Ron Funches and Joe Rogan dissect comedy’s emotional boundaries, from Funches’ stand-up growth (validated by peers like John Mulaney) to Rogan’s critique of rap’s shift from rebellion (e.g., N.W.A.) to mundane topics. They contrast wrestling’s staged violence with jiu-jitsu’s technical depth and Funches’ weight loss journey—from 360 lbs to 220 lbs in two years—driven by discipline, not just ambition. Overfishing’s "ocean genocide" and plastic pollution (like the Pacific garbage patch) spark Rogan’s call for sustainable solutions, while Funches credits diverse comedy exposure for his evolution. Ultimately, their conversation underscores how talent, effort, and awareness—over conformity or conflict—shape success in art and life. [Automatically generated summary]
The difference that I'm learning between when I do comedy and acting is that like the last thing people really want to see from your own stage is you really get emotional.
Yeah.
You know, but when you act you have to go to that right away.
We were talking about how weird it is that you could actually have something that sounded so similar to that, but we could tell the difference.
Like with the exact same words, you know, with enthusiasm, just something's off about it.
Something's off about it that you know it's funny versus something's off about it where you know that person's serious.
And a person, like I was, we were just saying, try to explain that to someone who doesn't understand English or doesn't understand human communication.
But when I first started my acting class, I was talking about that with my acting coach.
And I'd be like, there's a point, like, if my set's really going well, where I'm in the present moment of enjoying the set and saying these words, but at the same time, I'm in the future thinking about what's coming next.
I'm surveying everything that's going around me, and I'm also still kind of like judging myself off of what just happened.
And so this thing happens where you're kind of like time traveling in a way, where you don't exist in any one space of time.
You just kind of like remove yourself from that.
And when your set's going really well, that's the thing that my girlfriend and I have talked about is that you can hear these sets and hear these jokes.
You can see someone set multiple times, but if they're really good, oftentimes you don't remember the joke.
Like how many times people go back and quote a joke to you and they've got it half wrong.
Right.
Because they've heard you a thousand times, but they got the joke half wrong because you've hypnotized them.
I'm not constantly like, oh, I need to write this down.
Every day I have the structure.
But I'm constantly...
I try to make my house so that we're constantly always joking around with each other.
There's notebooks everywhere.
There's little bowls of post-it notes for me whenever I... An idea comes, I have to make sure I catch it, and then I have to make sure that I work on it.
That becomes a difference, just constantly keeping myself in motion so that I don't get stagnant and I don't just do the same 10-15 over and over again.
That's where I think, especially when I first moved out here, it was always about, oh, I've got to show these people that I'm good, so I've got to do my best work.
My best work.
And I did that for about three months.
And I was like, oh, I don't have anything in the kitchen.
I don't have any backup, you know?
I haven't been building anything up.
And so I learned very quickly.
I think the comedy story has been the best for me at that.
It's just being like, having to follow people who are completely not like me stylistically.
Having to follow people who I grew up watching.
You know, I did a...
Night the other day where I had to follow, it was Sebastian and then Ron White and then me.
And then I was like, there's no...
I mean, I'm like, I'm confident in myself.
Some people know me, but when it comes to that, it's like...
I'm the bottom of the totem pole on those three, and I had to go out there and just show them that, like, I'm capable.
I'm not gonna mess up the momentum here.
I'm just as funny as these people.
You just don't know me.
You haven't met me yet.
That's the thing.
I've been listening to a lot, like, there's rappers all the time, but, like, there's rapper 2 Chainz where he said, like...
I just had to wait for the fans and for the game to learn what I already knew.
And that's where I'm starting to feel now, a new confidence of like, I know I'm good and I just have to wait for people to catch up on my wave.
And given what we know about prohibition, sounds like an interview, given what we know about prohibition, like how bad it was for alcohol and how it popped up, the organized crime, and I mean...
It caused a lot of problems.
Do you think it would be a wise thing to make all drugs legal?
I think you have to start, I guess that's really trying to give people a lot of credit about their intelligence and their decision making, right?
And that's what you're trying to lead towards, that the individual is very intelligent and they're going to make their decision no matter what, and that By putting these stigmas to it, just like, you know, prostitution, things like that, you're just adding extra jail time, extra obstacles, extra life-threatening situations.
But I think there's a real problem with infantilizing adults.
The real problem is if you are 25 years old or older and you decide you want to try cocaine, why can they say you can't do that?
Why?
Says who?
Says who?
Why is that a why why if you catch me with that can you put me in a jail it grows from the ground?
It's a plant they take that plant they process it they turn into cocaine.
They still use it legally for Lidocaine and medical grade cocaine.
They still use it for the flavor of coca-cola They still use the leaves they still use the plant like who says I don't even do coke but who the fuck do you think is making money selling coke and Because there's a lot of coke.
Yeah, and that was an interesting time because that's, I mean, talking about real anger, we talked about before, these are coming from real places of people who were dealing with Los Angeles at a horrible time and a lot of police corruption.
And then what's crazy is then you...
It goes the other way, right?
They take that real anger that people connect it to, and then they just start manufacturing it.
And then rap becomes all these fake stories of like, I murdered all these people, I have all this money, and now it's just so far gone that it's hard to find.
I mean, now my favorite authentic rap is like people who are like, oh, you know, I can't find my Wi-Fi password.
I mean, that is like a classic example of someone taking the art form and completely switching it up and slowing it down and make it casual and relaxed and celebratory.
I just changed my diet and started exercising a bunch.
From a guy who didn't exercise at all and ate multiple Philly cheesesteaks a day to a guy who eats a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and protein shakes.
The diet and just feeling better nutrition-wise is very helpful.
Yeah.
You know, just doing two shows a night now.
You know, that used to be a thing for me.
I used to be, like, really tired afterwards.
And now, you know, no problem.
I do a lot of voiceovers and other little things.
And so, you know, I'm always bouncing around from going, like, doing shows on the weekend and coming home and then having to go do voiceover on Monday morning and taking care of my son and helping him with his homework.
Just being able to do that and not being like, oh, I gotta go pass out.
I'm tired.
That's really the biggest deal, being able to take on more so then I'm able to make more money.
You know, and you realize like, and it's just like, even if it's not that, like when a kid's sitting on your neck, it's not like the ideal place to carry all the weight.
They actually make a thing.
There's a company called the Outdoorsman.
They make a thing called the Atlas Pack.
It's like a backpack frame, but at the back of it is like one of those weightlifting posts.
So you could slide an Olympic barbell or an Olympic plate on and two plates.
You could put as much as 90 pounds on it, clamp this thing down.
And then it's sitting more on your hips.
It's way easier to carry.
But even that, still, it fucking sucks, man.
Walking around with just 45 extra pounds on your back sucks.
I'm happy whenever anybody does anything that benefits their health, whether it's for whatever your motivation.
The end result is always good.
It's always good, no matter what motivation is, positive or negative.
If you want to prove somebody wrong, You know, or you just want to do just do better just have a better path You know, so it's so it's so attainable for so many people so many people could at least Be way healthier at least have way more energy at least like understanding that not that feeling of just being like all day and every time I cheat like with Burgers and fries and and and like milkshakes and shit like that if I really go off the deep end with my diet I I feel like
dog shit.
I feel terrible.
It hits me.
I'm like, oh!
And then you gotta realize, hey man, this is how a lot of people feel all the time.
Just going off, ate half a burger and was feeling so sick.
And then I was like, man, I used to...
Live like this every meal.
My body is just a testament of what your body is capable to adapt to.
But once you start going the other way and start really getting healthy and your body becomes more sensitive to it, you really are like, oh, I prefer not to cheat.
There's nothing wrong with an ice cream or something like that every now and again or some sort of a dessert, but really it's They just think that your body has to be accustomed to getting what it needs.
That's what it is.
And for too many people, they're running on a nutrition deficit.
So when your body's just not getting what it needs for long periods of time, then you develop chronic inflammation and all sorts of other problems.
And this is what people are really suffering from.
They're suffering from a nutritional deficiency that's probably lasted for years.
They probably never...
Some people, they go 10, 15, 20 years without even thinking about their diet and they're just eating dog shit.
You're just eating stuff that doesn't have enough nutrients and your body just starts to get weaker.
There's no way around it.
And if you just...
Just turn that, start eating salads, eating healthy fish and some healthy meat, and just take some vitamins.
Just take some vitamin supplements.
Real simple.
Get yourself some multivitamins.
Get yourself a little thing of Athletic Greens or something.
If you're sitting there and you're having a burger and fries and enjoying the shit out of it and some asshole next to you has got kale with shaved pecans and talking shit about your diet while they're pouring fresh olive oil on top of their shitty salad.
And that's where I've been coming from, and that's why I have to keep reminding myself because I get frustrated when I'm at these parties or whatever and see food everywhere, crafts everywhere, and I have to stay focused on this diet because I'm like...
I, you know, I'm 36 now and I want to make sure that I'm at my healthiest and I return this deficit when I'm 40, you know, because when the natural aging process kicks in, I don't want to be, like, kicking off still being, you know, 230, 220 pounds.
I want to be, like, 200 and be able to coast and be a hot old man.
That's what I've been trying to do now is, I think, you know, when you're younger, 20s, teens or whatever, you don't want to listen to anybody saying those things.
And now I'm like, I'm starting to listen when someone I know, one of my friends are 50 or older and they're like, hey, you need to do this now because one cheat meal for me is two weeks of work.
But when I say nerd, I mean it with all due respect.
Because I'm a nerd in a lot of ways with some things.
But they're...
They're very like jiu-jitsu geeks.
They're like people that are obsessed with anything else, whether it's music or video games.
They become obsessed, but they're doing it in this physical way that requires you to have a deep understanding of all the potential moves.
It's very complicated in terms of your ability to...
When you're rolling with someone, like say if I roll with a guy and I know he's like a brown belt or a black belt or something like that, We're having an argument.
It's like a conversation with techniques.
And the more of a vocabulary you have and the stronger your use of those words are, particularly the basic words, the better your chance of winning the argument.
That's what it's like almost like.
This really complicated debate with physical leverage and choking and strangling.
He's this very famous Jiu-Jitsu black belt world champion.
Super nice guy.
One of the nicest guys on the planet.
But every time I grapple with him...
It's a matter of time before he catches me with something.
It's not whether or not I'm ever going to catch him.
That's not going to happen.
It's just a total different world.
And a lot of that is his deep knowledge and understanding something.
And you being a smart guy...
I think you'd get into it.
Especially because you love pro wrestling.
At least you have a mindset for watching guys do things to each other, manipulate each other, which is half of what's exciting about pro wrestling, right?
Some guy pulling off some crazy move.
Even if it's orchestrated, it's still a crazy thing that these guys are pulling off on each other.
Knowing what you know now about brain damage and knowing what you know now about that it's not even concussions necessarily as much as it's sub-concussive trauma that doesn't knock you unconscious but just rattles your fucking head and the repeated impacts of those.
Yeah, no, I go back and sometimes I watch some older wrestling and it really makes me cringe because we got a lot of guys taking all these chair shots straight to the face.
And then there's other guys that are basically doing like a ridge hand strike to your neck.
They're clipping guys on the chin like this.
And they follow through and it looks like a slap.
But this is not a slap.
This is like a karate chop.
They're like going like that to the head.
I mean, it's way harder.
And then some guys are doing like a boss root and palm strike.
They're hitting like this.
They're doing like a right hook to the head like that.
It's brutal.
Guys are getting knocked unconscious.
I like to see it but just with like older black moms they used to be the dumbest thing ever It was called X-Arm, and they would tape these guys' arms together and let them have an MMA fight.
It was an MMA fight slash arm wrestling competition, and they were taped together.
It sounds so stupid, you can't imagine that not only was it real, but that the guy who created it was one of the original creators of the UFC. It's such a crazy idea.
They just went for it, man.
Look, they taped these people together.
Their arms are taped together.
They can't even move away.
And then when they say go, they start fighting.
Come on.
And they get in arm bars.
This guy fucks this guy's arm up.
Dude, he broke his arm on the table.
100%.
If that guy keeps pulling on that thing, he gets his arm snapped.
Well, it was interesting to me, too, because as a very young man, I think I was like 23 or 24, I got to see how fucking smart this guy was, yet he still wound up in prison.
So I was like, okay.
Just because someone's a criminal doesn't mean they're stupid, and just because someone's smart doesn't mean they won't go to jail.
You know, some weirdos from society that can figure their way to be able to be at this place at 1 o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday.
Like, why the fuck are you here, man?
Like, don't you have responsibilities?
No one there had to be responsibilities.
Everyone there was some sort of either a professional gambler or they had, like, one of the guys was a fireman who they would put them on these 24-hour shifts and then they would have a couple days off and just come to the pool hall and hang out, watch guys gamble.
Well, that's one of the reasons why I fit in there from stand-up.
You know, like, starting doing stand-up from 21 and then being around these pool hall guys when I was like 23 or 24. I was like, oh, you guys are like my fucked up friends that I like.
It's like, too many people out there Think that there's only one way to live your life.
Well, in general, how can anyone give you advice that doesn't relate to something that happened to them, you know?
Like, they're only going by their life experience.
so that's one thing um i learned from the chris jericho another wrestler where he was just like you don't listen to unsuccessful people because they don't know how to do it yeah why would they tell you of course they're going to tell you you can't do it because they couldn't do it a successful person will tell you you can do it most people i know like if you tell someone that hey i want to go try comedy you know if you don't if you have the balls to get up there and do it they're going to support you.
On both sides, there's plenty of people out there that will give you good advice and really care and want you to do well in your life, and there's plenty of people that don't want to see anybody doing any better than them, and they're not doing that well.
There's a lot of that.
There's a lot of that.
That's a sickness that we've got to forgive people for, because I had it when I was a young man, for sure.
And I think many of us struggle with it.
It's one of the things that made me realize that I was looking at stand-up the wrong way in terms of other people's stand-up.
I was looking at other people's stand-up as a comparison to mine.
I was judging, like, who's the best?
Who's doing better?
Who's this?
Who's that?
And then I realized, like, that is so stupid.
Like, I should just be a fan of comedy and do comedy.
And so I shifted the way I thought about it.
So instead of, like, when I would see someone killing, I'd be like, God, I wish I thought of that bit.
Or, God, he's doing so good.
Shit, now I have to follow him.
Instead...
Somewhere along the line, I got to a place where you're like, this is great.
I was very competitive, not but maybe a year or two ago.
And getting in a relationship that I'm in now has been very helpful because she's a big fan of comedy.
And she always wants to watch comedy.
And so then I'm always like...
Okay, I have to just not be—I just have to enjoy these people, too, because you're right.
They're great.
I had to learn, like, I don't want everybody to be doing the comedy that I'm doing, or I'm not special.
I want to see all these different types of styles.
I think, I mean, the fact that me and you are in this room together and we both respect each other's comedy and our comedy's worlds apart and different, you know?
Just two completely different styles, but we both respect each other because we both know that we're authentic in what we do, you know?
If I were to try to be like you, that would make no sense.
No, I respect the fuck out of you, man, and I respect your process.
You know, you're, like, we were talking about it as an art form, as this structure-based, you know, like, you structure things.
You know how to set things up.
It's so important, and we don't have anyone to tell us how to do it.
We have to kind of, like, learn from each other and learn from the greats of the past that we can...
We could watch, but in a lot of ways, it's sort of an undocumented art form in terms of the creation of the art form.
And part of the problem is that everybody has their own way of doing it.
That's why I asked you, do you write down?
Do you type?
Some of the best just have ideas, and they don't write shit.
And then they go on stage a lot, and then they work those ideas out when they're on stage, and they work those ideas out in their head, and they keep everything in their head.
There's a lot of guys who are really great who don't write.
They just write in the moment.
They write on stage and they have ideas and they flesh them out and they continue to work on them and they just stay active.
And they never have to actually sit and write.
And they're some of the best.
And then there's guys who write every day and they're some of the best.
You know, it's like, fuck, man.
I don't think there's the right way to do it.
I think you just have to care and you have to be trying to get better.
It's got to be effort and not going back and like what I'm trying to do now is...
It's be a little bit more picky because I did my special and then I go write a joke and I go, oh, you're basically doing an extension of what you've already written.
Don't do that.
Let's try something new.
If you don't have it, let's just go up there and relax a bit.
Live life a little bit.
Most of my material is personal anyway.
I don't really do a lot of topical.
So for me to generate material, I usually have to be active in life and have things happen to me.
I don't like to bring it up all the time, but when something like Brody's passing happens, I have to go like, oh yeah, stop being so in the rat race and so competitive all the time and worried about what you're making and realize that the true gift is the time that you get to spend more.
With these truly unique minds.
You know, the people who don't think like me at all.
People who, like you say, I see jokes every day where I go, oh, fuck, like, how, like, that was in the air for anyone.
And it's not that it's not a lot of money to work at a club.
It's great money.
It's not bad.
But it's a different choice.
It's like the choice of right now, for me, the choice is about just trying to make my shit make more sense and more reps in front of different people and more feels, more different vibes.
Yeah.
Every time you go on stage, you're in a different place.
I'm getting ready to go out on a tour and I specifically was asking my people.
I was like, I want to go to Huntsville, Alabama.
I want to go to these places that you don't expect to see me and I want to see A, because I think it'd be cool to just bring in people who are like, hey, why are you here?
And I want to see That's why I'm going to Australia.
I just want to make my comedy travel and I'll learn.
I'll learn how to...
I'm sure I'll go in there and I'll say something that's too American and I'll be like, oh, okay.
And then it'll just inform my writing and I'll start writing more globally and those are the type of things I'm looking for now.
It's a dumb thing here that's just a remnant of propaganda and dumb stoners that are real people.
You know, I mean, there's always that time where you run into someone who's too high and you're like, oh man, you're just fucking up the whole stereotype, man.
I've been walking in the last couple of days telling my girlfriend, I go, the craziest thing would be if they say he's not guilty because then you have to go, what happened?
Did he bribe somebody or did some new evidence come forth that they had a bad investigation?
Did the two guys that were his witnesses, did they get caught lying about something else?
You know, the witnesses against them, they might have caught them lying about something else and they don't know what to do and they have to abandon the case because then they obviously know that these guys lied about something.
Like, this is a crazy scene in the movie where crazy music is playing, and you see Jussie Smollett come out in slow motion and put his sunglasses on and get into the limo.
And he comes out in slow motion and gets in the limo, and then dudes are wearing ski masks, and people are pulling on...
It's like...
Like, one ongoing story in one of those Tarantino movies where you've got four stories like Pulp Fiction battling it out.
He's one of them.
Where he gets not guilty and he becomes a big twist because you feel like you find out there's some behind-the-scenes shenanigans and shit that led to this.
Yeah, it's way, way, way, way, way too shooty, right?
And do you think that people, this is my opinion, I want to know if you agree, I think that people in colder areas, like Detroit, in Boston, Chicago, like there are different kind of people.
There are hardier people than people that grow up, like in San Diego, no disrespect San Diego, I'm sure a lot of you are hard as fuck.
But there's like a difference between people that have to shovel snow and deal with that fucking winter and be holed up and really be fucking freezing.
Like when you come in from outside, you're like, fuck, fuck, fuck.
And you appreciate the warmth of a nice restaurant or something like that when you walk in from out of the cold.
There's something I miss about when it was snowing and you would go outside and it would be silent.
You wouldn't hear anything.
It was one of some of my favorite times living in Boston, or Newton, where I was.
I lived right across the street from the Charles River.
And there was this big grassy area in front of my house.
And you'd just look at all the white.
It would just be all thick white snow, and it muffled everything.
It was sound insulation for everything.
You didn't hear shit.
You know that feeling, Jamie?
You grew up in Columbus.
You know when you get a big snowstorm?
It's quiet.
It's just like sound deadening everywhere.
There's no hard edges anymore.
Everything is covered with snow.
And it's just quiet.
It feels good.
It would feel good.
You know, it would feel like, yeah, this is nice.
As long as you have food, as long as you know it's going to go away, as long as the plows are still running, as long as you have either firewood or a backup generator or something, sometimes that electricity cuts out.
unidentified
And then everyone gets scared, noddles up together.
Everybody does if you live in a place where it snows.
At some point in time, the power goes out.
I remember these guys in Toronto were telling me their power went out for two weeks, and it was fucking crazy cold, like in the zeros and below zero.
And they were doomed.
I mean, there was ice everywhere and ice had made the power lines fall down.
They had, you know, like frozen rain had come and covered everything with ice and things were breaking off and power was out and like blocks and blocks and blocks.
And all these people in fucking the dead of winter in a city were in danger.
And what I think about it more than anything is from natural disasters.
That's what I think about.
I think about the potential for natural disasters.
It can happen at any moment.
And most people have no preparation for it whatsoever.
They have no idea what they would do.
It just seems that if you're paying attention to history at all, you know that it happens all the time.
It almost just happened.
That one that you pulled up the other day that happened in December, some asteroid that blew up in our atmosphere that had five times the power of Hiroshima.
I think that's one of the biggest life lessons I had by having a not most stable childhood of moving around a lot and bouncing around to different schools and different states where I learned very quickly that things aren't permanent and I learned also that things are very relative to whatever area you are.
That's what really helped me I think what helps my voice as a comedian now is that I've learned very young that what's cool is very relative to wherever you are.
The things that were cool in Chicago, people weren't on in Oregon.
Things that were cool in Oregon were like Greece.
That would have gotten me beat up in Chicago.
So I learned very quickly to just be like, oh man, just...
Enjoy what I do and just like what I'm about.
It's really helped my life be more peaceful in that way.
And that's why I'm a 36-year-old man who owns a shit ton of wrestling action figures.
And that's where it's about, because you think that thing would be like comedy, but then you also learn that you can overdose on that.
You can be over...
Because that's the thing I learned...
When I started headlining, and then you hear these stories when I was younger, like when Greg Giraldo died, or Patrice died, and I just get to these parts where I'm like, man, that's like...
And obviously, all due respect to them, but I was like, I don't want to die on the road.
That's not how I want to live my life.
I don't want to be found in some hotel somewhere.
I want my family around me.
I want people who care about me.
And that really made me be like, okay, I have to think about more than just each individual set.
I have to start thinking about, what do I want to give back?
What do I want to do bigger than that?
What do I want to do if...
I just want to do the road for fun.
If I just want to, like, if I want to move into something else, my son's 16, he's going to be going, hopefully, he'll be going to college soon, and I want to be, like, I want to be able to spend more time with him, you know?
Yeah, your life as a comic, you know, oftentimes, Find that guys go through these stages and then the first stage kind of feel like an imposter feel like a fraud You know you feel like like I'm not really that good at this and then you you get to a stage where you feel like a professional When you feel your professional then you start to take put more responsibility On you on your work,
you know for me, I think that's right around when it happened with me Somewhere around ten years in I decided like hey, I gotta I gotta treat this like I'm an actual professional and stop fucking off and I fucked off a lot.
I went through periods of years where I didn't write anything, where I was really lazy and I had the same sex.
I was doing TV show shit, sitcom stuff, and I just wasn't working on the act at all.
But it's just such a more energized time right now in comedy.
Guys like Santino, we were talking about all these guys that are coming up.
Having all this good comedy around you, it's almost like...
It raises everybody's vibration.
The whole community.
The better everybody gets, instead of how everybody used to approach it, where everybody was competing against each other, and then you have weird feelings when you're around each other, now everything's a different kind of vibe.
And one thing I'm really liking is a change of the presentation of people being more cognizant of like, I want to present like just dressing up more, you know, looking nicer, not necessarily trying to like, suit up or anything.
But I see more and more posters and more and more things where people are clearly putting work into their graphic design and their art.
And I don't want to speak for female comedians at all, but I'm just noticing a trend more where women are being...
Because it used to be either like, I am the hot girl.
Or like, I'm just a dude like you.
Don't worry.
I might be hot, but you wouldn't know because I'm wearing a hoodie.
And now there's just more of these women being like, I'm just me.
And so I might be hot, but that's not a part of this.
And I see that a lot now.
But they'll still go out there and they'll put out their posters where they're in a bikini or whatever.
Because it's like, why wouldn't you?
Just like when I go and I wear a suit.
But I love seeing people...
Take charge of that, of what they're presenting.
That's how I used to dress all the time, which is wear a big purple hoodie or whatever.
But now I'm more like, I want to look more like a star.
I remember the Martin Lawrence days when he was on top and he'd wear those crazy outfits on stage or Eddie Murphy in Raw where he'd wear this crazy leather jumpsuit.
He put a lot of effort into what he was going to wear.
Delirious, that was another one.
Eddie Murphy had these crazy costumes that you could only wear if you were doing stand-up in a lot of ways.
I talk to people who I admire or people who I want to learn from, people who have accomplished things I want to accomplish or have gotten better in some form in their life and I ask them about it and about setting goals and stuff.
I usually just ask people about their goals, and I ask them about some advice to give me.
But other than that, it's usually just some type of free-form conversation.
It's just...
You know, it's funny sometimes.
But for the most part, it's just like...
The reason why I wanted to do it is because I was a big fan of, like, Patton Oswalt's website, The Spew, and stuff like that when he had that.
And I noticed, like, when I was on Twitter, there had been a shift from people who were, like...
Used to be very supportive of me, especially when I was fatter and stuff.
And then it became this thing of, like...
Anytime I would try to post something positive, people would be like, well, why the fuck do you, who cares?
You have money and you just, you know, and I just want to be like, no, I'm not on a different side of the fence because I did these things.
I'm like over here being like, anybody can fucking do it if my dumb ass did it, you know?
So it just became more about, to me, talent and success is more like this ocean that we can all drink from, and it's about how did this person get to that ocean.
I don't think there's people who are talented and untalented.
You know those moments when you're a young comic where someone says something to you and it really gives you a nice boost, like you feel great about it?
And one time I was at the store and it was maybe like 12 or 13 people in the audience.
That's what I've been learning to get out of, like, every set is the same and, like, this is my material.
And I've been at that for a little bit, but knowing how to shift my energy for, like, that, like, you do want to be professional for those 10 people, but you're not going to do the same, like...
Yelling energy as if they were a hundred people.
You're going to be a little more intimate, you know?
Yes.
You're going to make it more of a conversation.
And that's what I'm really learning to do now.
Watching, I think for a lot of comedians, but that Gary Shandling documentary.
But it really helped me about being mindful, about being in the moment.
So I've been really, like, whenever I write a set list now, because I usually number it and it has, like, a couple words.
The first, I would write number one, bullshit, for as long as possible.
Because I don't, like, I don't want to just get into it.
I want to, you know, unless it's like, I got ten minutes and I have things I want to do.
But for the most part, I'm like, Let me get in the moment.
Let me look people in the eyes and see if I see something.
Not necessarily going in and just crowd work and rip on people, but let me just go in and talk about my day for a second and then maybe that will segue into my set.
And so it teaches me a new way to get into things.
He's great at it off the cuff, you know, in the spur of the moment type shit.
Because all those years of roasting and all those years of fucking with the crowd, and that show they're doing, him and Attell are traveling and doing that bumping mic show, where they just fuck around, man.
I mean, it's crazy.
They just get in front of those people and fuck around.
I left when I was 13 because my mom was in a negative relationship.
So I went to go live with my dad in Oregon.
And he was also a negative thing.
And then I started comedy in Portland, Oregon when I was 23 at Harvey's Comedy Club there.
And then doing some shows in Salem at this Chinese food restaurant called Lucky Fortune.
And then I just started some shows there and, you know, struggled for a long time.
And then I think about five years in, I got Asadou Conan and then was New Face.
And then...
Got divorced, and then was like, alright, I'll move to Los Angeles, and now I have my son here, and it's just been me and him, and now my girlfriend, and my mom now lives with me for the last year.
I didn't seem lucky at the time, but it turned out, in hindsight, to be very lucky that the one time that that booker...
Saw me.
I just ate shit.
Hardcore.
And so they wanted nothing to do with me.
And it turned out to be the best thing because then I was in this position where I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm not going to get Idaho shows so I don't have to pander to that type of audience.
And I'm just going to be here.
And so I can, right now, it's really just like, oh, just write what you like.
I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily the truth or if the way that is set up for us to go, the structure that is naturally just doesn't work as much anymore.
It made more sense in the past, you know?
And also, it's been shown to not be sound, because that's the thing that trips me out now.
It's like, when I was a kid, what was drilled in my head for my mom was, get a good government job.
Get a good government job.
And now that seems like the most unsteady job you could have.
That's a great thing, though, that you have the discipline to do that.
That's a great thing.
It really is.
It's...
It's an underappreciated thing because I think it's easy for me to keep doing what I'm doing.
I always do it.
It's part of my natural way of doing it.
But to not exercise and then decide you're going to clean your diet up and you're going to start exercising and you're going to continually do it even though you're exhausted because your body's not really prepared for this.
So you must have had a long period of like for a couple weeks at least where you're like having your body try to respond to this where it didn't have to do this before.
And now you're making it stress out all the time and it's got to recover and then you stress it out and it's got to recover.
And people undermine it because they feel like it doesn't mean as much because you let yourself get to that weight.
And I think it's a silly way of looking at it.
I am a firm believer that many of us who are feeling really good about life and having a great time here are very, very lucky in their circumstance.
Very lucky.
The people you're around, the positive influences in your life, the good things, very lucky.
Because shit can be really not good.
When things are really not good and people go down a spiral, whether it's with booze and cigarettes and heroin or whether it's with food or whether it's with alcohol or whether it's pills, you can go down a spiral.
It's who out of the person that is in the bottom of the spiral, who can pull themselves out?
Could you, if you had to start from there, instead of starting from a place of success, and this is why I think people get cocky, you wake up every morning like, oh, I guess everything's okay.
You know, my life's not in the shitter.
Instead, think of what it would be like if you woke up and you were 380 pounds.
And this is your new life.
Your new life is, you got to get down from 380 pounds to about 220 pounds.
You've got to figure out how to do that.
And you've got to figure out how to not lapse when you're aching with hunger.
You've got to figure out how...
Your body has no fucking energy.
It doesn't know how to recover.
It never gets pushed.
And you have to push it through that.
And you have to do that to the tune of 160 pounds.
Yeah, that's been one of the best things about it.
And what actually keeps me on it is when I get people reaching out to me, like when I post pictures from the past or now, and they're like, man, like, you know, in some ways it used to piss me off because people would be like...
Oh, if you can do it, then I can definitely do it.
Would you ever even imagine, if you didn't know that people ran marathons or ultramarathons, would you ever even imagine that you would want to just run 100 miles?
So when a guy like you loses all that weight, it changes people's idea of what, if they maybe identify with you, it changes their idea about what they're capable of.
They change their opinion of themselves based on you pulling your life together in an awesome way, publicly.
That's one of the things I love when I talk about a lot of my podcasts is...
And I try...
Because people don't know me, you know, and a lot of times on Twitter, if I'm like...
If I try to give advice or things, or I'm not even really advice, just trying to be positive, people go...
Like you were talking about, like, what do you know?
What do you care?
You were on a TV show.
And I have to go like, you don't know my history.
You don't know where I came from.
You don't know that I'm like, I'm a single dad of a kid with a disability.
I take care of myself.
I was poor as crap.
I had three weeks of a college, community college education.
And I... Once I was like, oh, I gotta pull my life together for this son who's different from other people and I don't know if he's ever gonna be able to live on his own or have his own job or I have to prepare for not.
I have to prepare if he does, if he needs help.
I have to prepare for all these things and it really motivated me and it pushed me forward and I like to...
Now, for some reason, I don't know if it's like survival's remorse or whatever, I'm always like, man, I feel like so many people can do that, you know?
Not necessarily comedy or whatever, but I always feel like people have their own gifts, they have their own talents, and sometimes we're not...
We're not told that.
We're not pushed in those directions.
Sometimes we go through traumas or things in our lives that dim our light, you know?
And I like to be like, anybody can do it because I'm a testament to that because I should not be here.
And they had a lot of them where I grew up with this bank call center where I was working because it was the only place, this tiny town, not many jobs.
If you didn't have a college education, you were working at a Subway, you were working at a Sam Goody, or you were working at this bank and you were making like 20 bucks an hour.
You're making like double what you're making at this Subway.
There's no skills that transfer.
So if you want to leave this job, you're going back to Subway, you know?
So a lot of people end up trapped there.
And I knew right away, I was like, I gotta get out.
I was watching a video today of a guy jumping with scuba gear on into the garbage patch.
It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
You know, I knew that it was supposed to be horrific, but when you see it in a video, you watch it and just go, what the fuck is this?
This guy put scuba gear on and jumped into this.
I mean, it was plastic.
You couldn't see anything but plastic.
Everywhere you looked, to the left and the right, it was all plastic.
Like, this is huge.
Like, several states large.
Yeah, this shit.
This is what humans are doing to the ocean.
You see him jump in and it's almost...
Did they show him jump in or is this a different video?
Probably a different video.
This is a different video because the other one, the guy starts out on the boat and dives in and what he dives into is just like plastic soup.
It's fucking disgusting, man.
It's crazy.
Yeah, like this.
So there's this guy that we had on the podcast, his name is Boyan Slott, and he created a device that he's using to try to pull the plastic out of the ocean, and they'll maybe convert that plastic into things that we can use.
And I don't think it worked on the first attempt, but they're...
They're relaunching it, right?
They had to do something to fix things.
They're still in the prototype stage, but it's going to have these machines, these giant nets that move around through the ocean and catch all this plastic.
I mean, what kind of shit gets in their system, and then when you eat that fish, what kind of shit are you getting in your system?
Like, how many people are testing their fish?
You know?
I mean, how many people are, before they eat a salmon, they're like, hold on, let me check for mercury, let me see how much arsenic's in this, let's see what kind of heavy metal pours, what's that stuff, BPBs, that they're worried about that come from, what is the stuff they're worried about that comes from bottles?
Oh, so this is their first actual pulling of the garbage?
You know, listen, man, even if it takes 10 years, if they could figure out a way to get rid of all that plastic and we could figure out a way to not put that plastic in the ocean, we could maybe...
What I really worry about almost as much as this, maybe even more, is overfishing.
When you realize how many different ships are out there using giant nets and just scooping everything they catch inside that net and then just serving it to us.
And we're like, ooh, you want to get sushi?
Yeah, sushi sounds good.
We're like, so cool.
Sushi sounds good.
It's ocean genocide.
I mean, it's fucking chaotic, man.
They don't have real...
I mean, they don't have real control.
It's international waters.
People are just cutting nets and dropping them to the bottom of the ocean and they're catching things all the time.
A person's supposed to be able to catch a fish, or a two fish, or three fish, and then you eat it.
Like, this is chaos, man.
This is some crazy thing where you have to make Filet-O-Fish sandwiches because there's, you know, 320 million people and 100 million of them want junk food anytime they want it.
I mean, I don't know if that went to Filet-O-Fish or if that's expensive fish.
I really have no idea.
I'm just talking shit.
Don't listen to me.
And I also eat fish, so I'm a hypocrite.
But it is kind of crazy when you watch this video.
And I'm not a...
You know, I'm not opposed to you eating fish, but I'm just saying the reality of what this is is crazy.
This is a crazy scene.
And to deny it's a crazy scene, I'm still going to eat fish.
Yeah, it's hell, no matter what, for these organisms.
But they're delicious, and they're really good for you.
But how are they going to ensure that there's going to be some left?
That's what's crazy.
Like, the human governments need to get together and go, hey, we can't kill the whole ocean.
Because that is possible.
If you keep going at the pace that it's going now, if you really stop and think about what the ocean must have been like when you hear about those Japanese tuna fishermen, like, did you see Jiro...
Dreams of Sushi.
Remember when those gentlemen were at the fish market and they were talking about what it used to be like?
Used to be tuna everywhere.
So much tuna and now it's like a small amount and you gotta check to see if it's good.
Like they're watching it happen in real time.
If you go from that point where that guy was talking about to today and then go 50 years from now at the same pace like...
Well, at the very least, they have to take into consideration the fact that they need to maybe develop some sort of an international program to breed these things.
They've done that with Yellowtail.
They have this ocean, almost like a corralled-in area, and they're out in the ocean.
But they're only in this one trapped area, and they're feeding them.
You know, and occasionally they get out.
Like, they get those yellowtails in Hawaii.
There was a storm, and the storm wrecked their little enclosure, and they got out.
Now they're everywhere.
So all these hamachi-grade, like, sushi-grade yellowtails are swimming around all over the place outside of Hawaii.
It's interesting, but I was thinking when they were telling me that, well, so if that's what they did, like, maybe they should do that and just keep releasing them.
Maybe it should be a program That all the people who buy sushi fund into that just takes a little piece of the sushi money and uses it to develop these programs to make sure that these fucking fish keep breeding so you can have more sushi.
That's what I think we can leave this next generation.
They have a real good possibility of making things work out better.
I really think that.
I think it's totally possible.
I think it's possible that the world is just going to keep getting better and better, and there's going to be terrible things, but it's going to keep getting better and better, and then we'll be able to come to some kind of time in our future where it seems like things have improved.
I think we're headed towards the age of a new golden era, a new enlightenment, because, and I think a lot of times these things that we think are negative are kind of indicators of that, because These are things, a lot of these negative things we talk about were happening either way, but now we're more aware of them and people fight them and people are more upset about them and they're more public because of things like social media.
And I think that's a positive, not a negative, that people aren't able to pull the wool over your eyes as easily.
I think what's really interesting about this time is that you got so many people that are able to communicate.
Whether it's yourself or Joey Diaz or Ari Shafir or Marc Maron or whoever these people are that have these podcasts.
So many people have this ability to communicate.
So many people have this ability to...
You show your world in a different way.
And everybody gets to compare all these different ways that people are communicating.
And we kind of come to...
Maybe a better understanding of why we think the way we think, in which I think, especially one of the reasons why I'm so hell-bent on having people be reasonable and try to talk to each other, is that I think that everybody could learn something from each other in this world.
Whether you're left or right or in the center or religious or atheist or whatever, there's too much conflict that's unnecessary.
There's too much of what people are or aren't that has nothing to do with you.
And you should be able to talk about politics or even religion and be completely calm about it and not be angry and not get emotional and childlike.
But we're programmed to think you're supposed to.
We're programmed to think that every fucking conversation about something you disagree with is supposed to be this angry battle of one-upsmanship.
There's certain issues that, like, where you're like, oh, I don't want to argue over my, like, civil rights or things like that.
You know, you're like, I don't want to be like, oh, okay, well, you don't think I'm a full person?
Okay, let's have a point-counterpoint.
There's issues like that.
But I think now...
get wrapped up in politics that people do forget to be civilized and do forget that we've always disagreed and we've always had different sides and that's what's made us a country you know is the fact that we we're supposed to take the like you said the mix of those conversations and that's the way that we kind of head in you know that's the way we find out who we really are as opposed to who our side is painting the other side as
I feel like what I meant by people being able to get along is you can have opposing thoughts And still be a nice person.
If you're a really super conservative person, sometimes I want to know why.
I don't want to oppose you as much as I want to know why.
I want to know what you're thinking.
What's pushing you in this direction?
What makes you think this?
As opposed to if you are a really progressive person.
What makes you think this?
What's going on?
That conversation can be had in a way more peaceful way, or maybe we could all examine why we think about things a certain way.
And I've been thinking about it a lot when it comes to religions lately.
We're so fucking tense about religions.
So fucking tense lately.
And if it's not for, like, kids getting abused or wars getting started over it, the vast majority of it is just a guideline for people to live their life.
And if you take that away from them or tell them that that's bad for them or tell them they can't live that way, then you've created this conflict that's really not your business.
Those are kind of constant through all those things where you're like, that's something I can take from you, but to judge someone else's life based off of their sexual orientation or something of anything, that to me never jives.
Right.
So I'm always like, I'm open to whatever you want.
Whatever makes you not be a fucking jerk, I'm for.
the first time I found out there was other religions like I don't know I was raised a Catholic when I was a little kid and I found out there was other things other than being a Catholic and I was like what are you talking about it's like there's other things because my uncle was converting to Judaism and so I was like what does that mean Oh, he's going to become Jewish.
Like, what does that mean?
Like, what are you talking about?
I was like, you know, five or something like that.
I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
It's amazing how much they've been involved in show business.
You know, when I'm watching that marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it makes you realize, like, oh, yeah, Lenny Bruce was Jewish, this guy was Jewish, that guy was Jewish.
There were so many Jewish guys in the early days of stand-up.
I mean, maybe they do and we don't know, but for whatever it is, it's diminutive in comparison to any of the places that we know of that have scenes, whether it's New York scene, you know.
LA has seen San Francisco.
There's like some big scenes here where you know funny guys and girls who've come out of these scenes.
You don't hear like a lot of guys from Sweden, do you?
Yeah, but they're starting to get more of them.
They're starting to get more of them.
Everybody all around the world is starting to get more comedy.
It's an interesting time in that way.
It's very similar to jiu-jitsu.
You know, jiu-jitsu at one point in time, there's only a few places you get it outside of Brazil.
It was hard to find someone who's really good at teaching it.
Now it's everywhere.
Now it's in New Zealand and Australia.
It's in Africa.
It's everywhere.
There's jiu-jitsu in Canada and fucking Puerto Rico.
And everyone is like, there's a really accelerated learning growth from the time where it starts getting put on the internet, which is like around like 95, 96, and the internet kind of becomes alive.
From that point on, people comparing jiu-jitsu techniques and watching matches and then, you know, new gyms opening up all around America in particular.
It's like the whole level of the sport went through the roof.
Yeah, I think that's very similar to comedy because I think a lot of my personal growth was I was able to do because I was able to watch so much comedy and also I was able to get on the internet and read about a lot of comedy and Twitter and YouTube or Twitter was just starting and YouTube was going and I watched a lot of watching the videos with you and Mencia and those things,
you know, and a lot of that stuff Inform my comedy at an early age about making a style or just how I wanted to write for myself.
Especially when you're first starting, a lot of what will work when you're first starting will set you up for failure later as far as pandering to people or writing for these rowdy rooms or bar rooms.
And those things don't work when you go to travel.
And so if I didn't have...
Like, the internet or all these things to watch to go like, oh, don't worry about this time.
Don't worry about this local scene as much because you don't want to be a local act, you know?