Steve-O and Joe Rogan dive into UFC’s Izzy vs. Pajera fight, praising Izzy’s stoppage call while debating weight-cut transparency, then explore CTE risks, Tylenol’s 500 annual U.S. deaths, and Steve-O’s Barrett’s esophagus diagnosis. They contrast extreme parkour climbers like Alex Honnold with Everest’s 4% fatality rate, linking danger to human growth, before critiquing comedians’ stagnation and Rogan’s stand-up evolution. Steve-O’s cocaine-damaged septum—fixed by a "kung fu instructor"—leads to Tesla stunts, distracted driving stats, and his failed van podcast setup. Closing with factory farming critiques, they mock Monsanto’s internal organic food while pushing GMOs externally, underscoring how health risks clash with modern convenience. [Automatically generated summary]
And when they made the move to ESPN Plus, or ESPN, It was driving me crazy because I'd get back to my hotel room after my shows, and I'd go to the On Demand, and the thumbnail for the event would be a guy like celebrating, you know?
I'm like, the whole fucking reason that I'm here is because anybody going to the video On Demand, and the thumbnail would give it away.
So I messaged Dana.
I'm like, dude, this is driving me crazy.
And he's like...
I got the, you know, the number one at ESPN, the number two at Disney's on it, and then they just got fixed.
I was talking to Michael Bisping, who was UFC champion, and he said that literally he got through his entire career before the calf kick came along, which is so wild when you think about that.
I mean, he got through his whole career before the calf kick emerged.
Which is insane to think of, that this one area of the leg to kick, the only person that had ever really done it before that was Benson Henderson was pretty good to doing it, and Mighty Mouse had done it to Henry Cejudo, and it happened to Michael Chandler and Bellator, but it wasn't a staple.
Everybody had to do it, and now everyone has to do it, and it just takes one or two shots and your leg is fucked.
And with the stoppage, too, on this Izzy fight, I thought it wasn't a bad stoppage, but at the same time, it was impressive how Izzy said, in the moment, I thought it was a bad stoppage, but then my coach and my manager, they said it was fine, and I trust them, and so it's all good.
I mean, especially that one to Jorge Masvidal, because that was a crazy one.
It's fucking the game they play, man.
Izzy knocked a lot of fucking people unconscious.
Izzy put it on everybody in the division.
And the thing is, when you are a specialist, Like, if your specialty is wrestling and then all of a sudden you're facing an Olympic gold medalist, you're like, fuck.
Because, like, there's people that are better than you at your specialty.
And at least on paper, Alex Pajera is one of the best kickboxers of all time.
I still think Izzy is technically a better striker.
Because Izzy is just so...
He's so clever and sophisticated and he doesn't have the kind of power that Pejera has.
But Pejera is very technically good too.
He just has a different thing that he relies on.
He just has that nuclear option and he relies on that a lot and it paid off.
And it paid off with him against Izzy twice.
And one time he won by a decision, which if I go back and watch that kickboxing fight, I do not agree with that decision.
And the second fight with kickboxing, it was a kind of shady situation because Izzy was winning and Izzy had him fucked up and they gave him a standing eight count, which they can do in kickboxing.
And they allowed him to recover and then he went back and he knocked out Izzy.
And then this one, down 3-1, going into the fifth and he puts it on him.
He's so big for the weight class, which really wears you out, that weight cut.
That's a big weight cut.
And with wrestling, He's going to have issues, because he's not a grappler, that's not his forte, and he's getting better at grappling, but that was when Izzy takes you down and Izzy controls you on the ground, and Izzy's not, that's not his forte either.
I wondered, is someone going to shoot?
Is someone going to try to take it to the ground?
But to see Izzy do it, well, to see Pajada do it first, he did it at the end of the second, and then to see Izzy do it to him and control him and beat him up, I was like, wow.
I mean, he certainly gets above that in between fights, and he has a hard time making 185. Ah, man, I wonder, like, this is a question I've been dying to ask.
What do you think about if, like, when the fighters, they're putting on the Vaseline, you know, they're getting checked out by the ref, right?
What if they were standing on a scale at that point?
So that it was transparent.
You could actually know, compared to what they weighed in at, and then when they actually step into the octagon for the fight.
Poeton, I'm not sure what language it is, what's the language called, but that's hands of stone in his language.
That dude is fucking special.
He's so scary.
And if he fucking learns how to wrestle, and he learns how to take people down too, I mean, if he gets really good at that, and gets good at stuffing the takedowns and makes people stand with him...
So when you get a specialist like Izzy, who's just a specialist kickboxer, worst case scenario is the best kickboxer in the world enters into MMA, and that's what happened.
I mean, you can make an argument that he's certainly the best kickboxer in the world at 185 pounds.
He lost to Vahitov in his last fight in kickboxing, but Vahitov is...
The cream of the crop.
And Vaitov is super, super technical, and it was a split decision.
It was a very, very, very close fight.
So that was his last kickboxing bout in glory.
Other than that, the other elite guys in kickboxing that were supposed to fight in MMA, one of them is Cedric Dumbay.
And I've had Cedric on the podcast before, and he's another dude.
He's a fucking real problem if he gets into MMA. And he's been taking his time and learning wrestling, and he went down to AKA and trained with those guys for a while.
But he had some sort of an issue, a medical issue, in how to pull out of his fight in France.
He was supposed to have his UFC debut, and now I think he said he was in some sort of a dispute with Glory, because they're kind of upset that he's leaving Glory and going over to the UFC. I hope he gets over there because that's another guy that like all those dudes at 170 that like to strike like good fucking luck Good luck with that guy Yeah.
Because he's a motherfucker.
And he's a motherfucker against strikers.
Like, when you get a world champion striker who enters into MMA, all fights start on the feet, man.
They all start in an advantageous position.
It's like if you're fighting a grappler and all fights start on the ground.
Like, every fight started with that dude on top of you.
What I usually do is I get it on my phone, and then I use the Apple app, and I stream it to my television through Apple TV. Does that mean that there's not like a ton of money for kickboxing?
Glory is the biggest organization for kickboxing in the world and they put on phenomenal fights and I'm a giant fan of the organization.
But it's weird to me that boxing got so popular in the United States and around the world and MMA got so popular in the United States and around the world but kickboxing never really caught on here.
It doesn't make any sense because it's so exciting.
When you watch guys that are like high-level like Cedric Dumbay or Alex Pajera or Vahitov, these fucking world-class kickboxers are so exciting.
I also went to like and now of course famously the whole CTE phenomenon you can't find out if you have it until you've died and they've like I think they can tell now oh yeah I think there's a new way that they can tell before you die but it used to be that they had to wait and do an autopsy on you right well I went to some like brain specialist kind of guy Were you having problems?
No.
I just went because I was interested.
And Dr. Drew sent me to this guy.
It was actually when I was trying to get cauliflower ear as part of my multimedia comedy.
And I remember telling you too that I was like, I'm going to do a crazy bit and I try to get cauliflower ear.
And I remember you telling me You were like, nope, I don't support that.
He said, I think the cauliflower ear is something that should be earned.
I remember thinking, oh well, I became buddies with Chuck Liddell.
Chuck Liddell and I got together.
We made the fucking funniest, craziest video of him trying to get...
I made this helmet.
I designed this helmet that left my ears sticking out to protect my head from head shots.
A little bit.
And my ears sticking out.
Chuck Liddell fucking sets a golf ball on my ear and fucking whacks it off for the golf club.
And the way she explained it when I did the post-fight interview, how she explained how she went for the Kimura and then Molly got her arm free and then she trapped it again and then got the leg over the head.
And then once she got the leg over the head, I was begging her to tap.
Frank is so big and so strong that your arm has no chance.
Frank has broken two different world champions arms inside the octagon.
He broke Tim Sylvia's arm with an arm bar and then he broke Minotauro's arm.
And when that arm breaks like that, man, I don't think you're ever the same again.
Snap.
See that?
That's it right there.
So what happens is all the pressure is on this bone.
And so it's like this going that way and this bone from just the angle it just Snaps and you get all the like he's got a giant plate and they have to piece your arm back together like a jigsaw puzzle and Screw it all in place and even then like you're always gonna have this bar in your arm And it's probably there's probably nerve damage and tissue damage and it's probably never gonna be the same right Fuck that.
Tap.
Just tap.
Please tap.
The other time was Khabib when he had Michael Johnson.
I was like, please tap.
Please tap.
Please tap.
And then Islam Makachev, he had Dan Hooker.
And again, I'm going, please tap.
Please tap.
You gotta tap!
Like, live to fight another day.
There's times when you gotta tap.
And the Kimura's a big one.
When the guy gets the leg over your face and he's just got that angle and he's cranking it like, oh Jesus, just tap.
Dude, it's so crazy how, like, my dad's side of the family is just straight academics, theologians, zoologists, like, just everybody's, like, PhD or, like, you know, crazy.
Clergy men.
My dad's dad fought in World War II and was decorated.
And then there's my mom's side of the family.
Addiction, gambling, suicide, the whole deal.
My mom's father dodged the draft.
He was in Canada.
Dodged the draft for World War II and got fairly obnoxiously wealthy selling Bootleg gasoline.
They had a ration for the wartime.
His bootleg gasoline operation, you could buy as much gas as you wanted beyond the ration from my maternal grandfather.
And he became obnoxiously wealthy, had a boat, walked out with a crazy wad of cash, and the fucking dude gambled it all away, and then when he was broke, fucking blew his brains out.
I don't know that I ever met that guy.
I was a baby when that happened.
It doesn't make any sense because with all the alcoholism, that didn't deter me from becoming an alcoholic.
Or your next like wild thing you could also transfer that to accomplishing personal goals and you know fitness goals and just getting your life together starting a business being obsessed with the business like you can do it in a positive way with that same mindset and Oftentimes you see that with fighters like some of the best fighters.
They they had like real horrible Bouts of alcoholism or drug abuse in their past.
You're lifting crazy amounts of weight and you're fucking up your back and fucking up your elbows and your shoulders and instead of dealing with it, you just take a pain pill.
I mean, he can kind of stand up, but he really can't move around that good.
But he's got a fucking amazing attitude, even though that's the case.
Like, guys that feel sorry for themselves that I do it all over again.
I mean, he was one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time.
But he was different than everybody else in that...
When Ronnie was at the top of his game Ronnie was lifting enormous amounts of weight like a lot of bodybuilders They just do very very high reps and a lot of steroids Ronnie was lifting crazy weight like wild wild amounts because he just wanted to be massive Just as massive as a person could be and he accomplished that But he paid the price.
Because he would hurt his back and just keep lifting, go through the set.
He wouldn't stop and pause and assess what was wrong with him.
So if you're taking normal doses of TRT, then you're just like a normal man.
The idea is that as you age and you take TRT, your body repairs itself and functions well and your immune system functions well like it did when you were younger.
And it works if you don't abuse it.
But if you're a crazy person and you say, well, instead of this amount, I'm going to take double.
Instead of taking it twice a week, I'm going to take it three times a week, double three times a week.
That's a lot.
And people definitely do that.
And if you get addicts and you give – like if an addict – you don't have to go to a clinic to get the shot.
You give the shot yourself.
You just say, I'm going to fucking keep shooting up.
And then you go to multiple doctors, like, if they don't have a database on whether or not you're on testosterone from this doctor and also from that doctor.
Like, I knew a dude about a pill problem.
And what he used to do is he would go to multiple doctors and get opiates.
And he was fucked up all the time.
And he was mad that these doctors gave it to him.
I'm like, bitch, you didn't tell them that you were going to...
Take it on yourself, man.
Like, you fucking did it to yourself.
I know it sucks.
And I know, like, you probably didn't know it was that hard to kick or that addictive, but he fucking purposely went to multiple different doctors.
Like, he used to live in Texas, then he moved to California.
My nose had broken so many times that I only had like one quarter of one nostril that I could get oxygen from.
The other one was completely closed.
So I could go like this.
And I literally couldn't breathe a thing out of my nose.
And then on top of that, the same thing that happens to cauliflower ear also happens to the inside of your nose.
So when you get a bloody nose and your nose gets smashed all the time, calcium deposits can form inside of your nose the same way they form in your ear.
So my nose was just useless.
So the doctor scooped all that shit out and shaved my turbinates down and then reconstructed the actual septum.
So the path between the two nostrils.
So when he did that, when I was 40...
It was like the first time I could breathe out of my nose since I was like five.
I fell down a fly stairs when I was five years old and broke my nose.
Pull up how many people die a year in the United States from acetaminophen.
When I found that out, I was shocked.
Well, when I read about that woman who died when she was just trying to get over the COVID, it's responsible for 56,000 emergency department visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and 500 deaths per year in the United States.
They'll lure you in with some fake headlines, some bullshit website that's in Macedonia or some shit that's just designed to get American clicks and sell ads.
Published in Lancet, for patients under 65 taking daily aspirin to prevent a recurring stroke or heart attack, the annual rate of bleeds requiring hospital admission was approximately 1.5% compared with 3.5% for patients aged 75 to 84 and 5% for those aged 85 or older.
Huh.
So you know what it is?
I guess it's a trade-off, right?
Yeah.
It probably prevents the clots but also makes you bleed to death.
And I'll take this off of you because when I'd like linked up with with some of these kids that do all this fucking crazy parkour shit like from building to building and I Reposted on my Instagram some kid doing like some like it was like he jumped off one building and then landed on the next building like by his fingers and People In the comments were just like, oh, this fucking stupid kid's gonna die.
And I was kind of incensed.
And I went on my story and I was like, why is it that these kids are catching such fucking heat?
But then this other fucking guy wins an Oscar with a fucking free solo.
I mean, I admire people that want to take challenges on and do things that are very difficult because I'm just guessing that the sense of accomplishment after you do it is probably pretty extraordinary.
But...
The other hand, like, fuck, man, passing by people who didn't make it.
Two climbers found a woman alone and dying, yelling, please don't leave me, but were forced to continue and let her die as they had no means to help her, and staying would risk their own lives.
They felt so guilty, they spent years saving up enough money to finally return and give her a proper burial.
And then there's other mountains where, like, that's one of the things they covered in The Alpinists, where, like, a quarter of the people who try to summit it die.
Well, there's that, but there's also people can't take care of people.
They don't have the ability.
If you're working full time and you have a career and a family and your father is unable to take care of himself anymore, you're left with a limited amount of options.
What are you going to do?
Are you going to abandon your life for the next 10 years so that you can take care of this person 24 hours a day?
Or are you gonna put him in some sort of a medical facility?
But then the big fear is that he gets abused there.
That is the saddest, scariest shit when you see those videos of people getting abused in nursing homes, like hidden camera footage of The last days of your life, some young asshole is fucking smacking you in the head and shoving your face in food.
Yeah, and maybe it's not about putting people in nursing homes, but I just think that there's a real, like, a real, like, living with the blinders on, like, I don't want to think about it, la, la, la, la.
And then you end up...
You know, further down the road thinking like, oh man, why didn't I do this?
Why didn't I do that?
As opposed to really like being deliberate and living the life you would want to have lived when it's coming to an end.
Well, I think it's also a learned thing to be able to take chances.
And if you go through your life, and maybe you have a family, and your family is your mother and your father are averse to risks, and they play everything safe, and then they drill it into your head to play it safe, and then all of a sudden you're 35, you don't know how to do anything risky.
This is like the life you've always lived.
I mean, there's how many people that just live this sedentary lifestyle and they're just gelatinous blobs sitting in a chair every day and trying to avoid risk.
And by the way, those are the people that freaked out the most when COVID came along because they were really, like, genuinely vulnerable.
Whereas, you know, if you're an athlete and you're relatively healthy, that was not something you were as terrified of and those people got mad at those people.
That weren't terrified because for them it was literally like there was a demon waiting to get them because they were scared.
And the crazy thing was when those people got vaccinated and they're like, well, I'm the smart one.
I'm taking care of myself.
What are you doing?
Bitch, you live in a glass house.
Your body is barely functional and you have no resiliency.
You know, that vaccine, it'll help you a little, but you've got other problems.
Like, you're obese, and that is one of the number one causes of death.
Like, the idea that you're going to be safe from danger because you got a COVID vaccine.
Like, okay, well, maybe you'll be safer from COVID, but you're still vulnerable as fuck if you're obese.
It is one of the worst things, and it's 40% of the United States.
I was just looking at the New York City Marathon qualifying times, and for a 40 to 40-year-old, you have to be under four hours, and this is a half an hour faster than that.
And as I broke this down in my book, I said that I really believe that the...
That's an example of somebody operating with a mentality of scarcity, where the idea is that in reality, these people are concerned that if Steve-O comes in to stand-up and has success, that that means that there is going to be less on the table from them.
It's going to take away from them.
There's not enough to go around.
And that this is their way of dealing with what they perceive as a threat.
And that's operating with the mentality of scarcity.
And then, there's people like Joe Rogan, who operate with a mentality of abundance, where you're perfectly comfortable that there's enough to go around, and you're not threatened by anything, you actually encourage people to get into it.
And I just had to, you know, I'm so fucking grateful for that.
You know, for the way that you supported me, for the way that you support everybody, and that you just want there to be more funny shit in the world.
Stand-up is talking and being funny while you're talking.
That's what it is.
It's like you tell stories, you figure it out.
The idea that only one group of people should be able to do this and that it's our thing, like, fuck off.
The only people that think that way, they lack self-examination or they're using criticism to avoid looking at their own problems.
There's a great quote that I overuse, but I'm going to say it one more time.
Most criticism is the tragic result of unmet needs.
They haven't done enough.
So they find flaws in other people that maybe don't even exist.
But the idea that you shouldn't be able to try stand-up because they do it and it's my thing, it's our thing.
Well, first of all, I think you You'd be better at it if that was your thing.
And second of all, this idea that no one else should be able to do it because they come from some other world or some other career or some other thing.
Look, I don't give a fuck if you're a musician or your Dean Del Rey.
He didn't even start doing it until he was in his 40s and he became a very good stand-up.
Anyone can do comedy.
You might not be able to.
Look, you might not have it in you, but if you do, I hope you do.
I support you.
It's a wonderful thing to be able to do, to be able to go out in front of a group of people and make them all laugh and make them all feel better.
Why the fuck wouldn't you encourage more of that?
There's not that many of us.
If the idea that it's a fucking famine mentality, boy, what a famine it is then, because there's only like a thousand of us on Earth.
How many fucking professional stand-ups are there?
There's a million doctors in America.
How many fucking stand-ups are there?
There's so few that are like legitimate professional stand-ups that can consistently churn out a new hour over the next few years and perform in front of live audiences on a regular basis and kill.
There's so few.
There's so fucking few.
The idea that you would encourage that, what do you want, the art form to die off?
You know, because like it kind of almost did during COVID. I mean, COVID got weird.
You know, people were doing Zoom stand-up and people were doing stand-up behind glass.
The first time I tried stand-up was 2006. So, like, way long.
But I've only been, like, really, like, in earnest touring since 2010. There's a thing that comics also do, where they don't treat beginners like they're comics.
Well, first of all, I'm a martial artist, so I come from this mentality where you're always encouraging people to try.
Because even if you're never going to be very good at martial arts, it will be very good for you.
It will benefit you to try to get better at this difficult thing, because it is a vehicle for developing your human potential.
I feel like everything that you do that is difficult is a vehicle for developing your human potential.
Whether it's learning how to play chess, learning a new language, writing a book, anything you do that's difficult allows you to confront your character flaws and allows you to confront your discipline issues, allows you to confront all the thoughts that are in your mind that maybe you haven't properly organized, and it gives you a chance to excel at life.
And for people that don't understand that or don't get that, they're generally selfish or narcissistic.
There's something wrong with them that they don't see that a person who is attempting to do this difficult thing should be encouraged.
Because, like, just because you started when you're 35 as opposed to starting when you're 21 or whatever, nonsense.
Like, I met a woman who, she started doing jujitsu when she was 58 years old, and she got her black belt in her 60s.
That's amazing.
That's an amazing accomplishment.
Now is that lady gonna go to the UFC and fuck everybody up?
No.
So if she shouldn't, should she not be encouraged?
That's crazy.
And the idea that it belongs to the youth or it belongs to people who have been in the arts their whole life, that's nonsense.
It's such a foolish way of approaching life.
And it's also like you're defining yourself in this very egotistical way and like that you're a purist and you're a purveyor of the truth and you're the only way that this should be done is my way.
I was in sixth grade and I saw Michael J. Fox holding onto the back of the fucking car, cruising around.
I saw the skateboard tricks in the movie and I was like, dude, I gotta...
Every kid thought, I gotta fucking try it.
There was a fucking skateboard underneath every goddamn Christmas tree that year.
And every kid had a skateboard.
It was the wildest fad ever.
And in short order, every kid found out how fucking hard it was to ride this goddamn thing.
Every kid trying to ride it fell down and hurt themselves.
At least 90% of these kids, these skateboards went totally unused.
And the kids that didn't put it away, the kids that stuck with it, I mean, right there, dude, that is like a white hot core of just the fucking persistence, dedication, like fucking sacrifice.
Like skateboarding weeds out pussies and quitters and just isolates kids who will...
Yeah, just put effort and fucking tenacity and on top of that, with the getting hurt and the fucking doing it, the sacrifice, and then on top of that, everything that you're riding your skateboard on, you're effectively fucking vandalizing.
Yeah, so whether it's stand-up or learning how to play guitar or whatever it is, you can get better at things.
And when I see a guy who's a comic and they're an open-miker and they get a couple of laughs on stage, I treat them the same way I treat a headliner or the same way I treat someone who I work with on the road.
That's a comic.
I don't say, you're not a comic yet.
You're not a comic yet.
Well, you're certainly not good yet, but that's okay.
That's the same as a white belt.
If I see someone who's a white belt in jiu-jitsu, I don't say, oh, you fucking suck.
You're not even good yet.
You're not even black belt.
Well, it takes a while to get good, but if you keep going, you'll get good.
For me, when I first started, it felt like such a departure from, you know, like, you know, I've been doing this jackass shit.
Now I'm going to do stand-up and it's going to be separate, you know, and I'm just going to devote myself to it and I'm going to work to establish myself in it.
And it was just me and the microphone.
And I would do like, you know, I would have like a set of stand-up and then I would do like a set of like silly circus tricks, you know, like whatever and like have that be part of my show.
And I did my first special.
It came out in 2016. And I can't watch that shit, man.
What happened was really interesting after I taped that special.
Then I went to go put together my next hour.
And as I was putting together that second hour, it occurred to me one night that the stories that I was telling comprising this new act of were things that largely happened on video camera.
So then I thought, oh my god, what if my next special in post-production, I interstitially edit in the footage of the story's unfolding so that it's got a multimedia quality to it.
I record my sets, I put it in the computer, and I bring in the footage.
Dude, I saw it right away.
I'm like, this fucking works.
This is epic.
The way that that forced me to study footage of my stand-up, the craziest thing, the things that made me cringe, I addressed them.
It sped up the progression of my stand-up so much by studying it.
And the best thing, too, was that for the next couple of years, That I toured with that hour, I did not have the footage with me on the road as a crutch to lean on.
For that whole tour, it was just me and the microphone.
And the shows were successful in their own right.
I got through it just me and the microphone.
No benefit.
And the footage came in in post-production.
So then I put out that special.
As far as I know, that was the world's first fucking multimedia stand-up comedy special.
I put it out on my own website and I fucking killed it.
That was when I duct taped myself to the billboards.
Did you ever see that?
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, that was to promote me putting out my own special.
And I was fucking super successful with it.
That's awesome.
But by the time I put that out, Then I had two really big things that were kind of irking me.
Up to that point, my stand-up had been an exercise in living in the past.
It's just like, oh, you know, old footage, like old fucking memory lane shit.
I felt like I was turning into a schmuck who won't shut up about what he could bench press in high school.
So what I wanted to do next for the third hour was to create All new content, new material that's current, and I wanted to bring footage with me on the road.
So I set about taping new high-level ass shit.
And what's so rad about it is that over the last 12 years, my various worlds have all just converged into one.
So now when you go see me on tour, you're seeing me perform stand-up, I tell a story and then after I get done telling that story, then I screen the footage.
Sometimes I'll just go out and have the experience.
I'll have the crazy idea for whatever the The stunt is and I'll go and film it and then Having filmed it then I'll go to the comedy store and just take ten minutes to just work on that chunk And so when you go on the road are you bringing traditional stand-ups to open for you?
The saddest shit is that people, there's comics that, look, I'm all for everyone trying comedy, but some people don't ever get it.
They never get it.
And I don't know why.
I don't know what it is.
Some people get it.
Like, I saw guys that used to struggle, like Sebastian used to struggle.
He used to struggle.
And then one day, I hadn't seen him in a while, because I got kicked out of the Comedy Store in 2007, and I was on the road, and I was in Vegas.
I'm pretty sure I was in Vegas for a UFC, and I was alone in my hotel room watching TV, just flipping through the channels, and Showtime came on, and Sebastian was on.
Sebastian's got a special.
And it was fucking great!
It was really funny.
And I remember tweeting it, saying how fucking funny it is.
And I got a hold of him.
I said, dude, that was awesome.
I just loved it.
I loved that he found his confidence.
He found that thing, whatever it is, that swagger.
Fucking really good and it's getting really really well received and he's at like more than three million downloads now it's three three million two hundred twenty seven thousand nine hundred ninety six Amazing and that's only in two weeks.
It's incredible not even two weeks 13 days Every day more and more people are watching it, and it's really fucking good, and he worked really hard on it.
And that's a thing, man.
You can fucking get better at stuff if you can do it.
But the thing is, comedy is a weird thing.
I encourage everyone to try martial arts.
The difference is...
With martial arts, you might always suck and you're going to try to get better, but at least there's like techniques that you can use that everybody uses.
We've had problems with people where, like, you know, they'll, like, guys opening for guys will start doing bits on the same subject these people cover after they, even setting them up the same way.
Like, I had to talk to a guy about it recently.
I'm like, hey, motherfucker, you gotta stop doing that.
Like, you're literally, you're in the neighborhood of stealing.
Because you're working for a guy and you're doing his premises before he does them.
They like to take people on the road with them who suck.
Because they want to come in and rescue them.
Like people that are like mildly competent, they want to bring like the worst opening acts so that this audience has to suffer through 20 minutes of nonsense.
That's the beauty of the art form is that there's this weird puzzle that you're trying to put together and you're trying to like work it all out in front of live audience members.
Like I'm in this weird place right now where I'm writing all this new shit because I've just filmed a special so now I'm trying to piece together a whole new hour and like I have these premises that are like infants.
They can barely walk.
They're like toddler premises.
Trying to find like where the beats are and you gotta let them grow just like a toddler you got to let them fucking develop muscles and Figure out coordination.
You got to put together these things and it's it's a challenge One of the unique things about stand-up is every time you release a special or you record a special, then you have to start from scratch.
Yeah, but it's exciting and it's also humbling right and I think that's a good thing about comedy that doesn't exist in music If you are a band that had some big hits you could tour forever with those hits and people get excited If you try to tour forever with some old stand-up unless you're Dice Clay Yeah, but...
Where they have a party in your stomach and you're like, get everybody out!
Yeah, yeah, that's a great bit.
But Jim, Jim is a rare talent, man.
He's one of the most underappreciated stand-up comics alive, because Jim can take A premise about things that just happened.
He's so naturally funny.
He's got this...
I mean, it's not natural in that sense that he hasn't worked at it, because he most certainly has.
But he has this ability to, like, a thing goes on in the news, and then he'll just go on stage, and he'll have fucking ten minutes on it.
And it'll be hilarious.
Because he just has a hilarious way of looking at life.
Like, he's a guy that, like...
And he's also, he doesn't have an ego.
Like he's not a guy that like looks at himself like he's a special person in any way.
He just does, he gets out of his own way, you know, and just finds the funny and shit.
People that can't get out of their own way that are always concerned about their image, always concerned about how other people see them, like boy that's a fucking weight you're carrying around.
It's such a handicap.
It's so bad.
It just gets in your way.
And comedy is all about getting out of your own way.
It's all about being funny, but it's also about finding the funny without you being in the way of it.
And that's one of the things where getting good at things teaches you.
Getting good at things teaches you the path to getting good at things.
And if you're a person that's all you've done is like stand-up or all you've done is whatever the art form is, and your whole self-identity is based on you being good at this thing, you can't wait to show everybody how good you are at this thing.
I ate it going on after him once more than I've ever eaten it going on after anybody in my whole life.
I was like three years into comedy.
We were working together and he was middling and I was headlining and I really shouldn't have been headlining.
It was just like one of those days where, you know, you'd just get gigs back then and we were doing this weekend together and I did okay every show except the last one Saturday night.
I hate shit.
But that eating shit made me go, I'm like, okay, can't do that again.
The whole idea is like finding these premises and these thoughts and then just molding them into something that's really good.
And people do it different ways.
I know a lot of really good comics who never write anything down.
They just keep it in their head, and they fuck with it in their head, and then they go on stage, and they keep going on stage, and they do a lot of sets.
Like, Ari, most of the stuff he does, he doesn't write.
Like, he just has these premises, and he works them out in front of crowds, and he just continues to improve on those premises until it becomes a functional bit.
But then there's other people where everything they do, they write out almost like a monologue, and then they kind of tighten it up with the audience.
Yeah, Chris was always like, he also has famously employed other comics, like Rich Jenny was one of the best ones that he brought on the road with him, and he would have Rich watch his set, and then afterwards they would talk about it.
Rich would give him his advice or his opinion.
So when you have someone who's a peer, who's also like a top-level comic, and they actually have a job, and their job is to sit down and watch you, and then you brainstorm afterwards, that's a great benefit too.
There's a lot of people that don't do that, but I think Chris is brilliant in that regard, that he did that.
It's like a good It's a sign of a healthy ego, too, because he's willing to bring people in.
He would hire two or three guys like Rich Voss.
I think he did it with Nick DiPaolo.
He had these guys, and they would go and sit and watch him, and then they would sit down and talk about it afterwards.
They'd have dinner or something like that, and they'd go over the set, and then Chris would make notes and think about what they said and think about the way he felt, and then he'd rewrite things and reformulate things.
Chris would go on stage and try not to kill too.
He would go on stage purposely to try to find those uncomfortable moments where he had to find the funny.
Like he'd put himself out there.
You know where he was like out on a limb and like you're fucked the audience is waiting for you to say something and then something would eventually come and maybe it wouldn't and maybe it would and but the ones that did then he kept that okay I got something now and then but you have to be willing to try new things to do that and one of the things that happens to comics once they start doing well and this is a real danger for Young comics.
They'll put together, like, 15 minutes that's good, and then they go up at the store, and they'll have a really solid 15-minute set.
They never develop another.
They never expand.
They don't ever try new stuff in there, because they only have 15 minutes.
They want to kill.
They're sandwiched in between Jeff Ross and Anthony Jeselnik, and they don't want to bomb, so they don't try new stuff.
I mean, I thankfully left that behind, you know, some time ago.
But yeah, it used to be really uncomfortable for me to go do local sets in LA because Steve-O doing stand-up, you know, a lot of people look kind of sideways at that.
And then there's the fact that people aren't there to see me.
You know, it's like...
You know, which is actually a benefit.
And then there's the level that in the crowd are gonna be like people who are like, you know, Agents, you know, industry professionals, like, it just felt like a lot of pressure, and it used to scare the shit out of me.
Yeah, and the key is also doing different places too, right?
Like going to the Ice House, going to the Ha Ha, going to these different places, get a different feel, these different neighborhoods, these different clubs you're working at.
There's a lot going on, man, when you're piecing together material.
You know, I think it's unfortunate that you had to like, oh, Steve-O's doing comedy.
Like, I don't get that at all.
Even actors.
Like, actors go up.
I give them a chance.
Like, if you really want to do it, like, good luck.
I hope you do well.
I would love to see some person who's an actor, and then all of a sudden they're a killer stand-up comic.
Look, that's fucking Neil Brennan, who's a great stand-up comic, was a producer of The Chappelle Show.
He was the co-creator.
Didn't do stand-up.
When I met Neil, Neil was a doorman at Boston Comedy, the club in New York City, in the village.
And I knew him from then.
And then when he started doing stand-up, I'm like, good for you!
That's fucking awesome!
And so many people were hating on him even back then.
People are weird, man.
They just get scared and they don't want you to do the thing that they do.
Your boy Curtis from the Comedy Store last night was saying that in Texas that's like the sensibility of the crowd more so than anywhere else, that they really are rooting for the The comic to have success on stage.
Well, we have a really good environment here, you know, and it's it's essentially there was always a kind there was a scene a small scene here But now like 12 world-class comics have moved here during the pandemic.
So it's fucking amazing like the show tonight.
It's Duncan Trussell and Tony Hinchcliffe William Montgomery and It's fucking great.
Dude, when I was talking to Duncan Trussell on my podcast, I told him...
We were talking about consciousness.
And I said, I have a theory that people are...
Making a mistake in assuming that the human brain is a generator of consciousness.
That that's where the word consciousness originates.
That it's a transmitter.
And I said, I believe that the brain is a receiver of consciousness so like say for example if you've got a radio you know you can take a sledgehammer you can smash that radio to oblivion you've killed the radio but you've done nothing to kill the signal right like the signal is still out there we're just a radio picking up a signal you know and that's kind of how I look
at it and Duncan Trussell without skipping a beat he goes yep And there's some people walking around thinking, I'm the fucking Beatles.
They come from the ether, but they also come from your mind.
They come from, you know, states of consciousness, whether it's psychedelics or meditation or yoga or there's there's different ways you feel different times depending on how life is going.
And all that is a factor.
It is something is in you.
But what is that?
And how much of that is innate to you?
And how much of that is just in the universe itself?
It's a massive mystery.
To isolate it to your own individual mind and to live and dwell inside your own ego and consciousness, I think it's a bit of a trap, you know?
And even to just say it's not you, it's everything.
Yeah, it's a weird thing to be a person and thinking.
And also to be a person that has thousands of years of human instincts that were ingrained in us through genes and evolution for survival and for social interaction and in order to be able to keep the species moving.
Like there's all these things that are in us that maybe aren't even very self-serving and you have to kind of navigate those.
Figure out the best way that you can manage them personally.
And some people are terrible at it.
And some people, they push it on everyone else and they fuck everybody else's life around them in order for them to have some sort of sense of control.
They keep everybody on edge and everybody's upset.
And then they get this high out of having disputes with people and then making up.
There's a lot of people out there.
They have these little bitter battles with people and they really just want love.
That's really what it is.
But they don't know how to get love in any way other than being shitty to people and controlling and then apologizing and then making up.
It's like, ugh!
Those rollercoaster type relationships that some people get trapped in.
Those super highs and super lows and, fuck you, I fucking hate you, and then you're fucking and having the best time ever.
It's like nuts.
But it's just, it's this management of this thing we call consciousness.
And there's, you know, there's not a lot of fucking really good guidebooks on how to do it, and not specifically to you either.
We're all this very complex individual machine that has all these stored emotions and life experiences and genes and family and loved ones and there's no fucking guidebook for your individual journey.
And you can kind of like pull abstract thoughts from Alan Watts and Terrence McKenna and all these different people that kind of give you like a framework to think about individual experience.
Yeah, well, if you're going to have someone do it, have someone like Josh, who really knows what the fuck he's doing, and he's probably done that to many people.
Anticipating my food is something I've been really enjoying.
Well, given that I'm sure you haven't been in camp or anything or training, given you fixed your nose, have you had time to let the rest of your body heal up too from just constantly being in camp over the last...
He's also got no ACL. One of his knees has no ACL. I don't know if he bothered getting that fixed or he's going to wait until after he's done fighting.
But yeah, he blew his ACL out and decided to just keep fighting with no ACL, which is crazy.
But the world that those guys live in is just a different world.
The world of what kind of pain you can tolerate and what kind of discomfort you can tolerate, that's a different world.
Yeah, and so then I left for my Canada tour a couple days after that.
And literally, the fucking day after I get home, my buddies have built a ramp over my Tesla.
They just mounted a crazy ramp in a track.
The whole fucking roof is made out of glass.
The windshield goes from the hood all the way to the truck.
It's like skating over glass, and I got Tony Hawk driving my Tesla, and I fucking jump my skateboard onto it and skate over the whole thing while it's moving.
There's a lot of deaths that are related to people being distracted by electronics, whether you're fucking with your navigation screen or you're fucking with your music on your screen or whether you're actually looking physically at a phone.
Physically at a phone and texting is probably the worst because you're moving your thumb around.
Well, it's social media, distracted driving, all that shit.
Yeah, not good.
And then there's also like how many people are suffering from depression and anxiety because of phones because they're addicted to social media and they're just constantly comparing themselves to other people and reading comments about how bad they suck.
I mean, dude, I feel like I had an experience going through an airport where one person comes up to me and they're like, dude, I fucking watch everything.
I fucking love it, man.
And then I'll walk a little further and now I'm at the security checkpoint.
And then the guy's like, hey man, what happened to you?
And also, I don't want to say, hey, you fucking loser, you're working at CVS. You're 50 years old and you're working at CVS and you're trying to make me feel bad?
Like, what are you doing?
But some people will do that.
And that's the type of people that leave comments.
I was very, very reluctant to jump on the podcast bandwagon.
I just thought, fuck, everybody and their mom has a fucking podcast.
And it's been...
It's like over the years one of the more annoying questions like will you do my podcast you know like like for God's sakes like I don't want to spend you think that's annoying well I mean like in the case where people don't have an audience I'm gonna spend so much better than you wanting to do their podcast and I'm not wanting right yeah that that that Because once you have a podcast, then everybody wants to be on your podcast.
Well, the thing that gets me is like, At this point, with the amount of fast food that people desire, and this is the conversation that I had with Will Harris, I said, is it possible to feed people the way we're doing it now with regenerative farming?
And he said, no.
He said, but should we be feeding people the way we're feeding them now?
The question is, if you have a place like Los Angeles where you have 18 million people that are living in this one spot and no one's growing anything, how are you going to get those people enough food And his thing was like, maybe we shouldn't be living like that.
Because that is an unsustainable way to live.
But that's a giant conversation.
Like, what are you going to do?
Make people move out of the cities?
And people like living in cities.
But can you feed them in a way without factory farming?
It doesn't seem like you can.
It seems like we made those places because we had those other things, and they grew because of those other things, and now we're kind of stuck in this gross system.
Well, there is definitely a disconnect when people eat meat.
They think that somehow or another they're not doing anything bad, but those same people sometimes will be upset at hunters.
They don't like it.
It's very weird.
Because if you're hunting, that animal has the best life possible.
And honestly, the best death possible is from a hunter.
If I shoot an elk with a bow and arrow and I hit it in the vitals and that elk dies in seconds, that is the absolute best death that thing is ever going to experience.
Because if that doesn't happen, they're going to get torn apart by wolves.
Every hard winter, you'll lose thousands of mule deer that die off, just freeze to death.
It happens.
You know, it's like there's trade-offs, right?
It's not good in any way.
And if you want to eat meat, you know, if you want to buy it in a way that you feel good about it, like a regenerative farm is without a doubt the best place to get it from.
Like a place like White Oak Pastures where they're just living in these giant fields of grass and they're just roaming around.
They're 100% grass-fed.
They just live like they normally live and then one day...
He lives in this place where he's surrounded by people who do industrialized farming and he does regenerative farming.
And the stark contrast between the runoff, like he showed us a video and there's a river that runs through his area and there's where his farm is and then there's the property line.
We're his neighbor who has an industrialized farm.
And the industrialized farm, all the topsoil's gone, right?
So they're using all this fucking artificial fertilizer.
And look at the difference.
There's a clear line.
Look at the line.
So his river is normal.
And then if you see that line in the river where to the right of that gentleman is all dark and muddy and fucked up, that's all toxic shit that's getting washed out of the industrialized farm into that river and poisoning the river.
And people that eat just vegetables and think that they're doing a great thing for the environment, they don't take into account how those vegetables are grown.
Monocrop agriculture in an industrial setting is devastating to the environment.
It's devastating to wildlife.
It's devastating to all the insects and all the different animals that live in those farms.
Yeah, and the person said, oh man, what are you eating?
You got all this yeasty...
They're shit experts.
I told them, I'm vegan.
And they were like, oh, that's the problem is that you're eating this highly processed fucking soy and wheat that your body does not recognize as food.
And clearly your body's struggling to break it down.
And seed oils and all the fucking horrible things that people eat that are supposed to be used as industrial lubricants and they've converted it to food for people.
And in high concentrations and high levels of it, it's very inflammatory.
There's all these studies done on it.
It causes macular degeneration.
Like, Paul Saladino sent me all these studies that are showing that high levels of seed oils is actually contributing to eyesight diminishing in people.
Yeah, there's fats that the problem with them is when people cook in them particularly.
They're not so good for salad dressings either, but when people cook in them, they break down under heat, and that causes a lot of inflammation in people's bodies when people cook with those seed oils.
Like, again, they were originally created because, like, grapeseed oil.
It was created because they were trying to figure out what to do with these grapeseeds.
Like, oh, maybe we can get oil out of them and process it.
But it's, like, highly processed.
And they have to do something to take the smell out of it and the taste out of it.
Like, really processed shit.
And then when you cook with it, it breaks it down and oxidizes it, and it's just terrible for you.
You're supposed to, like, cook with, like, beef tallow is really good to cook with.
But there's some saturated fats and there's some natural fats that are good for you, like avocado oil is good for you.
There's oils that are good for you, but those oils are coming from, I mean, avocado is essentially a fruit.
Well, you know, we're supposed to be eating organisms in the way that they form in nature.
You know, the healthy things in nature, healthy fruits, healthy vegetables, healthy animals and eggs.
That's how you're supposed to eat it.
You know, in factory farming, whether it's both monocrop agriculture in terms of growing food and even growing animals, like, we're fucking with things.
We're fucking with nature.
There's trade-offs and consequences when you do that.
And I think there's definitely people that are just allergic to gluten.
But man, I know that when I eat wheat and I eat bread and pasta when I'm in Italy, my body has a different reaction to it.
I have a friend who has celiac disease, though, and he didn't find out about it until he was, like, 30. Like, he just was trying to figure out what was going on.