Nikki Glaser and Joe Rogan dive into her extreme fitness contest, Silver October, where Ari Shfier’s reckless 80%+ max heart rate push and Tom Segura’s understated discipline spark debate, while Nikki reflects on her own Dancing with the Stars elimination despite grueling practice. They explore her past struggles—anorexia at 80 lbs, near-death hospitalization, and alcohol-fueled coping mechanisms—that fueled her comedy career, comparing it to Rogan’s Jerry Seinfeld-inspired rise. Glaser’s psychedelic curiosity clashes with her weed triggers, while Rogan frames DMT as a "pineal gland portal" to cosmic awareness, linking rapid cultural shifts to unchecked online discourse. Controversial material addiction (like Michael Richards’ ban) contrasts Norton’s unfiltered honesty, which Glaser weaponizes in stand-up to dismantle shame around taboo topics—from bedwetting to threesomes—arguing society’s sexual expectations exploit women. Ultimately, their raw conversation reveals how discipline, trauma, and authenticity shape art, fame, and personal growth. [Automatically generated summary]
He shit in a box and brought it onto the stage and he had it like sealed up and then opened it in front of everybody and apparently the smell was like so horrendous people were bailing out of the room and gagging and throwing up.
It's like a public health hazard.
You're not supposed to like have shit, human shit in public.
Look, the fact that he entered into this contest at all, and he doesn't work out at all for ten years, and then he's like, there's a fitness contest, and the loser has to do something.
We haven't totally determined what the loser has to do.
Yeah, you guys were talking about like who you think about when you're really trying to get past that point where you're either you're kickboxing or even on an elliptical.
And this is so interesting to watch because you're right.
You already work out a lot.
You're an extremely healthy guy, but you're now going to take it.
I can see the excitement on all of you to take this to just an excruciating level.
Because it gets obsessive and it gets fun.
But that's the thing.
I'm excited to talk to you at the beginning of this when you're still pumped up about it and it's like you get a high from working out for three and a half hours a day.
You know, did you ever see, there's a really interesting documentary with Eddie Izzard, and Eddie Izzard, who's not a guy and really good, did you see it?
Maybe I'm just doing the thing comedians do of patting themselves on the back for being more interesting than other people.
Like we do all the time.
We're so much more broken and we have such more willpower.
But I think that...
I get obsessed with exercise, too, and I really get into it.
I remember Louis C.K. doing some interview where he said that he runs five miles a day because on that fourth mile when he doesn't want to do the fifth, he thinks about a day where he'll be on set and want to just call it a day and not push through.
It's how it all relates.
Or you'll be in the middle of an hour set.
And you'll be tired and you just, everything can relate to being on set or in the middle of a set and that run five miles a day, making yourself do that means you can get through anything.
And so I run a lot and I have, I think of it the same way.
It's just endurance to perform for an hour every night.
It was a month of my life every day, four hours a day dancing, and I've never danced before.
But I didn't realize how mental it all really is.
In the end, athletics, it's so mental.
I didn't realize it because I've never been an athlete my whole life, but before I got into this competition, I was reading all the books about, well, I am where I am physically.
That's not going to change, so I better figure out a way to mentally overcome some stuff.
And I was able to, but man, it's all that.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of times and it broke me in many ways mentally and physically But it was I mean it was my sober October for sure It was my you working out every single day and giving it trying to beat Burt.
When I want to be good at something, I will give everything to be good at it.
And here's the other thing.
If you have a natural ability to begin with, if someone goes, you've got a knack for this.
You go, oh, well, I'm good.
I'm going to keep trying.
When I walked into this, no one's ever been like, you've got rhythm, girl.
No one's No one's ever given me even the slightest nudge towards any kind of playing, you know, having any musical ability or having any dance ability.
If anything, I've been shamed my whole life.
And then they asked me to do this literally my whole life.
I've never danced at weddings.
I don't dance at concerts because I just know that I'm going to be made fun of in some way.
And obviously no one's even thinking about me.
But in my head, it's my most insecure thing to do.
Like I meditated my way out of it, which I've done with several different injuries in my life of just like, I gotta be better.
I have to dance on live TV tonight and I couldn't move.
I couldn't brush my hair because my arm was hurting so bad that morning.
So I just started saying to myself, you're strong, you're prepared, and this is easy.
You're strong, you're prepared, this is easy.
Wow.
3,000 times out loud in the makeup chair all day walking around slowly going from this kind of injury walking like in the morning to okay I'm strong I'm prepared this is easy and then I then at the end of the day I was I danced on live TV and I cured myself mentally it was insane dude but They were so mean to me.
Especially Len Goodman, the British old cranky judge.
It was really hurtful, and I took it in stride, but he called me awkward.
I just wanted to walk away from this show not being a white girl dancing meme.
I just didn't want people to be like, oh, white girls can't dance, because...
I know I can't dance, and I just didn't want to be made fun of, and he made fun of me.
He was like, you look awkward.
Because at the end of it, I just go, I can dance!
It was just me being funny, because I obviously can't, but I was like, I just completed a dance.
That if you watch, it's not that terrible.
I was very injured that morning.
I was proud of myself.
And he goes, you were awkward, and you can't dance!
You can't dance!
And then...
He said other things that I just...
I kind of blacked out during it because I was so sad and I was just holding on to Tom Bergeron for dear life.
And then I got eliminated first.
So it's so funny to me because I took on this challenge being like, the worst that could happen is that I get eliminated first, which I surely won't do because I can't be that bad.
And you know, like, being on a reality show, like, have you done a reality show where it's like...
And the next, the first contestant eliminated from the show, and then there's a spotlight on you, and I'm staring at the stage, just a slat in the stage.
I'm just staring there being like, they're going to say Nikki and Glob.
They're going to say Nikki and Glob.
And it was just like, I'm on a reality show right now getting eliminated.
It was so surreal, and it sucked.
And it sucked.
And I'm still obviously very much feeling it.
And I loved the show.
I wanted to keep going.
I wanted to do different dances.
I was ready to really...
Because I just learned how to learn how to dance.
So I had to learn how to learn how to dance.
Because I'd never danced before in my life.
Never learned the marcarina.
I took myself out of any kind of dancing that was offered to me in school.
If I was on with you, I probably would have had a worse performance.
I don't fucking dance, right?
So it's like, think about your base that you're coming from.
You're not a person who dances.
This is a totally new thing for you.
But, if now you have this in your head, and you decide to take dancing lessons, and you do it on a regular basis, just once, twice a week for a year, you could be fucking amazing by the time next year rolls around.
Because during that show, they decided this one guy who was winning, they decided it was a great thing to have him keep winning, and so they rigged the show.
And because of that, there's actual federal laws about how you organize and run game shows.
I'm working on a bit about encouraging people early on because I do look at the people that told me you should be a comedian right before I tried it because I was going to be an actress and then I was like...
I'm not really good at this, and I don't care enough to get good at it.
I see what it takes to be great at being an actress, and I was just like, I don't want to do that.
But then someone was like, you're funny, you should try stand-up, and then that was like, oh, I care enough about this to go through the worst of it and get good.
But I've been exploring recently on stage blowjobs I've been talking through, and I think it's the same thing because I'm not great at them.
I've never been like, wow, you're the best at this.
And I've never been a girl who's like, I love giving blowjobs.
And I've always heard girls, there are some girls that say that, like, I love sucking dick.
But now I realize that the difference between me and those girls is that those girls, the first time they gave a blowjob, I guarantee, or one of the first times, the guy was like, you're amazing at this.
You're really good at this because when a girl is told or anyone is told early on the first time they do something they're like, you have a natural talent at this.
You go, I do?
And then you do it again and again because you're like, I'm good at this.
This is my thing.
And then you get good at it and you're like, it's my thing.
But no one ever said that to me about blowjobs early on.
It was always just kind of like a means to an end.
And I feel like if someone would have just been like lied to me.
So I am...
I ask guys now, like, just lie to every girl.
If you get a blowjob and it's, like, mediocre, just be like, you're the best at this ever.
Like, this is the best blowjob I've ever received.
Because she will be so—it'll make her feel good.
What's it gonna hurt that she thinks she's the best at this thing that she's not that great at?
But she'll do it a lot because she'll be like, I'm great at this, and this guy thinks I'm the greatest at it.
So she'll do it a lot.
And then by doing a lot, she'll get better, and then everyone wins.
I just, I haven't, I try, and I'm not like bad at them.
Like, I don't think I'm bad at them, but I just, I think I always was apprehensive because I think the first thing I heard about blowjobs was that the first complaint I would hear around me was too much teeth.
I had buck teeth as a kid, so people always called me a beaver.
I was like, my teeth are going to get in the way of this.
So immediately, that was my biggest issue.
And then you learn that that's easy to work around.
And then...
So anyway, but my friend said that she learned this new trick where when she's hooking up, she'll do a roleplay of like, will you teach me how to do a blowjob?
But she's actually like wanting them to teach her.
And so it's a hot thing where like she gets to roleplay, but she honestly doesn't know and gets and then the guy tells her exactly what to do.
And then if she messes up, it's like part of the character as opposed to her being bad at blowjobs.
So that's my next thing I'm going to try, I think.
And I hate being pegged, no pun intended, as, like, a sex comic, but, like, I don't...
Because I just did this ABC show, Dancing with the Stars, and the whole time I'm trying to be on my very best behavior because I want to play the game.
Do you remember when there was this ridiculous time just a few years ago where they were trying to push this narrative that if you have sex with someone who's been drinking that you're a rapist?
Even if you're drinking too.
This is this like weird third wave feminist nonsense where there were like adults, like two grown adults have a couple of drinks.
You're not supposed to do that because they can't consent because they're drinking.
And so people were literally calling people and accusing people of rape because they had sex with each other while they were both drunk.
Well, it was a real weird time and they've abandoned it because it's so preposterous and the pushback was so hard.
But you're responsible for yourself every other time when you're drunk.
If you're driving, you're responsible.
If you get in a fight, you're responsible.
You're responsible during all those things.
But somehow or another, if you and a person are exchanging pleasure Then you are not responsible for your actions and you can't consent to that because you've been drinking.
And then it becomes rape.
And it's only, really only rape in the case of the guy.
It's never rape, like a girl raped a guy because the guy was drunk.
And I ask the crowd sometimes, I'm like, have you guys ever, who here has had sex for the first time with someone where both of you were stone cold sober?
First time sex.
Literally two people raised their hand in the main room.
Sober October was the first time I did absolutely nothing for a whole month.
I didn't smoke a joint.
I didn't do mushrooms.
Nothing.
Wasn't that hard.
What was interesting about it was the dreams, first of all, because the dreams come hard and fast when you're off the weed.
Because apparently I talked to this guy, Dr. Matthew Walker, who's a dream specialist, and he was on the podcast discussing the importance of sleep, sleep specialists, I should say.
But he was saying that marijuana impedes certain aspects of REM sleep, which is when you do all your dreaming.
So when you get off the marijuana, your brain apparently makes up for lost time and hits you with some crazy fucking dreams.
Talking frogs and fucking unicorns and roller coasters that go straight to heaven and like fucking bananas dreams.
Well, the thing is, this time for Sober October, I was way tapered off.
By the time this rolled around.
Like I smoked a little pot in Toronto on Saturday, but I mean a little.
Like I took like one or two hits.
I had a drink, maybe two drinks.
I think I had one drink when I went on stage and then I had a couple glasses of wine after the show.
We went out to this restaurant after the show.
But yeah, this was an easy one.
But I think I slowed down after last year.
I think doing that Sober October thing made me realize, like, hmm, there's like some...
I'm of that school, unfortunately, that all my favorite...
Comics did drugs.
All of them.
Hicks, Kinison, Pryor.
Everyone did drugs.
They were all, I mean, Pryor was coke.
I've never touched coke, but Kinison was coke, too.
But Hicks was more psychedelics and, I mean, he did coke and alcohol and a lot of other stuff before.
But there was, there was all, they were all like these wild fucks.
Like, Ron White is a good friend of mine.
Always drunk.
And there's like this part of that life that That, you know, it's so attractive because it's just like this wild, loose, carefree, rebellious, figured-out-tomorrow life.
And that's the life of the comic.
But I realized, like, after last year's Sober October, that there's...
A lot of that stuff you could do if you're sober.
I think, as I said, you can abuse alcohol, but you can also use it.
You can use it.
You can have a couple drinks and feel good, and you enjoy the moment more.
There's something...
There's something to it, but it's really a matter of your own personality and discipline It's like how much and how much of an addict are you like what how much what is it?
What holes are missing in your brain that get filled up with that booze and that like once you take the booze away, there's like this gaping Chasm that you need to fill you know, what is that?
And you gotta figure out who you are.
Because I know some people that can't have anything.
They have one drink and then they're off to the races and they're doing meth.
Maybe it's circumstantial a little bit, like maybe I'm feeling lonely that day, or I didn't get a thing that I wanted, or I... But I really do think it's like the weather.
I just can't even describe it.
I remember Sarah Silverman talking about her depression.
It's like just a cloud comes over you and you're just like, oh, well, here it comes.
And that's kind of how it feels.
And I totally have it under control when I'm meditating every day.
I don't get a single one of those thoughts.
But if I skip a day, if I don't do TM one day, those thoughts, they come in.
And then if I... And then if you get into a real bad spot, those thoughts start...
And I've never even so much as made an attempt or even planned to make an attempt.
It's never gotten to that even close to that for me.
But I realize that these are the same kind of thoughts that people that end up doing this start with.
There's some kind of...
People who love me and care about me get so upset when I talk about this, but I think that more people struggle with these thoughts than talk about, so I'm eager to share it because I don't think I'm ever going to kill myself, and I don't think that that's...
But I think that, like a lot of people, I'm at risk.
And I don't think that people talk about that enough.
Because I do have these thoughts.
And it's not even like I go, what can I do to make myself feel better?
Oh, I could kill myself.
It literally is like, kill yourself.
It's like a little voice or something.
And I've struggled with mental illness before.
I mean, I had anorexia where it was like, don't eat.
I wanted to be famous someday, and I idolized everyone in the magazines.
The whole classic thing of looking literally in magazines and being like, I want to look like that.
I hate pinching my sides, being like...
If I'm not like that, then I'm worthless.
Having a mom who constantly hated her body was skinnier than me and constantly said she was fat and things like that.
You have things modeled for you.
So I grew up thinking, skinny equals more lovable.
And then I lost weight just because my senior year I lost weight because a boy liked me that I liked, who I liked back, and I was very nervous about it.
You know when you just get nervous so you don't eat that day?
And I had a date with this guy.
It was my first date ever.
And that day I didn't eat because I was just nervous.
And then the next day it showed up on me because someone goes, you look great.
It's, and that's the way people, and I see girls like that now, and I do the same thing that people used to say to me, which is like, just eat a sandwich, bitch.
Yeah, because when I went to school my freshman year, I was so crazy looking.
I was like the Nightmare Before Christmas Jack Skeleton.
Yeah, that is what I looked like.
I look at pictures and I'm like, how did you have friends, bitch?
But I did because I became really funny.
Because I wanted people to go, look over here, don't look at me.
So I just...
I was a shy kid in high school when I was not anorexic.
But then when I needed to make friends, because I went to school alone, I was like, oh, I'll just develop this really over-the-top personality so people don't notice that I'm so thin.
So that's when I became funny.
Really funny.
You know, I was always, like, dormantly funny.
But that's when I became, like, outwardly funny.
People started telling me I should be a comedian my freshman year.
I tried it.
I did it one time.
And then I was like, oh, I have a reason to live now.
Like, I have a purpose.
And that sounds so...
Stupid, like, cliche to say, like, oh, comedy gave me a reason to live.
But it really did because I didn't know what that...
I was like, if I'm going to...
What am I going to become a teacher?
I'm not passionate about that.
But this, I was like, okay.
So then I was like, I have to gain some weight if I'm going to now have a career.
So then I started...
I found a therapist.
I was like, I got to beat this.
I started reading books.
I found a therapist.
And I found this one therapist who told me the thing that really broke through, which was like...
When you have anorexia, everyone's like, just eat something.
Why don't you eat something?
And you feel very in control of it and you feel like you're the one to blame for it because you're the one that's choosing not to eat and you're the one that's choosing to exercise.
And so I felt all this shame about, like, why can't I cure myself?
Why am I giving myself this thing that's ruining my life?
And then this therapist was like, think of it as like cancer.
Like, you got sick.
Like something invaded your life and there is a demon inside you telling you don't eat.
And it's not you.
It's not you.
So don't listen to that voice.
And then as soon as I was able to like disassociate My illness from, like, it's my choice.
It's my doing.
I'm not eating.
And I was, like, able to see it as, like, the exorcist.
Like, that little girl has, like, a demon inside her that's like, don't eat, bitch.
Don't eat.
If you eat, you're weak.
As soon as I was able to go shut up voice, then I was able to eat again.
It was, like, one nugget of...
One way of perceiving my illness that was able for me to, like, crack it.
And then it took many years to, like...
And I still struggle with, you know...
Control issues over food, but I'll never be anorexic again.
But yeah, it was that.
It was a mixture of comedy and also therapy that got me out of it.
I had seen so many doctors, but until that one guy told me to think of it and like literally did the thing where he put a chair in the corner of the room and was like, talk to your disease.
Tell it what it's done to your life.
And I had to like...
And I go, this is...
I'm not doing this.
Fuck you for everything!
It took me 30 seconds until I was sobbing, screaming at this empty chair.
I think I'm still so angry about it and there's still pieces of it that I'm like, how did I get this and how did I have to save myself instead of someone else coming in and saving me?
It's very hard for someone to convince someone you need to stop drinking or you need to get your shit together or you need to do this or you need to do that.
There's still just things about it that are really painful to me.
And I think that when I am dealing with something like that on stage, I think the pain still shows and I can't be funny with it yet because I'm still so angry.
I think I'm still just like angry about it because I also feel like I'm still a victim to body dysmorphia like crazy like that's my new thing.
We're like, I'll just see something in the mirror that I'm like, well, yesterday you felt the opposite.
I'll go from in a 24 hour time frame from being like, you're fat.
I'll like look in the mirror and be like, you're fat.
And then the next day I'll be like, you're too thin.
And I'm like, well, those two things can't be possible within 24 hours of themselves.
So, I mean, I'm still dealing with stuff like that, and I want to be on the other side of it and be able to tell girls, like, you're beautiful and your body doesn't matter, and it's what's up here that counts.
But I'm not there yet, so I don't know how to really talk about it.
I think everybody's got their own weird thing that's causing them to have issues, whether it's to be an alcoholic or to be addicted to whatever you're addicted to.
You have to figure out the person and then figure out how this disease or whatever it is is sort of interfaced with that person.
And what is it that happened to you that made this This thing attractive, where it fits into your slots and distracts you from all the things that are freaking you the fuck out about your existence.
But I just know that that's on the horizon, that attention from men and women and just society will start to wane and you'll become more invisible physically to other people.
And I just hope at that point I don't give a fuck.
And then I like myself enough.
And so that's when I'm running at that, trying to like myself enough on the inside, which I really have gotten so far ahead of what I thought I could ever do in terms of loving myself and working on myself and getting sober and all the things.
But I still feel like it's not enough.
I still deal with insecurities and I'm like, God damn it.
I'm aging, and I'm supposed to not feel this.
I'm supposed to not care that I'm aging as much.
I don't want to be one of these women that hates aging.
I mean, this is going to sound ridiculous, but you have to realize that the entire...
Your life from birth to death is a blink of an eye.
It is a very short period of time in terms of the entire life of the planet, the life of the human race, the life of the universe.
It is a blink of an eye.
And for you to wear blinders and concentrate on one tiny little window of sexual viability, it's preposterous.
It's ridiculous.
Because your whole existence is insane.
It's so bizarre.
Looking at people is bizarre.
Like, how the fuck do your eyes work?
You're looking through your eyes, and light is refracted through your lenses and your cornea, and you're seeing things, and I know that if I reach, I can grab this can, and it's right there.
I mean, all of that is bizarre.
And so to concentrate on this one thing, when will people stop wanting to stick their dick into me?
And I think the wider you get away from that and one of the best ways to do that is psychedelic drugs.
Psychedelic drugs are one of the very best ways to broaden your perspective because the experience is so titanically alien and so giant and connects you to the entire universe itself that when you come back down to Earth...
It seems so preposterous and then you see this dance that everybody's involved in you know with putting on fake butts and and fucking getting your lips done and all the chaos that people are doing just to try to attract more sexual attention and Knowing that this is so so such a short period of time one of the things that freaks me out is what I call monster face It's when women get their face pulled back so far that their mouth looks like it's bigger because they've been doing this and so it looks like they just open their mouth up like venom and
fucking get your whole head in there and chop your fucking head off.
Yeah, and then they shoot things into their cheeks to make their cheeks puff up because it eliminates some of the wrinkles, but then it looks like you've been beaten up.
You literally look like you got fucking stung with a swarm of bees.
Well, it also doesn't work because there's a thing called the Fibonacci sequence, and when you look at a person's face, there's a golden ratio of the nose to the eyes to the chin, and as soon as you fuck with anything, as soon as you switch one of those up, like lips, you're like, hey!
Like, if you look at, say, like, Serena Williams, her lips match her face.
And there's a natural order to that.
If you look at Ari Shafir, his nose matches his chin, matches his face.
There's a ratio that it fits in.
And when you get a nose job, and you're supposed to have a big nose, people look at you like, what the fuck is going on?
If you have a Persian face, like a big, robust Persian face, but you have this little fucking pixie Irish nose, people are like, what the fuck is going on with her face?
Because of the fact that I was a comedian and then also because of the fact that, you know, I was...
I was relatively famous back then.
Not famous famous, but I was on television.
I had done some things.
People would want to turn you on to things.
I would go to parties or meet people.
And they would say, hey man, have you ever done mushrooms?
And hey man, have you ever heard of DMT? And then there's a few different things that would happen and you would be around these people who had gone to jail for it or that were like real psychedelic heads.
And once I was around a few of those, I realized, well, there's a whole other world out there.
And then I discovered...
Timothy Leary and John Lilly and this the flotation tank became a giant part of my life and then You know Terrence McKenna and Dennis McKenna and all the the various psychedelic wizards that are out there that have been sort of Expressing that there's there's a whole world out there that you're not seeing It's like we're living life inside this very strange tent This very thin membrane tent.
And if you just unzip that tent and step out, the entire wilderness of the universe exists.
But most people live their life inside this very thin walled tent.
And they think that that tent sort of defines the actual universe itself when it's so small and so limited.
You know, there's been a lot of people that were...
I mean, I have friends that know friends that...
Well, the issue is with, you know, psychosis and people that have schizophrenia, people that have, like, legitimate mental health issues.
And...
The argument is correlation or causation, right?
And the argument is, do psychedelic drugs cause mental illness or do a certain amount of people already have mental illness?
And I think it's much more likely that the percentage of people that are schizophrenic remains static.
Because if you look at it, the number of people who smoke marijuana who are also schizophrenic mirrors the number of people who are schizophrenic, period.
So it's not that marijuana causes schizophrenia.
It's a one out of a hundred or whatever the number is.
They just have this issue.
And for those people, it's critical that they avoid psychedelic drugs, that they avoid marijuana, and probably even alcohol or maybe a bunch of other psychotropic drugs as well.
Because you've got an imbalance.
Just like someone who has a liver disease has an imbalance.
Just like someone who has a lung disorder can...
Breathe well.
Someone has cystic fibrosis or someone who has any number of diseases.
You've got to kind of think of it that way.
There's an ailment of the mind.
And so if you add this unknown element to that ailment, like five grams of dried mushrooms, like, who the fuck knows what could happen?
You might never come back.
And then there's the question, the other part of your question is, is it possible you could open that tent and not like what you see and fuck up your life?
Yes.
Yes.
Even if you don't have schizophrenia or a mental disorder, you might have a view of the world that's untenable with the experience that you have under the influence of psychedelics.
But that might mean that your view of the world is bullshit.
And you've been living your life with this fucking Norman Rockwell nonsense floating around your head because you've been so influenced by media, by songs, and by television shows, and by, you know, I want to live like the kids on Friends.
They don't even live like that!
Look at them, they're all fucked up now, you know?
Matthew Perry looks like he's been to hell and back.
Like that motherfucker went headfirst into a sandstorm and he got his face ripped off like he's been just doing meth every day and smoking cigarettes, one lighting the other from the time he's awake until the time he goes to sleep.
I've talked about this many times in the podcast, that this business is nuts because it takes people that are insecure already and then puts them in a position where they have to get chosen for things.
So you have to audition and people have to decide whether they like you.
Next, Nikki.
Hmm.
Okay, Nikki.
So, what happened to your Comedy Central show?
You had a Comedy Central show that didn't work out?
It was just bad because I was hanging out with two people, a couple that got into a fight while I was with them, and they kicked me out onto the street in New York City.
Yeah, it just got kind of tense hanging out with them.
We were supposed to just, like, us three chill on their roof and, like, look at the skyline and just have a nice night.
But then his girlfriend got sick.
They were in a weird kind of bickering thing.
I was like, I'm gonna go.
I left.
I had been arrested the night before for smoking weed on the street.
So I'd spent six hours in a holding cell the night before.
But I had planned to do mushrooms the day after.
And the guy was like, you should still do them.
We'll celebrate you getting out of jail.
And I was like, okay.
So I... Did mushrooms.
I was broke.
I had just been arrested.
And I was on the street.
And I remember I called my parents because I just felt like the way that smoking weed is portrayed in movies where it's like, whoa, things coming at you.
That's the way I felt on mushrooms.
I don't know if that's the normal way, but I felt like everyone was just in my face.
I called my mom and I go, Mom, I'm on mushrooms right now.
I'm on the Upper East Side.
I'm just trying to get to my friend Mike's house.
And she goes, Who do you think you're talking to?
You don't call your mom and say you're on mushrooms.
She was like, for once in her life she had boundaries.
And she goes, talk to your father.
And so then I talked to my dad and I was like, I'm on mushrooms and I don't know.
And he kind of talked me down.
But I just went home and chugged a bottle of wine because I was like, I want to feel something else other than this because I felt too much.
But now, I think I've read enough about them, and I'm like, you know, there are soldiers that have PTSD that go through talk therapy for years and have minimal amounts of progress.
I only did it once and the rebound the next day was horrific for me.
That was one of the worst hangovers I've ever had.
It wasn't just a hangover.
I felt really stupid.
Like I couldn't read like I was trying to read a magazine the next day I couldn't read and then I had to perform that night and I kind of ate shit on stage and But I'll never forget the lessons from the experience.
It was really powerful like it really illuminated how much insecurity hinders you and inhibits your ability to communicate with people and flavors how you interact with people and how much of you know my own Aggression and the way I would interact with people was basically just me being scared.
Well, you know, when I was young, I was super insecure.
My parents split up when I was really young, and then we moved around a lot, so I didn't have like a base of friends, and then I found martial arts when I was a young teenager.
And...
What martial arts did was it gave me something that I finally felt like I wasn't a loser at.
It was like the first thing that I ever did where I was like, oh, I'm good at something.
I can be really good at something.
And I got good at it really quickly because I was obsessed.
I was completely addicted and I was training every day.
And it became my identity.
So my identity was that I was really good at martial arts.
And so to be really good at martial arts, especially in competition, You have to be very aggressive, you have to be ruthless, and you have to embrace this sort of...
There's an undeniable violence in kicking someone in the head.
I mean, it's very violent.
Like, martial arts competition is extremely violent.
And you have to be able to embrace that.
And the embracing of that and the terror and the fear of it all just...
It shaped my developmental period.
So, like, when I was...
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. That was my whole life.
That was all I did until I started doing stand-up comedy.
So my entire formative period was based on violence.
It was all...
I mean, it was...
Martial arts.
It was very controlled.
I wasn't a bad person who was beating people up or anything like that, but I was ready to go all the time.
It was always around any corner, there might be something, the next person might say the wrong thing, and you might realize you're going to have to fight them, or whatever it was.
I hadn't done it in about a year and a half to two years.
And then we did DMT three or four times.
We did a trip, and then we went back in, and then we went back in again.
I can't remember if it was three or four times, but it was...
It just made me realize, like, oh yeah, okay, this is just, the world that you're living in is like a thin veneer over this gigantic, impossible realm.
That's the realm of souls and of love and expectation and understanding and information and that that's what the universe is made of and that you're sort of trapped in this very strange rudimentary tactile existence where you can pick things up and put them on scales and you can measure things with a ruler but the rest of the universe is not made of that stuff.
The rest of the universe is made out of ideas.
The rest of the universe is made out of thoughts and there's dimensions that you can't travel to with your feet and with a car and with a plane.
Like there's portals that you go through and these portals are chemical portals and your brain literally is wired for these.
Not only that, your brain produces dimethyltryptamine, which is the most potent of all psychedelics.
It's literally made by the human body.
And it's everywhere.
It's in all sorts of plants, thousands of plants.
It's in every animal.
It's like all these different creatures create it, and they have it.
I mean, it's actually made by your third eye.
They're pretty sure.
You know, there's a group out of New Mexico called the Cottonwood Research Foundation, and they're doing these tests on all sorts of tests to...
Find out the source of DMT. And they've isolated it in the pineal gland of rats.
And this is the first time they've ever shown it in a live rat that exists in the pineal gland.
The pineal gland is literally your third eye.
Like that thing from Eastern mysticism, like this right here.
And reptiles, it actually has a retina and a lens.
It's an eyeball.
And this is, the Egyptians would call it the seed of the soul.
And this one spot in your head is producing the most potent psychedelic chemical known to man.
As well as it's produced by your liver and your lungs.
Like, your body's a psychedelic chemical factory.
And this one psychedelic chemical, they believe, and there's been some recent research, there was a recent paper that was put out that showed that they think that during periods of extreme stress, like with periods if your body's convinced that you might be dying or that there's something happening, that you may be releasing this psychedelic chemical.
So it might be the portal to the afterlife.
Like, it might be the way that carries your consciousness through to the next dimension when your body passes.
It was like a big deep breath, and it was like, oh, it's going to be okay.
The last time I did a real serious psychedelic trip, I've done a little bit of acid, a little bit of mushrooms, but the last time, a serious one was right before I filmed Triggered.
It just lets you know.
Just do your best.
Try to be nice.
And this is nonsense.
This whole thing is nonsense.
Don't concentrate on the fact that in 20 years no one's going to want to fuck you or that your tits are going to fall off.
You're alive right now.
You are existing right now in the...
One of the craziest experiences that the world has ever known.
Being a human being in 2018 in the United States of America.
I mean, this is a fucking bizarre pathway you're on.
All of us.
Every single person listening to this.
If you can listen to this podcast, you are in the rarest moment in human history.
You are literally at the cusp, the very peak of this insane merging of technology, of information, of understanding, of expression.
All the stuff that we're seeing going on right now socially, whether it's the Me Too movement or whether it is, you know, social justice warriors and people who are woke and crying out racism, all this bubbling up of our culture is all this recognition of this ability to communicate, this radical new ability to express your ideas that is being done by some people that are irresponsible, some people that are very responsible, but everyone gets a shot.
If you make a mistake or you say something incorrect or you say something mean, you were just trying to be funny, it came out bad.
The blowback lets you know this is how people feel about that.
And it's disproportionate because your signal is disproportionate.
Your ability to express yourself is disproportionate.
So the blowback is going to be disproportionate as well.
So it feels awful.
But that's just an affirmation, just letting you know.
This is not what...
And sometimes people are completely wrong about, like, you know, white girls can't wear hoop earrings.
It's cultural appropriation.
There's bad signals out there.
There's a lot of bad signals, you know, where you're racist if you wear a kimono.
There's a lot of really dumb, bad signals.
But there's also a lot of exchange, and it'll all work itself out.
We just have to be really careful we don't lynch a lot of people along the way.
We don't get convinced that our ideas are 100% the way things should be, and that we listen to all these various ideas, whether it's ideas about Trans people or gay people or women or men or anybody.
It's super important now that people think before they act and that they think before they cast judgment.
We have to communicate because things are fucking flying at us like fish coming down a river and you're trying to catch them with your hands.
Yeah, I mean, I have a radio show every day that I do, and even sitting here now, I'm like, oh, what am I going to regret saying?
And I've just gotten to a point where it's like, I will apologize if I say something stupid and wrong and it offends someone, and I really feel bad about it, but like...
I have to just lead from a place of like, at this point in my life, I know I'm a good person.
I don't think I'm a secret psychopath, which I think a lot of us are always like, am I a bad person deep down?
I see people and I go, why can't I just be like her?
Why can't I just be smiling and friendly?
Be smiling and say funny, nice things that don't offend anyone, but also everyone likes what you say, and it still gets people jazzed up, but you're not offending anyone.
It doesn't feel good to offend people, and I say things all the time that do, and I'm not going to stop because I just can't.
See, the problem is if you have 100 people in the room and 10 of them get offended, 90 of them are fucking slapping the table and laughing their ass off.
And when you both hate someone together and you get to send each other their snap screenshots of their Instagram and be like, look how sad this bitch is.
Because we're all capable of, when you write that name, when you're writing a name in a text, it's so easy to just, that person is probably in your phone, too.
That's generally, for me, what it is, at the root of it, if I'm going to be honest.
I recently got busted talking shit about someone and it got back to me from another friend and I wrote the girl and I go, I'm just jealous of you.
You're cool and you're who I want to be and I want to be friends with you and you didn't seem to want to be friends with me so I decided I hated you and that you weren't to be trusted and I told people that and it wasn't true.
It completely wasn't true.
I was threatened by you and you're hot and I don't like that you exist in the same business as me and it makes me jealous.
I literally have to unfollow girls sometimes who I'm friends with, who are comedians, who are my peers and who I respect and think they're funny.
I have to unfollow them.
If I see that they're just like, I'm working a lot right now and they're putting it out there that they're like really busy with work and I just got kicked off dancing with the stars.
I heard you talking about that the other day of like now that you've done your special ones out and like watching it now you come up with new tags and you're like oh god!
But that's because you're always growing and learning and getting better and I think comedy is like a living thing.
It's like it's alive.
You keep watering and it keeps growing.
You know and sometimes you have to trim things to make it better just like a bush.
You know you trim a little here trim a little there it gets fuller.
You know there's but then also it grows and gets bigger.
You know, but then you got to release it at a certain point in time.
My schedule seems to be two years.
It seems to be I develop a full solid hour in a year and then I hammer that motherfucker like a samurai sword for the next eight months and then I film it and then four months later it airs and then I start from scratch.
One of the things that I've been using over the last couple of years, I always write in Microsoft Word and shit like that, but I use this program called Scrivener that I really like.
And the reason why I really like it, especially when I'm doing new stuff, is the way it's set up.
So this is, with this in Scrivener, if you see here, this is all my new stuff.
So these are all the categories, and I click on each category, and when I go to each category, I have all the material that I've written out about each category.
Because I think there's so much to be gained by sitting in front of a computer working on your act.
That's one step.
Another step is you have to review your act.
You have to listen to it or watch it.
Preferably watch it.
I learned a lot watching the editing when I was editing the special.
I had a snip.
I decided I wanted it to be an hour.
And my set was like an hour and 17 minutes.
So I said, let me just cut.
I just wanted to just fucking...
Boom!
Just one hour, boom, and done.
So I cut a couple of bits out.
But, when I did that, I was like, watching the video, I was like, you know what, I should really videotape everything.
I should watch a video because it's so much more immersive than just audio.
You know, you only get so much out of audio.
I kind of know my expressions and all the different things that I'm doing, but when I see them, I go, oh, it's better if I move like this, or it's better if I pause there, it's better if I raise my eyebrows, it's better if I look concerned.
You don't realize how much of Comedy is the physical thing.
Until you do watch it, you're so right.
And you're right about writing it down.
Anytime I've had to do a transcript, because I don't write anything down longhand, but when I've had to do a transcript for a Tonight Show or Just for Laughs festival and see it, then you start writing new tags and you're like, all this took was from me.
I mean, I know you probably have people come in and clean, but if you're in a hotel room over the weekend and don't have a maid service, what are we looking at?
But it is interesting to me because I would have thought you were very meticulous with, like, organization and wasted a lot of time organizing things, and I like that you don't.
There has to be, look, if you're a comic, right, and if you're good, especially, I think there's a certain amount of you that has to be impulsive.
It has to be reckless and impulsive, and you have to be, like, one move away from ruining your life all the time.
But you have to keep it under control.
It's like you have a wolf and you have it behind this flimsy chain link fence that you're just like, I'm going to wire this fucking shut and I'm going to go to work and I hope the wolf doesn't get out.
That's literally what it's got to be like.
But then you also have to have discipline.
And I think those two counterbalance each other.
And one of the things that's helped my act tremendously over the last few years...
I think Triggered was my best special ever and I think this one is better than that.
I think Strange Times is better than Triggered.
And one of the things that over the last three or four years that I've really concentrated on is this process.
The process of organizing and being very meticulous about like how I structure my material and then doing a lot of sets too.
You got to do that and then fuck around and go on stage drunk.
I like to go on stage high.
I like to fuck around because those are workout sets.
In those moments of chaos, sometimes a thing will come out that wasn't there before.
It just pops out of nowhere and that motherfucker might be my Bruce Jenner bit.
That might be my closing bit.
Those bits are rare.
They're strange.
They're ethereal.
They come out of the sky.
You don't know where they're from.
And you have to nurture that.
And that comes from chaos.
And that's not necessarily a discipline thing.
The creativity and the madness has to sort of...
They have to share space with the discipline.
They have to go back and forth with each other.
So we've always thought...
Like, people have always thought of comedians as being, like, sad people, or drunks, or messy people, or not disciplined, don't have their shit together, but why?
I don't think that's the case.
Like, I'm always gonna be fucked up, right?
Okay, so how about I be fucked up, but I also keep it together, you know?
I bet less crazy than the average person because we're free to express ourselves.
The average person has to live this fucking bizarre contained life where you show up the same place every day, do something you don't want to do every day with a bunch of people you probably don't even like.
And you're all backstabbing and weird with each other and you're just doing it for a paycheck.
You know, and you're spending the majority of your time here on this heavenly body hurling through infinity, doing something you don't want to do.
You go on stage in the main room and you fucking crush and you say, thank you, goodnight, and everybody goes, ah!
That feeling of making all those people happy, they went out, they got babysitters, they got together, they dressed up, they went to dinner, they got to the comedy store, they ordered drinks, they sat down there and you fulfilled their expectations.
You gave them what they wanted to see and I've seen you do it and that feeling that you get when that happens, it's indescribable.
And that moment when I was in that audience watching that and in dying laughing and looking around I remember I really really distinctly remember looking not just looking at the screen but looking at all the people that were just like slapping the chair and moving around and holding their chest and Thinking how insane is it that this guy can do this that this guy can just talk and just through talking He's making me laugh way harder than any movie
I'd ever seen in my life.
And I think that movie came out, I think Live at the Sunset Show came out around the same time as Stripes, which is one of my all-time favorite comedies.
But I remember thinking, why isn't Stripes as funny as that guy talking?
How insane is this thing that this guy can do?
Where he's just talking.
unidentified
Stripes, I'm watching all this stuff play out, and there's tanks.
Like, it's universally accepted that if you go to see, you know, fill in the blank, Dave Chappelle, whoever it is that's killing, Bill Burr, when they're on stage smashing, that that's probably the funniest thing you could ever experience.
I'm just like watching these dancers like how did you just do like that?
That took me months to learn and you just taught it to this girl in three minutes for her to fill in for me to do the camera block like it was just like I couldn't but yet you that is the thing of the wonder of like I just can't I don't even know what that's like to do but I of course do you play any instrument?
But I think that what you're seeing, whether it's in music or going to see a great comic or anything, what you're seeing is these portals for expression.
And the more they concentrate on that portal for expression, whether it's dancing or whether it's musicians or...
Even someone making a film, the more they concentrate on those portals of expression, the better the message and the better the impact it's going to be for the people that are enjoying it, the people that watch it.
And I think Paul Mooney told me that a long time ago when I was a young comic coming up and he was like the old sage at the comedy store.
unidentified
He goes, if you really want to get good at comedy, you want to go up and kill?
When, you know, you go see someone sing and it's fucking amazing and you're like, God, that portal for expression.
Like they've honed whatever message that's going to go through that portal and it reaches you.
It's the result of hundreds if not thousands of hours of twisting and turning and hammering and sculpting and massaging and sanding and then you get to see it in this finished form.
You saying that to me just now, it's like, I need to work harder at doing, like, it sounds stupid, but I need to go enjoy myself and be entertained more.
You're absolutely right, because every time I do, I walk away from it, and I go and be a better comedian.
I think you could definitely get too distracted when you're not concentrating on what you should be doing, but I also think you could get too focused, where you lose track of what it is.
It's almost like a big part of my philosophy, like who I am.
It's never stopped.
Because, you know, I started working for the UFC in 1997. That's when I started doing post-fight interviews.
And I was still very involved in martial arts then.
That's when I was just starting to learn jiu-jitsu.
So I was involved in a new martial art for me.
And then I've never stopped.
I've always done something.
And I've never stopped paying attention to it or studying it or learning new moves or paying attention to new trends or, you know, watching fights or, you know, especially things that I don't necessarily practice as much.
I'm interested in that, like watching different things that people do.
To me, it's going to sound ridiculous, but it's a spiritual way to achieve your food.
To get meat.
And spiritual sounds ridiculous to people.
Like, oh, you're shooting an arrow at an animal?
You have to be so finely tuned with your senses and your skills and your abilities.
And there's so much consequence on the line if you fuck up.
And then the pressure is so immense that to me it's almost cleansing in its intensity and that I think doing difficult things makes doing other difficult things better.
Not easier, but you get better at it.
I think if you put yourself in a situation, this happens to certain comedians, They get really good, they get really famous, and then they only perform for their crowd, and they get soft.
I think we've all seen them.
They start to suck.
Their comedy gets soft, and they become almost like someone doing an impression of them.
They lose their edge.
And I think one of the ways to keep your edge is to always be scared.
So always do something that scares the shit out of you.
Always do something that's nerve-wracking.
Always do something that's difficult whether it's a martial art or it's learning to dance or learning an instrument or there's something that's something hard like for Bill Burr does he flies helicopters he plays the drums.
I think things like that there I think those are critical.
I think you need different and it almost like should be thought of as like a protocol Like cross-training.
That you're not just going to do your discipline, but you're also going to be involved in other disciplines that they add to what you're doing.
Yeah, I think that's what you're hitting on exactly why I said yes to Dancing with the Stars, which dancing is the thing that I know that I'm worst at, was because it's like, that's the scariest thing to me.
And if I do that, then I can do so many other things that I'm also scared of, that I'm not as scared of as dancing.
Like, it's really weird, but like...
I talk a lot about sex.
I want to do weird sex things in my life that I haven't done.
I don't think that liking dick makes you like pussy any less.
If you're bisexual, it's not like you have an amount of liking other people's body parts to give out and you're giving half of that to dicks and half of that to pussies.
I think you can like them both equally and be as excited by them in front of you.
No, but I think, yeah, I'm into, I don't, I think that if, I'm not like, I don't look at women and go like, I want to fuck her, but if a girl was like super into me, I could totally date someone and fall in love with someone and like be in a romantic sexual relationship with a girl that would be just as gratifying as with a man.
But she would have to be, she would have to be into me.
I made out with all my girlfriends before I ever kissed a guy because I was so scared of boys that the first time I got drunk I made out with all of my girlfriends because we wanted to kiss boys but we didn't have boys around who liked us.
See, the problem is, I know so many closeted gay guys, and there's several stages to that.
There's closeted gays that are out to their friends, which I have friends that are closeted gay that are out to their friends, but they're in the business, and so they're closeted.
Yeah, and probably maybe even more because it's just such a stigma.
Whenever there's a stigma to something, there's always going to be a bunch of people that are just in denial of it and just they're sad that they are and, you know, there's a lot of that.
There was a guy that I used to know.
And he was a comic.
And he used to have the most ruthlessly homophobic material.
It was awful.
It was awful.
Like, he used to do, like, he used to, God, he used to do these really mean, nasty jokes about gay guys.
And then I moved out here to L.A. And then somebody said, hey, did you hear that guy's gay?
I went, what?
He goes, yeah, he finally came out.
I'm like, get the fuck out of here!
And then I go back home, went back to Boston, and then all of a sudden he's like a big old queen.
Because to be living in that lie, like, oh yeah, I thought of that.
That's my joke.
You're constantly justifying it and living in your head like that.
Those comics, when they get outed and they're forced to write their own material, they fucking suck.
They suck like a joke, like an open-miker or something, like someone who doesn't know how to do comedy.
And they could have been doing comedy for 10, 15 years, but you'll see their material and compare it to the jokes they stole, and you're like, You're so right.
One of the things that happens, like when someone gets caught stealing, we were just talking about this the other day, was that when someone gets caught stealing and then you call them on it, they say, I won't do that again, and then you say, hey, you hear he just did your bit at the laugh factory?
Like, that motherfucker, he said he would stop doing it.
I mean, I know that maybe towards the end when everything was kind of blowing up around him with other men that he was maybe worried about it, but do you think he went years of like, I hope this doesn't come back?
Yeah, and they love the fact that you can be so brave that you can talk about all the different things that you love that other people might be scared of admitting.
But when I did Dancing with the Stars, I really came out of it being like, I'm ready to eat some pussy now because I faced my fear of dancing in front of millions of people, which is like the scariest thing I've ever done on live TV. Anything could go wrong.
And now I'm like, why am I so scared of a threesome?
Because I think my thing about a threesome is I'm going to get into it and I'm going to be like, I don't want to be here and that I'll still have to go through with it.
I think that as a woman, we are so conditioned to think that men have to come at the end of it.
There's the thing called blue balls and that if you've made out with a guy and gotten alone with a guy and you've decided to hook up with a guy and you're like, I'm getting naked with a guy, you have to go through the whole thing until he orgasms.
Well then you better not tell me another one because you just said this is the last one I'll need.
Even though you'll say that next year too.
So there's endless things but I but my new thing is now like when I used to be so scared of hooking up with guys because I was like if I agree to kiss a guy alone in a room then I'm probably agreeing to have sex with him and then I don't even want to put myself in that scenario so I just didn't even kiss boys.
See, that's something that a man doesn't have to fear, right?
If a man is alone with a woman and he's making out with her in a room, he doesn't think like, oh my god, I have to satisfy her or she's going to be mad at me.
Yeah, and it's not even about like, it is exactly what you're saying because I want to backtrack and say it's not about like he's going to force me to have sex with him.
I was literally hooking up with them and I was like, I think this is it.
This is going to be it.
But here's my thing.
I hate being this woman, but if I'm going to get anything across to your listeners, because I sound like a hack 80s female comic right now, but more foreplay.
I never thought I'd be a woman that says that.
Just like...
We need...
I could always be convinced to have sex with you.
If I'm willing to make out with you, then I am somewhere in the realm of things.
And I'm not giving this to every woman, but for me, I am willing to take a good dicking from you.
I want to give, like, sex TED Talks because I think that I could get men and women to have more sex and enjoy it more because I've just given this stuff so much thought, but I really hate being the girl to say more...
But yeah, it's every morning from 10 to 12 Eastern on Comedy Central Radio, Sirius XM, Channel 95. So you have to get up and be there every morning at 10 a.m.?