
are
i think i look at certain people and i
go you were born to be that thing
you know my whole purpose is to find it
i was a juror on that murder trial on a
murder trial in long island and the
the woman who's a d.a i'm like you were
born to do this you were born to
put murderers away and this guy killed
the mother of his children and he was a
bad guy but like i was like you are
really good at what you do
she has a strong belief in whatever her
moral code is and what her
justice and ethics are and she wants to
communicate that to people
she was very good at at doing what she
did i don't know the facts of the case i
didn't really listen he seemed guilty so
i just voted guilty
but she i didn't really listen to her
but i heard the shape of her mouth was
very bovine like a cow and
it conferred a certain level of
expertise that i
enjoyed well it's funny i mean you could
see
you're half joking yeah you can often
see
that people just this they found their
place they found their roles found their
thing
they found their thing and that's kind
of the the purpose of life and once you
are in the in the place that seems
sticky like
the place that seems right you know
that's one of the problems with the
generation that you're speaking to
is there's always a feeling like i
should keep exploring keep exploring
but it's okay to stay in a place that
you follow that works yeah and
listen sometimes the best place you'll
find is like one point people are like
when did you feel really excited and
alive it's like doing nothing right
yeah you know like that's the other
thing it's like some people are gonna be
like i feel really excited and alive and
i'm laying in my backyard in a hammock
yeah and i just wanted the simplest life
and not have to do much and i don't like
doing anything
and i love laying around and going wow
this guy looks good today
yeah bill gates goes this sky looks good
today let's shoot a missile into it he
wants to do shit right so it's like
in between that and nothing is you can
find something
but in that process for you personally
i mean for me and for others i think
there's a struggle
when you look in when tim and dylan
looks in the mirror do you
love yourself or do you hate yourself
well a lot of times i think i'm amy
schumer so i'm confused
i don't i'm a dayton to myself all the
time i don't love myself or hate myself
addicts have a very uh bad uh
problem where you can't just fall in
love with yourself and you can't hate
yourself
both of them lead you to a negative
place you try to stay kind of even
keel i don't go like hey man you put out
a video i got all these views things are
great you sold a bunch of tickets let's
fucking go out like maybe let's
hey man let's have that drink that
you've been waiting for for 11 years
and i don't look at myself and go you
ate a burger yesterday you're a piece
of shit you're horrible you'll never
you know get into the shape you want
like i try not to get too low or too
high
both of them are not good for my
particular mind
okay i i gotta ask we were kind of spoke
about 2021
and you being potentially hopeful
hopeful short-term
cynical long-term yeah so let me ask
i forgot to ask are you moving to austin
i don't know i mean i don't think so
immediately you know
i love joe i love what he's trying to do
down there i'm i'm appreciative of
everything that he's done for not only
me but for comedy in general
and i think as things happen in austin
and unfold it's such a political answer
but as things unfold i will consider it
more and more but i mean
i think i got another year in l.a so you
uh
you've spoken so nicely about this
magical place that is los angeles
so you're very funny you think there's a
place for comedy in l.a
oh yeah there'll be a place for comedy
in l.a so it's going to be a place for
comedy in new york
i mean the question is how thriving of a
comedy scene is austin going to be
and the joe can probably make it one but
as of right now it isn't
so that would be him doing that but the
question there's a lot of people
escaping
los angeles but i know better about new
york there's a lot of
really brilliant let them go there's
there's other people this is the thing
it's like this is the fear thing it's
like no but all the brilliant people are
leaving
there'll be other people and they'll
fill their shoes the way that they've
done throughout history
and i think that new york and la listen
maybe in five to ten years they're not
the two cities
it would be real rough in five years
when this pandemic's over
for people in australia to go dude you
gotta go to america you gotta visit
charleston and austin
yeah stop let's see adults here let's be
adults
it's still gonna be new york in l.a for
a while uh la's is is it absolute
hellscape but i don't think
you're gonna replace california with
another place yeah and also everyone's
making decisions now
because we're literally in the midst of
a pandemic we've never had before right
we've never had this before joe loved
california up until the pandemic he had
problems with it
like we all have problems with it
there's a lot of benefits to being here
i think a lot of us made pretty bad
decisions in 2020
because we're all locked up and stuck
with their own thoughts
but so it's funny there's parallels
because i don't necessarily
you know i'm obviously a fan of comedy
but i don't care where
comics move sure but there's a parallel
move that's happening instead of
decisions which
do influence my decision making which is
where to start a business
that's tech centered and that's more
about
the uh san francisco silicon valley and
there is
a lot of people leaving there that's
everyone in austin
there well austin there's a i think
there's there's a bunch of different
places phoenix there's denver
austin will probably be a massive tech
hub
elon's there it seems like it's all
everything about austin says that it's
going to be a massive tech hub
i just don't know if that means it'll be
a massive comedy hub yeah it might
i don't know if those two can actually
coexist it's interesting because
yeah i don't i think you know comedy
suffered in new york in l.a when
everyone got super rich
like you know it just wasn't as cool
it's still much more fun on the road
it's still more fun to perform for
people that want and need to laugh
in strip malls than it is to perform for
hedge fund managers on
and with their dates and uh you know
instagram models in la it's just what it
is comedy on the road is much more fun
so maybe in the spirit of that austin
becomes but you know
you know if austin is just colonized by
tech bros and stuff like yeah i mean
sure it'll be fun and it'll be great i
think joe's
made a l.a scene so if anyone's going to
make austin a scene it's joe
yeah and i like the on the elon side
which is what i'm
much more familiar with the promise of
the possibility of
what that could become because there's a
lot of problems in silicon valley and of
course it might be
naive to think that just because it's
like the grass is greener thing which is
just because the place where you come
from has a lot of problems doesn't mean
you can just create a new place that's
not going to have those yeah there's
homelessness in austin there are
problems in austin i mean i i think that
with by the way
with the influx of very rich people to
an area
sometimes that helps things but
sometimes it just makes things more
polarizing and it spots puts a spotlight
on those problems and makes those
problems
even bigger right so i mean i don't know
that it's necessarily it's hard to
predict
i just know the la right now is funny
it's funny that there's 15 year old tick
tockers making millions of dollars
dancing in a house
while the world burns that is very funny
well it's for your
for for your style of humor yeah yes the
absurdity
it's funny that it is no one cares about
hollywood starlets and actresses and
actors and everyone goes hey fuck you
even though they've won
three academy awards they're all being
replaced by just mediocre
dancer 15 year olds i mean it's like
there's something hilarious about this
city and it will burn in hell but so
will everything so what are we talking
about
uh yeah eventually the the sun will die
out and we will all be gone unless we
colonize outside of our solar system but
you know
i i stand i just sit here you know i'm
struggling with this because
boston i'm currently at mit boston
doesn't feel like the right place to
start
a business uh in the tech sector
and so i'm choosing i'm looking at san
francisco the way it is and i'm looking
at austin
austin clearly so it seems clear
but it's it's such a difficult thing to
uh to predict what a place will look
like in 10 years in 15
years or 20 years and it's so hard to
participate you'll like it or not until
you're there
and you know this is speaking to risk um
there's not really a good reason for me
to move anywhere
well there's not a good reason to do
anything in life
part of me wants to uh just fucking do
it
and whatever and see what happens like
boston do you like other things about
boston besides the
tech thing mit that's the problem and
but do you like you like like the food
in boston do you eat food i haven't been
i
haven't eaten food or been outside for
years and i mean that
that's probably the better version but
you're keto forever
you've been keto for a long time yeah
keto fasting
for a long time uh 15 years fasting
uh eating once or twice a day
i'm not having uh no sugar ever no like
no sugar and no pasta ever no
no bread ever no pasta no bread no
except like uh so my source you could
kind of live anywhere because like
going out is such a big part of what
city you live in and like
you like the food there do you like the
restaurants can you meet people whatever
but it's like you really can just kind
of
yeah so not married no kids right you
have freedom i'm me too i have freedom
yeah and that that's we we have the
curse of too many choices
right that's the thing we have too many
choices we don't have somebody else
going what about like we don't have to
justify our decisions to anyone yeah
so we can just kind of like let our
minds go run wild so you just gotta
hone the instinct of just what feels
right and just
fucking do it and that's austin with joe
down there and elon down there austin
seems like a real
no-brainer move right for you to try you
know why the hell not
why not why not and then i think i
should go to mit
like i mean i mean i think i should give
those nerds a piece of my mind yeah you
should go to
i was in an uber pool once with a kid
from mit and i was eating uh
this thing from bova's bakery i forget
what it was it was like a uh
it's so good i don't know you don't know
bova's bakery right yeah i was in boston
it's famous
i was eating a thing i was like covered
in chocolate this kid like this little
nerd like this little like you know
usb drive with feet was just staring at
me and they just dropped him off at mit
and he like scurried away
yeah but that's a big school that
doesn't the nsa recruit out of there
heavy like at mit
places like that i can't i can't speak
to that
but what this is ridiculous
question i sometimes ask myself when i'm
alone what is the meaning of life
do you think about the big existential
kind of
why the hell we're here it's a cosmic
kind of joke kind of in a weird way
right i mean
joe said it the other day on maybe it
was you
saying that like he was just like you
know by the time you figure out what it
is you're out of here
you know it's kind of interesting or you
even start to figure out what it is
you're out of here it's like it's like
that's kind of funny it's like you don't
get enough time
to truly i think the meaning of life is
just like
at the end of the day do you feel it was
time well spent
was it time well spent that's
that's really what it is if you look
back do you go hey
it was time well spent like a pretty
good ride it was pretty good ride i did
i did it did a lot
i did a lot of things i i doing what you
say
is a part of it i think if you say
you're gonna do something maybe doing it
uh that seems to be extrapolating the
meaning of life question to like
you know what did you come here to do i
think it goes down deep
like who are you and what do you want
and you know what are you suited to do
and what
it does seem that like the people who
are most enlightened
that i've ever met or read books by
they ultimately land on humor like they
don't take shit seriously
they embrace the absurdity of it all and
just kind of laugh i
laugh at it in this kind of simple way
so it does seem that humor
is like one of the fundamental truths of
the scene yes
we're in and somehow it's love
humor humor can be love right people
laughing that that
sound is kind of like carolyn knapp who
wrote a book called drinking a love
story which is a really good
book about not drinking drinking and
then not drinking
and um she said the lat you could
understand things as love that you i
think one of the last lines in the thing
is like
people talking about their experiences
in life that that could be love like you
know laughter is love like i feel like
love and and finding it wherever you can
find it is
why we're here that's that connection
and laughter can be love and
you know figuring out you know something
that makes life better for a lot of
people can be loved
you know whether it's a vaccine or a a
technological advancement or whatever
like
you know all of those things i think can
be that feeling and i think that's
what's
important it connects you to a larger
frequency
you know i don't think there's a better
way to end it tim i hope
you're one of the voices i truly believe
that your legacy would be one of the
most important voices of our time
because you're fearless and challenging
all the absurdity of uh the nonsense
that
of our social and political discourse so
i hope you keep doing it
i'm a fan i'm still a big star struck so
oh stop it listen
i i your job i thought it was your
intellectual capacity
enjoying anything i do only underscores
how truly fucked we are
but thank you very much yeah uh
thank you for talking today thank you
brother thanks for listening to this
conversation with tim dillon
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and now let me leave you some words from
george carlin
scratch any cynic and you will find a
disappointed
idealist thank you for listening and
hope to see you
next time
you