Alison Rosen, 48 and a podcast pioneer, shares her chaotic IVF weight fluctuations—carbs failed long-term—and critiques modern fame’s dark side, from manufactured Real Housewives drama to Tom Cruise’s isolation. She contrasts Liberia’s cannibalistic General Butt Naked with her shelter dog advocacy, revealing how travel (Paris, Giverny) reshapes perspective on trivialities like social media. Rogan’s blunt honesty clashes with her "hippy-dippy" self-compassion, while both dissect trauma’s role in behavior, from circumcision debates to early puberty fetishes. Career shifts—from Time Out to Adam Carolla’s abrupt firing—highlight how online hostility (new dads, "river of cunts") warps resilience, proving adversity shapes identity more than genetics. [Automatically generated summary]
I mean, like, I've gotten overweight slightly before, but even then, I'd look at myself, I'm like, you fucking disgusting slob.
Like, get it together.
I just, um, it's...
You know, there's two schools of thought on it.
One school of thought is that if you spend too much time on your body that you're vain and it's a frivolous pursuit because you're going to die anyway and it's all pointless.
But I feel like that's kind of a cop-out because I think that you only have this one meat vehicle to get you through this life.
And if it was a car, you'd maintain it.
If you have a nice car, what do you do?
You take care of the oil, you know, you get it serviced.
You deal with all the stuff that makes it run nice.
I think if you're saying it's self-absorbed and it's vain and it's shallow to care about your body, and if you're saying that as an excuse to allow yourself to not get into shape, Then I think that you're not really facing what's going on.
And that thing where you're like, oh, it's just shallow.
You're not really addressing what the actual resistance is.
I don't know.
I think, for me, I got into a phase where I was going to a personal trainer, and I got really into it.
And for the first time, all this stuff that I'd heard my whole life about how...
Because I'm not a sports person, so about how sports can affect the rest of your life.
I never understood that.
I never understood the mental part of it.
But for that time, and I'm not really in that place anymore, but for the time that I was super into it, I felt better.
I definitely did.
And I felt like I can put in effort in the gym and the effects...
Not in terms of what you see on my body, but how I feel are immediate.
And also that thing of like, this is a challenge for me, but I'm going to dig deep and I'm going to do it.
And I set these little goals for myself almost every day that I could overcome.
And that was kind of insane, that feeling, how good I felt when I did something that I didn't think I could do.
And it was happening, you know, multiple times a week.
I just think it's almost, I mean, it's not overlooked with a lot of people, but with some people it is overlooked.
And I think it's unfortunate because it's thought of as like a vain pursuit, a pursuit of vanity.
And it really restructures the way your brain functions.
When you regularly exercise and your body pumps out all those endorphins and you release all that stress and your body sweats and it just feels like...
The good is the reaction to that, where you don't like that feeling, and then you do something different.
Because I think if you just look at yourself and you look in the mirror and go, fucking awesome!
And you tuck your gut into your shirt and tuck your shirt into your pants and you just go about your day and then have a heart attack, I don't think you're gonna get the results that you really want.
want I think if you if you want your body to work well you have to be honest and if you have slacked off and you have gained weight or you have eaten a bunch of shitty food and you feel like really just slow and sludgy and you know that feeling that you get if you just indulge too much or drink too much that oh that just that the drinking too much is a bad one like last time we did that podcast here with Stan Hope I fucking tried to brush my teeth with deodorant and I had deodorant out, and I had my toothbrush.
I'm like, what the fuck am I doing?
My brain was so scrambled from just getting hammered.
I'm like, that's just a bad feeling.
It's fun while you're doing it.
I believe there's an expression, I forget who, was it Oscar Wilde?
Back when I used to indulge in everything more, the feeling of indulging and the feeling of I'm doing something that I don't think I'm really okay with the fact that I'm doing it made me feel estranged from myself.
And then it's like I wanted to keep the party going.
There were so many nights because I don't indulge in much anymore because it was kind of getting out of hand.
And this is many years ago that I'm talking about because I've been on the planet.
Like a lot of what the partying is, is distraction from their own problems or their own goals that they haven't tried to go after, those sort of nagging problems in their life they're not working on.
The mind works in such a weird way where you chase after distractions sometimes with all this vigor, but you don't do the same with the actual real issues in your life.
I think at the end of the day, it's an experience and it's an experience that restarts every day.
You know, you go to bed, it shuts off, you wake up and you go, here we go again.
and you assume that this is the same life and you assume that you're not just waking up in some sort of computer program that pretends that you have 41 years of memories.
You go about your day and if you want to make the most out of it, you have to be aware of these mistakes that you keep repeating and sort of just try to not do that anymore and try to get better.
of these mistakes that you keep repeating and sort of just try to not do that anymore and try to get better.
And you know what I'm going to do?
And you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to fucking start eating vegan.
I'm going to fucking start eating vegan.
You know what I'm going to do?
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to start taking yoga.
I'm going to start taking yoga.
You know what I'm going to do?
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to start.
I'm going to start.
And you look at like these things as like positive sort of directions that you could get on that maybe will change.
And you look at like these things as like positive sort of directions that you could get on that maybe will change.
And then you like fall off the vegan wagon or you fall off the yoga wagon.
And then you like fall off the vegan wagon or you fall off the yoga wagon.
You start drinking again.
You start drinking again.
And it's like this constant cycle with a lot of people of like, you know, going on diets and then fucking up and, you know, eating cake, starting an exercise program, then getting fat again.
And it's, I think being self-aware helps you to have moments of reflection.
And I think meditation is really important too.
That's a big one that a lot of people don't like to do.
Spend time alone, by yourself, doing nothing.
Do 20 minutes a day.
Just sit down and breathe.
Sit down and think, and it will help you tremendously.
There are certain people that are programmed to see the world in a way where it's like people are trying to screw me over and I'm not going to let that happen.
And so they'll see it everywhere, even where it isn't.
It's when you actually do actually get fucked over, like in a business deal or with someone who's trying to fuck you over financially or something like that.
I would begin to think about everything and I would be like, when was the point at which this started?
And I'd have to kind of reconsider everything.
And that is my own obsession with, sort of like we were talking before, the way that I can prevent this happening in the future is to really understand how this happened now.
But I think I get a little too...
I mean, I can really, like, I can ruminate on something too much.
You know, I think also if something's important to you and you, you know, you really, you want something to work out well, whether it's a podcast you're doing or a comedy show or something like that, you can kind of obsess on things too much.
But like what we were saying earlier about the, or I was saying about trying to talk to myself differently, this might make people barf because it's so hippy-dippy new age, like Stuart Smalley almost, but...
Lately, I've been thinking, like, is that a loving behavior towards myself that I'm engaging in?
So if I'm ruminating about something or obsessing about something or thinking about something that's upsetting me, like, is that, am I being loving towards myself?
And then in thinking that way, after I finish vomiting, I think, like, it allows me to actually kind of move on and, like, put those thoughts down.
Well, for me, I think I try to avoid a lot of negative behavior and negative thinking because if I allow it, and I always think of myself as like, okay, if I was giving myself advice, How would I how would I treat it?
What would I and I'd probably be pretty brutally honest?
So negative thinking and negative behavior.
I try to avoid it almost for the consequences of me Chastising myself like I don't want to chastise myself.
I like I want to like me.
So if I'm fucking up like Like I don't want to hear me going come on pussy get it together.
So There's there's that part of me like it's almost like a drill instructor.
It's like looking over my shoulder Making sure that I don't fuck cuz like bitch.
I'm right here I know what you're doing stupid You know don't don't do don't get dumb and I've been dumb and I think we have all been dumb and I just think All that self-love and self-help is great But not if it allows you to continue the same patterns over and over again and still love yourself.
That's yes That's where you have to really be honest and make sure that you're rigorously honest with yourself Yeah, you can still love yourself and tell yourself you're a fat fuck Sometimes that's the most loving thing.
We were eating her cake and I was like, oh fucking Christ, this stuff is so disgusting.
A tiny little bit.
Because I'm like, you get into it, and especially if you don't eat a lot of cake, like after like the third or fourth bite, you're like, ugh, like this fucking pasty frosting and sugar and...
At the beginning, so my story is I was pretty overweight growing up and into my 20s.
And then, I mean, I had kind of gone up and down.
And then I finally lost the bulk of it and I've kept it off for years.
But about a year ago, it started creeping back on a little bit because I'm doing IVF. I'm trying to get pregnant and I'm shooting myself with hormones all the time.
And all the things in the past, all the ways in the past that I'd kept the weight off, because it had been, you know, about 10 years of really being careful with my calories and exercising and all that, like it just wasn't working anymore.
And it was freaking me the fuck out.
So that's when I started going to a personal trainer.
And that's when It was not his advice.
I don't know what made me decide to do it.
I was like, maybe if I just cut out all carbs, that'll help.
So at the beginning, I did lose weight.
But then it no longer helped in terms of the...
Then at a certain point, I realized, oh...
The weight comes on at a certain point in the IVF cycle and then comes back off in between cycles and goes back.
And I realized that I had been freaking out, but it's just cycling on its own.
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How she approaches diet and exercise and healthy eating and then occasionally indulging.
She's balanced.
Luckily, that's not an issue.
And for my kids, with kids, the big struggle is trying to keep them from eating too much sugar.
I don't want to be that guy that says you can't have sugar.
She has some kids in her class.
One of my daughters does.
This is one kid in particular that's on this insane diet like he doesn't eat any sugar There's nothing processed and the kids freaking out all the time because all around them kids are eating cake and having all these things and I feel like that can set you up psychologically So in a bad way where you develop this where you want to binge later?
Well Yeah, I think when your parents tell you not to eat, you want to eat.
When parents tell you not to be a slut, it's the first thing you want to do, right?
It's what everybody does.
Don't drink.
I can't wait to drink.
Suppression is just not good for human beings.
And so what I try to tell them is, you can have a little sugar, but you have to be aware that sugar is just not good for your body.
It tastes good, but it has consequences.
So when we'd go Halloween trick-or-treating, we'd let them have a couple of pieces of candy.
You know?
You just can't sit and eat that shit until you go into a coma.
It's not good for you.
So sometimes they repeat it, like, I don't like when I eat too much sugar.
It just makes me feel terrible.
And then sometimes, like, my youngest is fucking crazy.
My youngest is like a little barbarian.
She'll eat sugar and then run around the house roaring.
Like, she just stormed the beaches.
She, like, throws her arms back, like, rah!
And she'll, like, run around the house, like, sugared up.
I'm like, this is insane.
We just gave her rocket fuel or something.
Because you think about, like, a little tiny body, right?
My youngest is five.
She's almost six.
And she's, I don't know what she weighs, probably, like, less than 50 pounds.
So if you give her a fucking candy bar, like, how much sugar is in a goddamn candy bar?
That's how I try to treat them like they're little human beings that I know more than they know.
I don't think of them as my kids in that like I own them.
I think of them like they're my kids in terms of I love them deeply, but not like I don't own you.
You're a little human being.
And I also think that setting them up like that gives them a certain amount of autonomy and a certain amount of independence that I think is like really critical to develop early on so that's not a giant shock when you turn 18. Yeah.
You know, like, slowly build them into this idea.
You are a little autonomous human being.
And I'm always gonna be here.
Like, if you need advice, if you need a hug, if you need, you know, you always got a place to sleep, you don't have to worry.
Like, everything's fine.
Like, don't go through life with fear and hunger.
You know, you don't have to worry about that.
You have a family.
But, you're your own thing.
Like, what are you into?
You into music?
What are you into?
You like space?
You know, what are you into?
You like reading books?
Like, what's your fucking thing?
Find your thing.
And I never had that chance as a kid, you know, and I think looking at my life like back at like the things that Happened to me that made me sort of like rebel and made me sort of reinforce the idea that I need to be independent I need to get the fuck away from all these people I need to have stop all this negative input coming from all these different directions like I sort of In having children get a chance to re-engineer what
Comprehensive view of the world and the dangers it provided, but I mean I was almost molested when I was like eight by some fucking creep at a library that I was hanging out at and a librarian saved me I was Looking through I was in a monster movies when I was a little kid.
I was really into like Dracula and Frankenstein shit So I was looking through these books and this guy came up to me.
He's like really weird and He said, you know, you like monster books?
Well, I think for the longest time that was the attitude of like, look, I kept you physically safe, you're in clothing, you went to school, whatever it is, you know, so what's the problem?
And it's like, well, there's all the whole emotional side of things.
Well, I think when you look at our generation versus our parents' generation and their parents' generation, if you just go back a couple generations to like my grandparents' days, My grandparents are immigrants.
They came over on a boat from Italy and Ireland.
And when you think about what their life was like versus what our life is like today, we're barely even related.
We're so different with our access to information, with the understanding that people have about raising people, about communicating with people, about talking to yourself.
And I think normally, or I think traditionally what they do is they take the eggs and then they take the sperm and they put it together in a Petri dish and then just kind of let it do its thing.
But for certain people, they do something called ICSI, which is, let's see if I can, it's intracytoplasma something.
Sperm injection.
So they take the sperm and they literally inject it.
And I don't know how.
They must have the tiniest little needle into the egg.
They take all the sperm, they drive them far into the mountains, they drop them off, they give them one peanut, and they say, we'll come back for you in three weeks, and if you're still here, we're going to inject you into an egg.
No, but I get what you're saying in terms of natural selection.
IVF is circumventing all of that because it's taking a whole bunch of women who are past the age that they can get pregnant naturally and it's allowing them to get pregnant.
There's also that argument, which is, but the people who are doing it are people who have tried to be responsible and wait until they're at a point in life when they can have kids versus like a 22 or 23 year old who, and I'm sure there's plenty of great, actually I've never met them, but they're probably out there who've had kids that young and it all turned out well.
Mm-hmm.
They can get pregnant pretty easily, usually, but I feel like most people in their early 20s aren't really ready to have kids yet.
I just feel like we're getting emotionally ready later, but our biology is staying the same.
It's just the world we live in today is alien compared to the world of 1,000 years ago or even a few hundred years ago.
If you went 200 years ago and showed them how people are living today, they'd be like, holy shit.
Even the crazy science fiction authors of the 1800s, Jules Verne and Orson Welles and all these crazy people that had all these great ideas about the future, they never thought of the internet.
The internet is bizarre.
The idea that it's not going to be metal spaceships that change us.
Yeah, I was listening to you recently talk about how you don't think that the human brain is really...
Ken really knows how to process celebrity and that's why we end up putting the Kardashians on a pedestal or something because we're biologically historically wired to follow I
don't think that the human brain knows how to deal with technology, information, the internet, all of that.
because it's like, someone can say something shitty on the internet, and I don't get that bummed out by internet comments anymore, but there was a time where it's like, someone says something shitty, my brain doesn't know how to regard that, doesn't know my brain doesn't know how to regard that, doesn't know how to prioritize that, how to see that in perspective.
It just feels like, oh, someone close to me is saying something shitty, as opposed to this is one comment in a sea of comments.
The thing that you were talking about with the Kardashians, that was something that Neil deGrasse Tyson just Instagrammed the other day.
That was a conversation that he and I had when I did his podcast and I really firmly believe that that there's something about pointing a camera at someone and putting them on a screen that you you look at them and it hijacks your reward system the reward system that's designed to you know say if there's like some The mother of this tribe, and she's been alive for a long time, and she has all this wisdom, and so when she talks in front of the fire, everybody sits down and listens.
Why do they listen?
Well, because she survived.
She's achieved.
She's someone who you have to pay attention to because she knows things.
And you know she knows things, so when she starts talking, you listen.
That can all be hijacked by a fucking reality TV show camera on Bravo and next thing you know it's Real Housewives and some pilled up bitch is screaming at her friend and you know like we pay attention to them.
A friend of mine was at one of the people from that Real Housewives show has this restaurant.
Well, more importantly, your entertainment has been observing fools.
Like, you've put fools on for half an hour on television.
And that now becomes what your mind focuses on.
Instead of something really, truly interesting, instead of something enlightening or something entertaining, you're watching fools reluctantly with this weird, guilty feeling.
Like, what am I doing?
Why am I watching this?
And then you realize, like, these are people that you would never want to hang out with in real life.
Well, that's the thing, I think, that kind of happens from what you're saying about, like, we're watching Fools, is you're not, like, I'm watching a great piece of...
Right.
That you're somehow better than the people you're watching.
So I think people, it's like they become punching bags.
The fucking, just the green monster of hate that descended upon her.
You could feel it.
And I know a couple of those people that are on that show and that overwhelming negative message that you put out by being that person and the response to millions of people hating you.
Like literally millions of people saying you're a dumb cunt.
Like, it's devastating.
It's devastating.
Because people directly respond to whatever message that you're putting out there.
And that message is compelling.
That fucking Beverly Hills Housewife bitchy message is compelling.
I think, well, it's a distraction, obviously, right?
Those shows are a distraction.
Like all shows.
I mean, you could say that about great shows like Game of Thrones.
It's a distraction, ultimately.
It's entertaining.
And what is entertaining?
You're sitting there, and you're pretending these things are happening, and you get to just go off with them.
You get to go...
But there's something different about...
You know that Tyrion Lannister isn't really Tyrion Lannister.
When you see these people, this is them.
This is their actual...
This is their clothes they wear.
This is them talking to these other people.
There's cameras on them.
So it's this bizarre distortion of what is reality.
And also, it's been real clear.
There's a formula that's been established where if you can be the bitch on the show that makes a lot of noise and you can keep it real, you can speak your mind, that girl gets a lot of attention.
And I don't mean for the person who is the celebrity.
I mean for the person who...
You're like, I am seeing something that most people don't get to see.
Most people only see...
In terms of most people's relationship with Tom Cruise, you see Cocktail and Top Gun and all his most recent films that I'm not naming because I don't know them.
Excuse me.
But...
Here you are just seeing him at a restaurant.
That's something that most people don't get to see.
It's like the rarity or the scarcity of it.
You know what else I was thinking in terms of what it does to our brain when you see someone's face that's huge and when you're sitting in a darkened theater and someone's face is 50 feet tall?
That kind of replicates The way your parents and all adults appear to you when you're a baby.
Like it's a baby, you're just sitting there and there's these faces that are huge and they show up and they're over you and they're gone and I don't know.
They believe the origins of alien abduction memories have to do with birth.
And that's why that clinical strange setting of being pulled out of your mother's womb, of seeing the light of those in this really white, sterile environment that seems cold and harsh, and the people with the masks on, surgical masks and big eyes, That you see these things and they become iconic in your head.
And you think of them not in terms of like a person with a mask on, But in terms of this, like, very strange distortion of reality.
Well, it's remembering how to describe a memory you once had.
Like the memory itself probably doesn't exist anymore.
You have a memory of how you told the memory and that like really sort of distorts it too.
But think of like visually, you've never seen anything.
You've been in a womb and then all of a sudden you get pulled out and you get pulled out by a guy with a fucking giant light behind him and he's got a mask on and he's looking at you and you're pulling.
All you see is eyes and his face and so They believe that gets distorted into this iconic giant head, black giant eyes, and the cold sort of clinical...
The antiseptic room, this white room with the light.
And that's why everyone has these abduction scenarios.
They all deal with medical exams that are pretty preposterous.
I mean, they're always going up your butt with stuff.
Also, you've never seen light before, so you've seen this extreme light.
It's a powerful light source because everything has to be really bright so you can really get a good look at everything and make sure you're stitching up the vag good, you know, and getting in there and looking at the baby and making sure everything's in place and then putting that baby in an incubator like, whoa!
I was watching this YouTube video once of this guy defending this practice.
And he was, you know, an old rabbi and he was talking about how, you know, it's in the faith and if you believe in God and, you know, God came up with it the right way.
They were so strange and childlike in a lot of ways.
The other thing is, they didn't have the access to information, they didn't live as long, and they didn't have anybody around them that had access to information the way they do.
For every scholar and every person who was deeply embedded in intellectual pursuits, you had millions and millions of people that just didn't give a fuck and were just trying to get by.
I was so furious watching this asshole dressed like a wizard talking about sucking on baby dicks after they cut them.
I just wanted to beat the fuck out of them.
I really did.
Watching, I was like, you make me so angry with your stupid thinking that you're justifying cutting a baby's dick and you're talking about some dumbass old ancient bullshit that was written by morons who thought the world was flat.
And you want to continue that in 2016 because it's tradition.
It's like...
It makes me mad.
It makes me really mad.
Because you're talking about fucking babies.
If you're a grown adult and you get sucked into some stupid cult that wants to cut your dick and let that old dude suck on it.
Alright, man.
How old are you?
You're 35?
Good luck.
Don't do it.
I'd say don't do it, but good luck.
But when you do it to a baby, it just makes me fucking...
Fucking furious.
And to see this guy just encloaking himself in tradition and using it to justify these objectively barbaric practices, if you stand back and look at it and analyze it, what benefit is there?
What are the risks and what's the consequences and what are we doing here?
Well, it never regenerates a real foreskin because it's always going to be folded over in some sort of a strange way.
But the reaction is that it reignites or re...
whatever it is, the mucus membranes.
So the tip of your penis...
It's supposed to have like almost like a liquid mucusy sort of membrane over it.
That's all dried out now when dudes get circumcised.
So it desensitizes your penis.
And when your penis is encased in foreskin, then the foreskin is pulled back.
It's much more sensitive and supposedly much more pleasurable.
You know, who knows if that was a part of the reason why they started doing it in the first place, or if it was a hygiene issue at the time, people didn't know that much about washing.
They're pulling their face back so much that when they smile and they open their mouth, you start doing the Fibonacci sequence in your mind and you go, something's wrong.
So I used to play in a band and some of my Fred's hand recording studios, and I know that it was used to figure out acoustic nodes, I think, some pattern of sound waves.
What's funny in a town that prizes being skinny so much, I see so many people, men too, have these like balloony faces because they're just filled with, I don't know if it's Botox or Juvederm, I don't know.
I have not had any of that done, so I don't really know.
But it's like, yeah, their faces, it looks like they're puffing them out.
This Regenikine thing involves heat, and it involves your blood's response to the heat, and then taking that serum and injecting it back.
My point being, the same doctor that created this procedure created a new procedure that restarts the body's production of collagen.
So what wrinkles are is your body loses its elasticity and it starts to give in and starts to get sloppy and loose and that's why people get facelifts.
Well, with his new procedure, he's going to restart your body's production of collagen.
You're going to develop collagen like a 20-year-old.
Which is fucking freaky.
Because that's all it is.
It's not something like you're asking people to...
Be able to jump 10 feet higher.
It's not insurmountable.
It's just a simple matter of the body not producing as much as something that it used to produce.
So they figured out a way to get it to do so instead of pulling your face back and stuffing it with rubber and all that stuff.
Yeah, and my fear is always like, well, what if I end up with some stupid tiny nose that doesn't look right on my face, and then I can't get it back, and plus, I feel like that's just going too far.
But then I think, but, you know, I had braces, so my teeth look different than they would have looked otherwise, and I straighten my hair, and I look better with straight hair, I look better with straight teeth, like, I've...
All these little things.
So why is that one different?
And it just is because it involves, you know, undergoing a procedure and I sort of don't...
Yeah, well, it happens if people take some of the fat out of their inner thigh and they inject it in their ass, and all of a sudden it looks like they're wearing a diaper.
A friend of mine got with this girl once and they hooked up and they got together and they started fooling around and she had a thick waist and it freaked him out.
He said that she was boxy.
He said she went from her shoulders down to her hips and it was a straight line.
That's really interesting you brought this up because I was watching boxing this weekend and Canelo Alvarez fought Amir Khan and they're doing this thing now in boxing.
It's really weird.
Where when the post-fight ring announcer is interviewing the fighters, it was Max Kellerman, who's interviewing the fighters.
He's asking these questions.
They have these girls stand right there.
These really pretty girls, like stand like as if they're his friends.
They stand right next to him.
And it's so fucking distracting.
And this one girl, I don't know if she has Botox or if her face is just naturally shiny.
She looks like really young.
I don't think she has Botox.
But she's just sitting there with a smile, half expressionless.
She probably can move her face.
It's probably all in my head.
But all I'm thinking of is, her fucking head's frozen.
That's something called- Oh, but it looks so real.
We're looking at a video or an image of a guy who's on something called Synthol.
And Synthol is something that people who are into bodybuilding do where they inject it into their muscles and it's oil that inflates the size of the muscle.
It doesn't change the strength of the muscle, but it makes your muscles like blow up and look complete.
Look at that guy with the red t-shirt on.
Look at these guys.
Like look at this.
They inject their muscles and make them fucking enormous.
And not just a little bigger, way bigger than normal.
It really seems that almost all women have a certain amount of body dysmorphia.
I know I certainly do, especially having been pretty overweight and then now whatever I am and then, you know, it's like I don't know how to regard myself in the mirror.
And by the way, I don't need anyone to tell me how to regard myself unless it's positive.
It's like this thing where you can't just appreciate.
You have to constantly change things.
And if that's applied to your face, Or your waist, with the waist training that you're about to get into, where they wear those corsets and suck themselves in and compress their organs and also hinder organ function.
It can fuck with the way you're...
Because you're not...
Everything's not supposed to be fucking jammed in like that.
In terms of things like fetishes, I don't know that someone can...
Understand the mindset of someone who's into that.
I feel like that is so baked into your operating software, to use that term again, that it's like, I don't know that if I were to explain it, someone else would get it.
I don't think that's like that.
I think that's more like, I like the smell of vanilla or I don't like the smell.
What's weird when you find out that some fetishes are just sort of burned into your mind at a very young age when you're sexually maturing like Dr. Chris Ryan is a friend of mine has been on the podcast before he was talking to me about children especially boys when they're in a certain level of puberty like I think it's like ages between 11 and 14 any sort of sexual encounters that they have during those age can almost permanently Mm
-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
They become attracted to men blowing them for like forever.
I mean, I'm sure there's all sorts of, there's both, but I think what he's saying is that some men can be even attracted to gay porn or attracted to the idea of guys blowing guys and not be gay, which is, you know, we don't like to, we like to make things very clean the way we categorize things.
We like to have like very clean and obvious categories.
There's this girl at the comedy store, one of the waitresses, was telling me about her friend She said it was hilarious the way he said it because he said, I know I'm not gay because I've had sex with guys and I didn't like it.
And she said, I think that was one of the most heterosexual things that a guy could say.
And we were laughing.
I go, I guess so, right?
I'm like, you don't really know if you like sucking a dick until you suck a dick.
What's interesting is that it could have been so accepted and then there could have been such a change where up until recently it's like people who were truly gay did not feel comfortable being gay.
I mean, I'm drawn to it and compelled to view it and fascinated by the fact that these animals exist with us on this planet alongside us right now in the wild.
And it's one of the more amazing aspects about North America.
North America has these wildlife preserves, these places like Yellowstone, these state and national parks, where they have these animals that are wandering around.
And any given time, you can go to Yellowstone and you can see bison and wolves and bear.
And they don't mean whether you're there or whether you're not there.
That is how they live.
They live in the same way they've lived for millions of years.
In this really barbaric, raw, natural world where it's just about breeding and killing animals.
And trying to keep the numbers as high as possible while riding it out until the alpha male gets too old to defend its territory and then gets forced out and eventually dies and freezes to death.
And it's this intense, long-running cycle.
I'm just really, really fascinated by wildlife in general.
But I think our life, the way we live in cities and in urban areas, is insanely filtered in terms of our interactions with the rest of the world.
Especially when we're consuming things that come from the outside.
And then it comes, not just as far as animals, but even plant life, even just gardens and nature.
I think we buy too much vegetables from the store.
We buy too many vegetables from a box, from a shelf, and we stick it in a plastic bag and we drive it away.
I think we would all do ourselves a lot of good if we grew some.
We kind of understood this process like I grow vegetables and I put them in a salad and I chop them up and you know and cook them and eat them and there's something Incredibly satisfying about being there for the entire process knowing that this is a seed I put in the dirt I put the fertilizer up at the water and here it is in a salad and There's a connection to your food To this the life form that you're consuming itself in that way that I don't think you get any
other way and I think I think that the filter that we've created by civilization by Supermarkets by restaurants and things like that.
I think it's unhealthy because I think it keeps us from a true complete understanding of our position in this whole thing right that that bear is The only difference between that bear and the space that you're in right now is just distance.
Like, that bear could be right over there.
I mean, it's wandering around on the earth.
It doesn't have fences around it.
It's just distance that keeps it from being in Woodland Hills walking down the street.
Are you interested in desensitizing yourself to horrific images?
Like, I've had people on my podcast before.
It's usually people who came up in tech who went through a phase where they felt the need to watch beheading videos and like anything anyone would send them.
They felt the need to watch it so that they could handle it.
There's a thought process that I could understand.
I get why somebody, if something really bothers them, they would want to see it a lot.
And then if that does happen and you see things enough, you can get desensitized.
I think it's a really negative feeling to watch like a reporter get his head cut off by the Taliban or something like that.
It's a really negative feeling that I don't want.
I remember I watched this ISIS video, one of the last ones that I watched, of these guys shooting these guys.
They had them face down.
They shot them all.
And you see their bodies reacting to the bullets and then they climb over this guy and they cut his head off.
And I'm watching them dig into this guy's neck with this knife and pull his head up and yell, Allah Akbar, and hold it up.
And I remember thinking, as I'm watching that, like, okay, I get it.
I get it.
I'm not watching these anymore.
I get it.
I know those guys exist.
I've got it in my database.
It's there.
I don't need to be feeling like shit all day for the rest of the day thinking, like, how the fuck does everything go so bad that someone's making a YouTube video gunning people down and cutting their head off with a pocket knife?
Like, it's just...
What?
You know that that guy lived to be 30-whatever years old before he's shooting this guy and cutting his head off.
What is his experiences in his life that led him to be at the point where he wants to project this horrific image to the rest of the world to put fear and terror into the eyes of the beholders?
Yeah, a friend of mine sent me an article about this girl who went over to Syria to try to love her way through the country, and she was raped and killed really quickly.
And when he said it to me, I remember reading this article and thinking, like, why would someone be so naive that they think they could just go and hug all these people and wander through this land, and then she's gang-raped and killed by these Muslim guys.
And it's just...
There's a lot of people that don't want to believe that some people had a really shitty upbringing.
They had a shitty deal.
They were born in a terrible part of the world.
They were exposed to horrific things very early on, and their programming is...
It's ugly.
It's dark and ugly and filled with trauma and pain and suffering and violence.
And that is who they are.
But that is a reality.
That's why the people that are total 100% anti-military, good luck with all that.
Good luck with it, because what you're saying is you hope for the compassion of all these people in the world that it matches up with yours.
Well, guess what?
It doesn't.
Because there are parts in the world where these people are 30 years old, and for 30 years they have been exposed to horrific violence, and that is what they do.
And unless they die, this is just how they behave, and you are going to run into them, and most likely they're going to enact horrific violence on people you know or on you.
I used to be a total pacifist growing up, so when I was young.
And, you know, now I recognize that that's unfortunately a beautiful but naive way to go through the world because you just – it's just – it's not realistic to have no military and to think that you never need it because you do.
You need to be able to show strength and you need to be able to be protected and you need to crush bullshit when it happens in different places.
And I hate that though.
Yeah.
I don't love having to have come to that conclusion.
I prefer the idea that you can just hug people and make a difference.
Jesus Christ, they have this video on Liberia, and this guy, they call him General Butt Naked, because he would go into fights naked, and he was part of this...
Civil war that was going on in Liberia.
But he was a cannibal.
He killed babies from these neighboring tribes.
He would go over and kill the children and eat their heart.
And they thought that eating the piece of a child's heart would protect you in battle.
They would cover themselves with the blood of these innocent children and run through these fucking neighborhoods.
It just...
Horrific, horrific stuff.
And that's going on right now.
Liberia right now is a terrifying, terrifying place.
And if it happened in Los Angeles, you'd say, holy shit, the apocalypse is here.
Yeah, sometimes I'll, like, that, the awareness of how much fucked up shit is happening all over the place is when I am tuned into that frequency, like, I feel very overwhelmed and just like, fuck, I don't know what to do with that.
Not that I have to do anything, but I mean, I don't know what to do with that, because...
Like, on my show, my show is twice a week, and on a Thursday show, I've started featuring...
I have a friend of mine who's a dog trainer, and she goes to specifically the Downey shelter, but other shelters, kill shelters, and takes these dogs and trains them and gets them more adoptable.
And so I've been featuring a dog a week, hoping to try to get the word out.
But now that I'm aware of all these different dogs, I'm also aware when all of a sudden you go to the website and it says, you know, someone says no longer available.
And I know what that means now.
I mean, it means that dog has been put down as opposed to so-and-so may not be available or so-and-so has been adopted or so-and-so is with a rescue.
It's like, I think when it says is no longer available.
And I used to just think, oh, someone adopted that dog.
It's like, no, that dog got put down.
And so now that I'm aware of all this, I find I get emotionally attached to each dog that I don't personally know.
And I'm overwhelmed with the sadness of that.
And then I think, like, this is nothing compared to the horrendous awfulness on every level.
It's hard to...
That thing of, like, I want to make the tiniest difference in one little life...
It's easy for me to just feel overwhelmed to try to even be doing anything because there's always something so much worse.
But I think in some weird way that also makes us appreciate when things are good.
And that's one of the more unique aspects of today is that you can pay attention to some of the horrific parts of the world and go, wow, we are so fucking lucky that we're not trapped in North Korea.
We're so lucky that we're not living in the Congo.
We're so lucky that I mean, my friend Justin, he builds wells in the Congo, and he goes to the Congo and he's there for like six months at a time.
Just got malaria for the second time.
And he's, I mean, he's just a gem of a human being.
And he is part of this charity called Fight for the Forgotten, where he goes and helps these pygmies build water wells and maintains them for them and stuff like that.
But this guy's experience when he talks about the horrific plight of these people and all the gone through and all the persecution they've experienced, it just really, you leave and you want to be nicer to people.
You want to You listen to him talk and you listen to his experiences and you, one, have hope because a guy is willing to leave Dallas, Texas and fly down to the Congo and become a part of these people's lives and try to help them and elevate them.
So there's all this hope for humanity in that.
This person that has no real connection with these folks other than just meeting them once and then falling in love with their tribe.
That is possible, but it also makes you realize, like, God, we're looking for problems today.
We're looking for things to be...
Should I fix my nose?
What should I do?
You know what I mean?
But things could be so much worse.
And again, it comes back to that spectrum and the spectrum of information that we can access today.
It's almost...
I mean, the brain is really not...
It's not really available...
To tune in to all these different parts of the world all the time.
We originally were going to go in December, and we rescheduled.
Even though I know that the chances of anything actually happening are so small.
And it's almost that thing of like, I'm not that special that something's going to happen to me, you know?
But I think there just is that.
After the attack, we started thinking, maybe this is, you know, why were we going in the winter anyway?
Everyone says it's not the best time to go, so let's just postpone it.
Because we had always been debating, should we go in December or April?
But then after...
I wasn't scared once we made the decision to go, but I wondered, are we making the wrong decision?
But once I was there, I was absolutely...
I also moved to New York shortly after 9-11, and once I was there, I was not scared.
I feel like for me, the fear is more in contemplating going there.
But anyway...
Being there, being in another country where my daily thoughts aren't like, oh, I've got to check Twitter all the time and I've got to do this, like whatever the bullshit of my daily life is.
Having that instead be replaced with, I'm just trying to remember how to say this word and trying to communicate with people and hoping they can understand me and looking at all this beautiful art and everything that you do.
It really, upon coming back, I'm finding readjusting into my daily routine is more difficult and I don't want to.
I don't want to go back to Caring so much about minute bullshit.
I feel like that's kind of the gift of travel, not local travel, not small trips, but the gift of going to another country or being around people who speak a different language, is that it kind of takes your brain and treats it like a snow globe.
And then everything kind of gets readjusted.
And you remember that there's so much more than whatever it is you've been waking up and thinking about.
The neighborhoods they walk down and live in are different.
Their established patterns are just different.
And then when you experience those different patterns and different cultures and different cities, I think it makes you just go, oh yeah, it's a big fucking world.
Right, because it's so easy to think that your life is very similar to the life that everyone else is living.
I was thinking, and by the way, it's not like I was in the rainforest or something.
I recognized I was in a place that, all things considered, is actually pretty similar to where we are, but we went out to Giverny one day and sort of drove through the countryside.
Just that the kids that I went to school with were just very good at sports.
And they valued that.
And, you know, I definitely did not feel like I fit in.
I was round and soft and pasty and had black hair and brown eyes and just could not keep up.
I always joke that it was like a Lenny Riefenstahl wet dream there.
It was just very, the pride of white people there.
And I resented growing up there.
And then once I got older, I realized why my parents moved there.
Because I was born in Oakland, and apparently it was getting kind of rough.
So they fled with the rest of the white people.
To Orange County, where it's incredibly safe and everything's manicured and the schools are nice and, you know, it's safe being the prominent thing, I think.
And growing up, I was like, why?
Why the fuck?
Would you choose this place where we are so different in every way than everyone here?
I didn't get it.
And then, you know, as an adult, I go back and I see it is, it's nice and it is peaceful and it is calm.
And I get why you'd want to raise your kids there.
I was like, LA Times today, you know, my stars just...
I really thought as a freelancer, because then I went to college, freelanced all through college, came back to Orange County, began writing for People and for Rolling Stone, and it happened fast, and I was young, and I was like...
There's just no stopping me.
And I didn't realize that, like, no, it kind of just, it's not like I do this today and then cover a Vanity Fair tomorrow.
Like, first of all, there's only so far I'm going to be able to get if I'm staying in Orange County.
And I ended up, like I said, playing in a band, writing for the OC Weekly.
Yeah, and especially, I feel bad because a couple of the people in the band...
I mean, they're still in bands.
They really wanted to make this happen.
And I was like, this is just my stupid little thing I'm doing on the side while I'm pursuing what I'm really trying to pursue.
I love the college I went to.
I'm glad I went to college.
I believe in college, but I also think it can make you a little bit insufferable.
And that's who I was when I graduated.
So I was writing.
At a certain point, I was like, the life that I want to lead is headed this way, but the one I'm leading is going this way, and I've got to bridge the gap.
So I moved to New York.
I made the decision to move to New York.
And then 9-11 happened like six days after I made the decision.
All the people that I was talking to when I was freelancing for national magazines were based in New York.
It just seemed like the place to go for that.
I wanted to be in a city.
I remember my band toured and I met this guy.
I was walking around San Francisco and San Francisco felt like such a city to me.
I was like, I really want to be in a place that has the feel of a city.
And I met this guy who worked at the venue that we were playing.
And he was telling me that he was moving to Brooklyn because San Francisco just wasn't enough of a city for him.
And I remember that was blowing my mind because I was like, this feels like such a city to me.
If this isn't a city enough, what am I doing in these cow pastures in Orange County?
So I made the decision to move and then eventually moved and I was there for about nine years.
First couple years, much more difficult than I thought.
I felt weirdly insecure and I hadn't expected to feel socially insecure, but I had left everything I knew.
I didn't know where I fit in suddenly.
Especially after having been in the band, like my whole life during the time I was in the band was, and also I wrote about music before I was ever in the band.
So my life was going to shows or playing shows and I had a group of friends and a community that I really missed once I left them.
So then I was in New York and I was like, I don't have friends and I don't have a job and I'm freelancing but it's not enough.
I don't know what I'm doing and I feel very alone and I feel uncomfortable and weird.
Thankfully, that went away.
It just took longer than I thought it would.
Got a job at Time Out New York, where I worked for a number of years.
And while I was at Time Out New York, they were looking for editors to go on television to talk about events going on in the city.
So I said, I'm like, I'll do it.
And it was Channel 4, so WNBC. They really liked me and they wanted me to keep coming back and doing it every Saturday morning.
So initially they were going to have a group of editors doing it and they decided they just wanted me, which I thought was great because I was so destined for greatness.
I'm like, it's all happening.
That's how I felt.
I hope it's clear that I'm trying to be self-deprecating.
I worry I'm coming off as an asshole.
Anyway, I began doing that a lot and I realized I really enjoyed that.
I enjoyed that performance element, I guess.
I liked going on camera.
Started doing other TV stuff.
And then I was aware of YouTube and I was experimenting with YouTube and I was putting my television clips.
I started doing a lot of news stuff.
I was putting my television clips on YouTube and then I don't know what made me decide one day, like, what if I just recorded myself?
What if I just did, just talked, you know, did question and answer, like talked directly to my little bit of an audience that I'm beginning to have because I had a blog as well.
And so I did that and the response to that was so overwhelming.
I was like, oh, people don't care if it's polished when you're dealing with the internet.
It's more about the immediacy and it's more about you talking to them.
So I started getting into that, started doing various web shows.
And then I created a show called Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend on Ustream.
And I would do that.
It was a talk show from my living room that I would do for three hours every Sunday evening.
And it was not that dissimilar, there's so many negatives in that sentence, from the podcast that I have now.
That's where I started a lot of the segments that I do now, was on that show.
And by the way, I remember when I was Ustreaming, you were also on Ustream.
And oftentimes on the front page of Ustream, it would have me and you, way back when.
We don't stream on Ustream anymore because We were doing it, and we're trying to do it simultaneously with YouTube, but there's something wrong with our TriCaster.
I had begun to wonder, is the audience there for online streaming visual stuff in the same way that they're there for podcasts?
I remember listening, I was friends with Doug Benson and listening to his podcast and I got this curiosity about podcasts.
And then I heard that Adam Carolla was looking for a news girl.
And I was still in New York at the time.
And I tried to send them my stuff, and I didn't hear anything.
And I'm like, okay, well, I did what I can, and no one's getting back to me.
And then, very rapidly, someone in my family got sick, and I moved from New York to California to be with them because we didn't...
It turns out that person is actually doing very well now.
But at the time, it wasn't clear what direction it was going to go, and so it didn't make sense to stay in New York.
When this was happening.
So I moved back kind of suddenly.
And then around the time that I was lying on my parents' couch being like, what the hell did I do?
Why did I... I don't think that I made the right move and coming back, I got an email from Mike August and I think the entire message was in the subject line and it was just like...
You know, Adam Crowell show this day, this time, you know, can you come in?
And I said, sure.
So I did and I auditioned and then they narrowed it down to like four of us and then I auditioned again and then I got the job.
Um, I began doing my own thing while I was still there, and I really enjoy doing my own thing.
Yeah, I also really liked being on that show, too.
You know, I'm grateful for the four years that I had there, and there's a lot of positive memories, also a fair amount of things that I think that was fucked up, but...
Whenever I talk about all the stuff that happened on that show near the end when I was no longer on the show...
I simultaneously afterwards wish I had said nothing and wish I had said more.
It's so weird.
And I was like, why do I have those dual competing feelings?
And I think the reason is because I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Like, there's part of me that's so thankful for my time on the show and thankful that I was given that opportunity and, you know, we toured and I learned so much and I had the best time and all that.
And there's part of me that's like...
Hey, fuck you for not respecting me enough as a human being to have a conversation with me.
I think that I still have mixed feelings about everything, but I'm aware of how fortunate I was, and I'm grateful for so much, and I also feel like there were certain elements of it that I think were fucked up, like I said.
Everything was always really cordial and I thought...
I honestly thought everything was fine.
I thought everything was good.
I thought we were in a good place.
I was very, very surprised to find out how wrong I was about how he was feeling about everything.
And I only found that out because I was fired.
And then he did an episode where he...
Talked about everything and it was like I was kind of blown away by all the and I didn't listen to it for a while but people were tweeting me a lot of people were tweeting me these things like why'd you do this why'd you do this and I'm like I didn't do any of that like that is all it's not true and it was when you're saying that you have to explain what you're talking about okay I'm trying to think of like one of the one of the shining exam well Is this going to be
I think that all the extra attention that was on me after it happened made me I speak in the way that I'm speaking right now, which is super unnatural and really halting and examining every word before I say it.
You know, it did.
It did.
Because...
Okay, now I'm just going to talk about some of it.
Immediately afterwards, when there were all these people coming to me, people tweeting at me like, why didn't you do this?
Why didn't you do this?
I wanted it to set the record straight.
And someone that I... A mentor, someone that I look up to, but who doesn't come from podcasting, who comes from old media, was like, don't take the bait, Allison.
Don't do it.
When the dust settles, do not get in there.
Just allow, just be, you know, take the high road because everyone can see what's happening.
And it may, like that night I had planned to be like, here's my side of the story.
Here's my response to this, to this, to this, to this.
Like I was going to get into it because it, there was so much It's untruth out there.
And I had very simple like, no, let me read.
Here's the email.
Here's what this said.
Here's this.
This is not the way it went down.
You guys are getting a distorted version of things.
But then I listened to this guy and I was like, that makes a lot of sense.
So I am just going to say thank you for the great time that I had on the show and I wish you the best.
And I did that.
And then for the next two months, I chafed against that because it's like, I agree that that is a great position to take.
But if you have an audience, if you have a podcast, that podcast, depending on the kind of podcast you have, but for the most part, it's predicated on the relationship you have with the listeners and the fact that you are honest with them and you're transparent and you're authentic, genuine self.
So all of a sudden, I did not know how to be my authentic, genuine self while also trying to not discuss this thing that was such a big thing, obviously.
And so I was kind of like vacillating and going back and forth.
And being authentic in every way other than this one topic that I wasn't talking about.
And then at a certain point, I'm like, why am I not talking about it?
It feels so weird to not be talking about it.
So then I finally did talk about it.
And it was a couple months later.
And that specifically is a thing where I'm like, I wish I had never said any of that.
But it might just be because there's so much immediate online response anytime I... That's one of the more difficult things about anything that you're putting out there, whether it's a talk show or a podcast or fucking even an album or anything.
It's the navigating the response and the social media response, which is just so different than the response that you would have gotten.
A few decades ago, or a decade ago.
It's so different.
It's a different world, and no one knows exactly how to handle it.
Do you see a video that I posted the other day about one of the most dangerous rivers in the world?
And it's insanely deceptive.
I tweeted it yesterday, I believe.
This is crazy.
It's this place in England.
And it's this river that, if you look at it, it looks like a calm, just sort of...
Meandering river just doesn't look anything exceptional but the way it's cut into the to the ground what you're seeing is not the entire river there's an underlying aspect of it with torrential currents so if you get stuck in it if you go in it you literally can't escape you get smashed up against the rocks and you get killed like here play this oh yeah it looks so plastic yeah look at this play it jamie I reckon it is the most dangerous stretch of water anywhere on
Even for them, you know, the people that are doing that, a lot of times they don't even realize the harm they're doing to themselves in their own psyche by just lashing out at people.
I went to this guy's page yesterday.
He was tweeting at someone I know, like some really negative shit, and I went to his page, and his entire Twitter page was just him shitting on various famous people and trying to get them to respond to him.
It's got to be incredibly damaging to your self-esteem to be just constantly lashing out at famous people and trying to get them to respond to you, just trying to insult them, trying to troll them.
Some of it's men, you know, like if you ever ran into a man who's like in his 50s, never had a family, never been married, there's a weirdness to those folks.
I noticed a fair amount of hate that I was getting years ago.
I noticed a pattern that I would oftentimes discover, like I would get some shitty comment and then I would go to the person's page and they had a newborn.
And it was like a lot of brand new dads.
And that really surprised me.
That like it's brand new dads who are writing shitty things.
Yeah.
And my husband's theory is like, yeah, because they're not getting sex.
And it's kind of weird as a parent because I don't want my kids to face adversity.
I want my kids to have a really fun time.
But I also know that unless they do, unless they do face disappointment and some adversity, at least some, they're not going to get a full...
On how to manage those waters, you know when they do fall into the river of cunts You know what to do?
It's like I swim in the river of cunts freely.
I've been around them for so long now It's just you know, you're not gonna fuck with my Zen that easy But if I lived an entire entirely sheltered life How much of how much my resilience would I have?
And how much resilience do people have where they don't experience life outside of their very small existence, their very small community, their very small pattern of life experiences?
That sort of letting my kids go through adversity, that part I know is going to be hard for me because I'm the kind of person where if there's someone in the corner that has an itch, I'm like, let me come over and scratch it for you.
It's interesting also, not just that, like, the genetic variables, which are truly fascinating, personality variables, all these different things, but also...
How they interact with each other, which is going to be so much different than how you interact with them and watching kids interact with each other and getting annoyed at each other and trying to work that out and watching their own little personality disputes that they have and how they navigate those and little tools they have.
Like my youngest one cries at everything.
Everything is like, I can't believe she did that.
And she'll go way overboard.
And I'm like, settle down.
Relax.
Because they figure out, if I cry, I get hugs.
And someone picks me up.
And so that's the move.
So anything that goes wrong, I'm just going to start crying.
So I'll watch her.
She'll do something wrong.
Her sister will get pissed at her.
And then she'll run away crying that her sister did something.
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold on.
I just watched it.
I watched that whole thing go down.
That's not how it went down.
Yes, it is!
And then the cries will get bigger.
So it becomes like you don't want your kid to be a crybaby.
You also want your kid to recognize that you know exactly what went on, but you also want to let them know that it's okay.
So that's where I've always...
Gone to the, I did the exact same thing when I was your age.
And I think that's a big one.
Like, letting them know.
And then, you know, letting it go, too.
Don't harp on it.
Just let it go.
All right, come on.
Give me a hug.
Let's go play with some stuff.
Like, let it go.
Because they learn themselves.
They see themselves that things don't work.
They see themselves that they got called out on their manipulation.
Like, oh, I fucking ran my crying game.
I shut down today.
But no one's getting mad, you know, so it's not like I'm a terrible person, I need to feel awful, but that crying game don't work on daddy.
And, you know, I have parents who have that, the stakes are high attitude towards everything, where it's like, the stakes are very low here, but they're just very, you know...
Prone to anxiety and prone to overreacting people.
If you're living in the Congo, whatever issue came up wouldn't come up at all.
I guarantee you these people that are trying to find water don't look at their nose and go, God, I've got to figure out a way to get out of the Congo and get to Beverly Hills, get my fucking nose fixed.
I felt like the entire time I was on Joe Rogan's podcast, he was judging my nose, and I don't want to talk about it, but I don't want to talk about it.
So it's like one of those things where I feel like I could say too much or too little simultaneously.
It's weird that you know your ears aren't too big, but if somebody stretches your ears out just a little bit and makes them poke out of your hair, you're like, what the fuck?
What's going on with my ears?
The Photoshop thing is a weird thing.
It's weird that people could do that.
It's also weird that people use it to manipulate their own image.
I know a male comedian who smooths his skin out and does a glamour filter on his pictures.
Those things, the ability to manipulate faces and the Photoshop thing and what they do to models, you know, where they thin out their waist and widen their butts.
Have you seen those reality versus the Photoshop images?
I mean, we're going to get to a point very soon where actors are unnecessary.
Because if you look at some of the incredible CGI that they're able to do now, where they're so close to absolutely recreating a human being, they're not going to need actors, maybe voiceover actors.
And then even that, maybe they'll get to their point where their audio software can manipulate the human voice in the same way that you could do with music software, where you could use GarageBand and create songs without knowing any guitars.
I think my conception of acting is almost like comes from a theater world where it's like you put on a costume and then you go be a different person for two hours or whatever.
Like a theater movie amalgam.
But I shot this pilot recently And, you know, everything was shot out of order, as things are when they're shot.
And it kind of gave me this insight into like, oh, so much of the skill is just your ability to pick it up out of order and act it out, even though, you know, it's so piecemeal.
Maybe that is the difference between, you know, superstar, powerhouse, really compelling acting and just sort of average acting is that they really are living it versus they're acting it out in a moment.