Mary Lynn Rajskub, the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of comedy," traces her career from performance art—like a lipstick-covered genital taping piece—to stand-up roots in San Francisco’s raw scene, shaped by clubs like Cobbs and the Comedy Store. She thrived on touring’s discomfort, even when fans sent strangers with wine, but struggled returning to polished L.A. stages, comparing it to running with a weight vest. Rajskub’s growth mirrors Joe Rogan’s shift from aggression to discipline, both embracing adversity—whether through allergy shots, cold shock proteins, or Watkins’ Thunder Pussy improvisation—to break self-doubt and build resilience, proving success demands pushing past avoidance, not just comfort. [Automatically generated summary]
I think I was in such a bubble, I didn't really, and I wasn't on the road hardcore, and I wasn't, I don't know, I wasn't identifying with me as a performer so much.
I went to art school for painting and I got really frustrated when people started to critique the paintings and I was supposed to be getting more serious in art school and more conceptual and everyone was doing something different and everyone was critiquing it in a different way and none of it made sense to me.
And then the idea of having to sell that I mean, it makes it sound like I don't like or appreciate art.
I just, for me, I couldn't grasp what the next thing to do was.
You know, you're poor, you're in art school, you're making something, and then you have to go sell and market that thing.
And I also was...
Frustrated and kind of like boiling inside and needed to express myself.
I was trying to be polite and not look down there.
Another woman was obese and her piece was, she had pre-set up, we weren't aware she was doing the performance, butter pats in like dominoes, like a few thousand of them in a line and she was obese and she crawled on the ground She didn't actually eat them, but it was something...
It's weird.
My mind kind of drops off.
I remember specific parts of it, but I don't remember.
I think she just was collecting the butter pieces and crawling, and that was her performances.
Another guy...
I went to Detroit and then finished in San Francisco, and San Francisco is known for being a real performance art history artist.
A lot of the, you know, the most famous performance artists, nobody knows.
That was the scene, it was in San Francisco.
So it was a two-story, really beautiful campus overlooking, you could see Lombard Street on one side, you could see the water on the other side.
And another guy's piece was to jump from the second story to a tree, that he may or may not have made the jump, and that was his art piece.
So he was like, comedy is my life, and I do this open mic.
And I was like, I'm going to do that open mic.
And I had...
I taped like phrases to my body and phrases from commercials or snippets of conversation that I had heard and I went up and I started reading them and then I would improvise a little bit and I'd be like waxy build up or whatever and just repeating Just letting it all filter through and come out my mouth for five minutes of whatever the open mic was and I started getting laughter but it was like awkward laughter after the fact of that uncomfortable like what it what is she doing
but my commitment level was so high that the fact that it didn't make any sense Just caused laughter, right?
There's a lot of people that are just really odd, and if you saw them, you would get it, but if you saw what they wrote on paper, or what they said just written down on paper, you would be like, what?
Well, I thought you were going to say, which is a similar point, that it comes in the pause and after what they're saying, even if it doesn't make any sense.
But you're saying sometimes people write things and it makes its own sense when you hear them say it.
It was a really fun time in San Francisco because the comedy clubs were closing, so a lot of comics were coming to these open mic poetry rooms, and one of my favorite rooms was in this bar.
And also, I was from the suburbs of Detroit, and so just being in San Francisco, that was a real city, and a friendly city, you know?
Like it's small enough and it's beautiful and they have a real arts scene.
And it was the first time that I had seen like a real counterculture and people that would hang out in coffee shops and a lot of young people that looked like I did.
So I'd go to bars for this open mic and there'd be, you know, like a transvestite who was semi homeless, but was, you know, made up who was like reading her poetry.
And I was like, I'm in.
Like, I'm done.
And I had no money.
And I would sit and crouch on the floor and drink like a half a beer and be like, oh, this is crazy.
And I would watch her read from her journal.
And I did a similar thing where I would just, and it was always, I didn't know my own mind or my own thoughts, really.
So I would write down random words and I would perform it.
I mean, and still now, it's, you know, I've progressed a bit, but it's like it informs you how the audience reacts, or it begins to.
And I just love seeing all these, like, different people and what they thought they were saying versus what they were really saying and what their intended effect was and how people were really seeing them.
Anyway, so comics started dropping into these rooms, like Patton Oswalt and...
Jeremy Kramer and Blaine Capatch and, you know, Greg Behrendt, all these Ron Lynch people that were more San Francisco affiliated that were there at that time would start doing these open mic nights.
But because a comic is so versed in their own voice that...
Watching them, I was like, oh, they know how to speak, and they're more polished.
And then that was attractive to me.
So I kind of gravitated towards, and there were all these alternative rooms that weren't comedy clubs.
It reminds me of that thing in Steve Martin's book where he made that choice.
And again, a very different time, very different scene where he's like, I'm only headlining for money.
He made that conscious choice.
That would not work now.
And like you said, I work out in town.
I don't expect to get paid.
But it does.
It makes a difference that the comedy store, that system that is in place really works.
It's like, I'm a paid regular.
That was a big deal.
Because I remember I had been on the road doing...
Comedy really for the first time in the club proper, even though I had tons of stage time, but connecting it back to that alt scene where it would be a different thing every time, and I didn't quite know what I was saying.
So in the past four years was when I did the six shows per weekend, and you're like, I'm your entertainment for the night, and I learned how to do that.
Do you feel like you are always, because I see you as somebody who's so powerful and such a strong point of view and strong belief system, do you feel like you've always kind of been that way?
And then, as you're saying things, you're thinking about people's reaction to them.
That's a big one.
A big one is that comedy has allowed me to really pay attention to other people's reactions more than, like, I think I wanted to.
Because I think...
If I had my own way and I had nothing to do with stand-up, I probably would be way more antisocial, way more guarded and protected, and way more insecure because I hadn't answered those questions.
I didn't pose them of myself because they made me uncomfortable.
So what stand-up allowed me to do is, like, I wasn't the most outgoing person.
I've talked about this before, but I would, like, talking to a bank teller, I'd know that I'm next to talk to the bank teller, and I'd kind of freak out.
I wouldn't exactly know how to talk and say things and do it right.
But it changed from teaching martial arts.
When I started teaching martial arts, I learned how to project in front of this big room full of people, which is something I never imagined I was going to do.
Any public speaking before that.
It was never on the menu.
I never even thought about it.
But when I taught classes, I had to teach them.
And I was teaching in universities.
I taught at BU, and I taught at some other places, some other gyms and stuff.
And you have to get these people's attention.
You have to be clear, and you have to have confidence.
We would oftentimes, like, if we opened up a new school somewhere, we'd do a demonstration.
And then they'd give a speech afterwards, explain what the martial arts were.
But we'd do a demonstration first.
Like, people would hold, like...
Boards and shit and you'd kick them and stuff like that which we never did in real life We only did for demonstrations like we never trained that way But my point was like getting into stand-up.
I didn't have a particularly clean point of view I think I was 21 years old.
I was thinking was a moron, you know I didn't have any life experience other than martial arts and girls like that was all I could talk about and I didn't I knew martial arts weren't really funny.
unidentified
So it's just relationship stuff but um Hey guys, how about when we hit that block and we don't really do that, am I right?
It helps to just even say anything and to be like, oh, I exist.
I have a voice.
And I'm just now starting to...
I mean, I have a lot of material that's true, but I'm just now kind of starting to build that deeper...
The belief system thing, you know, like I talk about my personal life and there are kernels of things in there, but it's it's scary to kind of Come out.
Yeah But it's fun because that's what people want, you know, that's what like that's what gets it going and that's what gets everybody excited and that's what It's cool.
I haven't done it very often, but I did it a couple of times in my career where I got like surgery or something like that and I had to take some time off.
And then I got burnt out once, maybe like five years ago, and I took three months off.
That was crazy.
That was real weird.
But then when I got back into it, it was before I came back to the store, too.
So it was a real issue with me, like, going on stage.
Like, the improv never felt like home.
It was like a place to fuck around.
It was a nice club.
But it never...
I didn't hang out there.
It just felt weird.
Didn't feel the same.
So I'd just do a set there and then I'd get out of here.
So I was missing like the camaraderie aspect of it.
And I just finished a special and I just didn't want to do anything for a while.
I wanted to chill.
And so I took like three months off.
But then when I came back, I came back with like a lot of purpose.
Like I really was enthusiastic about it.
I had been thinking about coming back for like a couple of weeks before I actually did it.
But you're always working at it.
Always.
You're always in the process of reaffirming, thinking things through, understanding who you are.
It varies with your health.
It varies with how you're eating.
It varies with who's in your life.
Your comedy radically varies.
Like how you interface with an audience radically, how you look at yourself, all that varies so much.
Have you ever been on stage and just been, not angry, but like not enjoying, kind of not wanting to be on stage and it shows in your performance or do you always get out of it through performing?
There was a woman who kept heckling me in the front row of the Comedy Store, just interrupting, just stopping bits before I had a chance to explain them.
And then finally I had to kick her out.
And it was so annoying.
The way she did it, it was so entitled.
She was entitled to voice out her opinion in the middle.
I was doing this chunk last year on my last special about this guy who broke into the White House.
That a guy just broke into the White House.
You would think there would be all these things in place to keep someone from breaking the White House.
The guy just humped across the lawn, ran across the lawn, got to the front door, and there was only a girl sitting there.
One unarmed girl by herself.
He smacked her to the ground and just ran through the fucking White House.
And I had this whole bit about whose idea it was to just leave a girl by herself.
But there's a difference between like you then overcoming it and being like haha that was awesome and then the feeling of I think what I'm I was tense.
Yeah, like where you're just in inside your own head going I don't want to be here like that sucked like it's not fun.
It wasn't that it was just like I shouldn't have allowed myself to get so upset but I came into the stage upset that was part of the problem is that I had a crazy day with a lot of fucked up things happened and I carried that energy onto the stage There was a lot of weird shit that happened in my life that day.
It was just like enough enough fucking enough And then her.
Yeah, it's like weird shit with friends and a couple weird business things.
It was like a compounding day.
And then this lady was hammered.
And I gave her the benefit.
I tried to talk her into just release.
And I explained to her, this is how the bit would have gone if you didn't erupt.
I go, okay, get it.
See, I'm going to say something outrageous.
Then I'm going to say something more fucked up about myself.
This is what I do.
So I did it again.
And she interrupted again.
I'm like, get the fuck out.
Just get out.
Just get out.
But I was really upset.
And you shouldn't really get upset.
So when you allow yourself to get really upset, it's usually because you came into it Unbalanced.
And again, it's always, you're never done.
Like, you might think, well, I understand how to behave now.
I've got my shit together.
I get it.
But you don't.
You get it right now.
But if you let it slip, you won't get it tomorrow.
If you have the wrong attitude or the wrong approach, and the wrong dude cuts you off, you're like, fuck off!
I'm not saying you weren't like this before, but you just are so positive and loving and kind of like you can feel it.
Whereas...
And, you know, there's a lot of baggage in the past, and we never, not baggage, but, like, I was like, oh, that guy hates women.
Oh, that guy hates me.
But that was also when Duncan was hanging out with you, you know, he and I just broke up, so that was the baggage I was referring to.
But, like, I just thought, you know, you have such a strong energy that I was like, oh, that guy and I, not that I, it's weird, because I wasn't, like, I just never pictured us talking easily.
Oh, and then the other thing that, when I was talking about going on the road, which I was going to mention, coming back to the store, because I was there in the 90s too, and it was just like a terrible place and a bad vibe.
My husband, who like, he used to, before we had a child, he used to come see my one-woman show that I did.
I think he came like every...
Anyway, he saw me at Cobbs and he sat back there.
And it was a great assessment because he goes, you've gotten really good because I had been on the road.
But he goes...
That's a really hard room, because these people, especially that late show, like, they've just had dinner, and they're there, and it's so dark, and it's, it's like a room, I don't know, some people love it, but it's a room that's sort of seen its heyday at a different time that it would be packed out.
I was going to say, I came back from going on the road for the first time and doing the six shows, and I was on 24, which I love that we're just full-on comedy shop talking, by the way.
Like, I would sometimes have somebody sitting, like, with a...
This guy had an article of clothing that I had worn in season three, so I'm, like, trying to do comedy, like, okay, like, you just want me to sign your thing.
But, you know, my approach was, because I'm in my own head, so I'm like, hi, so my name's Mary Lynn, and doing my, like, I'm uncomfortable, and that's where my comedy comes from.
And the whole vibe was like, what...
You know, like, you're a TV star.
Like, we came to see you.
And I had to adjust and, like, take that in.
And then not only take it in, but talk about it, you know?
And I would just be like Jack Bauer.
And they'd be like, ha, ha, ha, ha, like, losing their shit.
And, like, I would just make somebody in the audience, like, you're my Jack Bauer.
And then I just, you know, had to make it, like, 5, 10, 15 minutes of, like...
Let's talk about it, because it was such an amazing thing.
And it was to me, too.
But that was the only drama I had ever been on.
And I had this whole other world of comedy that I had been doing, but the intersection of that was just bizarre.
But then, like you said, you're never done, and you never know what's going to happen, and you adjust to it.
So I would do the 24 stuff, and then I would go into my...
That's my stuff about my life and my personal life and my point of view.
And then that became really gratifying, you know, once I sort of brought them in, did the thing that they needed to hear about, which is also part of my life.
So I did that same circuit a year and a half later, and there would be some super fans, there would be some comedy fans, and there would be some people that didn't know why the hell they were there.
So then I would have, yeah, the guy that knows me from always sending in Philadelphia, the lady that knows me from 24 and the guy who's out of his mind on drugs going, you're not funny.
And I'm like, you know, and this poor person's like, she's a superstar.
Like, why is she in this shithole?
And the other guy's like, I don't know who she is.
And that guy's like, you don't get what I get because she's from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
And then I would pit them against each other.
I'm like, she doesn't get it, but you get it.
And it's like, oh, the burden of being so versatile, you know?
I also learned something about myself, the shitty road, because I... I would not have a car, and I'd take the hotel that they gave me that would be by the freeway that would be not even near the city and a little bit from the club, and I'd just hole up.
And then it took me a while to realize, like, oh, you like that.
Like, I like a certain amount of suffering and, like, it's so shitty here.
I'm going to go, like, walk along the freeway, and then, you know, someone would be like, why didn't you get a car?
There was one hotel room that had like a dining room table for 10 and like these big plastic flowers with dust all over them and this weird hot plate with foil on it and a walk-in closet.
But it was the shittiest, most run-down.
Like, who's partying in here?
Like, whose fancy hotel suite is this?
It couldn't have been shittier.
And it was...
Yeah, I guess it's just fascinating.
And I... I like being comfortable, you know?
I like having my things, but I guess I like that too.
But when you're in the road and you're in like a shitty hotel in Pittsburgh or something, it's in the middle of January, you look out and the sky is like a shitty, dark, smoky gray.
Ali Wong has a great bit of I'm Not Gonna Do It Justice, and I don't want to paraphrase it either, and I don't want to tell anybody what it's about, but it's essentially the difference between life for a woman comic on the road versus life for a male comic.
It's a big difference.
The danger level, that's like guys that get obsessed with you, want to bring you wine and shit.
Oh, I never completed this, whatever, the story of going through being on the road and then coming back to the store and thinking like, I got it because I've been on the road, right?
My brain just has to be constantly overrun with things to think about and do.
My brain just wants to go.
Just, come on!
Let's go!
We need more fucking stimulation!
Let's go!
It always needs something.
So what I do is just stuff it filled with information, work it out, get it to run hills and do jujitsu and yoga and burn that motherfucker out so that I could be calm.
And so a lot of what people notice today versus how I was like 20 years ago is I understand myself better.
I'm better at managing my business.
Like, whatever are the things that make you you, I'm better at managing those to be very positive.
To just be, just overall, and my attitude is very different too.
But my sort of road of discovering, like, my hidden anger core, I'm like, oh!
Like peeling off the layers of like, oh, she's uncomfortable, she's quiet, she doesn't react, and it's like...
No, no, no.
They're in there.
You've just buried them, like, all of your feelings in, like, politeness.
So comedy has helped me with that, too.
Because early on, I was, like, way too reactive.
I'd be like, oh, what do you think?
Like, talking to an audience member, it's like, no, no, you're in control.
Like, you tell them where it's going.
You steer it.
Like, yes, you can listen to it, but...
Um, so that's, it's teaching me that as well, how to like, drive the train instead of like, I'm gonna be open to you and listen and go wherever you want me to go, you know, and just react to you.
Well, I mean, it's like I said, being a person and being a comic are very similar in that you're never done.
We're just never done.
You know?
You're always trying to fix that thing.
Always trying to tweak it.
Make it a little better.
And then, that's like one of the big arguments for writing new material too.
The idea is that every time you write a new act, especially when you have to, like release a special or something like that, you're going to be better because you understand comedy better than you did two years ago.
You're just going to be better.
If you've really been paying attention and you really are looking at it correctly, you're going to be better.
Yeah, and it's like a little cocktail of all the things, cocktail for me, of all the things that I'm allergic to, and then I just build up my tolerance.
Yeah, and my allergist was like, he did it in my arm, but he said I didn't even raise it that much, but I went home and I was reading and I'm like, God, I'm itchy.
Oh, I must have been sweating, like I worked out and I didn't...
For like a full 10 minutes, I wasn't conscious.
I was just subconsciously going, man, I gotta go take a shower or something.
And then I lifted up and it was like, like traveling.
And then I just was like, I'm having an attack.
Like, I need a Benadryl.
And like, no one was listening to me.
And I'm like, I think I need a Benadryl.
And I didn't...
I was looking for the Benadryl, couldn't find it, called my allergist and he goes, yeah, just come here right now.
And then I drove there just like so scared because I could feel it traveling and I'm like, you know, panicking, but also trying to like manage, like when you panic and it's a good thing because you have to act fast.
And then I thought, are my eyes going to close up?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick, she's a giant proponent of sauna and also cryotherapy.
And she was talking about the benefits of cold shock proteins.
And one of them is your body freaks out when you go into those cryotherapy chambers because it's like 250 degrees below zero.
So you get this big, powerful burst of norepinephrine.
You get cold shock proteins, these cytokines, because your body's trying to react to the fact that you have this massive cold environment that you're just trapped in.
It's like so fucking cold, your body freaks out.
And it produces this really radical anti-inflammation process.
And your everyday, and your living there, it just made me think about my own life, which, you know, my parents worked really hard to, like, make me comfortable.
And here's your TV, and you go to school, and you come home from school, and how that's the goal in, like, suburban life is to just...
Like trying to fuck up the other dude and going through so much adversity.
Well, my point of view is like...
I'm going to do my chores and I'm so comfortable right now.
Now I'm going to deliberately make myself uncomfortable in order to do what I know is good for me and that I enjoy doing and that I want to have success in and that takes me to another place in my life.
I mean, they're Africans that speak Spanish, and they live on an island that's off the coast of Florida.
I mean, it's a crazy spot.
The whole thing's crazy, and it was run by a dictator forever.
And they had some of the best athletes in the world in boxing, in judo, in wrestling, just world-class athletes that had mental toughness the likes of I mean, it's hard for the average person to even comprehend what those people are capable of.
And a lot of it is because of that really brutal system that you all talked about on the podcast.
But you just think, like, there's a person out there that can do that, and look what happens on the other end.
You get that guy.
Like, Jesus.
If you just be in the room with him, it's just...
He's like a fucking superhero.
It's like, Jesus!
That is the product of genetics, ruthless training, ruthless environment, one of the most complex and sophisticated sports training systems in the world, with boxing and with wrestling and with judo.
In a different way for someone like me, like, I don't relate necessarily to what he does is, like, foreign and amazing, but through my own life, it's like, oh, I can be not comfortable, and, like, that's why it seems like a contradiction, but it's not.
I was playing that, I was playing I Want to Be Starting Something and Thriller in the car on the way taking my son to school and I start crying just because it's like, how do you explain what he was and how monumental what he did was?
Like I can remember seeing him dancing to Billie Jean and like how Kind of like broke the mold for music and the persona that he had and that level of creativity.
Yeah, it was weird.
And to be in the car with my kid who doesn't really, knows the name, but didn't, you know.
His doctor who went to jail for giving him the anesthesia also testified that Michael Jackson was chemically castrated by his parents when he was young to preserve his voice.
That's what I suspected.
I suspected, I talked about it on the podcast, like, years ago I was saying this.
I think he was a castrata, which is, they take young boys, and they used to do this with opera, and they would castrate them at a very young age.
And because of that, their body never developed testosterone, so they would develop this high, piercing, like, haunting voice.
It's very strange.
Like, we played some of the...
There's only a few recordings of actual castratas that are available, or castratos.
One of those.
But when you play them, they're haunting.
Because you realize, like, this is a kid that was castrated as a baby so that he could be a singer.
Like, this is fucked up.
And that's what Michael Jackson's doctor said they did to Michael.
They did it through chemicals.
They chemically castrated him, the same way they do to pedophiles.
Part of me was like, I had a friend, a mom, who said, the march is going on right outside our house.
Like, who wants to join?
And as soon as I clicked on the email and saw what it was, in the pit of my stomach, I was like, no.
No.
And then I covered it up with, I should do that.
This would be a really good thing to do.
And I... Was then fighting with myself because I was like, well, you can't have both things at once.
Either you want to march and do that, or you don't.
Like, those are conflicting things.
What was the no?
I don't want to do it.
I don't think it'll help.
But then there's another part of me that really likes when people march because I do think it changes the attitude.
Like I'm really happy that the Women's March happened and is happening.
But I didn't go.
And I feel like it's like a dirty secret.
And I have a bit about it that's sort of an unformed bit where I say, yeah, I live in Encino because that's where you go to give up.
Like, next time you see me, I'm going to be like, I live in Thousand Oaks.
I'm allergic to the sun.
Yeah.
And I described, like, the moment I knew I had given up was, and this is just an exploratory, I still don't have it figured out, the moment I knew I had given up was I was making my stay away from my vagina poster with glitter, and then I marched out to the curb and was like, it's too hot.
Like, I don't think they'll be parking at the march.
You just decide what you want to do and what you don't want to do.
You know, and you didn't want to go march that day.
It doesn't mean you're a hypocrite.
It means you just didn't want to do it.
You're a hypocrite if you were saying one thing and voting for another.
That would make you a hypocrite.
That just makes you a person who just decided that's not what you wanted to do.
And also, look, it would be nice if you threw your one into the 600,000 that were marching through the streets of downtown LA, but there's still 600,000 people, even if you're just watching it from the news and go, you go, girl!
There's a lot of other people that think like-minded.
Gets people to watch.
Gets people to put it on the news.
People at home watch it.
Maybe people feel like, hey, even though some fucked up things have gone down with Harvey Weinstein and all this other shit, at least it's turning around.
Maybe people are bummed out that this guy became the president, but now people are active.
So ultimately it's almost like what we were talking about before.
You get past that adversity and there's actually a benefit to it.
And sometimes I think even as a country we might need that because we don't have any war over here.
Everything is over there.
We don't see it in terms of like right in front of us on a daily basis.
But this is like a cultural war and an idea war.
And so I think that these things happening right in front of us and having these uncomfortable moments Forces these conversations.
There's just gonna be peaks and valleys in the conversation where people are rude and people are calm and maybe there's gonna be some breakthroughs, but ultimately at least...
It is sad, but there's two things that have to be addressed.
Guns have to be addressed for sure, but also mental health has to be addressed.
We have to address psych medicines.
We have to address how many of these people, whether it's correlation equals causation or not, how many of these fucking people have been on psych medicine?
And the answer is almost all of them.
Now, does that mean that they're mentally ill and so that's why they shoot people?
Or that doing these psych meds, a lot of people call the effects of these things very disassociative, that they allow people to do horrific things they might not have been able to do before or inspire them to do that?
There's a real argument there.
It's not exonerating the people that have done these horrific things or exonerating the people that got the guns in their hands.
It's not doing that, but it is a factor.
There's a factor that people aren't taking into consideration because it becomes a one or the other thing.
It becomes an either we need more gun control and we need stricter gun control or we need to do something about the effects of psych medication.
There was an article that was, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but there was an article that was written, I gotta remember this, that was written recently that was really ridiculous.
And it was saying, contrary to popular belief, most of these mass shooters are not mentally ill.
Well, what the fuck defines mentally ill if they're on psych medication?
They're all on anti-psychotics and psychiatric meds and SSRIs.
They're almost all So if they're not mentally ill, why the fuck are they taking medicine?
If you can just go into a school and shoot 19 children, you have to be mentally ill.
But the point is, if they're not mentally ill, why are they taking medicine for people who are mentally ill?
This is a bullshit article.
And it's an article, who knows what the fucking, whether it's a contrarian point of view that's designed to get clickbait, Hits, or whether it's someone who's trying to set up a narrative that's contrary to what the pharmaceutical drugs companies have known for years.
There's real effects to those things.
They're not always positive.
And it's a goddamn crapshoot whether or not a pill's gonna work for you or not work for you.
I mean, that's why they have Abilify.
Abilify is an anti-psychotic they prescribe to people who are on SSRIs, but they think about killing themselves.
They're like, look, if you're thinking about killing yourself, try this first.
Try to stack these two together.
Maybe that's your mixture.
Wasn't it the number one most prescribed drug in the country?
See if that's true still.
Abilify, an anti-psychotic, was the number one most prescribed drug in the country.
Look, we've got a fucking problem.
Now, how many of these people are taking medication because they really need it?
I'm sure some of them.
How many people are taking medication because drug companies are pushing this shit?
Abilify is top selling US drug.
There you go.
That's fucking crazy.
The top selling US drug.
See this.
Don't blame mental illness.
Blame men.
Well, that's true too.
No, she's right there too.
I have a bit that I'm doing about all the different fucked up things that men do.
It's an anti-men's rights bit.
I don't want to do it on the air because I'll fuck it up before my special.
But it's that we have to pay attention to all the shit that we do wrong.
Mass shootings is not just...
If you want to take credit for the good things that men have done, you have to take credit for all the war.
That's also what they've done.
Men have caused all of it.
In the bit, I go into detail about all these different things.
It's a build-up to something else, but this also has to be addressed, that it's always men.
That's real, too.
It's not blaming every man that didn't shoot up a school.
We have to figure out, what the fuck is it?
What combination of psych drugs, guns, and being a man is causing this?
And if we just want to blame only the tools, that seems to me to be fucking crazy.
They also want to blame the NRA. Well, I see in one point because you think the NRA is helping people get guns rather more easily.
I get that.
But also, no one who is a member of the NRA has ever committed a mass shooting.
So you have to think of that.
Well, what does that mean?
I mean, are you really blaming the group of people that wants gun safety to be paramount and the group of people that doesn't want their rights to be infringed?
Or are you going to...
Attack the group of people that are actually shooting these people.
The real problem is the people that have actually done it.
And I guarantee you, there's something wrong with every single fucking one of their brains.
Because everything you're saying, I'm just thinking that the person that shoots a bunch of people, whether they're on psych drugs, whether they have access to a gun...
Mental health issues, they're isolated to the point where they can do something like that.
And that...
A quiet little statement that someone is isolated is something that we can't address because it's so complicated and it's such the fabric of how we live our lives.
It's so much easier to blame and fight for all these things, but how do we fix the one guy whose brother was just found with all that porn?
There's definitely going to be people that feel alienated and they always want to, they see these people having a good time around them and they want to just flip over the game.
They want to say fuck you and burn the whole thing to the ground.
They see people that are happy, that are enjoying life.
Like, especially if this kid felt alienated in school and bullied and cast out and targeted, and then he gets free and he sees these people that are having fun.
He just wants to go back and just punish everyone.
And one of the oldest ones went to college and then they would, I can't remember, I think it was a dude, would come out and the mom would be waiting for him and like, So the oldest one was out in the world and still no one could help.
And that's my issue with all this masculine bullshit, is a lot of these guys that are proclaiming masculinity are really bitches.
And that real men wouldn't be doing this stuff in the first place.
You would look past most of this stuff in the first place.
You know, there's a lot of people in this world that don't have personal sovereignty, whether it's men or women.
And they're not raised correctly, and then they didn't go on a beneficial path through life that left them in the current state where they're a helpful member Of our community.
It's hard to just fucking dig your heels in and decide to do something that's tough like that.
And then also the financial investment.
If you decide to do it yourself, you gotta spend a lot of money and hire a crew and make sure the director doesn't fuck it up and make sure it all comes out well.
You know?
Who do I know that did one and they fucked up the shooting of it and he had to wind up putting it online?
Was it Rory Albanese?
Did he say that he did one?
That someone fucked up and he wound up putting it online?
Yeah, you're giving me the training right now of the stuff that's like, obviously, you remember when you went off on that thing, go back and listen to it and write it down.
The more time and enthusiasm you put on something, the better you're going to get at it.
If you're a guy, like say if you're a bowler, and you only like to bowl 40 minutes a day, but you want to be the best in the world, you're not going to be.
I guess I'm trying to connect it to what we were talking about earlier about people who get isolated and don't have friends and don't have a feedback and don't have those tendrils of being able to make that leap so that you start eating yourself alive.
And he was talking about how, you know, he was a fat loser who kept making excuses for himself and just, like, drinking chocolate milkshakes every day and working for an exterminator, and he was fat as fuck, and he just decided, I don't want to do this anymore.
And he had these moments where he went running, he ran three quarters of a mile, then he turned around and walked back home.
That was his first time running.
Like, it wasn't quick that he became this guy who runs 100 miles at a time, and he was doing...
He played it for, he showed us the website, and he was like, these are all the ones he did in a year.
It's like, what the fuck?
Like, every week or two weeks, he was running 100 miles, like in the mountains and shit.
100!
That's a 24-hour race, and he was doing it every week.
That's fucking insane!
But this guy started out running three-quarters of a mile and then he quit and turned around and walked back home because he was fat and he was eating milkshakes every day.
Like, that's the same guy.
With these little incremental steps and then just deciding, this is who I am now.
I'm a guy who does what I say I'm supposed to do and I'm fucking serious.
I'm gonna change my life.
Oh, he's shredded.
Just, the guy's a fucking animal.
I mean, he's just a pure, A machine made out of, like, motivation and discipline.
Like, you don't get more discipline than that guy now.
But he wasn't at one point in time in his life.
And by him expressing that on the podcast is really an inspirational podcast.
I think it gives everybody hope, because you like to think that, oh, that guy who is really good at this thing, or that guy who's really mentally tough, or this girl who's super disciplined, who just accomplishes thing after thing, she's always been like that.
No, no, no.
Nobody's always been like that.
No one has.
You start off fucking up.
You fail.
You move up.
You figure it out.
You make some mistakes.
You fall back.
You get back up.
You go, well, that's not me.
I'm me now.
I realized, don't do that anymore.
Now, instead, don't quit after three quarters of a mile.
Now we're going to drink water instead of drinking chocolate shakes.
We're going to eat healthy food.
And tomorrow we're going to do a whole fucking mile.
Let's do it.
And then you do that mile like, holy shit, I did it.
Mark it down.
Write it down.
Did a mile.
And then maybe take a day off.
And then maybe the next day try to do it again.
And then build.
With everything.
With comedy, with fucking, I'm sure that's the case with music, with everything.
And I kind of loved that I spent the day leading up to that stand-up on the spot.
Actually, I thought we had...
Our podcast was yesterday.
I had to go back into my text, and I kind of...
You know how you do when you have something to do at 1?
So at 11, you're like, well, I can't completely go do something else.
So I kind of just agonized, and then it was like 12, and I looked, and I was like, oh, it's not even today.
So now I'm kind of like...
You know, didn't do stuff I could have done for a couple hours, and now, you know, I thought we were podcasting, so now I have all that time, so I'm just like, well, I have that stand-up-on-the-spot show tonight, so I really was just...
Yeah, so I weirdly, but it was kind of a productive day because then when I got to the end and was so appreciative, it made me so aware of the nightmare of my own head that I was very conscious of what I was doing.
Yeah.
That got me to that then when it was so easy.
It really was like waking up from a bad dream when you're like, oh, this is life.
It's not that.
Being engaged and being present and going to do this thing, it was nothing like what I was beating myself up.
We were talking before the podcast about yoga, and I was saying how when I did that 15 days in a month thing, I decided to end it with nine days in a row.
So I just did nine days...
I ended like a week early.
I finished like a week earlier, like five days early, but I did nine fucking days of yoga in a row to end it.
And I was like, this is crazy.
I never would have thought...
Not only that I could do it.
I mean, I know I could physically do it.
It's not impossible.
But I didn't think that I'd ever, like, follow through and do that.