Joe Rogan and Jeff Ross blend martial arts nostalgia—Jeff’s record-setting black belt at 10.5—with prison roasts exposing systemic flaws, like Texas jails rewarding inmates for good behavior while locking up more Black men today than were enslaved in 1860. They critique internet comedy’s credit chaos, from "the Fat Jewish" Instagram account’s alleged intern exploitation to Dave Asprey’s stock-photo scandal, before pivoting to racial identity debates, where Joe defends white BLM supporters but mocks Sean King’s actions. The episode ends with a sharp contrast: Milo Yiannopoulos’ data-driven arguments on gender differences in STEM vs. Rogan’s dismissive humor, underscoring how comedy and truth often collide. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I'm curious, because I wanted to know what...
Because I know a lot of fighters have used it and had very good results.
Like, it's alleviated a lot of anxiety with them, given them a lot of confidence, and they've attributed it to a lot of their positive performances.
It's not foolproof.
Better man always wins every time.
You know, and sometimes fighters who don't have a mind coach will still beat fighters that have a mind coach.
But I think...
All things said, if you add all the different things that a fighter has to be aware of, you have to be in shape, you have to know your techniques, you have to be motivated.
There's a lot of stuff going on in a fighter's head that has to be lined up properly.
And a mind coach, not a bad idea.
Having someone who can hypnotize you and give you tenets to live by and pathways that you could follow that are positive, I think that's fucking super important for anybody, for fighters, for anybody.
So I just wanted to try it.
I wanted to see if what it does for fighting can actually do for stand-up.
No, it's like a little bit like something that might happen in a sensory deprivation tank, because it seems like you go into this weird alternate state.
And that's sort of how he describes it, that you're actually entering into an alternate state of consciousness, like a different mind state.
Very, very interesting stuff.
I was always curious, because you ever seen a R-rated hypnotist?
Don't you think that when you're on stage and you're killing, when you're locked in, don't you think that's kind of like sort of a mass hypnosis in a lot of ways?
You know how like when you're in the middle of your material and you're locked in, you're tuned into the audience, the audience is tuned into you, and they're kind of thinking like you're thinking.
I feel that way when I watch somebody.
If I watch somebody really good, like I watched Burr the other night, he was hilarious.
And I feel like when you watch someone as really good, you're tuning in to what they do.
Like, you're in their head.
Like, they're in your head, I guess, more.
And like, you're just kind of like an empty vessel, and your brain is filled up with their ideas.
And when someone's captivating, especially like Diaz the other night, had this fucking Cosby bit that was killing me.
Fucking killing me.
And when he's doing it, you're thinking the way he thinks.
Like, your eyes are open, you're anticipating what he's going to say.
You don't have any room in your head for anything else.
I've always said this, that when I'm at my best, I'm as much of a passenger as I am a driver.
I kind of have to make the turns and steer the car and figure out which way the bits are going to go, but when I'm locked in, I feel like I'm just riding it.
There was an article a long time ago, maybe it was in a book, about late-night hosts, and you have to listen.
As soon as I stopped trying to think of jokes and just started to listen and trust that whatever I said would be entertaining in some way, eventually if I just stay in it and just listen to the other person...
If a funny character is presented in front of me, if someone's boring, you might have to try to...
Write a joke on the spot in your head, but if they're an interesting person, you could just talk to them and eventually it's gonna land on something funny.
I had a lady on stage in Chicago and so speed roasting the crowd and gosh, she was like a really round person With a crazy yellow mohawk way over the top, and she was tiny little thing,
but built like a little mailbox with a big mouth and just a funny, funny body, and she came on, just threw herself up on stage, wanted to be roasted, and I was like, he said, a lot of people, I think I said a lot of people couldn't Pull off that outfit and you're two of them.
I just try to say out loud what people normally would say behind people's backs.
Hence the karate.
Self-defense.
I do remember early instances of hecklers.
Before I knew anything about roasting, I was just a comedian, you know, usually emceeing, you know, on the road or in Jersey, you know, where we had a lot of characters.
And in the audience, I remember...
You know, a few times people taking swings at me or just walking on stage.
I was working with Rich Voss at a firehouse.
You know, I'd only been doing comedy a year or two.
And I opened for him at some sort of fundraiser at a firehouse.
I was about five minutes into my routine.
Saturday night, these firemen are in their firehouse.
This is before there were any rules to anything.
They kept telling me, make fun of Larry.
Make fun of Larry.
He loves it.
Make fun of Larry.
I don't know who Larry is.
Of course, Larry turned out to be the biggest asshole on the planet who doesn't love it at all.
And he literally was gigantic and walked up on stage and took the microphone out of my hand, put it in the mic stand and said, you're done.
Well, you definitely would get a little bit more confidence having gone through martial arts, because you've done some difficult stuff, been involved with a little bit of conflict.
It's like you never feel more alive than when you're competing.
And I love when comedy has a little tension to it.
It doesn't have to be all about what I think.
Sometimes I remember getting as heckling became more and more In the audiences, more and more you heard people heckling and there were famous instances of hecklers and audiences and stuff like that.
I said, fuck it.
People are going to videotape the shows.
It's so annoying.
Why don't I just go one step further and put the audience on stage?
And I read it and then I retweeted it because it was fucking really powerful, man.
That's one of the things about...
I went to a Texas jail to roast the inmates to hear what I learned about incarceration in America.
And then in the corner is a girl with her ass up in there.
But it's also it wasn't just that it wasn't just this this article too, but also the little pieces that you had In the videos where you had like the stats like one and out of every 100 Americans is in jail And then there's more black men in jail right now than there were slaves in the 1800s fucking a man It's an emergency.
The roast helped people talk about it in a way that is a little more accessible because it wasn't something I knew a lot about.
And as I started writing, I really just wanted to roast criminals.
I thought it'd be funny.
And as I started writing the act, I did a stand-up act for months just to acclimate myself and have an act that would kill in front of people that are locked up right now.
I learned so much, and that's what...
I think is the greater good for me is that not only did I make them laugh, but I got something out of it, too.
I mean, it's embarrassing that we have more people locked up in America than anywhere else in the world.
And also, the idea that someone in this world can't fuck up.
You can't make a mistake.
And if you do make a mistake, then you get locked in a cage.
Especially a mistake if you're thinking about someone who's coming from a really poor background.
Who needed money, took a chance, and sold some drugs.
And that's it.
And then you're locked in a cage.
And I'm sure a lot of the people that you were talking to, a lot of people that you were looking at, they were in there for some sort of non-violent drug crime.
Medicine charge came after officials discovered expired tube of toothpaste in her cell.
What?
That's the medicine charge.
Wow.
So they're just fucking with her.
Contraband came in the form of books and magazines, such as a copy of Vanity Fair magazine featuring Caitlyn Jenner, LOL, and a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine featuring an interview with Manning.
Oh wow, she's not allowed to have an interview with herself.
But according to ChelseaManning.org, she received the reading material legally through the prison's open mail system.
Yeah, they're fucking with her, dude.
They're fucking with her.
They can.
They're fucking criminals.
Just lock that person up and take away all their rights, all that's any privacy, any ownership they have over their own body or even what they want to read.
Can you imagine that?
Vanity Fair is fucking contraband.
You can get locked up in solitary for a Vanity Fair.
Fuck.
Sick.
It's sick.
And, you know, look at that whole thing, the way it went down.
That poor guy, Julian Assange, he's still locked up in that fucking...
He's still in that house in the...
What do you call those things?
Embassy.
He's still in the, who is it?
Ecuador's?
Ecuador's embassy?
Something like that?
In London.
Like, he can't leave.
If he steps foot out of that building, he's fucked.
So the dude's not getting any vitamin D. He's not going outside.
Super unhealthy.
It really is unhealthy.
Like, you really need to be outside.
Poor fucker.
You can literally walk out the door.
Yep, exactly.
But you know what they're saying?
They're saying it.
What they're saying is that it's a sex case, that he had sex with a woman, and then in the middle of the night, he stuck it in again without a condom.
It's called surprise sex, like they were cuddled together naked, and he didn't put a condom a second time.
And I don't even know if the woman is pressing charges.
I mean, I don't know what's going on, but they were trying to extradite him for that.
Like, right!
Yeah, that's what you were doing.
Yeah, right.
Like, that's why this guy's locked up in an embassy.
Do you imagine if every time a guy tried to cuddle with a chick and sneak it in without a rubber, that guy would get locked up in an embassy and be holed up there?
Because I guess she was asleep, and they had already had sex, and they were, you know, cuddled together in this little spooning-type position, you know, dick to vajayjay right from behind.
I don't know.
I'm just making it up, because I don't really know what happened.
Nobody knows what happened.
He says it's all bullshit.
But the idea that they got this guy locked up for that, and that's why they...
No, it's not!
It's WikiLeaks!
It's the fucking information they released!
That's what they're trying to get him on a loophole, and we all know it.
Wayne Dickey is the jail administrator at Brazos County Jail and he stepped up and had confidence in his institution and his facility and he wanted to He wanted everyone to see his staff and how great they were and to see how his inmate behavioral programs worked, where he incentivizes the inmates.
I took that as a huge compliment that so many people did that.
Not everybody, but most of the jail, more than half, came to my shows.
And they were appreciative, and I felt that too.
That's why the show came off, because not only were they good sports, but they knew what they were signing up for ahead of time, because they had a month's notice that I was coming there to roast them.
And there were posters around the jail that said, you know, if you can laugh at yourself, you're one step closer to freedom.
And they came.
And when I asked for volunteers, guys were running down from the balcony.
They're not allowed to even be in the same room.
It was a communal experience for the different sects and gangs and types of people, you know.
It was all dudes and squeezed into this one room.
With the most dangerous closer to the stage by the door and the least dangerous packed into the rafters.
I wanted to initially think of the funniest thing, which would be crime in America.
And I talk to a lot of people.
I'm friends with Tony Hinchcliffe, Mike Ferrucci, George Reinblatt, my cousin Ed Larson.
We just brainstormed and tried to think of the funniest, craziest shit we could do.
and somehow roasting criminals seem like a hilarious way for me to do what I do face to face you know roasting concepts is one thing or roasting people from behind a desk has all been done and but going to it like getting into something immersing in an environment that's my specialty I I love that.
To me, it's like a corporate gig, you know?
You're writing a special act for a certain night, then you're never going to do it again.
Something that I'm interested in or curious about or a fan of...
You know, it's got to be something meaty, you know?
I mean, I can riff if I don't, but if I'm invested in it somehow, like, with the jail, I thought, like, how did I, like, smoke so much pot and have so much fun in my life and never get in real trouble?
I sold weed in high school.
Like, this could have been me.
You know, this could have been me.
So I got curious.
And as I get personally curious and invested in something, I can start to see, find the hypocrisies that go into it and how the humanity can be lifted out of it.
And I started to see that this is a sad place, and it's kind of like doing a USO tour.
And I told that to the jailers when I met with them.
I had to go down there and ask permission a couple times.
And they had to trust me, you know, that I wasn't there to humiliate anybody or expose anything that was not just...
I don't know.
I didn't have an agenda.
I was going to make it real.
I was really just going to go there and see if people had a sense of humor.
It was simple.
And as I got into it, I realized how lucky I am that I never got in real trouble, that I never got busted for anything, and that if I had, I'm not sure I would have survived.
If you were selling pot, you could have got caught, and you also could have got talked into selling more pot.
Have you ever heard of those stories?
Like DEA agents go undercover, and they'll talk a kid into, like, listen, I'm going to put a deal together, you know, if you're a part of this.
There was a story that they did in Rolling Stone about a DEA undercover agent who talked this kid into a big cocaine deal that wasn't real.
It wasn't real.
There was no real cocaine.
But he talked this kid into selling it, and this kid's in jail for life now.
The kid was just a low-level dealer.
He was selling, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there, nothing big.
And this DEA guy essentially talked him into doing some gigantic deal that put him in jail for 25 to life.
And that can happen to anybody!
Look, I've made some big fuck-ups in my life.
I've been an idiot many times in my life.
I don't know a single person who hasn't made mistakes.
We all make mistakes.
But it's whatever the environment is that you're growing up in, dictate how bad your situation is, whatever you were exposed to, and that might be a factor in the level of your mistake.
So the dumb mistakes that I made were the pretty...
Uneventful childhood.
Nothing too serious.
Good parents.
Nice folks.
My mom's a sweet person.
You know, love my sister.
It's like pretty easy life.
Growing up in Newton, Massachusetts.
Not hard.
Not hard at all.
Imagine...
Just a much more chaotic situation with the same person, living in Inglewood, you know, whatever, Watts, Detroit, in some fucking hopeless place where you can't get out, and then next thing you know, you're in fucking jail.
You're in jail, and you're gonna be in jail for five, six years, and during that time, you go from being 21 to 26, and now you're getting out, and you're a fucking, you're a man, and you're a convict, you can't get a fucking job, and you're just trying to figure out how to scratch and survive.
It's fucked.
It's fucked.
You know, it's fucked that there's so many people out there that just don't get a chance or whatever chance you get.
You know, and there's a lot of people go, oh, if you just follow the law, but get the fuck out of here.
Whatever the fuck they encountered from the time they were a baby to the time they were a prisoner.
And then the fucked up thing is you just become kind of a human battery.
Because all you do is you generate money for private prisons.
Every one person that goes into those private prisons is worth a certain amount of money for those companies.
And they sell that.
That's their business.
Their business is making money, extracting money out of prisoners.
And there's a whole system that's involved in doing it.
All the way from the guards.
The guard unions make sure that they keep certain drugs illegal and make sure that certain laws stay on the books and certain penalties are still in place.
It's fucked, man.
It's fucked.
You know, I had this guy on the other day we were talking about, and he was saying that one of the only things that, like, keeps it from getting even worse is that the private prisons and the guard unions don't get along.
Like, the guards want certain things that the prisons don't, because the prisons don't want to pay the guards, so there's a fucking, there's a little internal struggle.
But if they worked together, it would be even worse.
Well, you went to jail for something you didn't even do.
You are, out of all the dudes that I've ever met, out of all the guys that I've ever met who have run across crazy women that get really fucking angry at you when you break up.
Every fucking girl you've ever dated since I've been friends with you, they get furious at you when it's over.
Well, they want to kill you.
I've seen it in person.
It's not just, granted, you inspire that in some men as well.
I was thinking, like, I want to meet a girl that, like, every time she goes to Vegas to hang out with her friends, like, that she sends me a photo that I'm not looking at the wallpaper and then comparing it to, like, Dan Blitzerin's Instagram photos, you know?
Like, I'm like, wait a second, it looks like the same cup on his nightstand as...
You know, we're talking about this guy who goes by the Fat Jewish on Instagram, and I would follow him, and I'd see funny stuff on there, so I kind of knew about him.
I didn't know a lot about how he collected his material.
I guess I didn't think about it.
Like, most of the five million people who follow him, they don't care.
He was actively trying to make sure that he didn't show who created it and he just put it on his page so he didn't give credit to the people that made it.
The internet, my entire career, I've never made money off all the millions of clips that are out there, millions of views, and people are always shooting comedians.
Comedians get annoyed.
You see a lot of comedians want to shut down phones at their shows because they don't want their half-written jokes on the internet, or they don't want the...
They're fans to see their material without having to pay for it, either live at a show or buying their specials online.
Well, you know, networks are trying to be edgier, but there's still bleeps, and there's still censorship, and there's all sorts of regulations.
But with the internet, everyone always explained it as a wild, wild west.
You know, you could just do whatever you want.
Like, all the time you'll see people will make videos and compreels, and they'll edit famous movies, and you just use whatever footage, and no one ever cares.
Then now people are starting to care a little bit.
They're looking for ways the last five, ten years to monetize the Internet.
And to me, it's coming very close to being how we watch everything.
I hardly ever watch TV anymore.
And when I do, it's a big live event.
They're just all starting to become...
There's no more the Internet.
There's no more TV. It's just...
Programming and it's different brands and you go to those brands So I go at some point the regulations for the internet and television should be the same and they should be they should get together and it should just be Do you mean as a set of standards for now on but what do you mean by standards?
Do you mean as far as the music rights and how it all goes down and the stuff we have to you know the I'm in the Writers Guild.
I don't know.
I mean, it's all the same now at this point, and I feel like the internet needs to step it up, and they should be crediting stuff and paying for rights, and to some extent I think it's happening, and I think that's good.
I think for a long time it was innocent, you know?
Like someone would post a funny meme on their Instagram and no one cared because it was just people being funny.
Like, oh, this guy's funny.
But then, when people started making a lot of money off of it, then you realize, well, what made that guy famous?
He's just an aggregator.
All he's doing is collecting all the shit that's online and instead of the actual writers of each one of those individual bits getting some credit, All the credit's going to him.
So now what he's doing, what this guy who calls himself the Fat Jewish is doing, is he just puts the guy's name at the end, or the girl's name at the end.
So he steals their picture, puts it up on his site, and instead of saying, this picture was made by Jeff Ross, the real Jeff Ross, it now just has...
Just a tag, you know, at, and then whoever's name it is, with no mention of where, you know, like, that this person created this originally.
It just, it just throws their name up there.
Which is stupid.
Like, all you have to do is, this hilarious meme was created by, boom!
And then that person gets credit, that person probably happy, they'll get a shitload of fucking people will come to visit them, and sign up, and follows.
And I did notice he sort of does it at the end of whatever the new comment is, so it almost looks like the person he wants to give credit to is actually giving credit for the comment, not the picture.
But how do you I mean Brian rather did a great job of actually finding the original image and finding the time the original image was posted in the day and That's how he credited people and that's how he actually discredited a couple of people that Originally were trying to claim that they came up with it first But it was proven that somebody else had posed the exact same image the exact same text before them Yeah
Yeah, it kind of sucks because if we want regulations, if we want to change how it is now, what's going to happen is it's like when you have a YouTube video and it detects that there's copyright material in it.
So now anytime we want to post like a photo on our Facebook or tweet something, we're going to have like a block and we kind of don't want that.
I put less jokes on Twitter than I used to because I want my best material for when you come see me live and that's a much more unique and exciting experience.
The other thing is it's not just two people going back and forth.
It's a bunch of people that would decide that they're on the other guy's side or this guy's side and jump in.
Like, you get a lot of that now.
There's a lot of what you see online when there's any sort of a debate about something is pile-ons.
You know, there's a bunch of people who pile on.
One side or the other.
You know, I tweeted something the other day.
And this guy, he's up for, he might go to jail in Canada, because he's been tweeting at this girl, and apparently there was some agreement that he wouldn't tweet at her anymore, but he used to be on her side.
I think he actually even did some artwork with her, but she's like this radical feminist, and she took him to court.
She called the police on him.
This guy was harassing her.
And it was even sometimes, she would write something about him, and the fact that he responded to her about him, she was saying he was harassing her.
Which is kind of hilarious.
But all I did was there was an article and a video.
And I retweeted it.
This is interesting.
The exact title of the video is what came up on my tweet.
In the exact same order because I just went to the YouTube thing where it says share and I tweeted it.
I didn't put any commentary.
I didn't have any editorial control over it.
And so many fucking people were angry at me, saying that I'm a misogynist, and why would I post this?
It's a woman in the video, an older woman in the video, who's talking about this case.
So it's a woman's video about a woman who's suing a man, and the man might go to jail because the man was tweeting at a woman who didn't want him to tweet at her.
This is crazy.
But I looked at the comments, I was like, Jesus Christ!
Like, the fucking mean people piling on and angry at me that I tweeted this.
I guess you could kind of think that maybe this is my opinion instead of me just sharing something.
But I share shit I don't believe in at all.
I'll share some flat earth shit or some Bigfoot shit.
I'll share nonsense.
I'll retweet people that think the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
I do that all the time.
This is one dummy that I follow.
I retweet him.
Well, I don't retweet him anymore because I don't want him to know that I follow him.
But I do read his shit.
It's just so ridiculous.
Some of his stuff is so...
It's all anti-Obama.
It's either he hates Obama.
I wish I remembered his name.
Joe Sussmanup something starts with a C. But he's like one of the dumbest religious guys online.
And everything is like either anti-Obama or anti-evolution or anti-the earth is, you know, 4.6 billion years old.
There's this MTV celebrity, and I don't want to say who she is, but she's always on TMZ, and it's always her being like, don't you know who I am?
And getting arrested, and she's just like this privileged white girl celebrity from MTV. And I tweeted her something, because recently she hit a cop or something like that, and they're drunk and they're just recording her outside of a club.
Handcuffed and I tweeted or something and it got a lot of retweets and Last night I was at this thing and she was there staring me down.
I'm like, this is it.
I can't do this She's gonna attack me right now.
And I was that's one of those things that I wish I never tweeted that because now she knows like She's an enemy.
Yeah, she's an enemy for no reason like it was just me like dude I should have said that you know to myself instead of tweeting it and Yeah, you could do that.
But the point being that the way I reacted to it, I wish I could react to it like that all the time.
But I don't know if I would.
Like, if I'm stressed out, I got a bunch of shit going on, and there's a fucking...
You hit this boiling point.
Where you come in on a four or five instead of at a zero.
You're coming in hot already, you know?
And I was thinking about that while I'm in yoga class.
I was like, there's times where my reaction to the thing is not entirely warranted by the situation itself, but is more dealing with all the different shit that I've got going on in my life.
This is what I think, and this might be crazy, but I think this is part of the problems with police brutality and some of the mistakes that cops have made is they come in hot.
Their job is tough and other stuff's going on, and then you come from one thing to another, and they warrant different things.
Rules and disciplines and danger levels, but they're coming in not knowing or, you know, fired up.
Their blood pressure, I've talked to cops, especially in New York and Chicago, where they're on blood pressure medication and their families are stressed out and their job is more intense than it ever has been.
That had two floors and one floor was above the water looking down But the first floor was like the water would go right under the fucking bedroom Like you would see the waves come in and you would hear them crash underneath you and it was dark and I'm looking out this window and I was high as fuck I was looking out this window.
I was like, oh my god, this is crazy.
I can't sleep here.
I was like, this is nuts.
And I know that this fucking building's been here for, who knows, 10 years, whatever.
I know that a lot of the houses have been there since the 50s.
There's pictures.
It's like there's one of those restaurants down there that has these old black and white pictures on the wall.
But when you're there at night, it looks like a monster.
In the day, it's like this beautiful friend.
In the day, you look out there, like I'd have breakfast, and I'd sit down this little table, look out the window and eat eggs.
I'm like, God, this is amazing.
Look how beautiful it is just to be like...
Next to this alien world, this beautiful alien world, and I'd see sea lions or seals or whatever the fuck they are, and birds, and occasionally you'd see a fish splash around.
You walk into Artie Lang's house in the Jersey Shore, and if he didn't tell me he lived there, I would think, like, Mary Lou Henner lived there or something.
It's immaculately decorated, perfect nautical-themed white pillows everywhere.
I wonder if people really did have little dicks back then, or if they just made them have little dicks so that everybody looking at the sculptures didn't feel bad.
Because, like, look at that guy's dick.
That's an enormous man with a fat guy's dick.
That is like a mushroom cap, and the guy looks huge.
That looks like the Hulk.
I take back everything I said.
I take back everything I said, though, because that guy's giant.
For some reason, we're looking at this guy's back that is insanely muscular, and it's a sculpture, but his ass cheeks are a little too big, and he's holding something in his hands.
It was like the best day of my life just because I saw a comedian that I knew yeah I've been in that situation before it's cool those situations are cool when you you know you have that camaraderie you run into someone that you know yeah the old days baby I used to do news radio right next to...
Greg Giraldo had a sitcom for a while.
And Giraldo's sitcom would be right next to him.
Common Law.
Yeah.
They would be right next door.
And I'd go out, hang with him.
We'd just hang out in the parking lot and shoot the shit.
But it was always like, oh, you're not even an actor.
You're a comedian.
We're comics, right?
We'd talk about it, and he'd talk about how frustrating it was, because, you know, trying to do his show his way, all the producers and every, you know, the network and all the jazz that you have to deal with when you're trying to put together a sitcom.
Well, if you did that, you know, like, for real, if you wanted to do a show, say, like, Dallas is a big port, there's always big ports, and you set up a podcast studio in that port and said, you know, we'll be here...
Today's guest.
We're going to be here from 9am to 3pm.
Let us know if you're coming through, and maybe you can schedule your layover.
I got dehydrated and couldn't after a bunch of shows and traveling and not drinking enough water and over-caffeinating to make up for not sleeping and being nervous.
That was what happened.
It sent me to the infirmary, to the medical tent in the middle of, I think it was Al-Assad or Fallujah.
In that you're bringing laughs where there normally aren't any, and it's politics and all that, and whether people deserve a show and all that, you can just put that aside for a second.
As a comedian, just going in and that challenge of making people laugh that are miserable, I love that.
I feed off that.
I remember trying to make my mom laugh when she was sick and stuff.
I love that challenge of trying to break somebody who's just a little frozen.
I remember being early in my career seeing Buddy Hackett perform.
I didn't know him, but I knew his son Sandy, and Sandy let me come by myself at the end of a run in Atlantic City, and Buddy was there the next day, so I stayed an extra day to see the Buddy Hackett show.
It was kind of a late afternoon, early Sunday show, and I remember Buddy right out of the gate Saw some lady taking notes.
She was a reporter and he didn't know about it ahead of time or whatever.
He called her a cunt right in literally the first 45 seconds of walking on stage and just the whole audience.
She tried to say, I'm from the so-and-so Herald and he just wouldn't hear it and he just called her a cunt and he just put a really weird vibe in the room right out of the gate and You know, eventually the show, you know, went on and it was amazing.
But literally a decade later, Buddy became a very close pal and I could ask him anything.
And I said, you'd never remember this, man, but like 10 years ago in Atlantic City at the Trumpat Castle or whatever, some lady, you know, he's like, well, I go, why would you do that?
Like right away, just for no reason, just...
Could you imagine what might have been happening in your head, buddy?
And he's like, oh, I do that all the time.
I like to dig myself a hole just to make it interesting.
It holds you up sometimes when you know you got something and you're developing it and you have a couple of tent poles that maybe you won't need once the whole thing's built.
And I said, you're dedicating a lot of time to this bit that I know you don't really think like this.
Like, you don't mean this, right?
And he goes, no.
I'm like, but what if somebody has this disease that's in the audience and they hear this or someone who knows somebody?
I go, you're taking all this time and creativity and you're putting it together with something you don't necessarily believe in.
And I said, you got to think of a bit as like a subject is the scaffolding.
And then inside that scaffolding, you put all your material.
And that's what you're doing.
You know, and when you create a new bit, sometimes you do have those dance moves.
Sometimes you do have those, and sometimes I'll just chop them down and leave, and I'll start it out good, and I'll just hope there's a pathway that opens up in my brain when I'm in the moment and contemplating the bit.
Where I know there's a lull there and I know I gotta dig myself out of the lull.
Maybe I'll find it.
And I don't find it.
Sometimes I don't find it.
Sometimes you'll do a bit three, four times and you're like, I'm ready to abandon this motherfucker.
And then, boom, something pops up and you're like, oh, this is it.
24-year-old Joey whatever has captured the hearts of more than 4 million teens and young adults through his playful, sweet, and inspirational YouTube presence, not to mention his sparkling eyes and perfect hair.
This is like a book about him and he has this on the back of his cover.
Yet Joey wasn't always comfortable in his skin, and in this candid memoir, he thoughtfully looks back on his journey from pain to pride, self-doubt to self-acceptance.
But he has that kind of creepy mustache that some black eyes can pull off.
There's his dad.
His mom's white as well.
There's photos of him as a young kid, totally white, but talked about his struggles of being an African-American, how he was always bullied, and throws a lot of pictures up, I guess, that are...
Black and white.
And here's the thing, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a white guy that works for Black Lives Matter.
Well, this guy that I really like, Milo Yiannopoulos, I'm not exactly sure how to say his last name correctly, but it's Nero, N-E-R-O, on Twitter.
And he's a fucking funny writer, man.
And he's a really good speaker, too.
He's hilarious.
He does these interview shows, and he's always saying logical things and having logical arguments against feminists.
If you like Google some of these, Milo Yiannopoulos, and they can't fucking say anything about him because he's gay and he has blonde hair and he's super articulate.
So because he doesn't look like, you know, like one of the guys from Jersey Shore, he's not like, you know, a lot of these guys that are representing men's rights, they kind of look douchey.
You know, they kind of look like bros.
He's gay.
And he's open about it, and he's fabulous, and he's got a great vocabulary.
But when he's describing, or when he's giving these arguments and debating, rather, these women, he's crushing them.
Because he was talking about diversity in science, and he's like, well, the cold hard truth is, it's not that women are discouraged from doing science.
It's that a lot of them aren't attracted to it.
Men and women have different states of mind.
And boys and girls, when they're young, if you give them, like, equal access to toys, boys naturally will gravitate towards, like, trucks and cars, and girls will naturally gravitate towards dolls.
It has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, here's one of them on Sky News, why men are better at chess.
unidentified
Listen, look at them.
How do you feel about being called different because you're hardwired differently?
I don't know.
I'm sure it's not something you've failed to hear before.
It just seems to keep cropping up.
Is it necessary?
It's just...
It's ridiculous.
It's 50s thinking, you know.
I mean, it's just so ridiculous, this biological determinism.
Frankly, you know, interests and talent and, you know, passions for particular topics, subjects, sports, arts, whatever, like, they're not relegated to either gender, but unfortunately, because of some stereotypical thinking...
Often, one gender is encouraged to pursue a sport or an art more so than the other.
It's bullshit!
My colleague at The Telegraph, Radhika Sagani, she wrote a piece just this morning speaking to...
Like young girls who play chess.
And actually, what she found out is that they're dropping out at the age of 12. Probably because, you know, they're not encouraged or, you know, there's an environment around telling them that it's not for them, it's not cool, etc, etc.
So, you know, this hardwired brain stuff, like, it's retro sexism.
No, it doesn't matter in the sense that they are equal but different, but it simply isn't true to say that there is no difference whatsoever between the aptitudes of men and women.
And it is without question true that there are some biological differences between men and women, and we know that from our anatomy.
unidentified
But we also know it from experiments that we do on young children, before they've had the opportunity to be socialized, the sorts of toys that they go for.
And that holds true, actually, for other bits of the animal kingdom as well.
It's very trendy these days to say that everything is socially determined, but that's not what the science says.
And it's not either what common sense says, because if it were true, these days there would be a lot more representation of women in the sciences, in astrophysics, in philosophy, in mathematics, and in chess.
But very, very elegant and, in the end, very appreciative crowd.
And I roasted them at the Friars Club once, and I roasted them on Comedy Central once.
I remember him not laughing at all for like three comedians, and I went up to him during the commercial break, and I'm like, Donald, you have to at least smile so we have something to cut to other than other people laughing at you.
And he's like, oh, okay, I get it now.
So he's sort of smiling and enjoying himself a little bit.
And I fucking hate when people say, you know, yeah, that's great.
I'm gonna have fucking people being educated on my tax dollars.
What about my tax dollars?
What about war?
Don't you know how much more it costs to go to war than it costs to educate people?
Don't you think it would be better if we had less people that were uneducated in this country or if we had less people that were leaving college in fucking massive debt?
If you're a kid, okay, if you're 18 to 21 years old, which is most people that are in college, You don't need to be saddled down with hundreds of thousands of dollars in education debt.
That's fucking gross.
It's gross and it's stupid and it speaks to poor management of our civilization.
That's what I think about our situation in America when it comes to colleges and the amount of money that kids get straddled down with.
Saddled down, rather, with debt.
They're fucked.
You know, especially if you talk to someone who goes to medical school.
Dave and I both lived on the sides of that park, and we used to watch Charlie all the time, and then I think when Charlie passed away, Dave kind of took over that mantle in the fountain on the weekends, and sometimes during the week, and he really found his voice, I think, in that park.
If it was an email or a phone call, you had your phone in your house and you went and did all that.
You left messages and got messages.
And you went out.
When you were out, you were present in the moment and you were loving every second of it.
Dave and I would hang around Washington Square Park and try to talk to NYU girls who were studying and whatever we could do and find some weed and we would brainstorm and write jokes and we'd eat lunch in the park and listen to music.
There was always the acrobats were in the park and Master Lee, a karate comic, would come and Charlie Barnett, this guy that was just hilarious, would, you know, like you said, he would jump up on the fountain and Showtime!
It's showtime!
And all his jokes are real simple and he could work the crowd.
A homeless guy walks by, he had a joke.
Japanese tourists walks by, he has a joke, he'd mimic him.
You know, and you know, it was a great show for anyone, 8 to 80, rich or poor.
Even if you don't speak English, you're laughing at Charlie.
He was so physical and funny, and it was a great time.
I remember there were riots in Los Angeles.
It might have been Rodney King, and we got warnings in New York to be careful.
There might be riots in New York, and Charlie walked me home.
He's like, yeah, I'm going to have your N-word walk you home.
I never had the guts to go on outside like that, but Chappelle watched him and watched him and watched him and Charlie sort of bringing him up every now and then.
He'd let him do a few minutes and Eventually, Dave, that just became one of his chapters.
It was amazing to watch.
Charlie was loud and his jokes were really short.
Dave was more soft-spoken and his jokes were longer.
So to see that in the park was fascinating because the park had to come to Dave a little bit and you really saw, at least I really saw, Having hung out there every night that every day, you know, sometimes Dave would do a few couple shows on a Sunday in the park and he'd make real fans and he got a real sense of who he was right there doing that.
I mean, it was magic to see a young genius in the middle of the public, just being him and having the public come to him, gravitate to him.
And there was this huge crowd of people and he was just walking by and he just looked over at me for some reason, just walked up to me and goes, hey kid!
And he signed my little paper thing and then just walked away.
Didn't take anyone else's photos or sign anyone else's shit.
Have you ever seen some of the memorabilia they have laying around the store from back when it used to be Ciro's and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis used to perform there?
But there was a tunnel that went from the Comedy Store up the hill to a house that, like, people could escape through or they could fucking move shit to.
You know, the Comedy Store is just filled with catacombs and it's just fucking so clustered and confusing if you don't know your way around that place.
If you're some cop and you're looking for Meyer Lansky and he fucking just skirts out the back and...
But you're kind of living a dream, you know, the way you do it.
I see you taking pictures, like, there was a picture of you the other day with Ray Romano in the cellar, and then boom, all of a sudden you're at the store.
You know, like, you just hop back and forth, and Ari's doing that, too.
I asked my Uncle Murray, he was coming out to visit a couple years ago, I said, if he could meet anybody, he's never been to LA, been all over the world, he's a Purple Heart, Silver Star recipient, World War II Army medic, helped liberate a concentration camp, dined all over the world, best restaurants in the world, was a caterer, had a great life, outlived two wives, loved them both, he's never been to LA. I said, what do you want to do?
If he could meet, do anything, what would he do?
He's like, I'd like to meet Mel Brooks.
I was like, well, what's your second choice?
Because that's not happening.
And, you know, he's coming, he's coming, and it's getting closer, so fuck it, I write a letter to Mel Brooks.
And I knew where his office was, and I knew Mel a little bit, because I'd sat in Sid Caesar's house for different holidays and birthdays, and he'd always pop in with Carl Reiner.
Even when Sid was frail and old, Mel and Carl would make a big entrance.
Mel would lean right into Sid's wheelchair.
Mel!
Sid!
It's Mel Brooks and Carl Ryder!
And you see Sid light up.
It was great.
And, you know, it was like Fourth of July weekend a couple years ago.
And finally I'm like, fuck.
My uncle's only here for another couple more days.
We're having a great time.
We went to Fred Willard and Mary Willard's fireworks party.
And I took him to the polo lounge with Bob Saget.
And we've been having so much fun.
And he saw Renee Taylor at Genghis Khan Chinese restaurant.
He got a picture.
And, you know, my uncle's having the best time.
But, man, he did say, you know, months ago, that would be the one thing where the creme de la creme would be, you know, just a handshake and a photo with Mel Brooks.
I'm a little embarrassed, so I go into the bathroom and I call Mel's office because I don't want my uncle to hear me, even though he's 90, you know?
And I'm like, just make sure you got the letter, you know, following up.
I'm just like being as humble and, yeah, yeah, Mel's been out of town.
I'll see if I can get an answer to it.
Boom.
I have to go to an emergency dental appointment.
I think a filling fell out, so I take my uncle.
To the dentist with me.
I'm done.
It's 10.30.
Now I'm like, how do I kill our last day with my uncle?
I love my Uncle Murray.
He's just the family ball buster.
Mean Murray, we called him.
And he just basically made fun of me as a kid and taught me how to take a joke.
Like a real Jersey guy.
You know, lifelong caterer.
Just super funny.
And we're up.
I'm showing him, you know, Mulholland and this and that.
And we're right at the top of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland and my cell phone rings.
Hold for Mel Brooks.
I'm like, oh, this is where he's calling?
Like, there's gonna be no service up here.
This is terrible.
Like, this is...
Mel gets on.
He's like...
He's like...
Basically, so what's going on?
What's happening?
And I'm like, I'm trying to talk and drive down this hill all at once.
And I'm like, well, you know, I think it would be so nice of you to meet my uncle.
He just loves you.
Whatever I can say.
I think you guys, you're both World War II veterans.
We might have a lot in common.
And Mel goes, the only thing I have in common with you, with your uncle, is that I'm a nice guy.
So come on over in an hour and a half over to my office or the barbershop.
I don't know yet.
I'll call you back.
Click.
I go down the hill, and we're both in shorts, so we're panicking.
So we're racing down Laurel Canyon, and we run home to put long pants on and just comb our hair or whatever.
I'm just coming from the dentist, you know?
And my uncle's like, he doesn't ever...
He doesn't ever wait on line.
Like, you know, he has certain rules.
He's like a very proud, stubborn guy, you know, seen it all, and he's like nervously rehearsing opening lines to say to Mel Brooks...