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April 18, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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Is It OK to Make Jokes About This? | Kat Timpf | COMEDY | Rubin Report
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dave rubin
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kat timpf
30:38
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kat timpf
What I do in my book is rather than say, okay, all of these things that people have been canceled for joking about, you can, I take it 9 million steps further and I say, there's not a such thing as something that you can't joke about.
And yes, I'm including religion.
Yes, I'm including death.
Yes, I'm including terminal illness.
Um, because there's research that backs this stuff up.
I'm not just saying this.
dave rubin
I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is the co-host of the number one show in late night
Gutfeld with an exclamation point, as well as author of the new book, You Can't Joke
About That, Why Everything is Funny, Nothing is Sacred.
And we're all in this together.
My friend, Kat Timpf.
Kat, welcome, finally!
Is this your first appearance?
unidentified
This is it.
dave rubin
First time on The Rubin Report?
kat timpf
It is.
It is, actually.
It's been a long time coming, but yes, this is my very first time.
I'm very excited to be here.
dave rubin
Very first time.
Now, first off, technically, am I, is that correct?
Are you a co-host on Gutfeld?
I mean, you're in the chair basically every day, and Tyrus is in the other chair, and then there are two other guests.
But are you technically, did I get that right?
kat timpf
Yeah, no, that's right.
Greg will call me that, so I think it's allowed.
dave rubin
I told you right before we started that I'm going to treat you like Greg treats you, because I want you to feel at home here.
Is that alright with you?
kat timpf
Yeah, absolutely.
dave rubin
OK, very good.
Let's get well, before we get into some of the politics stuff and the stuff around free speech and all the stuff that we're normally talking about, you go a bit into your into growing up and youth and how that sort of frames some of the beliefs that you have.
So you want to do a little bit of that first.
kat timpf
Are you talking about, you know, When I started doing stand-up back in, you know, when I was growing up when I was 22.
dave rubin
I was even going back further than that growing up in a Catholic household and some of the sacred cows there, but we can we can do that too.
kat timpf
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like that's the first chapter and then the Catholic household is the second chapter.
I can get into either one.
So for me, I mean this is the final chapter in my book, but for me comedy is a religion for me because I unfortunately don't have a religion.
I say unfortunately because I think I probably would be, I know I would be happier if I were religious, but I just I can't really seem to get there.
I hope that it changes someday for me.
But comedy actually does a lot of the same things as religion does, right?
It brings people closer together.
It can add meaning to certain experiences in your life, including the traumatic ones.
It can, you know, be healing mentally.
It can be healing emotionally and even physically.
The boost that you get from laughter and your immunity, and there's all these different studies.
The two things that it's really missing is, first of all, there's no promise of eternal life with any joke, no matter how good it is, unfortunately.
And the second thing that's missing is forgiveness, right?
Because every religion has some sort of path to forgiveness.
The Catholic Church was confession, which I would go and always be honest, even when I was old enough where my sins were a little bit less comfortable to talk to an older, strange man about.
But you read the Bible, right?
Leviticus is Old Testament, so it's not chill.
And then the New Testament comes in.
Supposed to be about forgiveness and chill and all, you know, more easygoing.
Leviticus is extremely fire and brimstone text, but even Leviticus, the standard is eye for an eye.
What we're doing right now with comedy and speech is actually stricter and more fire and brimstone than Leviticus because.
I don't think anybody would be able to honestly tell you the worst thing that they've ever been through is hearing a joke that they thought was offensive.
dave rubin
Although if you watch Jimmy Kimmel, it can be quite grueling.
kat timpf
Well, see, but there's more than one person who would say telling the wrong joke actually is the worst thing that they've been through, because they maybe lost everything or lost millions and millions of dollars or lost their respect or, you know, ability to come and be a human in the square, right?
The public square.
So I feel like if the way that we're treating jokes is stricter than Leviticus, we're doing something wrong.
dave rubin
What year did you start doing stand-up?
kat timpf
So I started doing it in college.
I did it a few times, so I graduated college in 2010.
And then after that, when I left college, I moved to LA.
It was supposed to be a short-term move, and then I had a fellowship, a stipend to live out there, I had an internship at Fox News, and then I had gotten into Columbia Journalism School.
So I was gonna Use my stipend for housing until it ran out, and then live with my college boyfriend for two weeks, and then we were gonna break up, and then I was gonna go to Columbia, and it didn't work out that way.
I'm 21, so it was a very dumb plan.
But where I wasn't dumb was taking out an $80,000 loan for journalism school.
So I decided instead to just stay in LA, get journalism internships and learn skills for
free and wait tables.
But things got really rough for a while.
The boyfriend broke up with me.
I had to move into this really, I was living in squalor.
I mean, I got fleas and scabies the same week.
My cat got the fleas, I got the scabies, but then the fleas jumped onto me.
That was the same week I lost my apartment.
I was running myself ragged.
I write up all about it in my first chapter.
But what I was doing that made me feel power in my life was standup comedy.
Every free moment I had, I was going to open mics anywhere I could and talking about my
dumpster fire life on stage.
And making jokes about these things that were making me feel so helpless gave me some power
over it.
And hearing people laugh and all of that, and it just makes me kind of nervous and terrified
and upset about what we're seeing happen in our culture where you can't joke about sad
or serious or controversial subjects when really that.
That's the way that I found healing through every tough time in my life was by joking about the stuff you're not supposed to joke about.
dave rubin
Do you look back on them, I think I already know the answer, and think of those years, the scabies years, as the good old days?
Because I know for me, for those 10 years of struggling in New York City as a stand-up and standing out in Times Square with tickets and literally being broke to the point that I had a friend who worked in food service and would deliver me industrial-sized cans of tuna that I would eat for weeks and all of that stuff, I now look back at them Kind of like, oh, those were the good old days.
Like, I have everything I want now, my life is good, but like, there's something charming about, like, that struggle.
Once you make it to the other side, I guess.
kat timpf
Right, exactly.
It actually is really strange just how, in what a specific way I was able to achieve my goals.
Because back when that guy and I were still dating in Los Angeles, we were at his brother's house and we used to always watch Red Eye because it was on at midnight there.
And I was like, I would be so good on this show.
And his brother was like, you're a cashier at Boston Market.
Which was true.
If you think in terms of what's likely to be possible, I shouldn't have even gotten on the show, let alone been the co-host of the show that would follow that up.
But it is remarkable.
But man, those times were absolutely rough.
I mean, the treatment for scabies, I don't know if you ever had it, you have to cover your entire body in a cream and just sit there for like hours on end.
And the fact that that was the same time I had to move in with this Colombian family
of this bartender that I was sort of seeing at my California pizza kitchen job and all
these conversations about how just because I need to live here doesn't mean we're together,
together, just sitting there at his house, his mom's.
My Spanish was never better, which is, I think, like the one positive thing of that experience.
I was very good at Spanish back then.
But you know, like, I don't know how I would have gotten through it if I wasn't able to
to laugh at it.
Because if you laugh at something, then you're telling yourself, oh, it's not that scary.
You're telling that thing, you're not that scary.
And that's the only way I was able to get through it.
And now, I just, I just am worried that that's not going to be possible for many people anymore.
People are too afraid.
dave rubin
Wait, I want to keep going with that.
But you worked at Boston Market and California Pizza Kitchen.
Any other major chains on your resume?
kat timpf
Ruby Tuesday.
dave rubin
Oh, and Ruby Tuesday with the salad bar and everything.
kat timpf
Yes.
I also worked at a diner called 4-20 Diners and Sherman Oaks.
It was a pie place.
It used to be like 4-20 Blackbird's Baked in a Pie, but of course a lot of people would think it was a restaurant that just made edibles.
Well, I would have to explain to people, like, no, there's no weed in our food.
dave rubin
Sorry, but... I used to live in Sherman Oaks.
I don't remember the pie place, but that might have been the edibles.
I'm not so sure.
kat timpf
Yeah.
dave rubin
Does this all, like, seem very obvious to you in a way?
Like, you know, obviously on the show, you guys were talking about the woke thing constantly and it just has infected everything.
Everyone gets it.
But when you see just all of these hysterical, joyless kids who are so confused about reality and have no sense of humor and have Gone out of their way to cancel everybody from the past and, you know, go after every show that we used to love.
Or that Friends now, you know, Jennifer Aniston says Friends they could never put on air.
For the record, I'm more of a Seinfeld guy.
But it just seems like the obvious extension of this hysteria, doesn't it?
kat timpf
Yes, and see what I do in my book is rather than say, okay, all of these things that people have been canceled for joking about, you can, I take it 9 million steps further.
And I say, there's not a such thing as something that you can't joke about.
And yes, I'm including Yes, I'm including death.
Yes, I'm including terminal illness.
Because there's research that backs this stuff up.
I'm not just saying this.
I mean, I write a chapter, obviously, about the shitbag, which I had that emergency surgery.
I had an ostomy for five weeks.
And as I was being wheeled into my surgery, I was like, What am I going to tell people?
Because I know that everybody's going to be like, oh, like so weird around me about it or scared about what
to say.
Same way as when my mom died at a young age.
And the friends I wanted to talk to weren't the ones with the most carefully chosen words.
They were the friends who just were able to joke around with me about it.
I joke around about, I threw a cats out of the bag party after where I had some unused but already open ostomy bags.
We were bonging champagne out of them.
And then I started thinking more because I had a lot of time to do nothing but think because I had some, you know, the ostomy and it was also the pandemic.
But think about all the people who have died recently of cancers we didn't know that they had.
Like Chadwick Boseman, like Norm Macdonald.
Because they didn't want to be treated differently.
They didn't want the illness to be the defining thing that people thought about when you talk to them.
And you actually, I mean, I cite this research in my book, there's people that are terminally ill, that people that are, they treat the terminally ill who rank humor as being super high on their list, even in one study that was pretty small, but still higher than the management of their physical pain.
I, when I wrote the chapter, I searched, Google searched cancer and then how to tell people I have cancer and the
second one had way more results.
So clearly everybody kind of gets this, but people are too afraid because of what the consequences might be if they
say the wrong thing.
But actually what you're really doing is the people you're hurting the most are the ones who the rules are supposed to
be in place to protect.
dave rubin
Do you sense that's changing a little bit?
I mean, even if you were just looking at the success of Gutfeld, I mean, it is by far the number one show in late night, which as you know, on the debut episode, I predicted that he would be number one.
I said it was going to take a year.
It took him only about four months or something, which is incredible.
But I mean, the fact is the one politically incorrect show on late night is the number one show in late night.
So that shows you that something's shifting at least, or maybe it's just exclusive to, you know, kind of our side of the aisle.
kat timpf
Yeah, absolutely.
Especially because there's so much to joke about when it comes to, you know, the current administration.
And I think a lot of other shows are kind of, they don't want to do that.
I mean, our show, you can kind of say stuff that you can definitely not say on other On other shows, it's a very comfortable place.
And even for somebody like me, where I'm not a Republican, I'm libertarian, very much so, and everybody who watches the show knows that.
I don't fit into a particular box, and I feel very comfortable on that show expressing myself, even when I do have opinions that might differ with the, you know, typical conservative audience and I it's just everything's cool and I just think that when we talk about speech and we talk about comedy a lot of the argument is okay I can say whatever I want and you can't stop me no matter how divisive it might be and that's true but that also I think really ignores the way that comedy and open communication can bring us all together because we're never going to be able to understand each other if we can't fully express ourselves to each other
dave rubin
Yeah, it's true.
Do you remember when you first wanted to make people laugh?
I mean, I remember the exact moment.
1983, I was sitting in my parents' living room watching Bill Cosby himself.
And this was way before, you know, serial rapist Bill Cosby, or at least that we knew of.
And I remember thinking, this is, you know, the chocolate cake thing.
And I was just like, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
That's what I, how can you not want to do that?
kat timpf
Yeah, I mean, I've always been a performer, but I have an atrocious singing voice.
But I try to get lessons, and the woman called my mother and said, I don't feel right about taking your money anymore.
She's never going to get it.
But I would still audition for all the musicals at the community theater, and I would just get on stage, and I would sing Happy Birthday.
Everyone had, you know, vocal coach and all this stuff, and they had these prepared numbers.
And I'd look at them like, I'm a star, baby.
Like, I don't know what you're thinking.
Like, put me on the show.
And I would always have these small roles because I actually really truly can't sing.
So I got more into comedy and it's also something that I was bullied a lot as a child and if I could laugh at it, it became so much easier.
I mean, even to this day, I write a whole chapter about toxic positivity where there's this idea now that If you don't like something about your body or your face or
something like that, just love it.
Instead of not liking it, just love it.
And then you'll be super happy.
And I don't doubt that that would be true, but what if you can't?
I don't think it's possible for anybody to be completely optimistic about themselves all
the time.
And studies back that up too.
I mean, this idea of body positivity has been around forever, but nobody's actually capable of doing it.
And what I found as a great replacement is to make fun of the things that I hate about myself.
So if somebody says something to me about something like, oh, I have a flat chest.
I was already at brunch joking about how my bra size is double my mastectomy.
Like, I beat you, and I've made these things less scary by finding them, you know, funny.
dave rubin
You know, speaking of health stuff, we actually have something in common that I did not know until you told me privately.
I'm actually not sure if you've talked about it that much publicly, but my audience knows about seven years ago or so, when I first started getting popular and I was getting all this hate, and I didn't realize I wasn't dealing with stress well, I developed alopecia.
And I lost probably 40% of my hair, huge chunks all over my head.
I went on crazy experimental medications.
It was by far the most depressed I've ever been.
I almost quit.
Like I actually had a night where I was like, I'm not going to be on camera anymore.
I'm done.
I'll just go do something else.
But you got that too.
Not too long ago, but I have to say your hair is looking quite luxurious at the moment.
kat timpf
So I have extensions in, but my natural hair is even like down to here now.
dave rubin
Nice, nice.
kat timpf
And at when my, you know, mid twenties, I lost about a similar amount. It was so thin. It was really patchy
and only to here.
And it was like see-through. It was very bad. I wouldn't wear it down ever without extensions in.
I mean, I would wear like hats a lot. I put my hair up in a messy bun and I try to like
cover the parts of my skin.
It was really, really bad.
Which is why, actually, I never felt more relevant than when Will Smith hit Chris Rock.
Because I am a woman with alopecia.
I have done stand-up.
And I get how painful it is.
But also, you can't hit somebody.
dave rubin
Right.
kat timpf
And I wasn't surprised to see that because of the whole words are violence thing.
Because if words are violence, then violence is an acceptable response to violence.
And I will never understand how this is being seen as a progressive value.
Because it's actually only as we become more modern and civilized as human beings that we say, okay, only words to respond to words.
I mean, you think about it, for most of human history, even, you know, Civil War, it's like, you said something bad about my mom, now we're gonna have a shootout in the yard.
That's what we used to do.
So I don't know why these people are like, words are violence, I'm a progressive.
It's like, no, you're behaving like a Neanderthal.
And I think there's such a difference between expressing something that maybe hurt your feelings because you want to share that or you want to share that you were hurt and trying to use hurt feelings to place yourself in a power position over others.
And the latter is definitely what words or violence is all about.
Because as soon as you've said that what that other person did was violent, the fact that you're just keeping it at verbal only is you doing them a favor.
dave rubin
Right, and they don't think violence is violence, because they'll tell you words are violence, but then they'll tell you burning down a Pep Boys isn't violence.
Well, ask the guy who's in the bathroom at Pep Boys.
Let me ask you something else, because you said you're a libertarian, and you're obviously on Fox, which is mostly conservative, and I always tell my audience conservative is a very wide thing right now.
If a gay married guy with two kids who's pro-choice can be thought of as a conservative, then okay, fine, that thing's pretty wide.
But is it weird to you as like, you know, a relatively young chick in New York City, that the progressives are the miserable ones also.
Like, I know you don't really care about someone's sexual preference or what they wear or what they smoke.
Obviously, that's all the libertarian stuff.
But that used to jive with the progressives, where I'm guessing when you do a show now, it's all conservatives who maybe want a little more government than you do, or maybe certainly on the religion side.
But those are the ones that support you.
kat timpf
Yeah, it's very, very interesting because I'm never going to fit in anywhere just because of, you know, I just don't.
And I always vote third party.
I always have.
I am, you know, and I'm not going to lie.
I mean, I'll say things on Fox that are more libertarian.
I'm more liberal on, you know, social issues.
I'm very live and let live, for example, and they'll say something to me.
But then there is people on the left Who won't listen to me say anything and they'll just say, oh, she works at Fox News.
I know everything I need to know about her and she's disgusting.
And like, I even had to, you know, cut off contact with one of my closest friends, um, who I knew since I was a teenager because it be, you know, after Trump became president, my views never changed.
I'd already actually been working here, but the fact that I, for example, had Joe Jorgensen, the libertarian candidate for president on my Comedy advice show, Sincerely Kat, was a huge issue for him.
He was like, you're, you're no, you're not, this is, is this really good to be doing right now?
Is this?
And then they bring words like safety and this and that into it.
And it's like, what if I work at Fox News, but I'm also my own person with my own values and I'll have any conversation you want.
I'm not scared.
I think conversation's good.
I mean, that's my whole thing.
Right.
But to just say, I know who you are because of where you work.
And it's like, don't you work at a bank?
Like some of these people, it's like, Fox News there's actually are people who aren't it's not all Republicans here obviously it's a it's right-leaning right everybody knows that but you don't know everything that there is to know about me just from where I work so I think it's the people on the right they might be like oh I don't like that you know I disagree with you or whatever but
They will at least acknowledge me as an individual with different views, whether as people on the left will often be like, you work there, therefore I don't want to associate with you.
dave rubin
How shocking has that been to you?
Because obviously, I mean, I feel the same way.
If you would have told me of 10 years ago, Dave, you're going to be on Fox basically every day and you're going to be friends with all of these crazy right-wingers, I would have been like, what are you talking about?
But I find them open and fun and decent.
And that's why I don't have a problem when people say I'm a conservative, because it's like, well, conservative basically just means kind of roughly sane.
I'm with you probably on all the libertarian stuff, but it's just kind of, yeah, you believe in reality.
How about that?
kat timpf
Yeah, it's been shocking.
I mean, I understand.
I'm hoping that this book can be something that brings people together because I really do believe that we all agree on a lot more of this stuff than people want to admit for whatever reason.
But it's definitely been shocking to me, especially when it's been people in my personal life who have known me for all these years and they acknowledge that my views haven't changed.
I haven't changed as a person.
I believe the same things that I've always believed.
I've never said anything other than what I believe, but it's just the fact that I work out.
At Fox.
And I think that I'm all about the individual, the autonomy of an individual to make their own decisions.
But I also just think that individuals, there's so many different kinds of people out there and everybody's a unique individual.
And I think that a lot of our problems come from not speaking with people with whom not just we disagree, but that we think we might disagree with, which we might not even disagree the way that we think we do if we just expressed ourselves more.
dave rubin
Yeah, I can tell you from where I sit, it's just getting harder to do because they won't talk to us.
I mean, I think it's what you're saying about, okay, you're affiliated with Fox, so a certain amount of people think this, and then, you know, I just went to D.C.
a couple weeks ago.
Every Republican we reached out to, 16 said yes.
Zero Democrats.
And it's like, that's a tough bridge to divide.
But that's a little bit of the inmates running the asylum over there, right?
Like, they're afraid of their own people, even if they would be willing to sit down with a scary interviewer like me.
kat timpf
Yeah, and I do have friends in my life that are definitely left-wing.
Some Democrats.
I honestly can have a better conversation with someone who's super, super, super, super progressive, because at least they see a lot of the same flaws in the system as I do.
They have the exact opposite solution, for which mine, you know, they just want the government.
I want no government.
They want all government.
dave rubin
They hate the government.
Government should be bigger.
kat timpf
Yeah, exactly.
So they see the problems, but it's the fact that the government... But I can at least have a more open conversation.
But those are people, obviously, that I've known a long time, and they know me first before they kind of know where I work.
But yeah, it's been difficult trying to...
People will think that, you know, if they haven't met me that they'll see where I work and they're like, Oh, okay.
Well, I know who this is.
I already know who this is because of where she works.
And it's like, that's actually not true.
If you just spend five minutes with me, you'd realize that that isn't the case, but you won't spend five minutes with me.
And then you understand, then maybe you'll say, Oh, it's horrible how nobody gets along.
It's like, well, come on.
Like I'm actually, I'm actually trying.
I'm always open to a conversation with anyone.
dave rubin
Let me ask you a couple things about the Gutfeld exclamation point program over there.
I'm pretty sure that Tyrus wants to kill me.
What's going on over there?
unidentified
No, I don't think so.
dave rubin
I think that guy hates me and he's always looking at me like he's about to get up and step on me.
Can you give me any insight?
unidentified
I don't think so.
dave rubin
You don't think so?
kat timpf
No, I don't.
I don't think so.
I think he said something about his pant leg and then he called you out for it, but I mean he's not like...
He already told you that, you know what I mean?
He's always gonna let you know how he feels.
dave rubin
We did also get into a very drunken fight a couple years ago.
Were you there at the hotel bar?
Greg was there, a lot of wine and something about race and it got very heated.
kat timpf
No, I wasn't!
dave rubin
We'll take that one offline.
Okay, scratch that.
So one of the things that I always tell people when I when I come back from doing Gutfeld and it's just always great every time it's like light and fun and like it's just a joy to do is that it's such a slim staff over there it's like I feel like five people maybe including the the janitor are working on that show and how that is in such contrast to the other late-night shows that have these massive staffs and everything else but that's really how it is right there right like you guys get in there in the morning do you help him with the writing at all?
kat timpf
Yeah.
Yes, I do.
Nobody on the staff has just one job.
I mean, I write for the show.
I'm on the show every day.
Same with Greg's assistant, but she also is doing production.
There's nobody on the show who has just one job.
Our entire staff is smaller than just the writing staff of a Stephen Colbert or somebody like that.
I think we have two, three, maybe, people who just write, but also they sometimes are on the panel, so that's actually not even true.
Um, I've been obviously, you know, I write usually a segment every single day and submit the guest intros, which is also funny because a lot of the ones that he's gotten yelled at for being too mean to me, I wrote them.
So, they're like, don't be mean to Kat.
I'm like, am I too mean to Kat?
Because I wrote that.
dave rubin
Do you ever feel like you're going to get him in trouble as you're writing something and you're like, uh oh.
kat timpf
Yeah, I have.
I have.
But it's... Again, I think a lot of it is... I mean, I think it's because I'm a woman, too.
I don't think anybody would be like, oh, you're too mean to kill me, right?
I think it's just because I'm a woman, but I think that's what I think is so great, is I'm treated as an equal.
I mean, it's not like I can't handle it.
Just because I'm a woman, I can handle it and I can give it right back and I have been for, I don't know, what, nine years now almost?
So, I love it.
I think it's the best.
I think being in that environment where it goes back to intention, right?
And I write a chapter about this too.
What matters is the intention and there's this very harmful idea out there right now that it's not the intention.
It doesn't matter if someone's offended.
That's all that matters.
But how can that be true?
Like how can that be true that it's exactly the same if somebody makes a joke?
Unintentionally, somebody gets offended by the joke.
Then if somebody was purposely trying to say something racist or sexist and hurt somebody, of course that matters.
Of course that makes a difference.
And it's just absurd that, you know, when it comes to like, if you kill someone on accident versus purposely, there's different designations for that in our criminal code.
Jokes are a little less consequential than someone's life, so why are we treating it like this?
I don't think anyone can actually feel that way.
Of course it matters.
I mean, when I was losing my hair...
I made jokes about it all the time.
I mean, Greg even made a joke that I look like Tanner from Bad News Bears without my extensions in.
I laughed.
I thought that was great.
It was funny.
I had an ex-boyfriend who was abusive and would tell me, like, you, you know, fuck you, you rapidly aging idiot.
Like, those things are, they're different.
Someone was trying to make me feel bad about myself so he could continue to maintain control over me.
How is that not different than somebody who is just trying to make me laugh?
Of course it is.
It's just insane.
I mean all the jokes the times that I've gotten I mean I've been involved in a few different Scandals one with Kimmel over jokes that was by accident I was talking about something else and I accidentally said something if I didn't mean to be offensive But I was treated as if I did it on purpose and not only is that not fair to people making the joke that really doesn't ...reserve the absolute shaming that we should be doing of people who are trying to be jerks on purpose.
dave rubin
Right.
Well, also, with a guy like Jimmy Kimmel, who's been in blackface multiple times, and, you know, making fun of the quote-unquote black accent from Carl Malone, it's like, that's why he's going after someone like you for a joke, because he has to, you know, bow to them forever, otherwise they'll take him out.
kat timpf
Well, I sent him a book.
Probably the most embarrassing thing that happened to me on air was when I made a joke about how hard it is to give my cat, a feral cat, medication versus a human, and it was during a segment about what his hiatus was, but we were actually also live, and I think this is the last time we were live, actually, because I was talking about how it's super difficult and the cat can claw you or whatever, and then Greg was like, oh, cat, you know, like Jimmy Kimmel's son has a heart issue.
And I didn't realize that.
First of all, I get the Fallon and Kimmel confused, and now I was like, oh wait, I do remember.
But I remember in the article, it was like, my whole family's healthy.
I remember before I made the joke, it was like, just so I'm not going to get in trouble.
But also, so much of comedy is swinging and missing.
You don't really know if something's going to land until you try it.
And I was just doing that, and you can't make people too afraid to try, or else we're gonna miss out on some really great jokes, not just in terms of laughter, but some of the darker subjects that can have those healing powers.
But I apologize, because I genuinely did feel bad.
I was like, I didn't mean it like that.
I don't want anybody to, you know, think I did.
Everyone who watched the show was actually telling me, like, you were fine, like, because I was holding back tears the entire time.
I felt so awful.
The next day, somebody posted a little tiny clip of it on Twitter and said that I had been making fun of him, his family, because his son had a heart problem.
And that it was harder to have a cat with a heart problem than a child with a heart problem.
And different media outlets, like Raw Story, if you can call it that, took it and ran with it.
So I was ironically at the vet with my cat, and I was like, Blowing up on social media people telling me like fuck you Jimmy Kimmel sister told me fuck off and die All of this stuff and like if I had actually said it's actually no big deal Fuck your kid with a heart problem because he has a heart problem I would have deserved that but I was trying to make a funny joke about that and also about
People who don't have children like me sometimes like having a child can be a catch-all excuse for everything and if you don't have kids like something that's relatable to cat owners and that's relatable to people that don't have children.
That's what I was trying to do and I don't think I should be treated the same way as if I was trying to do that which is a totally I mean that's just abhorrent right but it's that wasn't my intention and again if we make people too afraid to try Then we're going to lose out on so much healing within ourselves and also with one another through shared experiences.
dave rubin
I often quote Oscar Wilde or at least loosely quote him.
I mean, if you want to tell people the truth, you better be funny or they're going to punch you in the face.
So it's something like that.
Let me ask you a couple other things, just kind of world related stuff.
As people can see out your window there, I think you're at the Fox News offices.
Yeah.
You are in Midtown New York City, a city that I once lived in and loved for 20 years of my life.
But every time I go back there, which is pretty much only due to Gutfeld at this point, I find it to be a zombie of a city.
It's not the same New York midtown where you are.
There's no business people anymore.
Everyone kind of wearing a hood, looks like they're going to get weed or sell weed or steal weed or something.
Like, what is going on in New York?
kat timpf
See, I wouldn't even mind it being seedy if it was less expensive.
Because, like, a lot of the things that made New York so special, too, like the little small businesses, immigrant-owned restaurants, those, you know, special little gems, a lot of them are gone because they couldn't survive being illegal.
In the pandemic.
And everything is so expensive.
I mean, it's, it's so crazy.
I mean, I've been thinking about maybe having one of those baby things myself with my husband, but we're like, where would we put it?
dave rubin
You know, we have no taxes.
You know, we have no taxes on baby related stuff here in Florida, Florida.
I say it to you every time I see you, Florida.
kat timpf
I'm just, I know.
And I would, it's just this job.
I am like less concerned with being mugged on the street than I am knowing For a fact, I am being mugged by the government.
They take so much of my income and I walk outside and I'm like, what is this for?
You stole my money and then what did you spend it on?
And it's so expensive to live here.
It's just ridiculous.
dave rubin
Yeah, I mean, do you find anyone there that thinks that it's going well?
I mean, I know a few remaining people in New York and everyone, I kid you not, I think literally everyone right now is in the process of leaving.
And I already know probably 20 people that left in the last three years.
kat timpf
We would.
I mean, my husband's from New York.
My life dream was always to live in New York.
I mean, at this point, it's just, I mean, I'm also, you know, I'm grown up a little bit.
I'm, you know, married.
I'm not really going out a lot.
Uh, and I'm just sitting, you know, I'm working a lot.
So I'm at home a lot and it's just like, my home's not that big.
When I say home, I mean, handful of rooms that I'm paying so much money for that I don't even own.
I'm just renting.
And yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I feel like also a lot of this commercial real estate, I mean, a lot of people are working from home.
A lot of the, you know, the government, the state government, your city government, it's funded on this stuff.
And if that, when that goes away, I mean, you, you, you, you pointed it out to all the, for lease signs.
A lot of people aren't like, I want to take on this really expensive lease and this place that's sort of looked like it's collapsing.
Uh, so I think it's going to get worse actually.
dave rubin
Yeah, you know, it's funny.
You must know Douglas Murray, who's a Fox News contributor.
So last time I did Gutfeld and I saw you at the show, I went out to dinner with Douglas after and he's in from London now, living in New York City.
And he kept telling me how magical it was there.
And I kept thinking, man, if you only knew what it used to be like, but you're seeing the vestiges of magical.
But I guess that can still be magical if you're from somewhere else.
kat timpf
Yeah, yeah.
I love Douglas Murray.
We sat next to each other at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
dave rubin
He is a good one.
What else is on your mind politically at the moment?
I mean, obviously we can do the woke stuff till we're like blue in the face, but what about the sort of divide that's now happening between the red and the blue?
I assume as a libertarian, you're cool with this resurgence of federalism.
kat timpf
Right.
I mean, okay, as I mentioned before, talking about feelings, I think, is actually a good thing.
I know that a lot of the refrain when it comes to people on the right, I mean, you included, is that, you know, facts don't care about your feelings.
And I totally get that.
But it's also true that sometimes feelings don't care about your facts.
And I know that it's the only explanation for every relationship I had in my 20s where I was like, but I love him.
They're like, he treats you horrible.
He has no job.
He's mean to you.
He's cheating on you.
It's like, but I love him.
So like humans are emotional creatures.
We are going to have emotions.
And as someone who's pro free speech, I think that includes speech about feelings.
So I think that that's something that the right should acknowledge more and again bring up that distinction between why you're sharing your feelings there's a difference between sharing your feelings to try to express yourself to another person or hey man that hurt me or hey man have you ever seen it this way and let's have a conversation and you hurt me and now I have power over you and anything you say against me if you argue with me that's just further proof that you're a sexist or a racist or a homophobe or a transphobe or whatever and those two things I think that what We're really missing is communication.
And I think the more we're open to that, the more we can all get along.
And the more that I think the more speech, the better in terms of bringing us together.
I think a lot of the issues.
A lot of the people who say that they're sensitive and tolerant, they're really not, because they kind of want to catch somebody saying something bad because there's nothing more powerful than being a victim.
And I hate to see that getting lumped in with people who do just want to share their feelings, which I think is a good thing, because we all have them.
I'm a very sensitive, emotional person, but there's a difference between that and Being somebody who expects their feelings to be what the rest of the world around you caters to, that's narcissistic.
That's selfish.
And if you act out on other people and try to get someone fired, that's bullying.
That's not being sensitive.
That's being an asshole.
And that's a very, very important distinction in my mind.
dave rubin
Yeah.
To go to where we started for a second, you mentioned you're not religious up top.
Is that kind of the number one thing that would sort of keep you from saying that you're a conservative?
Because, I mean, from where I'm at, at least in the Florida version of it, like, it is libertarian down here.
Like, nobody really cares about weed down here.
Nobody cares who you marry down here.
Like, people have their own personal views.
And DeSantis obviously has his own views on abortion and whatever.
But like, It's pretty much working down here where it is more libertarian.
That is the sort of freedom version of it down here.
kat timpf
See, I just want even less government than the Republicans do.
That's my issue.
Like, I really do believe taxation is theft.
When it, you know, when it comes to immigration, I never wanted the wall.
I think that anybody who wants to come contribute to our... Immigration is another one.
I think that anybody who wants to come contribute to our economy Who's nonviolent should be more than welcome to do so.
I don't believe in the welfare state though.
Like I don't believe in I think that taking for anybody really and not the main issue that I used to have big get into fights with conservatives about which I haven't changed but Republicans have is foreign policy.
I'm very non-interventionist on foreign policy and a lot I've always had the same views on it and I used to get yelled at I get yelled at from Republicans about it, and now I get yelled at from Democrats about it.
dave rubin
Right, the Tucker wing... Right, they've moved to you, and now the Democrats are the Republicans of 20 years ago.
kat timpf
Yeah, I think I'm just very... I can't with any of the idol worship of any politician.
I want even smaller government than Republicans do, definitely than Democrats do.
I wanted to criminalize all drugs.
I wanted to criminalize sex work.
The religious thing, I mean, I don't think that religion should play a role in the government, but yeah, I'm not religious.
That is something that people have an issue with sometimes who are conservative.
I don't mind it if someone's like, oh, I'll pray for you.
Like, that's fine.
But if people are like, you're a jerk, it's like, no, I'm not.
Like, I actually...
I don't judge or think religious people are bad people.
I'm jealous, which is, I know, a sin also of people who are religious because I think I'd be way happier if I thought that I, you know, and I'm agnostic.
I'm not an atheist.
I just don't know.
If I didn't think that I'm just, life is, I'm just going to keep getting older and older and older until I'm like decrepit and I'm, you know, unattractive and, you know, and then I die.
And it's like, just like before I was born.
I hate that.
It's like, I don't, I don't want it to be that way.
But yeah, I think it's a lot of the social issues.
dave rubin
I think they're working on a pill for that, don't worry.
kat timpf
Yeah, I'm in general, like, just, I want smaller government than the two party system does.
And I think that the two party system kind of sometimes, you know, can play us against each other a lot.
And to get away with its own corruption, because if everything's so polarized and you're always gonna have your own side defending you no matter what you do, and that really can just breed corruption.
dave rubin
Yeah, it's interesting, because philosophically, I'm with you on most of that.
You know, the one, though, that I've shifted a little bit, probably in the other way than you, I think is decriminalization of all drugs, because I used to be for total decriminalization, and it's like, if you look at San Francisco, where de facto it is, right?
Like, it's not legal to be selling fentanyl, but in essence, it is, because the cops don't do anything.
It's like, look at that place.
That can't be totally disconnected from just like an endless drug parade, you know?
kat timpf
I, yeah, I think actually when it comes to drugs.
dave rubin
Or even New York City with weed, right?
Like, the whole city, part of the decay, and I hate, I'm not against weed, 100%, I'm not against weed, but like, in New York City, the whole city smells like weed now all the time and everyone's stoned.
kat timpf
I'm not stoned.
I think legalization more so than decriminalization where you can actually because the system is still in place where it's like this loop of like you get into drugs and then how you gonna make money you can't make money you know it once you have this felony on your record and all those sorts of things where you could know where you were buying where you could like just get heroin if you wanted heroin If that happened tomorrow, I still wouldn't do heroin.
Like, the reason that I don't do heroin isn't because, oh, it's illegal.
It's because, oh, I'm not smoking crack because I haven't seen that work out well for anybody,
even if I could buy crack at the store.
dave rubin
Except for Hunter Biden.
kat timpf
I think that, well, I think that your life is, it's all your choice,
but then it's also your responsibility, which is the other side of that coin.
I think every individual can make the decisions for what works best for themselves, but then they're also responsible for their own consequences.
I think that it's just immoral to take away someone's freedom because of something that they've decided to put in their body.
dave rubin
Cat Timf, the book, is You Can't Joke About That.
I should have showed it at the beginning.
We got it.
We made it happen.
I'm not a cable news host over here.
You're doing great.
I'm doing all right.
Kat, it was good seeing you.
I'll see you in New York.
We can wander around, catch the wafting smoke of weed, see if you want to buy some heroin, et cetera, et cetera.
kat timpf
No, no heroin for me.
dave rubin
Fine, no heroin.
Okay, see ya.
kat timpf
Thank you.
dave rubin
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