Roy Wood Jr. and Joe Rogan critique Apple’s predatory software updates, like Final Cut Pro’s forced obsolescence, exposing how tech giants disrupt workflows—Roy switching to Adobe Premiere, Joe trapped by iMessage. They trace comedy’s evolution from TV gatekeepers (Joe’s early struggles on Letterman or Last Comic Standing) to internet-driven success (Joey Diaz’s persistence, Dane Cook’s MySpace breakthrough), comparing it to porn and music’s piracy-fueled collapse. Wood Jr.’s thesis-driven humor—like dissecting Vietnam’s absence in video games—contrasts with industry norms, while Rogan praises originality over formulaic jokes, noting no formal comedy training exists. Both agree systemic failures, from Skid Row homelessness to bureaucratic charities like the Red Cross, persist due to political inertia and misplaced priorities, leaving real change elusive despite personal efforts. [Automatically generated summary]
But then when it came out, I couldn't get text messages.
And I had to email Apple and ask them to take my email address off of the iMessage database.
I'm like, take that email off so that I can't get iMessages anymore.
And it still didn't work.
I went online to try to figure out what is a way, how do you get out of this?
How does this work?
You can't.
Unless you switch over to text message for a long period of time beforehand, like switch your iMessages to text messages on your Apple, on your phone, or unless you buy a new number.
You've got to kind of buy it.
If you're going to get a Samsung phone or something, you've got to get a new number.
I would just, you know, like, I'd buy video games, just play them on Discord.
But even formatting it and doing everything, I would have to call friends that really knew what the fuck was up, and they'd have to talk me through shit.
There's some things you'd have to do in the BIOS and...
It's like, motherfucker, I'm sending you words electronically.
Does it matter?
It's AOL. What company?
What is it?
Is my email more ghetto?
Does it come with chicken grease stains when you open it in your laptop?
No.
It's the same words that if I send it from Gmail.
Now, I have a Gmail account so that people will take me seriously when I email them about business ideas, but I still have an old-school AOL email that I've had since college, and I'm like, it's fine.
Like, if you wanted to do multiple rounds of boxing with this thing, you would get in some serious fucking shape.
Because it feels real.
When you put that headset on, and that dude's in front of you, and he comes towards you, and he's got his hands up, and then he starts throwing punches like, oh shit!
And you're moving around, and he's swinging at you.
They're doing these warehouses now, where you go into a warehouse, and it's all virtual reality, and so they have everything planned out, and you're walking across this beam, and there's fire to the left of you and fire to the right, so you feel heat.
You know, when I was listening to you coming up, like, you started talking about the sensory deprivation chambers, and I'm like, that's always been something that's in the back of my head.
I think that I'm more prone to run into comics that are going, going, going, going, going.
And so when you're around that, it makes you want to go.
It makes you want to write because you see so-and-so working on a new bit and doing all of that.
And I didn't see as much of that.
Now, granted, you don't get to do as many sets in LA because of the logistics of the city, but I just felt like there was more of a go-go-go mentality that just rubs off on you more.
But because of that, you don't get to socialize.
All of my friends are in LA, so a lot of social relationships have suffered because New York is go-go-go.
And you're trying to get the next career thing done, and then you also got to go home and be a dad.
I would make the argument that I'm better off now as a comic 20 years in having started on the road instead of starting in a major market just because I feel like when you're a road guy, You meet every version of what your career could end up being when you're young.
Because if you're a big city comic, you're only hanging with your peers.
You run into the big wigs every now and then, but it's some high and bi bullshit at the comedy club and then they go on their way.
But when you do a weekend with Ron White and you get to watch him properly night after night after night, that's a fucking tutorial.
And then you can do a weekend, the very next weekend, with a guy who's been doing it 30 years, hadn't written a new joke in 15, burnout, alcoholic, hates his kids, hates his wife, and...
Once I got to LA, you start seeing, well, no, I know to avoid that because I'll end up like that, dude.
I know not to do that because I'll end up like that.
There was a comic, god damn, I can't name names.
There was a comic that used to read one custody of his child, and the one thing in the court order was that she could not be around the comedy club.
So you know what he did?
He fucking brought her around the comedy club.
So as his feature, I watched his seven-year-old while he would go out and do his set.
And if you don't skip that level, you go back down to levels.
And so these guys are trying to go from here to here and you're with someone that's attacked.
Why are you doing that?
You shouldn't be doing that.
There was a guy that used to take me on the road with him down south, kind of on some mentorship type shit.
And we would go do gigs, and if it was within four hours of the city, his wife would roll.
His wife would roll and both kids are in the back seat, car seat age.
It's like nine o'clock in Georgia and we're just riding together to a fucking gig.
We would do the show and then in exchange for an opportunity for stage time, I would drive this family back home and then I would go home and sleep in my bed.
But we didn't spend the night.
The family would stay at the hotel while we did the show and then we would get back in the car and drive the fuck back home.
Knowing what I know now, He was fucking chicks on the road.
And the only way she was comfortable with him still doing stand-up was if she got the role.
But if that's the proposition she presents to you in order for you to continue doing your career, then, you know, you either got to take it or leave it.
I listen to recordings so I have it Bluetoothed on my phone.
So I do that through the speakers of the car.
And that helps a lot.
That helps a lot.
That's gigantic.
You know, like, it also puts me in the mind, I feel like the more sets you do, right, the tidier stand-up is, but the more focus you put on your set, like, it's almost as good as, like, a half a set.
Like, listening to a full set is like doing a half a set.
There's a time, the thing that I struggle with the most in writing is consumption.
Chappelle says something Years ago in a magazine about how every comedian needs to understand how their joke machine works.
And identifying the stimuli that you were encountering during a time when you were having a creative high.
In the writing cycle, when ideas are just popping and coming to you, document what was happening, what was going on during that time, and do your best to recreate those situations and scenarios to inspire writing when you have writer's block.
So I know for me, it's stuff that bores me or stuff that annoys me.
Be it reading, magazines, TV, whatever.
So I have to find time to watch shit that I don't like or can't stand because I know my mind will wander into a place where I can write some stuff.
But to physically just sit and consume television, and that's what I have to start doing on the go.
I get it now.
I used to think these people were stupid, and now I'm one of those people who walks around staring at the fucking phone watching my DVR on the train or something because I have to...
Constantly take in so that when it is time to write that there's something that there's something worth writing there.
I had a conversation with Theo Vaughn about this last night where he he's burnt out and he had to cancel some shows and I said what's going on and he said man he goes I just been going too hard too hard too much too many weekends you know nine shows a week over and over and over again seven eight nine ten weeks in a row he goes I just I need to step because I'm not taking anything in Recovery.
He goes, everything I'm putting, I'm just putting everything out.
He goes, I had nothing to say.
Everything seems fake when I'm saying it.
Like, I feel, I felt, you know that, you know, you're laughing, you felt that spot where you feel like everything you're saying feels fake.
Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm still working on a lot more stuff that has more teeth to it and I'm starting to become, obsessed isn't the word, but There's something noodling at me about veterans and the trajectory of veterans when they come back from war and all that shit.
And I was trying to work on a bit about Vietnam and started watching this Ken Burns documentary that's on Netflix right now.
They interview North Vietnamese soldiers as well.
I ain't never in my life seen no shit.
Because normally Vietnam was always told from our POV, And they're sitting down with just straight up via con, like, yeah, we was trying to get them motherfuckers.
We set them up.
It's unremorseful in the sense of speaking about the war from their perspective.
And it tells the story from both sides.
And so it altered how I want to tell the joke.
And that's the stuff that you have to do from time to time to make sure that your jokes aren't weighted to one side.
Those BMX dudes, they started doing double flips, and then they started doing triple flips, and then a bunch of them started crashing and breaking their necks.
There's a Birth of Big Air 30 for 30 where they talk about when they started that shit in the 80s in Oklahoma and they were just doing it for the love.
Like it was just a dude with a ramp in his yard and just word traveled.
No email, no nothing, just word of mouth.
There's a dude with a ramp.
So when we're in town to do that race, we're going to go over to this dude's yard.
But the question becomes about teaching proper conflict resolution.
Because I also, I'm wired a little weird in the sense that I feel like because he's a black kid, he's not going to get judged the same if he throws the first punch.
So I don't want him in a position where he might get expelled or some shit, you know?
But if you got to get a motherfucker off you, go on and bend that knee sideways.
Well, that's the beautiful thing about kids learn jujitsu, too, is they also they're really used to conflict because you have conflict in the gym all the time.
Not conflict in a negative way, but when you're sparring, you know, you slap hands and you just do it and you go full blast.
You're trying to get each other as hard as you can.
And you can do that in jujitsu because you're not hitting each other.
You're just choking each other and getting an arm bars.
And then when someone gets you, you just tap.
And then you move on to the next thing.
And the thing about doing that is then you're not worried about conflict.
It doesn't seem as scary to you.
Like, for me, until I started learning martial arts, I was fucking terrified of everybody.
I thought everybody was going to kick my ass.
Like, fuck!
I'd see some dude that bullied me.
I'm like, shit.
And I'd go around the whole opposite way of school.
I'd walk the total way around the school to get to the bus.
Because almost every fighter that I've ever met, professional fighter, was fucked with.
Georges St-Pierre, who's like one of the greatest of all time, told a story on the podcast about he was driving his Range Rover when he was world champion through Montreal, and he saw this homeless guy, and the homeless guy was his bully in high school.
And he realized, he was like, whoa.
And he's like, what's going on, man?
What are you doing?
And like...
Talk to the guy and try to make amends with the guy and help him out a little bit.
But it's like, fuck, man.
This is his bully in high school.
And you realize, like, most people that are causing pain and inflicting pain on people, they're in pain, man.
That's why they're doing it.
You know, it's like victims...
You know, the victims of crimes oftentimes perpetrate those crimes on other people.
That happens when kids get abused at home, they get beaten at home.
They're the ones who want to beat kids up at school.
You know, they want to dish out that violence on someone smaller than them because they're getting it dished out on them by someone larger.
Not too much, because the only people that I'm friends with from back then, I'm actually good friends with, that I was friends with when I was growing up.
I had a professor from college accuse me, this was in a Facebook thread of something, I don't know, there's some article about me and all the other alumni are commenting on it.
And one of the professors...
I remember in 1994 when you said this thing to me in class and stormed out of class.
I'm like, I didn't enroll until 96. But I didn't say that.
I just, I literally just apologize.
Like, cause she's clearly been mad at me all of this time about something that I didn't even do.
I'm more of an evader and a schemer than a fighter.
I'm not going to argue with you and go back and forth, but what I will try and figure out a way to do is over the next two years, diabolically dismantle anything you stand for and believe in.
Like, that's...
That's my approach.
There's a comedy club owner.
God is my witness.
Before I die, I'm opening a comedy club across the street.
You know, comedy club owners, we have such a complicated relationship with them because we need them and we don't want to do it.
I don't want to fucking run a goddamn comedy club, but we need one.
You know, to have some guys dealing with a bunch of maniacs like us day in, day out, every week, coming in and telling jokes and getting drunk and Smoking weed in the green room and all the chaos.
But they sold 300 paid tickets and everybody ate and drank.
What do you think is keeping the lights on for your 30% selling capacity ass to come back in next year and the next year to go from 30% sold to 40% sold?
They're not making no money off of you.
But if these IG comedians can come in and at least help keep the lights on, I think in the greater scheme of comedy, There's more good than bad that comes from that.
And I also feel like there's a level of ignoring the tools that they've been able to use to get an audience in lieu of the fact that they don't put new stand-up on TV anymore unless it's contest shit.
Comedy Central just started with the Live at the Cellar shit, but other than that, I mean, it hasn't been a lot.
And then all these fuckers just cruise through that checkout.
And you're still stuck in the same waiting to get a...
Tonight show set line and the Instagram line opens and people just start whisking through to success and you don't know whether or not to change lines or stay in this one.
Guerrilla-style shit, man, that's how this podcast got started.
This podcast reaches some stupendous number of people every month, and it started out with a laptop in my living room, because I was bored, me and my friend Brian, because I had just gotten back from Colorado.
And I was like, yeah, I can't believe I'm back in L.A. This is fucking terrible.
I'm like, well, let me do something.
And so I just started doing Q&As on a laptop, talking to people on Ustream.
I think it is impossible to be a working comic and stay off of...
If you stayed off of television...
If you started your career and just never did shit, no festivals, just crush, crush, crush, crush, you become a fucking legend.
That by the time you finally decide, you're like a college quarterback that just stays in college for years and years and years and never enters the draft.
And by the time you do, then everything is stratospheric.
If the people from your predecessors, the guys who were successful when you were coming up, where they were headlining and you were middling, for them, that was the goal.
Because Tom Segura is self-aware that he's a guy that shouldn't be on TikTok, so his existence on TikTok...
It's what makes it funny.
He knows how to do that shit, but he's ahead of that curve.
So the other thing I think compounded guys like me from my generation is that Dane Cook was one of the first that was like, all right, fuck TV, what's over here?
And so many people shitted on Dane out of jealousy that you ignored the fact that his MySpace move was some fucking bullshit.
I'm just saying a lot of comics like me just didn't, you lean on what you're told because you look at older comics as mentors instead of realizing that maybe they don't have this shit figured out either and you should be trusting your instincts.
I mean, that's bigger now, but in the beginning, yes, it was just porn clips getting chopped up and nobody paying $40 for a five-hour DVD. You know what I noticed lately?
And so we were shooting up in Chatsworth or whatever.
And what I did, I learned so much about the porn industry and that I didn't know that like they would just have a fuck house where it's like an eight bedroom house and every bedroom is an individual studio set up for whatever genre of porn.
There was like at least five different genres of porn being shot in that house.
We're out in the...
And mind you, I still have this image that if you're a porn star and you're working with a porn studio, there's some bread.
So one of the actresses, her car is blocking someone.
So I go, give me your keys.
I'll go move your car.
In this car, I have to be the most filthy, saddest fucking...
To the point where I'm like, if this is what fucking on camera gets you, there's got to be something else out there.
And you want to talk about people that need to see where the curve is.
I think if you're a woman and you're cool with doing porn, you're probably better off just doing it on some self-starting shit than even dealing with any of these LA crooks in the first place.
Yeah, if you could figure out a way to get an audience.
I know there's a lot of dudes who run these companies that girls use where people pay to see their videos.
Like someone will ask you, if you're a porn actress, they'll say, hey, I want you to use this dildo and cover your tits with whipped cream and I'll give you $150.
Podcast you and Brian with a laptop and a microphone and just Turn a webcam on and just doing whatever the fuck you want to do with yourself then dealing with the industry Yeah, and the record industry is becoming similar to that, too I think so, too, but I think that it's hard for them to find an audience that way There's so much porn like I had a joke I was doing for a while About why are they making new porn like who is jerked off to all of it?
So, Steve Byrne and I, We were in Pittsburgh and three things lead to another and we end up at a strip club and it's a weekend and so apparently, I didn't know this, but porn stars tour strip clubs and they'll go to a strip club on the weekend and dance and sell whatever pocket pussy or whatever vagina mold they have and all of the strippers fucking hate them.
Like, some of the strippers are cool because, oh, they bring more people into the club.
But for the most part, the men are saving their tip money to tip the porn star that they came to see.
So it's like being a seasoned comic, and then the Instagram comic comes in who's never stripped before.
Like, yeah, you fuck on camera, but it's not stripping.
What I do is an art.
What you do is slutty behavior.
Because, you know, like, there's like a beef between, like...
Strippers and prostitutes because some strippers are sucking fuck in the back of the club and it fucks up money for the rest of the strippers that are playing the game straight up.
So there was this weird tension in the strip club while the porn star was on stage and I could not stop laughing.
Because it was comedy and that's part of why stripping to me is performative.
In a weird way, it's comedy and stripping.
It's damaged people entertaining strangers.
So there's more of a synergy.
So I don't really get anything out of watching the stripper because in the back of my head, I know you're thinking about groceries or some other shit.
But it was hilarious as a comic to watch two different same but different type of performance.
It's like the magician versus...
The stand-up versus the juggler and how they all kind of don't really like one another for one reason or another because they all think what they do is superlative to the other guy's craft.
And it was, it was goddamn, it was fucking hilarious.
There's a couple of strip clubs that I used to go to in Birmingham where the club would close at 2 and the police would leave and then at 3 the club would reopen and then it was open season and it was whatever you wanted to do and then you would see strippers in the parking lot Yelling at the other strippers who were choosing to stay for the 3am session, saying that y'all are messing it up and that's why nobody comes before 2 is because of what you're doing.
Isn't it hilarious that you could fuck anybody you want for free?
And there's not a law about it.
But as soon as money gets exchanged, you're a criminal and everybody's mad at you.
If you're just a slut, no one cares.
But if you want to fuck people for money, that becomes a real problem for people because people desire sex so much and there's so many guys that cannot get laid, but they've got some money.
And if they find out if they can pay for it, people are like, no, you can't!
You can't pay for it!
You can pay for everything.
Everything that's legal.
Everything else that's legal, you can pay for.
Except sex.
You can pay to have someone cook for you.
You can pay to have someone rub your back.
You can pay to have someone cut your hair.
You can pay to have someone mow your lawn.
You can pay to have someone take out your trash.
You can pay to have someone clean your house.
All things you don't want to do.
You can't pay for someone to suck your dick.
You can't.
If someone could do it for free, if they like you, there's no problem.
You show up at 6 in the morning with your driver's license, and you sign up, and then you sit in the lobby, and you watch the morning news until your name is called, and then they give you your job assignment.
And so you bring boots, you bring a hard hat, because you don't know what you're going to get.
You might get something with a keyboard, you might just be outside holding a stop slow fucking stop stick while they pave a road, and that's your gig for eight hours.
Dude, that was my first 10 years was just working day labor, weird jobs to make extra money.
And if the gig was under five hours, I would drive back home.
I wouldn't even stay.
At the time, I was still working morning radio.
So, if it was within five hours, I would do morning radio, get off the air at 10, be on the road by 11, five hours, nap, do the show, get back in my car at 10 p.m., five hours back to Birmingham, sleep at the station, wake up at 6, wash, rinse, repeat.
And I was doing prank calls, and I was using the prank calls.
I was taking my prank calls at the time and sending them to other morning shows.
This is website, Radio Online, which kind of breaks down.
It's almost like Billboard.
It's almost like Nielsen or some shit, but for radio.
And so I would go there, and I would look for other local morning shows that weren't syndicated.
in cities where I wasn't performing.
And so I would send my print calls for free to these morning shows and go look.
I'm a comic.
Here's some free prank calls we do in Birmingham.
They're not going anywhere else.
You want to air them in Omaha?
The guy says yes.
He doesn't have shit else to play on the air.
So I would send the prank calls.
The guy would play the prank calls for a couple of weeks, a couple of months.
And then I would call the local comedy club and go, hey, I want a feature in your room.
I'm on the radio and I know I can get on there.
And this is when the belief that radio still could bring people to the show.
So I would call local comedy clubs in cities where my prank calls were airing and use that as leverage to get booked as a feature instead of an emcee.
And so that's how I was able to kind of jump a level because I was a feature that was coming in town with the pre-plugged in media access and all of that shit.
You find people that you can, that are as driven as you.
And then you just figure out ways to work together and do shit.
But comedy is so, so many motherfuckers are lying, bro.
They're lying.
How so?
And you lie.
You get the leverage.
And like, it's...
So the way I got hired on radio, so at the time, the thought was that, this is 2001, I'm out of college, and if I can get on the radio, then that'll give me more access in the city, and I can host my own comedy night.
By hosting my own comedy night, I can offer money to out-of-towners who also have comedy nights and do swap-outs.
So I needed to get the radio gig.
So, at the time, they were doing some sort of contest or some shit.
And who's the funniest in Birmingham or some shit?
And I missed the window for the contest.
And so, I knew...
The long story short is that I go to the radio station.
I asked the guy at the time, Buckwild, who was hosting 95.7.
Not the same star on Buckwild, different Buckwild.
Now, I've done enough of the comedy club in Birmingham to know that on black weekends, the black radio station hosts the black comedy night on Fridays and they throw out t-shirts and all that shit.
So, I go to the comedy club and I told Bruce Ayers, I said, hey...
I just got hired at 95.7 and they want me to open for D.O. Hughley this weekend.
And he goes, okay, that's fine.
I'll go back to 95.7.
I go, yo, I know you don't want to fuck with me, but I'm opening for D.O. this weekend.
Do me a favor.
Watch my set.
If I'm funny, put me on Monday morning.
He goes, you got a deal.
So I get to the comedy club that Friday and all I have to do is keep Buckwild and Bruce Ayers apart.
So that neither one knows what the fucking lie was.
And Bruce came backstage and you just, as long as you act like you belong and you act like the truth is the truth, people will kind of merge in with that shit.
And Bruce came in and goes, okay, Buck Wild, you go out and throw the t-shirts and then you bring up Roy.
And I went out, and it was seven minutes, but I fucking crushed, like, just, when you need that one set to go right in every syllable, every fucking comma, it's perfect.
And I demolished in front of D.L. Hughley, and I walk off stage, and Buckwild says, see you Monday morning.
And that's how I got radio.
It's just, what were you gonna do?
Not fucking book me?
I'm already not really working the comedy club.
club I'm already not hired by you what is the penalty for this lie is this lie will this lie send me to jail no it's a hustle lie yeah I'm not saying load your resume with 50 different credits that you don't have but if you've performed somewhere else outside of where you're from you have performed across the country yeah Yeah.
People who worked in these department stores would take the carbons and sell them to him.
He would take those carbons, make a totally new credit card out of that carbon with some sort of machine, and then they would distribute them to these guys.
They would buy goods with this stuff, and then they would sell the goods.
And then guys would come to him in the pool hall with paper bags filled with cash.
And all he wanted to do was gamble on pool and he could never win.
And when I'm telling you never win, that guy was playing with dirty money and he knew it.
His head was fucked up.
He would be staring.
The nine ball would be in the hole and he would be like a foot away from it.
So I'm typing International Sal, and I hit spacebar, and two things come up, credit card thief and pool player, but when I click to search for that, nothing shows up.
Like, for instance, credit card thief, and it just brings up a bunch of other stuff about credit card thieves and other people.
What's crazy, though, is that when you get arrested, especially for like some white collar shit like that, like what they don't tell you about getting arrested is that the first thing they do is try to pin other unsolved shit on you.
So before you even like get a mugshot or anything, you just go sit in a room and they go, here are all the mugshots of other people we are looking at for similar crimes.
Do you know any of these motherfuckers?
And then you get a handwriting sample.
And that's when you find out, oh, I was just a petty fucking teenager that just took a credit card to get some jeans.
And then you start realizing, oh, there's an entire fucking syndicate of shit happening in this city that I didn't know anything about.
They're trying to fucking pin on me.
And that's when the fear...
Sit in.
Because in your head, you're like, all right, well, I know I probably won't go to jail.
Well, some of the greatest, most disciplined people went to jail.
Like Bernard Hopkins, one of my all-time favorite boxers.
He's one of the greatest midway champions of all time.
And Bernard Hopkins spent like six years in jail for armed robbery.
And he learned how to be disciplined.
When he was in jail.
And when he got out of jail, not only did he have a drive that other people probably couldn't comprehend, but he knew what would happen if it went bad again.
He knew what would happen if he slid back down that road again.
And apparently, like the corrections officer said, when he was getting out, you'll be right back in here.
And he was like, the fuck I will be.
The fuck I will be.
And he turned out to be one of the greatest boxers of all time.
This culture today does not want people to have redemption.
It's interesting.
This culture today wants people to be in trouble for things they did in the past.
You have to be who you were 30 years ago.
Yeah, we all go to church and ask for forgiveness Sunday for an opportunity to be forgiven for what we were that week Well the idea that no one that no one gets a chance to redeem themselves It's a terrible world like that's the one of the best things about Christianity is the idea that you have redemption you confess your sins and you move on I just think that it's all new and And I think there'll be a...
I think there'll be a market correction at some point.
Because as a society, we are obsessed with who you were.
Credit reports, rental history, drug history, employment history.
You sit down with somebody and want to know your date and history.
Twitter is just racism history or your bad joke history.
It's...
It's an opportunity for the first time as a society to audit your past behavior when all we do is judge who you are now based on who you were.
That's what our society is established upon.
So that's why it doesn't feel so out of pocket to me that people are doing it.
It's like, oh, it's a new way to see if you or me, I can literally search your name plus a word and see if you said the word and then I will fucking make it.
It's no different than a fucking bankruptcy sitting on your record from...
I like how you described it as a market correction because I think that is what's going to happen.
We're going to understand that what we're doing now is kind of unsustainable.
Like going back and judging someone on some shit that happened in high school or whatever it was and trying to look at words you said when you're trying to make a joke like what happened with Kevin Hart.
And he apologized for it many times and then he's hosting the Oscar and they're like, look, 10 years ago he said this.
The problem is that the people that could give him the redemption are some of the people whose trust he betrayed.
That's the problem, is that you start looking at the Lee Daniels and the Tyler Perrys and...
You know, maybe the Ava DuVernay's and the people that are in that world of black cinema that could get them back in into whatever this crossover mainstream world is.
But I think there's no, and I'm just saying from personal experience, you know, there's no group of people more forgiving than, I think, black entertainment.
He would have to explain the whole thought process for putting on the hoax, why he kept the noose on his neck, who was talking to the cops while he was holding a subway.
That guy who wrote it, he was self-diagnosing all of his own personal ailments and dealing with them himself and then trying to pass that off as a way to live amongst all these people that were paying attention to him.
I was just trying to figure out, like, what's the best?
I was into psychology when I was young because I was fighting all the time and I was always scared.
So I was trying to figure out, there's got to be a way to overcome these mental hurdles.
For martial arts competition, the big thing was the fear.
It wasn't your physical ability wasn't as much of a hurdle as the fear.
You know, the fear of competition was terrible, so I was like, but sometimes I'd feel confident, and it'd be great, and other times I'd be fucking terrified, and like, well, I've got to figure out how to be consistent.
So I started getting into all that kind of stuff, and then when I came to L.A., it was like in 94, I saw a Dianetics commercial.
Well, when I was 21 and I was first starting to do comedy, that's when I was really devouring as much of it as possible.
Because I was trying to figure out how to not be so lazy, how to be motivated, how to get shit done, and how to find the correct path and think about things correctly.
And so that's when I really got into Anthony Robbins.
You had workshops that you would do, like notebooks and shit, fill out and things to talk about and things to concentrate on.
If you did do it, it would help you.
But really what it's all about is just getting your shit together and moving.
Just go do something.
Like what you did by taking a job when you would show up at a gig and you'd be working there Tuesday through Sunday and then take a day job and work nine to five.
That is more hustle and more hustle mindset than anything you're ever going to get out of an Anthony Robbins book.
Like that is like just doing it.
Just doing it makes you do more.
Like do more hard shit makes you do more hard shit.
Understanding that you want it bad, so you're willing to put into work and do things you don't want to do.
It's what makes you have that confidence that you know how to push through.
And the mentality that I'm the type of dude to get shit done.
Like, I'm not going to waste my day just sitting around a fucking hotel room.
No, I'm going to go to work.
I'm going to work all day.
I'm going to drive five hours and keep that radio gig.
And then drive five hours and spend ten hours of the fucking 24 in a day in a goddamn car to do gigs.
Ford Focus.
Just to do gigs.
Keep that radio gig.
Those things are...
I had a guy on yesterday, this guy Dan Crenshaw.
He's a congressman.
He's also a Navy SEAL. We were talking about mentality.
I'm like, when you went through BUDS, do they teach you how to think or do they show you by example?
They don't teach you how to think.
They just show you.
They harden you through all that work.
And through all that work, through that insane hell week, all the shit that you have to do when you're going through BUDS training, the six months of breaking you down and building you back up, they teach you you can do anything.
Just by making you do anything.
So you will understand how you can pass your limits.
What you thought your limits were are no longer your limits.
That's what I feel like is missing from a lot of people that are getting into motivational this and motivational that.
Yeah, but then what am I doing in my performance that made someone think it was cool to do that and that that would make this experience better for everybody?
I need y'all to shut the fuck up so I can get this chisel shit out of my mouth.
So it totally changed how I, you know, and also alcohol makes me sleepy, and then it was too much driving in the 20s and stuff, so I can't be drowsy-headed at home.
I can't remember what comic did a joke like this, but maybe a couple of them, where before you drink, you have to look at your schedule for the next day and a half to make sure you have the bounce back and recovery and all that shit.
But if you do that, you'll force yourself to do it, and next thing you know, you've done it.
I have this dog that loves running, and so I make sure that if I don't take him running, he's always a pain in the ass, he's dropping the ball on the table, trying to get you to play.
He's a very energetic dog.
So, like, that motherfucker makes me run five days a week.
Five days a week, I get up, I'm like, come on, bro, let's go, let's go.
He goes crazy, starts running around in circles, and then we go hit the trails.
I was literally in the air over it before I'm like, oh my god!
Yeah, that was a different one, man.
I've killed a bunch of rattlesnakes, man.
Always seeing those fuckers.
There was one in my neighborhood real recently where there's a video of a bobcat and a rattlesnake Duking it out in the middle of the street Fucking mile from my house, man.
It's crazy Coyotes out here man.
There's a lot of weird wildlife out here.
You know, California's got weird wildlife There's a lot of shit out there a lot of bobcats and mountain lions.
I mean, people are going to try and stomp them out and poison and trap and all of that, but at some point, you just got to go, all right, man, you're going to live it, too.
Like, that's not what they want, for sure, but they're accustomed to being homeless.
Like, they've acclimated to that world, and they've lived in it, many of them, for years and years and years, and they go to places and shelters where they get food, they sleep out on the street, they have a whole community of people that are out on the street, they're all doing drugs, and most of them are psychiatric patients.
That's the thing that really fucks me up with the homeless population in this country, is that half are vets, and then on some mental illness shit, maybe some of them, their family just can't Give them the care they need.
But if they got the care they need, maybe they could be a little more level enough to at least be under a roof with a loved one or somebody that can afford to, you know, to take them in.
There's like this weird thing with the homeless as well, where I feel like, as a country, we're quicker to help people in groups.
In a weird way, it still fucks me up, and it's gonna come out wrong, but if there's a natural disaster, the amount of money we will pour into relief and support for a particular area after the hurricane or the tornado or whatever, and that's fine.
If that same type of outpouring happened just once for the homeless coast to coast, it would change so much fucking shit, bro.
We need, like, if something like Katrina happened or a giant earthquake, then we would realize we have to do something.
But if there was no homeless people, and then all of a sudden something terrible happened, and there was 20,000 homeless people wandering around downtown, we would immediately go, oh, we've got to fix this.
I mean, you think about how much money we spend on other countries, right?
How much money we spend on aid, how much money we spend.
And we don't fix inner cities that have been impoverished since the fucking 1800s.
We don't ever go in there and try to solve problems.
I've been saying this forever.
If you want a better country, the best way is to ensure there's less losers.
And the best way to ensure there's less losers is give people more opportunities and fix places where you have no chance.
I mean, how many people that grow up in neighborhoods where they have no chance get out?
It's like it's a tiny, tiny fraction of people that want to become successful and happy.
Most of them are trapped by the environment that they find themselves just by a random roll of the dice.
they wind up and they're in Detroit and they're in the worst neighborhood in Detroit or they're in the South Side of Chicago or they're in Baltimore or wherever the fuck it is and then no one does anything to fix it no one does anything to change it but if there was no place like that and all sudden the disaster happened and then there was a place like that then there'd be an outpouring of contributions people would want to do something to try to fix it
Yeah, I just think that we live in a society where it's just the people in power know that if you help the people that you've been oppressing, then you run the risk of facing their wrath once they have power.
Why would I... If I have an opportunity to make something better and people are labeling me as the fault for you being in that situation in the first place, then I run the risk of losing...
I just would think that in today's day and age, people would be more forward-thinking.
And they would think, look, we've got a lot of problems with the environment.
We've got a lot of problems with climate control.
Like, we've got real issues in this world.
But we also have problems that have been here forever that no one's done a goddamn thing to fix.
So these new—like, oh, the ocean's rising!
The ocean's rising!
What are we going to do?
It's not going to affect all these inner cities.
These inner cities that have had these same problems forever.
If you looked at the problems, like murder problems in this country, like the places in the inner city where you have gang violence and murder and drug trafficking and the same fucking problems over and over and over again, year after year...
I just think where politics like that is concerned, we are more inclined to vote and do things that serve our own interests first.
Politicians are more inclined to enact policies that serve their best interests, and we're more inclined to vote for things that serve our best interests.
So the two things work against each other, and for it to work, for the system to work, you have to vote for things that are for the greater good, even if it means sacrificing your own position in the process.
And that's what I think a lot of politicians don't do.
But I think in this day and age, trying to help impoverish communities, now there's an awareness of how long stuff's been going on and how...
Do you know who Michael Wood Jr. is?
Is that his name?
Michael Wood Jr.?
Yeah.
He was a cop of Baltimore, and he came across...
This paper from the 1970s that was detailing like rap sheets, all the problems in the area and all the different crimes.
And he was realizing this is in the 2000s.
He's like, these are all the same places with the same crimes that we're handling now.
So here we are.
30 plus years later, the same exact crimes in the same exact places.
And he's like the feeling of like futility, the handling this, the fact that no one gives a fuck and that this has been this way forever and nothing's being done to do anything other than just continue the process of arresting people, letting them out, arresting people, letting them out.
In the past, I think, it's like past eight years or so, they're starting to pull at the threads now and figure out, oh, what the hell is this?
What's going on with the water?
And it's all these people getting fucked up.
The people who covered it up Those are people in office who could have made the decisions that you're saying to not fucking let fucked up water get into the water table.
So if a corporation says, hey man, motherfucker, don't worry about that dirty water.
So, off that alone, the choice you're making isn't for the greater good of the society or the pride or, like, the way ants, like, you know what ants do that's so dope when it's a flood?
That's what we have to be, but we're not gonna be there, because nobody wants to be the ant on the bottom that might drown and can't get back up to the top in time.
Well, I think there's also a sense of futility, like there's a lack of resources to handle everything, so you just take what you can, handle what you can, and keep moving, and then just get the fuck out of Newark.
I mean, that's how people look at it.
People look at those neighborhoods like a place to escape, not that it's anything that could be fixed.
That's what I struggle with with Birmingham in terms of going back home and trying to do things that Feed the neighborhood positively.
Because I feel like I never had that growing up.
Like, you know, there were a couple of people.
Your Bo Jacksons and your Charles Barkleys, they come around and, you know, give a high five to a kid or two.
But to be able to do things that create opportunities so that the feeling of hopelessness or whatever isn't always there.
Or if there's one thing that can be like, Big Sean did something that was dope in Detroit.
He put $100,000 down on a recording studio.
And to help underprivileged kids have access to just fucking just to do something that makes things better.
So the problem is that in the process of trying to give a fuck, it's stressful.
And there are people that are pushing and working against you.
And you could easily just go to sleep in your bed comfortably at night and just...
Not care, but I try.
I do as much as I can back home.
But the idea of getting the fuck out, I'm always torn on.
Because it's like, I'm gone.
If nothing else, I can pay my bills till I die.
And I think my son could go to a decent Division II school and be fine.
But...
If I'm not using my gift and all these advantages to try and help better other people somehow, then I feel like I failed the city, or I feel like I failed where I came from.
So I'm trying to figure out how, because what I've never seen is someone that gave back or attempted to put back into without it costing them something in the process as well.
You have a certain amount of bandwidth in your brain.
And how much of it can you dedicate to charitable things?
How much can you dedicate to your career, your family?
Yeah, it's the constant process.
I mean...
I think it's the job of people who are running cities and states and the country, but it's about how much resource, how much resources they have and how much they delegate to fixing these problems that have existed forever.
We shot my Comedy Central pilot in Birmingham this summer, which was not an easy feat in terms of the logistics of it, just because Birmingham's not Atlanta.
It's not a bunch of fucking cameras just laying around.
But you start seeing how different entities at the state level and the local level, even the county level, all have to get a little touch, all have to...
Have a hand in it somehow so that everyone feels like they are all part, like you have to please too many people at the same time to get anything remotely done.
I don't know, I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I know in Alabama, that's generally how it is.
That's the saddest shit ever when you think about charitable organizations and you find out how much people are making to run those charitable organizations.
Oh, she was his assistant in 2008. She began as De Niro's assistant, and she now is being sued.
So she basically got to a place where...
They're working together for 11 years.
11 years of employment, De Niro Robinson rose to Vice President of Production and Finance, according to the suit which lists her 2019 salary at $300,000.
She finally left the company in April after being suspected of corporate sabotage, said the legal filing.
It's just funny that out of all the shit that this lady did, apparently, allegedly, the 55 episodes of Friends are the ones that became the headline that everybody had to click on.
Well, De Niro's probably trying to figure out where all his money's going, because he's getting divorced right now, so he's probably...
Yeah, man, he's getting divorced.
There was some public spat at a restaurant where he yelled at his wife, I wouldn't have to do these shitty fucking movies if you weren't spending all my money.
It was back in the day when you share cell phone plans and she kept pushing us over our minutes for the month.
I'm like, what the fuck?
Who the fuck are you talking to?
So the next month I requested the full itemized Call log.
Like back in the day, Sprint would send you your entire call log for the month, and I just went through it, and then I could see the patterns of when I was asleep or when I was on stage.
You could just see that when it's all in front of you, it's easy to just see that, oh, yeah, when I go to work at 6 a.m., then you call this guy.
But don't you think that, like, those brutal breakups and all the chaos of...
Infidelity and all that kind of nonsense.
It gives you a better understanding of relationships when they go well.
It's all like life lessons.
You don't get to be a seasoned, grown-up human being without getting your heart broken a few times, without having a bunch of things going and disappointing in your work life.
And then you become a person with an understanding of all the variabilities that you're dealing with in life.
I think the problem, though, you know, with love is that it also can be corroding in a sense where if you've really been invested and you've really tried to love and then it didn't work.
I think like I feel like if you've been in love a couple of I also feel like people get married sooner.
There's something more pure about it, but people get married later is more honest.
Yeah, okay.
It's like this blind love.
We're in love.
We've never been done dirty.
Oh my God, the sky is falling.
Versus your grizzled vet.
You've been cheated on.
You've cheated.
So you know both sides of that coin.
So you know how it feels.
You know both sides of that.
So when you enter into a relationship, it's more pure.
But because you have these battle wounds and these battle scars, I don't know if you love the same as the couple that got married in their 20s.
It's like Do you ever find, I guess, I can't ask you this as a married man, but you find yourself sometimes looking at past relationships like jokes where you go, oh, I know how I could have fixed that one.
Where even with the knowledge you have now of relationships and love, I can look back on stuff that I fucked up and go, all I had to do was this, this, boom, and that joke would have hit.
It's like you have to leave behind these poorly finished projects to appreciate the one that you're going to put out next that's going to be the best version of it.
I look at every fucking special I ever did going, ugh.
I like the ones where I know that it was an argument that he had with a girl.
Then he's bringing it to the stage and trying to work it out and make it funny.
Because if you have an argument with a girl and then she comes to see you at a comedy club like a month later and that argument gets relayed to the audience and it's fucking hysterical, you win.
You win and you fucking slam dunk.
That is a fucking grand slam that shatters windows in the parking lot.
Of course, there's some video games in Vietnam, but as far as hit, popular, Twitch-level ninja shit, none in Vietnam.
I told Will Cervant Supremist, and he says, that's because if you're playing a game based in Vietnam, you can't win, even if you want to.
Even when you win, you still lose.
And it's taking that thought and figuring out how to weave that.
But that's what I mean where a friend can help me work through an idea.
But then somewhere, the trick is to come around the backside of that and make sure that you're reinforcing and uplifting the people that chose to fight.
It's a whole world that I'm just obsessed with.
It all boils back to the whole Trump draft dodger thing and the hypocrisy that If we agree that the troops are fucked and they're treated horribly, then how is draft dodging bad?
Yeah, once I have the ideas together, I just go loose on stage.
I'll just run a bit a couple times on stage without any real structure.
Just bullet points.
Here are the four points I want to make.
Do that for a week.
Listen to the audio.
The stuff that's hot, transcribe.
And then from that transcription, start filling in the blanks of how to flesh out the thought and the point a little bit more.
But then some stuff requires research.
There's a bit that I'm working on now about how the most important person, the most important character in a civil rights movie is the white person, is the evil white actor.
You cannot have a powerful civil rights movie without a white person being evil.
So these actors are never honored.
They're never nominated for shit.
Like a civil rights movie is only as powerful as the white actor is evil because that captures what was fucking happening back in that day.
So I need to like sit and physically go to box office mojo and look at the last 10 years of civil rights movies versus civil rights movies versus white savior movies and pull actors and pull examples.
And then look at that and then go to their IMDb and look at their trajectory post civil rights movie to establish a pattern of if you're a white person, you do evil.
You're risk because my argument is that you're risking your career.
If you're not an A-list actor and you're playing a racist, you may not do shit else.
Because for black people, if you say nigga, it's too real.
So we can't see you as a fucking Romulan in a Star Trek movie years later.
We're unable to process.
So that joke, I have that idea, and I'll just work that thought a couple of times.
But now, before I put it on stage again, I need movies.
I need examples to back up the thesis statement.
So that's what I'll start writing and really start looking at all of these examples.
And I also have, like, it's in the same ballpark of that.
It's about how, like, people call, like, Green Book, like, a white savior movie.
And how this movie is about white people doing a good deed for black people back in the day.
And black people don't like white savior movies because, you know, it avoids the pain and the struggle and all that shit.
And I feel like white savior movies are just reactionary to powerful civil rights movies because nobody wants to be portrayed negatively.
So if there are enough civil rights movies that play white people as evil, it's inevitable that a white person is going to write a movie about, remember the time we drove you around to play the piano?
Like, that's...
It's inevitable.
We fed you chicken.
So don't just show all those evil things we did.
Let's also acknowledge the time we drove you around.
And I think if I go back and I look through the history of the box office over the last 20 years, I guarantee you I'll be able to find an oscillation between Powerful civil rights movie and white savior movie.
I just feel like if you look at every genre, and it's not to defend a white savior movie as much as it is to just show why the fuck it happened.
Black people in the 90s, like Boys in the Hood.
In the 90s, that was the era of shoot-em-up, bang-bang-hood classics.
And somewhere around 95, 96, black cinema became much more positive and reinforcing.
And there was Waiting to Exhale and Poetic Justice and Above the Rim.
What's the other one?
Love Jones and Love in Basketball.
There were all these more positive black cinema.
That was in direct reaction to not wanting to be perceived and portrayed constantly in a negative light.
So I could probably go deep into the fucking weeds, race by race on cinema.
I could do all the Asian movies and end with Crazy Rich Asians as the counter to that, but it's not necessarily Asian savior.
I don't know how to connect that, but I believe there's a way with all of these cinematic movies to connect it all together.
And at that point, you probably got a 25-minute bit that you know needs to be chopped down to 10. But that's how you build the whole house, and then you just start chopping off wings.
If you're on a show, when you're an amateur, there's fucking ten other people before you.
You have to grab them.
You gotta grab them.
You gotta grab them and show them that you have something.
But then, once you become an established comedian, the other problem is you're working with a bunch of other established comedians.
Like, say, if I'm working with you, and then there's Joey Diaz, and all these other fucking people that are going on that are murdering, and then you go up with some bullshit new stuff, that stuff has to be ready.
Having an established audience is great for a couple minutes.
And then you better have some shit.
It's almost like there's more expectations, so things have to be more tight.
But some people don't do that.
Some people don't do clubs anymore where they're working with a bunch of people.
They don't do like the store or the improv where they're working with a bunch of people.
Instead, they do their own shows.
They do their own shows only.
They have the same opening act all the time, and then people are there to see them, and it's a low bar.
They don't have to worry about it as much.
I think that's a mistake.
But I think the essay form, I started figuring that out maybe 10 years ago.
I started writing things in essay form.
I originally used to do it as blog posts.
I would write blog posts and I'd take those blog posts and I would extract ideas from them and then make it into comedy.
But I feel like the writing without the limitations of it needing to be funny is where I get the most ideas.
Yes, because I'm not just trying to bullshit people for a laugh.
I'm trying to find out, like, what is it, like, if that premise of, like, the White Savior movie, like, what is it about white people making these movies?
Like, what are they trying to, are they trying to defend something?
Are they trying to exonerate themselves?
Like, what are they trying to do when they make that movie?
Is it just a feel-good, is it their distorted idea of how to bring everybody together is to show that some white people were really good back then, even in the bad times?
Look, great movie.
Hey!
Good job, Michael.
Good job, Will.
Everybody did a great job in this movie.
What is it that's the motivation?
You find those gems of humor, those roots of humor in that.
I just like writing that way because I don't have to do anything.
There's no expectation.
It's just thoughts.
Just spill the thoughts out.
And then you get absorbed in the writing.
And then in that absorption, you're a funny guy.
You're always going to think funny thoughts.
Those funny thoughts are going to come out.
When you're talking about something, you're like, what the fuck was this guy thinking?
And then you go on this whole rant about this thing that maybe...
If you didn't give yourself the opportunity to sit in front of a computer and just stare at the screen and stare at those keyboard You probably wouldn't have come up with that premise.
Also, once I have the joke in a decent shape, even if it's kind of loose, I start watching myself on mute.
I go from audio to once the joke has structure to video, and then just watching myself on mute and just seeing body language and just seeing, does this look funny?
Once I identified what my comedic strengths were, it's quick spastic movements, but not a lot of stage talking.
Walking the stage doesn't work for me.
I'm not Chris Rock.
So, operate in like a three-foot box to either side of center stage.
And if it's quick in head...
But nobody, if I take my head one way, then bring my shoulders, instead of bringing my head and shoulders at the same time on a turn, while I'm contemplating a point.
Something as simple as that For me, helps jokes.
And then I can go back and listen to the audio.
Go back and watch the video and see where I'm getting laughs just off movement and I haven't said a word yet.
And for me, it's quick movements and facial expressions.
Those are the extra little...
I call that the extra seasoning.
That's the shit that, you know, once you kind of get the joke in a good place, where can we add a little seasoning?
Is it a vocal inflection?
Is it coming down on this part?
Is it...
Looking this way, then looking that way.
Almost borderline performative on some acting shit, but just looking and finding places where the emotions can change.
And not necessarily on this line, I do this thing.
But it's just, oh, this part is funnier.
If I'm not as excited here, Foxworthy says, I was watching Bring the Funny and he told one of the contestants, if you start at a 10...
It's a fascinating process, and we discussed this on the show many times before, that there's no books that can tell you how to do it.
One of the things that's really cool about this conversation is young guys coming up, young girls coming up that want to learn how to do comedy can listen to your process, and they'll get an idea of the map ahead.
They'll get an idea of the road, because there's no courses you can take that are ever going to prepare you.
You have to find established comedians and listen to them talk about how they do it.
In a sense, what we're doing is we're laying down Like, sort of a course for the up-and-coming class, for the people that are starting out now that don't really have anyone to show them how to do it.
They can cut a lot of time out by listening to a guy like you who's explaining the mistakes that he made and then the good choices that you made and then your process.
One of the tricks that I had early on was to just avoid topics that anybody else was talking about.
And then even if the joke wasn't the funniest, I got credit for being original.
And I don't know if this will work for every comic, but I know coming up early 2000s in the back half of the Def Jam era, to be a black comic that wasn't talking about fucking and sucking and weed and You ever been so broke?
My first two years of comedy was this weird Martin Lawrence, Doug Stanhope hybrid child.
I don't know.
It was terrible.
It was very terrible.
But I started noticing that The first thing I needed to do, the first objective when I got on was, alright, all the road bookers said, you gotta get a TV credit.
You gotta get a TV credit and then I can pay you more.
Alright, well the only thing that was booking people on a regular was Comic View.
So BET's Comic View became the path, but then...
I didn't get Comic View like two, three years in a row, and I looked at the material I submitted versus the material that was being performed.
It was guys doing better versions of the same topics as me.
So, all right, this year, we're going to try doing different topics from everybody.
So I watched Comic View for a whole year, kept a log of every topic that was touched on for every episode, and just never did jokes about those topics.