Sept. 26, 2025 - The Tucker Carlson Show
01:58:24
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| So that interview that you did in 2011, the famous Tiger Blood interview, I watched that and I have never forgotten it. | ||
| And I never will forget it. | ||
| And here was my takeaway. | ||
| My takeaway was this is a guy who's obviously on drugs, like there's a manic quality to it, which I recognized. | ||
| But despite that, the life force and the talent, it was just so obvious. | ||
| And I thought to myself, how many actors, how many people could be whatever, an eight ball in the bag or whatever was going on with you personally and talk like that and reveal so much of themselves. | ||
| I just thought there was something really great despite the craziness that came out of that interview. | ||
| And when I heard that you had, you know, gotten sober and were happy and pulled your life and all that stuff, I was, I was just thrilled. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| For you, I mean that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I just want to get that out of the way. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And that's why I wanted to talk to you. | ||
| I just thought that interview revealed something really impressive about you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Not everyone felt that way. | ||
| I don't think that. | ||
| No, that is the only, I mean, I'm the only person that complimented that interview. | ||
| Up to this moment in time in my life, that is the only positive review I've ever received with that interview. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So this is, this is, I'm, I'm going to sit inside this moment for you. | ||
| Well, I was grading on a drug curve, having used drugs candidly. | ||
| And I'm very against drugs, just to be clear. | ||
| But I was like, if someone can talk like that while he's impaired, that's crazy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| What did people other than me think about that interview? | ||
| Oh, just that it was the, it was, it was, it was the beginning of the end. | ||
| It was, it, uh, it was the moment when, when the, um, yeah, when, when, when it, it just, I had completely left the reservation. | ||
| And there was that's fair. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, that, that, um, I think people might have uh respected the commitment to it that, uh, that, that I, that I knew there was no turning back, you know. | ||
| I do respect that, right? | ||
| You burned your boats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| If you're going to go, I mean, all the way is the only direction that you know, right? | ||
| Um, you, you definitely went. | ||
| How long? | ||
| So do people approach you and say, you got to make a change or do they stop talking to you? | ||
| Or like, how, what was the response? | ||
| What do you mean, right after that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, yeah, it, I, um, there was, there was fallout. | ||
| There was fallout, you know, especially what was going on with the network and the show and, you know, all the, um, all the, all the high stakes elements in play, you know? | ||
| Um, yeah, I, I, I, it's weird because I've, I've, I've watched it and I've watched it just on this recent tour as it's been referenced and played and clips and stuff. | ||
| And, and it's, it's, uh, it's like watching somebody else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, it's like, I kind of look the same. | ||
| I mean, I look kind of the beat up version of me, the very fatigued version of me. | ||
| Um, sound sleep was not, you know, something I picked up there. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| Um, and it's interesting, the, um, the quality of my voice. | ||
| Did you notice that? | ||
| No, this, the grovel and the depth and the thing. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, that was from the testosterone cream, which I was doing heaping amounts of in the, in, in the book, I describe it as slathering on like a, like a freaking ponds commercial. | ||
| So what that's, it's, it's interesting that everyone's all for hormone treatments now for kids, but I think it's still forbidden to want to use testosterone cream. | ||
| I've never used anything like that. | ||
| But I'm interested, like, what does that do? | ||
| It was in the doses, it was, it was prescribed and recommended to be applied at the, you know, following those dosage guidelines. | ||
| It was, it was for enhanced, you know, sexual enhancement, more lean muscle mass, more energy. | ||
| When you exceed those, you know, 40X, then it can metabolize into what's essentially a Lloyd rage. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So there was, that was a lot about what was going on during that whole thing. | ||
| That's why I couldn't, that's why I couldn't pull the train back into the station, you know, that Once it got away from me, you just become the incredible Hulk. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But just during this time and even working on some of that, that chapter in the book, there's something that dawned on me. | ||
| It's like I turned into the I became that thing, which I detest most, and that was a bully. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I became a bully. | ||
| And I could say, I was bullied as a kid and I wanted to see how it felt from the other side. | ||
| So what? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It didn't feel good from the other side. | ||
| You know, bullying is still not cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Still sucks. | ||
| Would you recommend testosterone lower doses? | ||
| I would. | ||
| I would. | ||
| Because I've, in recent years, have used it responsibly and have gotten the results that were promised or that I was expecting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is there a downside to responsible use? | ||
| I hope not. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They are finding downside in long-term use to HGH to human growth hormone. | ||
| I believe that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If it's going to make things grow, then if you got a tumor or something that's kind of been lurking, it can bring that thing into some larger form. | ||
| Men with prostate cancer typically have their testosterone reduced medically because it feeds the tumor. | ||
| So that makes sense. | ||
| I don't use shaving cream or fluoride toothpaste, so it's like not my world, but I'm interested. | ||
| Have you tried the toothpaste from Wellness? | ||
| No, I used the Dr. Browner's. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We grew up on Dr. Braun. | ||
| So did I. That's why I use it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We ate his chips and everything. | ||
| Yeah, it was the Southern California thing in the 70s. | ||
| Remember Healthy Hunza? | ||
| No, but I just, you know, you use the Castile soap with all the weird sayings on the side. | ||
| We are one. | ||
| It was like a hangout from the hippie era. | ||
| That's the stuff my mom bought us. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's exactly how I grew up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I still use it to this day. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I no longer use Dr. Zog's surf wax. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| Best for your stick? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That probably doesn't exist. | ||
| But so you got better. | ||
| You got sober after that. | ||
| How long did it take from that interview to sobriety? | ||
| So that was 2011? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yeah, no, it got pretty dark after that. | ||
| Even though I did another, somehow managed to do another TV show. | ||
| It's still in the middle of all that. | ||
| You know, I mean, I was able to pull it back and present, you know, nicely enough, you know, at least walk into a room and actually, can I just go back just a sec? | ||
| One of the things I loved about that interview was the hostility that you so clearly had. | ||
| I mean, it just was obvious toward like the whole class of people who profit from the creatives in Los Angeles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And, you know, the agents, the managers, just that whole constellation of people. | ||
| And you clearly were at war with them. | ||
| And yet the way the system is set up even now, you were telling me at breakfast, like it's necessary. | ||
| Like you can't really work without participating in that system. | ||
| So how did you fix those relationships? | ||
| Time. | ||
| Just over time. | ||
| And just working on myself. | ||
| And yeah. | ||
| And, you know, those relationships can only be fixed if both parties are still in the game. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So I think that helped. | ||
| But the stuff I talk about in the book about that time was that it was that tour that really was ill-advised, you know, and that was not my idea. | ||
| And I'm still not sure how I allowed myself to get talked into it. | ||
| You know, everybody blames Mark Berg, but it wasn't Mark's, it really wasn't Mark's brainchild. | ||
| It was Live Nation. | ||
| They watched all of that and like they're, they, it, through their filter, they saw that as taking that on the road. | ||
| Yeah, we got to get this man into expensive hotel rooms. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| In front of a crowd full of paying customers. | ||
| Most coffee companies sell weakness, basically watered down drinks from faceless corporations that don't care about the American family. | ||
| Black Rifle is very different. | ||
| Drank it this morning. | ||
| It's American brewed. | ||
| It's unapologetically patriotic. | ||
| This coffee is built with people who love this country. | ||
| We actually know them, have shot with them, and can tell you that's real. | ||
| And they know what it means to fight for the freedoms that we have. | ||
| Special forces, veterans, ranchers, hard workers across this country represent the best that we are. | ||
| The coffee is strong. | ||
| The energy drinks even stronger. | ||
| Not because they're jumped up on sugar. | ||
| It's not empty marketing, but it's actual fuel for people who work hard and keep this country running. | ||
| Every purchase from Black Rifle helps support veterans, first responders, law enforcement. | ||
| From bold roast to ready-to-drink cans, mugs, cool t-shirts, tons of gear, Black Rifle makes everything it makes with pride. | ||
| How many companies can say that? | ||
| Honestly, not many. | ||
| Visit blackrifle.com, blackriflecoffee.com. | ||
| Use code Tucker for 30% off your first order. | ||
| That's blackriflecoffee.com. | ||
| Use the code Tucker or pick it up at your convenience or grocery store. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| Well, it's not even about the performance. | ||
| It's about the experience of being on the road, which anyone who's ever done it can tell you. | ||
| I mean, there's a reason so many performers wind up with these really tragic personal lives, which is like being on the road is not good for you at all. | ||
| Yeah, no, it was especially really not good for me. | ||
| I mean, on a good day, it's not good for a good person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But an addicted person is just going to like, so what, what happened? | ||
| What was the matter? | ||
| It was 21 cities in like 31 days with no act, with no act. | ||
| But Jeff Ross did come in and rescue a good portion of it. | ||
| So that was. | ||
| Did they call Jeff like midway through? | ||
| They called him like right after the second show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, we bombed right out of the gate. | ||
| So what was that like? | ||
| It was awful. | ||
| It was awful. | ||
| Did you know that it was bad when it was happening? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| No, it was an absolute train wreck. | ||
| It was complete bed shit. | ||
| No, it's fine. | ||
| I'm sorry to laugh at your mouth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, fortunately. | |
| I'll take it because there's a thing I talk about in the book that, you know, Hemingway's, you know, to become a man, you know, his list, right? | ||
| You got to, you got to, you got to fight a bull. | ||
| You got to have a son and plant a tree. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right. | ||
| He left out being booed off stage in Detroit on opening night. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was, we didn't make it. | ||
| We didn't make it to the second act. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then Simon Rex, you know who he is? | ||
| No. | ||
| He's an actor and he'd done some rapping and he had this one song that I really dug. | ||
| And so he was going to perform it, you know, and I was getting pelted with stuff, like not food, but like programs and shoes and whatever anybody could throw. | ||
| And he was in the wings. | ||
| And so I started like motioning him out. | ||
| You're actually on stage. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's, it's, it's, it's turning violent. | ||
| There's his, we are like on the verge of bedlam. | ||
| And so I wave him out and I, and I switch places with him. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| And he tried to do his song and they kept went harder on him. | ||
| And then he told me afterwards, he said, dude, you can't like you have to. | ||
| He says, you completely overlooked the fact that you that you brought a white rapper out on stage in Detroit who wasn't Eminem and expected the crowd to be satisfied. | ||
| You know, wait, but what we're skipping over the key part, which is what did you do to make the crowd so mad? | ||
| Stuck to the script that was absolute dog shit. | ||
| This thing that I built back home thinking, yeah, and then we'll do this, then we'll do that. | ||
| And then the girls will come out and just all this stuff that I was imagining would be crowd-pleasing stuff. | ||
| But they just literally wanted me on stage just screaming those dumb slogans. | ||
| They wanted more tiger blood. | ||
| Yeah, they wanted, you know, more seven gram rocks. | ||
| They wanted more Adonis DNA. | ||
| And what I, you know, finally explained in the book is that none of that, the biggest irony in this whole thing, none of that stuff was my original material. | ||
| I didn't cook all that, all that stuff up. | ||
| No, it came from a phone call from a baseball player like three days before I sat down for the interview. | ||
| And it was, it was, I think it was delivered as a pep talk. | ||
| Like in some dugout? | ||
| No. | ||
| There's a guy named Brian Wilson. | ||
| He used to pitch for the Giants. | ||
| They called him the Beard, right? | ||
| Great ball player, super dude. | ||
| And I was watching a highlight package of him one night. | ||
| And I just, I don't know, there was something about his magnetism, his presence, all of it, right? | ||
| And I told my friend Tony Todd, I said, get him on the phone. | ||
| I want to speak to that man, right? | ||
| And the next day I was on the phone with him. | ||
| And I think it was before the season started. | ||
| And he just volunteered. | ||
| He said, it's, hey, it's a pleasure to talk to you, man. | ||
| And it was already known that, you know, the train had left the tracks with my show and the beef with Chuck and all that stuff was already in play. | ||
| So he says to me, he says, you know, we're not like other people. | ||
| We're not. | ||
| We're different, man. | ||
| We got, we, you know, we got, we got tiger blood running through our veins. | ||
| We got a, we got a substrate of Adonis DNA that doesn't allow guys like us to ever lose because we're always winning, right? | ||
| This is all him giving me this material. | ||
| So, and he's, he's probably thinking, cool, man, that's going to, that's going to make him feel better, at least for, at least for today. | ||
| And, you know, maybe, maybe he'll, he'll, you know, make some progress with this other mess, right? | ||
| And then the interview comes around and there was something that she did. | ||
| No part of it was her fault. | ||
| I mean, no part of it. | ||
| It was the ABC lady. | ||
| Yeah, Andrea Canning. | ||
| And so she made a crack to the two gals that I had shacked up with, right? | ||
| And then she tried to continue like on to her next question. | ||
| And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you owe them an apology. | ||
| And she was like, okay, my bad. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm like, thank you. | ||
| And so then she tried to continue the interview and I started grinding on it. | ||
| I wouldn't let it go, even though she apologized and we should have just moved past it and we didn't. | ||
| And so that's when the whole thing just came out. | ||
| I suddenly felt like I'm going to be delivering another interview and checking every box that they want. | ||
| And I'm supposed to show remorse and I'm supposed to show all of those all those things that you sit down and do that interview and deliver, you know? | ||
| Which, I mean, that was the point of the interview, right? | ||
| That was set up because you have to go through this ritual. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that's what they were expecting. | ||
| And I think I might have agreed to it on those terms. | ||
| And yeah, I flipped the script sort of midway through. | ||
| And then I had all of his material. | ||
| And it was just sort of like, you know, it was there, man. | ||
| It was on standby. | ||
| It was kind of kind of on a loop, just looking for the right venue. | ||
| And there it was. | ||
| And it all just flew out. | ||
| And that, that's what started that whole thing. | ||
| Did he call you? | ||
| Did he see it? | ||
| The ball. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He was probably like, oh, my God, what have I done? | ||
| What have I done? | ||
| I gave my best stuff to the wrong guy or the most right guy ever, you know? | ||
| So I felt maybe I'm shallow. | ||
| I'll just, I felt you created a kind of art. | ||
| I felt like that was like a, thank you. | ||
| I did think that's awesome. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And most lines are other people's lines. | ||
| So there's no shame in that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, oh, and for years, I didn't want, I didn't think it was fair to try to lasso him into the craziness. | ||
| So I always kept it, kept him out of it. | ||
| I kept Brian out of it, which I felt was the right thing to do. | ||
| And then over time, I did start admitting that, yeah, that wasn't my material. | ||
| I didn't come up with any of that stuff originally. | ||
| And then with the book and this tour, I've just said, yeah, it was, it was, it was Brian, it was that guy. | ||
| Did you still talk to him? | ||
| Yeah, I spoke to him about a year ago because we asked him to be in the dock. | ||
| And he said he was going to do it. | ||
| And he just changed his mind, didn't want to. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| He doesn't have to revisit it. | ||
| I kind of do. | ||
| And well, I was telling stories about it in the dock where I was already anticipating them cutting to him for his side of it. | ||
| So it would have made sense if he was there. | ||
| But no, I don't, there's no love lost at all about that, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I'm again, totally pro-sobriety. | ||
| On the other hand, it's just nice to see vigor in a man in a world filled with men without vigor that, you know, I'll take a little craziness. | ||
| I just wrote that word to somebody yesterday. | ||
| Which? | ||
| Vigor. | ||
| Yeah, it's much needed. | ||
| Yeah, no, somebody wrote something to me. | ||
| Hey, this thing, or did you guys do this, something, something? | ||
| And I, and I, I was sitting there for like four minutes. | ||
| And I finally wrote back with vigor. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So yeah, we knew Teddy Roosevelt, right? | ||
| And I saw a little cocaine-infused Teddy Roosevelt in that interview. | ||
| So you go on tour, Live Nation decides, hey, we can profit from this guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not to impute low motives to Live Nation. | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so you, and you bomb the first two nights. | ||
| So then they call Jeff Ross, the Toastmaster General, to come in and say, which not stupid, actually. | ||
| No. | ||
| Did he do a good job? | ||
| He did a great job. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| He did a great job. | ||
| But what surprised me is that the set that he rolled out with, he showed up in a hazmat suit, like he was there to clean up a, you know, the radioactive spill, right? | ||
| Which he kind of was. | ||
| And the crowd loved it. | ||
| And his jokes were terrific. | ||
| And I'm like, wow. | ||
| And then I just figured he would be, then we get to the next city and he would come out with a different set. | ||
| And he didn't. | ||
| He just stuck to the ones he had assembled and built and they already killed. | ||
| And he figured that the next city hadn't heard them yet, but everything was in the paper because there's no internet or something. | ||
| And he just stayed with it, you know? | ||
| And then one night he couldn't make it. | ||
| So do you know who Chuck Zito is? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Chuck was helping me with security during the tour. | ||
| And I said, Chuck, I think it's going to be funny if like you come out and just take the podium and say, Jeff Ross couldn't make it tonight. | ||
| So I have his material and I'm just going to go through them one by one. | ||
| And he did. | ||
| And it bombed. | ||
| It bombed. | ||
| But it bombed. | ||
| And your security guy read Jeff Ross's set. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wearing his leather jacket and the whole thing, not Jeff's. | ||
| It's like so meta, actually. | ||
| I would have enjoyed that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I did enjoy it. | ||
| It's kind of high concept. | ||
| I was on stage. | ||
| For a stadium show. | ||
| Backing up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Chuck Zito filled in for Jeff Ross. | ||
| Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast you're ever going to see. | ||
| We can take or leave some people, but dogs are non-negotiable. | ||
| They are the best. | ||
| They really are our best friends. | ||
| And so for that reason, we're thrilled to have a new partner called Dutch Pet. | ||
| It's the fastest growing pet telehealth service. | ||
| Dutch.com is on a mission to create what you need, what you actually need, affordable quality veterinary care anytime, no matter where you are. | ||
| They will get your dog or cat what you need immediately. | ||
| It's offering an exclusive discount, Dutch is for our listeners. | ||
| You get 50 bucks off your vet care per year. | ||
| Visit Dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more. | ||
| Use the code Tucker for $50 off. | ||
| That is an unlimited vet visit, $82 a year, $82 a year. | ||
| We actually use this. | ||
| Dutch has vets who can handle any pet under any circumstance in a 10-minute call. | ||
| It's pretty amazing, actually. | ||
| You never have to leave your house. | ||
| You don't have to throw the dog in the truck. | ||
| No wasted time waiting for appointments. | ||
| No wasted money on clinics or visit fees. | ||
| Unlimited visits and follow-ups for no extra cost, plus free shipping on all products for up to five pets. | ||
| It sounds amazing like it couldn't be real, but it actually is real. | ||
| Visit Dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more. | ||
| Use the code Tucker for 50 bucks off your veterinary care per year. | ||
| Your dogs, your cats, and your wallet will thank you. | ||
| So when you get offstage, the first two nights when you bomb and people are throwing things at you, giving you the old Islamic shoe treatment. | ||
| What do your people say when you get back? | ||
| They're like, good job, Charlie. | ||
| No, they were like, huh, okay. | ||
| We really have to sit down and figure out if there's any way like what it's going to cost you to issue like all of those refunds. | ||
| They were refunds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Actually, the second, it was really just the first night. | ||
| I was wrong about that because something did happen between Detroit and Chicago. | ||
| Something usually does. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Between those two cities. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Especially on a tour bus. | ||
| No. | ||
| So I said, okay, everything that we had planned to just leave it right where it belongs in the toilet where it wound up in the sewer, in the gutter. | ||
| We are scrapping everything. | ||
| And they said, okay, all right. | ||
| Good start. | ||
| Good. | ||
| You know, okay, cool, Sheen. | ||
| You're reading the room, man. | ||
| And was it the shoes? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Partly, it was that last high heel. | ||
| And I said, I think I have a fix. | ||
| And they were like, well, do you want to share it? | ||
| I'm like, no, no, I don't have it yet. | ||
| So I'm going to ride the, I'm going to ride the tour bus. | ||
| I'm not going to fly. | ||
| I'm going to take the bus from Detroit to Chicago by myself. | ||
| And I just need a notepad and two pens. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| And I just rewrote the entire show alone on that trip, knowing that it was do or die because they were already, because I knew that tour was also, It was the child support tour. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because Warner's just hanging on to all my dough. | ||
| They were keeping my dough hostage because I'd violated all the morals clauses and I acted in bad faith and therefore they didn't have to pay me what they owed me, you know? | ||
| And I was like, well, hold on a minute. | ||
| Anyway, they ultimately had to, but I had to assume to get my get my scratch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| So I couldn't. | ||
| I'm not surprised. | ||
| So anyway, so that, yeah, so I did go on that thing. | ||
| There, there, there were, there were some noble motives behind it or motivation rather. | ||
| Just to have some dough to, you know, keep everybody housed and fed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because you have a big tribe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Big enough. | ||
| And so bigger than average. | ||
| Bigger than average. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean that as a compliment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And plenty of room at any, any, any stage of it, at any, any, any table that, that we sit down at. | ||
| There's plenty of room for everyone, you know. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And so we get to Chicago. | ||
| And so I go there in the morning and they're like, what are you doing here? | ||
| The talent never shows up until five minutes for you know sound check or whatever. | ||
| And I say, I just need to see, I need to see the theater. | ||
| I need to feel the building. | ||
| They're like, okay. | ||
| Where were you playing in Chicago? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| I couldn't tell you at gunpoint. | ||
| Chicago theater, probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it was nice. | ||
| It was vintage. | ||
| It felt right. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So, so I basically decided that it was just going to be like with a moderator. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Smart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I said, I just need two chairs, you know, just at the, you know, facing each other, just behind the curtain. | ||
| And I wrote this letter and I'm sure it's on video somewhere. | ||
| And I wrote, and I wanted the chairs just behind the curtain so I could come, I could walk out first, deliver this, this love letter to Chicago about, you know, what happened in Detroit. | ||
| And the whole thing was a mislead about, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've fought in the jungles of Vietnam. | ||
| I've, I've been through the, the, the, the, the, the, the hellscape of, of, you know, the volcanoes of, you know, just this whole like mythological, uh, just this thing where it felt like, and then the whole thing kind of ends with, uh, and that was just opening night in Detroit. | ||
| And I said, uh, and then the whole place went nuts and I knew I had them. | ||
| And then the curtains parted and we sat in the chairs and we just talked about everything. | ||
| We just talked about it. | ||
| How did it play? | ||
| It played great. | ||
| And then everybody, you know, all the Vibe Nation guys and, you know, the agent types and everybody was around. | ||
| They were like, you rescued the show, man. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| You've rescued the show. | ||
| Well, sincerely, good for you. | ||
| No, it was, it was, it was cool. | ||
| And so we went with that. | ||
| And then that kind of petered out because it wasn't like at the at the energy level that everyone was because you weren't pivoting against disaster. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then that's then a little bit later, they, that's when they brought Jeff in because they're like, okay, we got, we got, we got our, you know, we got, we got our bearings. | ||
| Let's, let's, let's ramp it up, but in a, in a, in a sense, you know, just in a, in a, in a sensible way, I think. | ||
| What did you think of working live like that? | ||
| Um, it was exciting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was exciting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I, I, I made the decision to start entering from the back of the auditorium, you know, like there's not from backstage, but from the audience side. | ||
| Like from like the exit door. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| Just it was just cool. | ||
| Just everybody was expecting me there. | ||
| And I, I would run up the aisle, high five and everyone, you know, just to break it up, just to keep it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it was a trip. | ||
| I've, I've, I've seen the shows that you've done. | ||
| Yeah, no, I love it. | ||
| I, I hope that that whole form continues, whether I can participate in it or not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Because I think it's important for people to be physically present with each other. | ||
| You seem really comfortable in those situations. | ||
| Well, I like people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You like to smell people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't like, that's my main problem. | ||
| The internet is I think it just disaggregates people from actual people. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| There's no, it was like, there's a person there, but everyone's sort of reduced to his dumbest opinion or most provocative opinion. | ||
| I'm not against those, obviously, but I think that's not the whole story about people. | ||
| And it's just, I just like people. | ||
| It's like good to be with people. | ||
| I like physical contact. | ||
| I hate the COVID era because of its lack of physical contact. | ||
| I just, I mean, these are not like groundbreaking ideas, but no, I just like being with people. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| What's the point? | ||
| Otherwise. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So how much were you partying on tour? | ||
| Not. | ||
| Yeah, see, that, and I covered that in the book also is that they sent the head of the network, Les Moonvest, to my house with the, with the, with the Warner Jet, like fueled up and idling on the runway to take me to rehab. | ||
| Right after the ABC interview? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I said, I said, I appreciate it. | ||
| It's also Les not lost on me that this is the first time that the jets ever been made available to me during the whole run of two and a half, right? | ||
| Was to put me in rehab. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| And I said, but I'm going to do this at home. | ||
| I'm going to do this at home. | ||
| And then the look on his face was, man, I felt he was saddened. | ||
| He actually felt for me. | ||
| I could see that for him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it had nothing to do with commerce. | ||
| And I write that in the book. | ||
| Good. | ||
| I also describe him as a good dude and a fucking gangster. | ||
| No one's yelled at me yet about that because we're supposed to keep him parked in the cornfield. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think the assumption is in this business and especially in your part of the business, you know, you got to be a pretty tough character to get to the top, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think non-gangsters run big entertainment organizations. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They never had. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Not an insult. | ||
| I'm not judging. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But yeah, no, I think it requires that. | ||
| So you never went to rehab? | ||
| No, I did a rehab at home. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Not a rehab. | ||
| Not a rehab. | ||
| Well, there were a rehab with cocaine. | ||
| No, there was no dope. | ||
| There was no drugs. | ||
| There was no doubt. | ||
| Actually, yeah, there was girls. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There was girls and testosterone cream. | ||
| That's the one thing I didn't quit. | ||
| And that was probably the one thing. | ||
| I probably should have stayed on the Coke and gotten off the cream. | ||
| Can you imagine like a doctor like recommending that? | ||
| You know, that's super advised. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| I've never heard that before. | ||
| So you think the testosterone cream used at 40x recommended doses was worse for you than the cocaine? | ||
| Well, I think it was doing more damage to my psychological state. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, because Coke is kind of predictable. | ||
| Oh, of course. | ||
| You know, what you're going to, you know, how you're going to behave in certain situations. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that other stuff was just like, ooh, it was a trip to the outer limits. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But like the really like kind of the angrier part of the outer limits, like the testier part, the more edgy part. | ||
| Yeah, it's like the more than cocaine. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, that's the most interesting thing I've heard today. | ||
| The day's young. | ||
| Fair. | ||
| So you have definitely heard about eight sleep by now. | ||
| People are talking about the well-rested people, you know, are talking about it. | ||
| It's a company with one mission, improve your sleep. | ||
| And it is changing the way Americans get a good night's sleep. | ||
| And trust me, they need it. | ||
| So we just received word that their team is launching a new product. | ||
| It's called the Pod 5. | ||
| The Pod 5 is an original, totally innovative mattress cover plus a blanket that uses precision temperature control to regulate your body's sleep cycles and give you the perfect night's sleep. | ||
| It ranges from 55 degrees for the cold plungers among you to the 110 degrees for the sauna fanatics. | ||
| That means no matter what you prefer, you're covered. | ||
| And the bottom line is you sleep better by up to an hour. | ||
| It actually works. | ||
| The pod also detects snoring and adjusts your bed's position to reduce or stop it. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Beleaguered ladies across America rejoice as one. | ||
| Everyone here can tell you there's no better way to be alert, productive, and happy than by getting a good night's sleep and eight sleep can help. | ||
| Visit eight sleep.com slash Tucker. | ||
| Use the code Tucker to get 350 bucks off your Pod 5 Ultra. | ||
| If you don't like it, just return it within a month, but you're going to love it. | ||
| 8Sleep.com slash Tucker. | ||
| So did anybody? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I'll think about that. | ||
| So I did stop. | ||
| Can I ask this? | ||
| Did anyone ever say to you, you know, it's good to get off the, you know, the narcotics, but like testosterone cream, when slathered in the amounts you're slathering is like pretty heavy. | ||
| Did anyone ever say that to you? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But a couple months before that, do you know Nick Cassavetes? | ||
| He's a director. | ||
| He's a writer. | ||
| He's an old friend of mine. | ||
| He's the son of John Cassavetes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Nick directed and wrote the notebook. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Everybody's favorite romantic comedy, right? | ||
| It's not a romantic comedy. | ||
| It's a love story. | ||
| So sorry, Nick. | ||
| I call this film a comedy. | ||
| You might want to cut that. | ||
| Well, you laughed and cried. | ||
| Yeah, you laughed and cried. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So We were in Palm Springs, and I don't know at what stage in that whole thing that whole time it was, but he did say, Hey, man, I noticed that you're using like a lot. | ||
| They recommended like the, you know, the size of a dime, and you had like five silver dollars in your hand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he said, You just, um, just think about, think about cutting back a little bit. | ||
| And I was like, you got it, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good advice. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Just ignore, ignore. | ||
| So, yeah, he no, but you mean like in the moment in that thing while it was going on? | ||
| Did anybody say? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, I didn't really broadcast what I was doing. | ||
| I don't think people would think to look for that. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Testosterone cream. | ||
| I mean, I didn't even really know that was a thing, but if I had known it was a thing, I wouldn't really think about it. | ||
| You know, I'd think like the crack is the problem, but it turned out. | ||
| So when you was it hard to stop using the illegal stuff? | ||
| Um, yes and no. | ||
| I, I, I missed it just physically for like a like a week, you know, but I wasn't on any any opiates. | ||
| So the Coke detox is pretty quick, you know. | ||
| Um, but it's um, the other stuff gave me the energy and just the different mindset to just to not even think about what my body was feeling. | ||
| Yes, you know. | ||
| Um, so then because you asked like how how long, yeah. | ||
| So then that, that, um, but when I came back from the tour is when I, is when I went, I went dark. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Went dark and stayed dark. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Usually it's the other way around when people are on the road. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it, um, I, I, I just wanted to finish it. | ||
| I just wanted to honor that commitment. | ||
| As crazy as that commitment was, I knew there was, there was, um, there were a lot of, there would have been a lot of consequences I didn't want to deal with had I not done every city, every, you know, every leg of the job. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So, and you're pretty work oriented anyway, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I have, I have that gear, yeah, yeah, you know, me too. | ||
| That's important, it is, yeah. | ||
| But it was after that, I think, I think the come down from it, just finally like landing and sitting with the damage I'd done to myself and my career and my, you know, and and and then, you know, how that affects my family, you know. | ||
| Um, yeah, I just had to just close the blinds, turn off the phone, and yeah, yeah, get back into the hard stuff, you know. | ||
| How long did that last? | ||
| Uh, about three months, four, four months, I think, maybe longer, maybe six-ish. | ||
| But not six years, no, no, because then a couple other things happened as a result of that dark place, you know. | ||
| Um, but as far as finally putting it down for real, um, it was yeah, it was, it was December 12th, 2017. | ||
| So, how I guess my core question is how, and I'm asking this not for prion reasons, but to inspire others. | ||
| Like, how did you do that? | ||
| Because I do think there are a ton of people who want to do that, but keep failing. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Um, I, I just, I, my body was really starting to send the kind of messages that that you either pay attention to or you die from. | ||
| Yes, you know, I'd never had the shakes before, yep, I'd never had the DTs before. | ||
| Oh, did you get the DTs? | ||
| Yeah, and definitely just from and not from being off of anything for a week, just from like going to bed drunk and then waking up and not being able to function until I got a few pops in me just to just realign my creative steady. | ||
| Yeah, so that was that was one. | ||
| And then, how scary are the DTs? | ||
| Um, terrifying, yeah, terrifying. | ||
| People die from that, they do, yeah. | ||
| And then, you know, and and I, I, for the longest time, I thought, you know, I thought Nick's portrayal in leaving Las Vegas, Nicholas Cage. | ||
| Um, I thought it was over the top. | ||
| I'm like, that's an exaggerated example of it. | ||
| And no, he nailed it like spot on. | ||
| Just the thing about you can't, you can't, you can't take a drink because you'll, you'll break a tooth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, and then, you know, only a couple of days later, you're puking blood. | ||
| So your body is like saying, hey, man, no, my, yeah, we, we have these, these, these, this built-in warning system, this, these flashing red lights for a reason, you know? | ||
| And then what's interesting is, you know, I think people imagine that the delirium tremens are like something that 80-year-old winos get. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But you like weren't that old and you'd had a job the whole time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Right. | ||
| So you're functioning actually. | ||
| And you still got them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It gets you faster than you realize. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you're the example of that. | ||
| You're the character in that story you promised you made a sacred vow to yourself that you would, you would, you would never star in in that story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's just like, so there's a lot of self-loathing. | ||
| There's a lot of, of course, but then, you know, I have an athletic background and I, and I, I'm, I'm competitive. | ||
| And so it was about a challenge of, okay, it's me against this thing. | ||
| How, how tough are we? | ||
| You know, how much tiger blood is really running through these veins, you know? | ||
| The Adonis substrate. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so, um, yeah. | ||
| And there's a, there's a, there's a really nice moment in the book. | ||
| Um, it's the, uh, there was a thing with my daughter Sam, you know, in a, in a car one day, just like, it isn't like this grand event where I, you know, got in a shootout with the cops and hijacked a blimp and wound up, you know, just a blimp. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like if you could hijack a blimp, I'd be impressed. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's, that's a box I've never checked, but it's not a bucket list moment. | ||
| So that's good news for the blimp industry, right? | ||
| Yeah, and it was just, it was this really personal, very soulful, painful moment with my daughter that just made me realize in that moment, it was, it was time. | ||
| Cause there's a, there's a theme in the book about, you know, talkers and doers, you know, and it was time to, as I say in the book, to there was nothing left to say. | ||
| It was time to shut the fuck up and get busy doing. | ||
| And then that, like that night and the next day took a few volume, had a few beers, and then the next morning decided we're done. | ||
| We're done for real. | ||
| And it just happened to be Cassandra's birthday, my oldest daughter. | ||
| It's just timed out like that cosmically. | ||
| You know, there's themes and tones in the book about that kind of stuff where, you know, certain circles close when they're supposed to, you know, and certain things align because they have to. | ||
| You know, everything's about timing because that's just the way it is sometimes. | ||
| Yeah, it's pre-written. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or feels that way anyway, sometimes. | ||
| So what was that? | ||
| So it's one thing to decide. | ||
| Lots of people decide. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Everyone struggling with addiction has made many decisions on Sunday morning. | ||
| I got to shut this down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But then you don't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because it's awful. | ||
| So was it awful? | ||
| No. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No. | ||
| It was, it was, it was, I mean, it was a little shaky for a week, but I, I knew that. | ||
| I had enough experience with, you know, Starstop, Starstop, you know, for a bunch of years. | ||
| So I, I knew, you know, what, what that path in front of me was going to look like, but it was, it was a really short path. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I knew it wasn't going to be, you know, a long walk into the, you know, you know, the, the end of the forest. | ||
| No, it was like, it was like from here to the, that park bench right over there, you know. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I just, I just rewrote, I, I, I wouldn't commit to the same stories I'd been told to worship for so long. | ||
| I said, I'm going to rewrite everything about this. | ||
| What were the stories you've been told to worship? | ||
| Just the stuff in the, you know, in and around the rooms of AA that, you know, you're been to AA before. | ||
| Yeah, a combined 21 years. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it isn't a guy that just did a few meetings and went, ah, it doesn't work for me. | ||
| It was a guy that really committed to it and did the steps like a bunch of times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You did? | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I sponsored people. | ||
| I was, I was deep into it. | ||
| And, but, um, but it never felt like it was celebrating the victories. | ||
| It was always making everybody, just in my experience, making me rather be prepared for impending doom for the ultimate disaster that I was always on a collision course with, you know, that as long as you've got something, some, you know, some disease on board that is, that is ultimately going to control your behavior. | ||
| I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't subscribe to that any longer. | ||
| I couldn't do it because add to that that subsequently, you know, I have a legitimate disease on board that is life-threatening. | ||
| And, you know, I take medicine every day and it's not life-threatening. | ||
| It's as manageable as diabetes, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But then the doctor said, if you don't take this medicine, you'll die. | ||
| And that's not something that's not like you don't, there's no other version of that conversation, you know, that is that's that's undebatable, right? | ||
| So you just follow that protocol and stay alive and live a, you know, happy, healthy, fulfilling life, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But AA says, um, you know, you got Southern disease on board. | ||
| If you don't go to these meetings every day or make that a part of your, of your, of your regular, you know, your, your, your, your curriculum, you know, um, then what's what what's in you will will kill you. | ||
| So I took the pills. | ||
| I'm alive, didn't go to a single meeting, and I'm coming up on eight years. | ||
| That's a, that's amazing. | ||
| Well, I'm just a rare example of a guy that, that understands the, the, the, you know, the physiological reality of a disease you can see under a freaking microscope versus one that I think was born out of necessity to uh keep people aligned uh through fear you know and i'm gonna get yelled at by a lot of people but it's all in the book here's something you may not have known back in 2015 the congress of the united states repealed something called the country of | ||
| Origin Labeling Act. | ||
| Now, why is this relevant to you? | ||
| Well, it means among other things that when you buy beef at the supermarket that says made in the USA, it may not actually be. | ||
| In fact, it could be, likely is, from a foreign country. | ||
| It means that repackaging foreign meat can be enough to get the made in USA designation. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| It's an absolute lie. | ||
| Most people don't even know what's happening. | ||
| So how can you be sure that the meat you're eating is from the United States and has been raised with the highest quality standards and is the tastiest? | ||
| It's truly made here. | ||
| Well, it's simple. | ||
| You can go to our friends at Meriwether Farms. | ||
| Meriwether Farms is an American small business. | ||
| It's based in Riverton, Wyoming. | ||
| We know the people who run it and they're great people and they have great meat. | ||
| They ship the highest quality meat raised free from growth hormones and antibiotics directly to your doorstep. | ||
| It's delicious. | ||
| We eat it a lot, including at this table. | ||
| These are Americans. | ||
| These are American-made products. | ||
| They're the real deal. | ||
| Again, we eat that meat at this table from Riverton, Wyoming. | ||
| They're the best. | ||
| Meriwetherfarms.com. | ||
| Use the discount code TUCKER10 and you get an extra 10% off. | ||
| Again, that's Meriwetherfarms, M-E-R-I-W-E-T-H-E-R, farms.com. | ||
| It's worth it. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| I didn't get so worth AA either. | ||
| And I always felt like I wanted to de-emphasize that part of me. | ||
| Like, why would I want to marinate in ugly things? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Don't want to stay positive and forward-looking. | ||
| I like the AA meetings I've been to have brought other people to really. | ||
| I like the honesty and camaraderie of it. | ||
| But I do think you're making a point that's impossible to ignore. | ||
| You don't want to focus on, it's not healthy to focus on the downside all the time. | ||
| No, and that's what you're reminded of and it's drilled in any time you step in. | ||
| And then if their slogan is keep coming back, that implies that you're going to be coming back because something else has taken control. | ||
| And it's what they call a no-fault disease. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Just that it went bad again and it's not my fault. | ||
| You know? | ||
| No, I always felt it was, all my problems have all been my fault. | ||
| 100% my fault. | ||
| Likewise. | ||
| Likewise. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| like nothing to apologize For right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, no, I, I, um, it just, I, I never felt, uh, I never felt celebrated there. | ||
| I always felt there was just like an just this weird air of suspicion and expectation, you know. | ||
| Um, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't miss it. | ||
| I don't miss it. | ||
| And, and, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't put down the bottle to then, you know, close all the bars or, you know, convince others that this is, this has to be their path as well. | ||
| I didn't, that's not, you know, I got, I quit drinking to live in the real world happily and successfully, you know, and I agree with you on that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a, we're, there's a bar right behind you that I've never touched, but I like bars. | ||
| I can't, I do too. | ||
| I hate drunkenness, but I love bars. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, there's a, there's an energy in a bar you can't find anywhere else. | ||
| And in fact, in the decline of bars in the United States, mirrors a kind of societal collapse where no one is with anyone else. | ||
| I mean, again, I'm a sober person. | ||
| I don't like, I don't drink. | ||
| I would never drink. | ||
| I hate alcohol. | ||
| However, I love the idea of people getting together and laughing and telling vulgar jokes and like hugging each other in sloppy ways. | ||
| Like that's a bar. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or to watch the big game. | ||
| 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And like, that's actually died. | ||
| People have gotten less sober, but at the same time, everyone's on something. | ||
| It seems like to me. | ||
| But there are no bars. | ||
| Nobody goes to the bar. | ||
| Oh, that's gone away. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I mean, I'm a little bit cut off, but it does feel that way. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| I mean, do you know people who like go to the bar? | ||
| Do you know anyone who picks up members of the opposite sex in a bar? | ||
| No one has shared a story like that in recent memory. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So I'm not like endorsing, you know, bar hookups or whatever, but as compared to what, like, I don't know, it's just important for people to be together. | ||
| That's all I'm saying. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And that was a place for me to do it, which I always liked. | ||
| But I have to add that, you know, anyone that's doing AA successfully and it's a part of their life and it's the reason that they can have the life that was given back to them or that they claim, you know, reclaimed, then absolutely. | ||
| Oh, of course. | ||
| It's wonderful for so many people. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I completely agree. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| With that. | ||
| I mean, I'm always talking up A, though I don't, you know, I'm not an A guy, but I, but no, I think you're making an important point, which is you don't want to, alcohol is the center of your life when you're addicted to it. | ||
| And the goal is to make it not the center of your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| That's how I've always felt. | ||
| I don't want to think about alcohol, actually. | ||
| I don't either. | ||
| I don't either. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I thought about it a lot while I was drinking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I know. | |
| While I was drinking. | ||
| And I don't, this, this idea that you have to identify as an alcoholic. | ||
| Oh, I agree. | ||
| And it's like, how, how is someone still an alcoholic that, you know, the guy hasn't had a drink in 20 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I'd much rather be identified as a father or something that matters to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There was a guy in one of our private groups, and I can't say who. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Super famous, great dude. | ||
| And he would identify, they'd go around the room. | ||
| Hi, Dave, alcoholic, Charlie, alcoholic. | ||
| And it would get to him, I am so-and-so human being. | ||
| And he refused. | ||
| And they were like, well, that's not how we do it here, man. | ||
| He's like, you're not allowed to be a human being here. | ||
| Like, no, of course you are, but it's important you identify with your disease. | ||
| And he's like, no, first and foremost, I'm here on earth because I'm a human being, right? | ||
| And in this room, I'm a human being. | ||
| And I'm here to address some issues that I have, but I'm not, I'm not going to just reduce myself to a label. | ||
| And I was like, that guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did he stay sober? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| An AA meeting in Hollywood must be wild. | ||
| It's awful. | ||
| Why? | ||
| It's awful because it's not just about that. | ||
| And that second A is just, that's, they, they honor that as, you know, as little as possible. | ||
| Oh, is that true? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No, it's, hey, I heard you were at the Sundowners meeting at, you know, 5th and Broadway or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's like, yeah, but I went there because it was supposed to be anonymous? | |
| Second A, yeah. | ||
| And yeah, there's, there's a lot of, you know, people that want to give you a script. | ||
| Actually? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or want to hit on your girlfriend or just creepy stuff that you're not going to get at home alone watching a ball game, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that's kind of fun. | |
| Yeah, there was an element there that was just never felt just like skeevy at times. | ||
| And there were other meetings that were like, okay, all right, this makes sense. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| I like these people. | ||
| And then at some point it turns. | ||
| At some point, it turns. | ||
| And that's this is just my experience. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So you said when you did that interview, lots of people judged you, lots of people scolded you. | ||
| Then you go on a tour and you bomb the first night, people judging and scolding you. | ||
| Who were the people who were kind to you throughout all of the dark moments that you had? | ||
| Family. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you're close to your family. | ||
| I was interested in you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My ex-wives. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They were very supportive. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How'd you do that? | ||
| Because, you know, I've kids with both of them, except for my first wife, Donna. | ||
| But with Brooke and Denise, yeah. | ||
| So, you know, we decided early on, you know, after the after the splits that, you know, our, our, our stuff is, is, is, is incidental, it's secondary. | ||
| It's hi there. | ||
| It's about the kids. | ||
| You know, we have to have a children first North Star, you know? | ||
| Yeah, well, lots of people set that goal. | ||
| And I'm saying, yeah, it would, it would, it would run through peaks and valleys, but, but when it, when it's good and is good today, um, no, they're really supportive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| The whole time? | ||
| Uh, 80% of the time. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| 70% of the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'll take it. | ||
| I'll take it. | ||
| So, but you're, and your family was kind to you the whole, the whole way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They, um, you know, a guy with my kind of history and, you know, the, the, um, you know, not, not, not so much a chronic relapser, but a guy that would get some time and then just blow it all up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, you know, it's the, it's the trust thing that you can't, you can't get back in a day or a week or a month. | ||
| And so when I, what I decided to do was not make the big announcement, not say, I've, I've quit drinking, everybody. | ||
| And they're going to be like, here we go again, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was just going to just do it. | ||
| And then as soon as someone made a comment about, hey, you're looking, you look clear. | ||
| You look, you look content. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As soon as I started hearing stuff like that, I would then volunteer the changes I'd made. | ||
| It's called a soft launch. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| You don't do the immediate tour. | ||
| You just start doing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Much more effective. | ||
| Much more effective. | ||
| That dials down the pressure a little bit. | ||
| Do you think, were people like your work peers supportive? | ||
| Any? | ||
| Well, or nice to you. | ||
| I guess that's what I mean. | ||
| You mean like former work peers? | ||
| Yeah, you know, people outside your family who you know. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| So there were loyal people. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's what I'm asking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because I didn't really haven't had the big job in like this time, which is fine, which is actually probably better, which is good that I had all this time to gain some perspective and just work on myself and be like a responsible, available father to all these kids, you know, and grandkids. | ||
| How many kids do you have? | ||
| Five and three grandkids. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's pretty cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You're a biblical patriarch. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Is it like I'm always wondering about the studios, the manager, the agent, even the accountant, the lawyer, all the people around actors and in related businesses. | ||
| And like they have kind of a mixed incentive. | ||
| Like they, you know, you're not doing well, but they want to keep you working. | ||
| Sort of like the athlete who gets, you know, the Novocaine rather than the surgery because he's got to play the game. | ||
| Do you feel like they, any of them actually try to help or they just kind of want to keep the money coming? | ||
| In that, in that extreme example that I lived through, I think there was a want to help from specific individuals. | ||
| I don't think they knew how or that I was I was reachable enough to to receive it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, so I think they had to kind of decide: is it is it, you know, kind of like, you know, weighing the pros and the cons, is, is he going to be at least, if he goes back to work, is that enough of a full-time thing with distractions and responsibilities that that will be deterrent enough, you know, or have we sent him just back into the lion's den, just covered in fresh blood, you know? | ||
| So, yeah, I probably don't think I was ready to go back to work on anger management on the show about a year after the whole two and a half disaster. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I don't think that was advisable. | ||
| However, it's still, it, it comes down to me giving that final yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'll do this. | ||
| So I do, I, I have to own that, that part. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| So you said there were threads throughout this whole experience, times, the timing of certain events that made you think there was a supernatural quality here. | ||
| I mean, did you, how would you identify? | ||
| Is that God? | ||
| Like, what is that? | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting. | ||
| I got asked this with Bill Maher just last week. | ||
| Bill Maher asked you about God. | ||
| Yeah, he did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| What world is this? | ||
| What is happening? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Bill Maher is asking about God. | ||
| We are in a brand new age. | ||
| Yeah, no, and I wasn't happy with my answer. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, now you have a chance to read it. | ||
| Yeah, most days I don't know what else to call it. | ||
| That's what I should have said in that moment. | ||
| Most days I don't have a better word or anything else for it. | ||
| It is exactly that. | ||
| And just whatever my interpretation of that is, you know? | ||
| But I, yeah, it just kind of caught me off guard. | ||
| And yeah, I should have just leaned right into it and I did a little bit of a tap dance, you know. | ||
| Well, it's kind of weird. | ||
| I mean, we're, you know, about the same age, didn't grow up in a world where people talked about God at all. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, my dad, devout Catholic growing up. | ||
| And rather than that, you know, he always, you know, let us know that that was his personal journey. | ||
| And we were, we were welcome to climb on board, but it wasn't anything that he was, he was going to mandate, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so, so we did have exposure to it in our house our entire life. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And it never. | ||
| What did you think? | ||
| I didn't, I, I, I, I saw some, you know, I saw a lot of goodness with it. | ||
| Um, I saw other stuff I didn't want to align with. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, and yeah, it's, you know, I was, I was talking to Lexi just yesterday, you know, some days I'm all in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm like, okay, then sure. | ||
| Well, you, you know, can I describe it better? | ||
| Do, do, do I have a better prediction? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
| And there's other days I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, so not people will read the book and, you know, there's not a chance they say, oh, that guy's an atheist. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But there is a chance they go, oh, he's curious. | ||
| He doesn't quite, he hasn't fully figured it out or. | ||
| So you're God curious, you would say. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I don't think that's, um, and that's not me just wanting to say that in your presence. | ||
| That's me having time to, you know, right? | ||
| Just have I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I'm hardly an authority on the subject. | ||
| No, when I understand the, the, the, you know, what it means to you. | ||
| It's come to me now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, I, you know, again, things are changing so fast and I'm, I don't have the answers to most questions, but I definitely have become convinced that God's real for sure. | ||
| Yeah, no, and that's inspiring to see that level of acceptance. | ||
| Well, don't you feel it, kind of? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I do, but, and, but there's still, there's a part of me that, you know, just still wants to be a science snob. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you were, I mean, for, for the longest time, my whole life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I'm not, I was always pro things about it I like, but I mean, I would, I don't think I would ever say in public, I know God's real because that's like freaky. | ||
| And also there are cultural connotations attached that are just different from the culture that I grew up in, like completely different. | ||
| So, you know, it just found it sounded kind of phony or not really like me or whatever, but then things change so much in the world. | ||
| And I saw all this stuff that blew my mind. | ||
| And I was like, wow, God is real. | ||
| I can't believe this. | ||
| And then when you say it, you're like, actually, that's not crazy. | ||
| Everyone's always thought that. | ||
| Can't believe I was like embarrassed to say that. | ||
| So then once I do think that once you say it, something in you changes. | ||
| That's been my experience. | ||
| Not that I have a ton of experience or would feel qualified to give advice to anyone. | ||
| I certainly don't. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| I don't want to get there and be wrong. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you don't. | ||
| There's the thing. | ||
| There's the thing. | ||
| But isn't there some like, aren't you allowed to wait till the last minute? | ||
| I think once, you know, it's just, it's kind of like a lot of things. | ||
| You arrive in a place and you're like, yeah, wait, I've always known this. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| I've always felt this. | ||
| And it's totally what I thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You do occasionally feel that way about things. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I'm not controlling any part of all this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That I know for a fact. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, and it doesn't have the feeling of randomness, does it? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, there's too many signs. | ||
| Nothing's a coincidence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And it's just, it's everything's connected. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And people are connected. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And how do you, how do you explain deja vu? | ||
| Well, you kind of can't. | ||
| And then you realize that actually the real religious nuts are the science snobs who are sort of desperately backfilling against the evidence. | ||
| Like, well, what does that mean? | ||
| Well, shut up. | ||
| Just like so desperate to cling to something that is just absurd. | ||
| I'm not saying that the physical world can't be measured in a lab. | ||
| Of course, it can. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I'm grateful for that. | ||
| And I'm grateful that, you know, for its byproducts, like, I don't know, automobiles and penicillin, but I'm not against science, but the idea that science explains everything is itself a religion and really kind of the dumbest religion ever concocted. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And the people who espouse it know that it's dumb. | ||
| And that's why they're so brittle and so given to lecturing you about it. | ||
| There's no Mormon missionary who's ever been judgier or more persistent than Tony Fauci. | ||
| Trust the science. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Does any Christian ever say that? | ||
| Trust the religion. | ||
| Not that I, not that I've ever hurt you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, the science religious wackos believe in conversion by the sword. | ||
| Like, do what we say or we'll hurt you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's not a religion I want to be anywhere near. | ||
| Me neither. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, that's bad. | ||
| It doesn't sound loving. | ||
| Oh, it doesn't sound forgiving. | ||
| No, it sounds dangerous, actually. | ||
| It does. | ||
| It sounds kind of like Al-Qaeda a little bit. | ||
| So I'm, I just think, and it's sad because who acts like that? | ||
| Only people who know they're wrong act like that. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's actually a line in the book that I don't know where I read this or heard this, but they, somebody smarter than me described science as a, as a, uh, an ongoing historical series of corrected mistakes. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| How about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just kind of institutional. | ||
| It's, it's a method for satisfying curiosity and understanding the physical world. | ||
| And I'm totally for that, completely for that. | ||
| But at its heart is skepticism and an acknowledgement that you don't know the answers to the most obvious questions. | ||
| And so keep trying to find the answers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I'm 100% in favor of all of that. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But what it's become is the medieval church, brittle, rigid, punitive, stupid, laughable. | ||
| And the second you describe it with no emotion, any normal person's like, well, that's insane. | ||
| I don't want to be part of that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, and, um, but I'm, you know, I'm not, I, I, I'm not going to try to solve the unsolvable. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and I'm fine being completely mystified by it. | ||
| Well, that's the beginning of wisdom. | ||
| You know, to admit you're mystified. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you're admitting you're not all knowing. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And yeah, for sure, not all knowing. | ||
| Well, speaking of mysteries, how did you wind up knowing Alex Jones? | ||
| How did I wind up knowing Alex Jones? | ||
| Um, he, it was his early videos. | ||
| It was his early documentaries. | ||
| It was the stuff he produced himself, like on VHS. | ||
| How could you have seen that? | ||
| How did I see it originally? | ||
| You're like in Los Angeles making movies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| I've always been a guy that likes to just needs to peek behind the curtain. | ||
| I've always been a guy that's done my own research. | ||
| Always been a guy that just never, not always satisfied with the official story about anything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| And, you know, and I, you know, I create fiction for a living. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm pretty good at spotting it. | ||
| I just want to pause on that. | ||
| I create fiction for a living. | ||
| I'm pretty good at spotting it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a good quote, right? | ||
| It's a great quote. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And so, you know, dad played both Kennedys when we were growing up. | ||
| So we had access to JFK stuff that wasn't in the public sphere, documentaries and, you know, unedited Zapruder stuff. | ||
| And so we were, you know, I talked with Rogan about this a little bit last week and we were, you know, so we've always had a, had to, we're just raised to, you know, take, take a deeper dive. | ||
| Look at things just with a more, just polished, through a more polished lens, you know, or skeptical lens. | ||
| And so, yeah, I, I, you know, be it JF Cave or 9-11 or Oak City or Columbine. | ||
| We just did 9-11 doc, and it was an amazing experience for me to be involved in this because I not only bought the 9-11 story, I was very resistant to anyone who questioned it because it felt like disrespectful or desecrating the crap. | ||
| I don't know why I had that incredibly embarrassing, not at all noble reaction to people's honest questions about 9-11. | ||
| So it took me a long time to want to rethink it. | ||
| And then once you do, you realize like it's just a tissue of lies. | ||
| At what point did you start asking questions about it? | ||
| 04, 05, whenever Loose Change dropped. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was the first. | ||
| Well, no, actually on the day. | ||
| Really? | ||
| On the day. | ||
| Yeah, there were things. | ||
| Emilio and I had it because everybody like rushed to Malibu. | ||
| We were like in the city. | ||
| I was in a high rise. | ||
| I didn't know how far this thing reached. | ||
| Everybody just had to get back to the folks' house. | ||
| Like, you know, let's reassemble at base camp, you know? | ||
| And Emilio and I were out on the deck and I said, you know, man. | ||
| At your parents. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I said, there's something about the way that building came down. | ||
| I'm just, I don't know. | ||
| And, and, you know, by that point, we had seen different angles of it. | ||
| And it was really, it was, you know, there was, there was a lot of content to digest, you know, horrific content, might add. | ||
| And we just, yeah. | ||
| And then I just thought, nah, because that would entail all of these things. | ||
| You just shut it down anyway. | ||
| Yeah, we talked each other out of it. | ||
| Roughly. | ||
| Because that would entail. | ||
| It's interesting, though, that two guys in the business of like manufacturing images would focus on that image and say that there's something about that. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I kind of just let it, I let it, you know, just didn't, didn't go near it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, you know, it led to what it led to. | ||
| The whole world was different. | ||
| You know, the whole world was different. | ||
| It's never returned to what it was. | ||
| No, it really hasn't. | ||
| No, there's pre and there's post. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then I watched that documentary. | ||
| I'd been, you know, a fan of Alex's early stuff, you know, and that's, you know, just him. | ||
| So you knew who he was on 9-11? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How? | |
| How did I? | ||
| He's my friend. | ||
| I would mean no disrespect. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| He's coming in a month, but I'd never heard of Alex Jones on 9-11. | ||
| And I was in the news business. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| How would you have heard of him? | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Just, you know, spending time on those research channels in just in that part of the subjects. | ||
| It's interesting that you, so you have long felt like you want to look at other sources of information. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've always done my own research, always. | ||
| And then. | ||
| Do you know other people? | ||
| Did you know other people around 9-11 who already were thinking like this? | ||
| Like maybe reality as presented to us is not entirely real. | ||
| People would believe things only so far. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so I would back off and I say, you know what, we're just going to, we're just going to focus on two things. | ||
| We're just just two things. | ||
| And if you can explain those, I will, I will, I, I, I'll submit to the official story. | ||
| I'll just say, all right, fine. | ||
| However, you, however, you say it had to play out, I'm in. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I was explain these anomalies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Building seven of the Pentagon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just help me out there. | ||
| You know, I've got to believe that the Pentagon is the most protected and documented, you know, video protected, surveilled building in the history of the known universe, right? | ||
| Turns out not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm saying we just have two videos from the parking parking kiosk. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's, that's the thing. | ||
| And then, and then that is weird, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then building seven, it's just you can't, you just can't. | ||
| You can't watch that and say that is the result of a fire that burned for five hours on two floors. | ||
| You can't sell that to me. | ||
| And, you know, that for years that was always met with that is disrespecting the victims. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't, okay, how? | ||
| How is that disrespecting the fallen heroes? | ||
| How? | ||
| If you're just looking for the truth behind what is clearly not what, how, how it was explained. | ||
| Clearly. | ||
| I mean, a three-year-old could look at that and know, you know, that looked like that hotel in Vegas that we watched them bring down intentionally, you know? | ||
| So that's how I met Alex was reaching out. | ||
| Trust your eyes. | ||
| You've always trusted your own perceptions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, but I did this in the middle of two and a half at its peak, decided to be vocal about 9-11. | ||
| Now we're in the studio. | ||
| They were like, oh, my gosh. | ||
| There's actually a commercial because one of the advantages we had with that show promotionally was the NFL. | ||
| Because we were a Monday show all of Sunday, all the CVS football games on Sunday were just, you know, every 20 minutes to do a commercial for us. | ||
| And that is like a built-in thing to keep the ratings and the momentum in the eyes and all of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it was great. | ||
| It was the best tool you could possibly have. | ||
| So they made a commercial, like a promo. | ||
| And it's probably on YouTube somewhere. | ||
| Someone out there is going to find it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it opens with, Charlie has a lot of questions. | ||
| And then my character would be, hey, Alan, you know, where'd you hide the beer? | ||
| Hey, mom, where'd I leave my car? | ||
| Charlie's really curious. | ||
| Hey, you know, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that a silk bra or is that polyester? | ||
| Whatever, like actual lines from the show to support Charlie's curiosity, Charlie Harper, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But Charlie, in the world, like going into places that on a corporate level with a giant hit show, your lead actor is not supposed to be doing. | ||
| So they tried to make it kind of like, hey, he's doing these things, but don't worry, he's still, he's still in our world doing them, you know? | ||
| They, they just, it was, it was kind of a brilliant piece of propaganda if you think about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I was just thinking that it's a geo move. | ||
| You take the energy and you pull it in your direction. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I remember watching it and I was flattered that they like put all that energy into this thing that I'm sure was upsetting a lot of people. | ||
| And I never saw it again. | ||
| Did they ever say anything to you directly about your questions about 9-11? | ||
| Kind of, but not really. | ||
| Things like, maybe it's not the best time to be doing this kind of research, kid. | ||
| Maybe, you know, take a little pause for the cause. | ||
| Yeah, it was, and, and, yeah, they, they, but they didn't like, you know, show up at my house like they did for, you know, going crazy on dope or testosterone. | ||
| But yeah, they, they, they were, they were nervous. | ||
| And so, and I did pull it back. | ||
| I did organize a symposium in LA, though, with a three-day event called A Weekend of Truth. | ||
| Alex Jones was the key speaker in the middle of two and a half. | ||
| Um, seriously? | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you feel that your job was at risk by doing that? | ||
| I thought the other stuff was more important than my job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's just. | ||
| How many lead actors on hit shows put anything above their job? | ||
| Cult of one. | ||
| Yeah, none. | ||
| None. | ||
| Well, dad, my dad has at times gone heavily against the grain in the face of the same type of pressure. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But yeah, no, that was. | ||
| And then when Alex and I got together and I sent him that email that I told you about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And my last line was zero hour is upon us. | ||
| So just for people who weren't at breakfast here. | ||
| You said that you saw something he did and you just emailed him cold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| I said, hi, Alex. | ||
| I'm a fan for yours. | ||
| Perhaps you've heard of me. | ||
| My name is Charlie Sheen. | ||
| I said, we have to talk. | ||
| Zero hour is upon us. | ||
| And he called in 10 minutes. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then flew out to see you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then we thought, okay, let's build a secret weapon. | ||
| Let's do something that like is unique and, you know, let's do something within in the media. | ||
| Let's use the media to try to, I guess this would have been 07, 08. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So we got together and we wrote this piece called 20 Minutes with the President. | ||
| And what it was, it was a fictional retelling of this 20 minutes that I was granted by Obama. | ||
| And it was me sitting down with him, asking him 20 questions about 9-11 and asking him based on these irrefutable bullet points if he would consider activating, you know, reopening a new 9-11 commission. | ||
| And we put it online. | ||
| And this was, but you didn't actually get 20 minutes with Obama to ask. | ||
| No, it was all made up. | ||
| It was all made up. | ||
| But the research that Alex and I dug into that we that we because we, you know, we, we, it could have been 100. | ||
| It could have been 100 questions. | ||
| It could have been 100 minutes with the president. | ||
| And we, we, we drilled down into the 20 things that were really bulletproof, really bulletproof. | ||
| And so we, we published it online and we let it kind of marinate for about 20 minutes before we added the following has not taken, it didn't actually take place, but we're hoping one day that it, that it could or that it might. | ||
| Or so we did let kind of the hysteria build a little bit that people thought, holy hell, man, dude, Sheen and Obama, right? | ||
| This thing actually happened. | ||
| And because we didn't want to prejudice it with it being, you know, a work of fiction right from send. | ||
| And it was a little bit of a manipulation, but so what? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, did anyone from the Obama White House reach out to you? | ||
| There's a guy. | ||
| He was the deputy press secretary. | ||
| His name was Bill something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Burton? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He called me. | ||
| I got the memory. | ||
| Well done. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cause I knew his name was the same two initials. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He called me and I said, how's it? | ||
| Hey, thank you. | ||
| He's like, yeah, that thing that you and your buddy wrote, that meeting you're looking for, never going to happen. | ||
| Those were his words. | ||
| Never going to happen. | ||
| I said, well, that's a shame because it really should. | ||
| He said, okay, all right. | ||
| Good luck to you. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| It was like a 14 second phone call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But anyway, so, yeah. | ||
| And I guess, and then Alex said, look, when this thing goes out, they're not going to debate any of it. | ||
| Cause we, you know, we told it was Bill O'Reilly, it was Harold Rivera. | ||
| We said, we'll sit down and debate you just on these 20 things. | ||
| And nobody bit. | ||
| And Alex said, look, they're just going to call you. | ||
| Nobody bit? | ||
| No. | ||
| Nobody took the challenge. | ||
| And you're at the height of the show's popularity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Nobody took the debate challenge. | ||
| You're one of the most famous actors in the world. | ||
| And you're offering talk show hosts the opportunity to be on their show to talk about something that is really interesting and controversial. | ||
| And they say no. | ||
| They said no. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Now, what do you think that is, Charlie Sheen? | ||
| That's a little weird. | ||
| It's a little weird. | ||
| Having been in the talk show business, I can promise you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You should have called me, man. | ||
| I would have done it in a second. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I probably scolded you for your ridiculous questions, but I still would have done it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are disrespecting the memory of the victims. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How dare we? | ||
| Finding out why they were murdered is disrespect. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Wow. | ||
| No, I know it's insane. | ||
| And I always force myself to admit that I had these views because I want to be less judgmental toward other people. | ||
| And reminding yourself what an asshole you are is a really good way to be less judgmental, but also because it's like, it's a feature of human nature that we don't want to know the truth about things, actually. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Don't you think that's true? | ||
| Well, it's clearly not true for you, but it has been true for me. | ||
| I don't want to know. | ||
| I don't want to know that. | ||
| What do we then do with that information? | ||
| Trust me, I'm not defending that attitude at all. | ||
| I'm ashamed that I had it, but I just think it's more calm. | ||
| And I think of myself as like one of the most open-minded people I know. | ||
| I mean, I am very, very open-minded. | ||
| I'll entertain any possibility because I've seen so much that you can't not entertain any possibility. | ||
| But if I have felt that way, that means that it's probably just how people are built. | ||
| And you have to convince them that they should know what's true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| That the truth does matter, actually. | ||
| It does. | ||
| It does. | ||
| But Alex said they're just going to paint you as crazy. | ||
| Well, of course. | ||
| And I said, really? | ||
| That's like they can't get more creative than that? | ||
| He says, no, they're just going to call you crazy. | ||
| And Smash Cut to like a week later. | ||
| And it was, it was literally, it was Bill O'Reilly and it was Geraldo. | ||
| And they just dismissed me in one sentence. | ||
| Well, Charlie Sheen's obviously crazy. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Someone can find that clip, I'm sure. | ||
| Handmaidens to Power. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is. | ||
| But then I saw Bill O'Reilly outside of Dr. Oz one day. | ||
| I saw him in the parking lot. | ||
| He was just over there. | ||
| I guess he was the second guest or he'd already come out or something. | ||
| And I started walking right up to him. | ||
| He's kind of a big dude, right? | ||
| He's huge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He says, he says, you're not going to punch me, are you? | ||
| I said, no, I'm not stupid. | ||
| I don't want to get my ass kicked. | ||
| He's like, well, I said, I'm just came over to give you a handshake. | ||
| Just want to shake your hand. | ||
| He was like, oh, okay. | ||
| Well, good to meet you. | ||
| I said, nice to meet you. | ||
| And he's like, yeah, sorry about the doves. | ||
| I said, I don't care. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| You know, I get it. | ||
| Showbiz. | ||
| That's what I said to him. | ||
| It's showbiz. | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| He left. | ||
| And then we both went in and had a pretty good episode with us. | ||
| But it was a trivial thing. | ||
| He was like, he was on his heels a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's not as comfortable with human contact. | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty disgraceful on all of our parts. | ||
| And I wouldn't have, I don't think I would have called you crazy because objectively, it's not crazy to ask about why the greatest tragedy in American history happened. | ||
| I didn't think it was. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| And it's still not. | ||
| Shutting people down for asking sincere questions is very hard to defend, I think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But anyway, that's the Alex Jones kind of origin story. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| I just wish I could tell you where I actually acquired the videos and it had to have been online, like mail order stuff. | ||
| So you really cared. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he just, the stuff that I'd seen, he just was a guy that was just on the constant hunt for the truth and just, you know, for the right reasons. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Not to exploit it, but to expose it and share it and do something about it. | ||
| I think that's all noble. | ||
| And I, and I think that of him, you know. | ||
| And I think, by the way, he's been vindicated by time. | ||
| I think. | ||
| I don't think quite as many people mock Alex Jones as crazy anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At all. | |
| They can't. | ||
| They can't. | ||
| No, that's exactly right. | ||
| He called 9-11. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Did you call 9-11? | ||
| I did. | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| Nobody did. | ||
| Nobody did. | ||
| Alex Jones. | ||
| So right there, we know that he's worth taking seriously. | ||
| In fact, it's worth asking, how did you do that? | ||
| I've asked him many times, never gotten a straight answer, but we know for a fact he did. | ||
| It's documented. | ||
| So that's incredible. | ||
| My dad spent some time with him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, because we asked dad to read the president role because we wrote it like a play when it gets to the thing about the actual conversation that we have. | ||
| And we wanted to hear it out loud to see if it sounded like legit exchanges of dialogue. | ||
| And he was currently playing the president, right? | ||
| So he and I played the scene. | ||
| And they both had big shows at the same time. | ||
| Yeah, on the same lot. | ||
| We'd visit each other like at lunch. | ||
| Not often. | ||
| Not often because we were both super busy. | ||
| But yeah, they overlap by, I think, two seasons maybe. | ||
| What lot? | ||
| Three. | ||
| Warner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The Warner Brothers lot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then so dad spent some time with Alex. | ||
| And anytime he'd leave the room, Dad was like, I don't know, man. | ||
| I think I think this guy's ex-CIA. | ||
| I think he's too smart. | ||
| He knows everything. | ||
| I think he's got a background that is like this thing. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which was him complimenting Alex. | ||
| Well, and it's the way that people talk now. | ||
| It was not the way people talked then. | ||
| So that's just, that's interesting. | ||
| I mean, now that just sounds like Twitter, but then people took things at face value. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, do you remember? | ||
| Well, obviously you were in a different world. | ||
| So how did other people in Hollywood react to the? | ||
| So you're at Nobu and Malbu and you say, I don't really understand how Tower 7 came down. | ||
| What do people say? | ||
| It's not, it's, it's, there's more resistance to it than alignment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not so much anymore, but at the time in that moment when, you know, it was like the lone voice out there, at least in my industry. | ||
| But it was a lot of support from, you know, architects for truth, pilots for truth, all of those various associations. | ||
| Actual experts, you mean? | ||
| Those guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So you're just reminding me. | ||
| How did this interview get started set up in the first place? | ||
| I totally forgot about this. | ||
| Like you wound up at this table this morning because why? | ||
| Because I saw a promo on somewhere on online, not even on YouTube, that Sean Stone had directed a six-part documentary called All the President's Men. | ||
| And the only place that it could be viewed was on your platform. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so I signed up and I watched it all six episodes in one day. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And had to sit down and have a conversation with myself about just everything that, well, it goes back. | ||
| It just, it was, it was a gear I was familiar with because it was a downshift that made sense. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because it goes back to a guy that does his own research. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I hadn't for so long. | ||
| I hadn't done my own research for so long. | ||
| And, you know, I decided that when the second Trump victory, right, that I was not going to allow myself to feel how I felt during the first one. | ||
| I just wasn't going to do it because it just wasn't, it wasn't healthy for me. | ||
| It wasn't, it didn't, it didn't, no, no part of my life got better feeling like that every single day and being told who I was supposed to despise and why I was supposed to despise them, you know, and you were on that list. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was on the despise list. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's, and so, you know, apologies. | ||
| Um, I'm, but I've been so despised for so long that the sting is gone. | ||
| No, but I watched that documentary and it just, I, I, now I was armed with some fresh data. | ||
| Did you know Sean Stone? | ||
| Yeah, I've known him since Wall Street. | ||
| He plays Michael Douglas's tiny child in the movie. | ||
| No way. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I've known him since he was a child. | ||
| And then I reconnected with him as an adult. | ||
| And we had talked about a project here or there. | ||
| He would write a script and send it to me. | ||
| I'm like, he's a good guy. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really smart. | ||
| He really texted me, right? | ||
| I know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| It's strange. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I, you know, I would read a script that he wrote and say, oh, it's, it's not for me, but it's really good, you know. | ||
| And then I didn't talk to him for a while and then saw that he'd done this and done it brilliantly. | ||
| And so it just, it created a desire to just, you know, embark on what I can describe as an experiment, an experiment, just changing the channel. | ||
| Just, you know, stop listening to the chorus of nonsense that, you know, and the another thing that that twilight zone that I was stuck in for. | ||
| And it's just so dumb. | ||
| The funny thing is that Sean did that series. | ||
| We didn't produce for him at all. | ||
| He came to us with the series. | ||
| I think I'm actually in the series. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he came to my house and I, you know, sat for it and everything. | ||
| And I like Sean a lot. | ||
| I really like his, I know his dad and I and I admire his dad. | ||
| I do agree with him on everything. | ||
| But like, I think he's an honest guy and I think he's a brave guy. | ||
| And he's, by the way, earned the right to have his opinions as far as I'm concerned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Having dropped out of Yale to serve in the infantry during Vietnam. | ||
| And like he's a good man. | ||
| Oliver is. | ||
| Anyway, but he I don't think he could get it aired anywhere. | ||
| That's the craziest. | ||
| Seeing. | ||
| Things have changed so much that the level of open-mindedness in the world that he grew up in is just gone. | ||
| There's just no open-mindedness. | ||
| It's like, here's the story, deviate from it. | ||
| We'll kill you. | ||
| It's like, it's crazy rigid. | ||
| Do you feel that? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I do. | ||
| Yeah, but it just really brought me to a place to continue with further research into some of these subjects, you know, and to, as I said, change the channel, you know, and, you know, like most experiments, the results are constantly evolving. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But, but so far, I'm pretty happy with those results. | ||
| It's kind of wild who you wind up talking to and agreeing with. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, also, if you're, if you're told to feel a certain way about someone because of this specific set of examples or reasons or whatever, and then you decide one day you're going to investigate on your own. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| And then you come to something that is the exact opposite of how you were told to feel. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Because you decided to, I don't know, be autonomous, maybe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And just exercise. | ||
| Live as a free man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's that part. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And so it's been quite liberating. | ||
| The distance between what you're told someone is and what you discover when you spend time with the person is really vast. | ||
| I had that experience with Oliver Stone. | ||
| I'll be honest. | ||
| I mean, I always thought Oliver Stone was a kook, a conspiracy nut. | ||
| I was told to believe that. | ||
| I accepted it uncritically. | ||
| Years later, I wind up at Oliver Stone's house in Los Angeles alone, just me and Oliver Stone about something specific. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, I can't believe I'm in Oliver Stone's house. | |
| Like, wow. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's not sure. | ||
| You've had this feeling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Maybe you have it right now. | ||
| I'm having it right now. | ||
| I am. | ||
| So sorry. | ||
| And I'm like, and have been for the last hours. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I'm like midway through this conversation with Oliver Stone. | ||
| And I'm like, Oliver Stone is a really nice man, a courtly man, very smart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And has thought through everything that he's saying. | ||
| And by the way, I agree with everything I've heard him say. | ||
| I don't agree with the things I've heard said about him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like those are bad. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But what he's actually saying to me, I'm like, I completely agree with you. | ||
| And also, you're a decent person. | ||
| And so I'm like, why did I? | ||
| And then I really felt misled, I guess is what I'm trying to say. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had been lied to. | ||
| And that's not the only case where I've been lied to and where I uncritically accepted those lies. | ||
| And so then you feel stung by that. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| You lied to me because you didn't want me to have this conversation. | ||
| I don't know who I'm referring to when I say you, but like the media environment that I grew up in and that my views were formed in was dishonest, really dishonest, and probably intentionally so. | ||
| And probably part of the design was to prevent me from ever talking to people with whom I might share common ground because that would be a threat to the people lying to me. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, you're, you're, you're, you're telling my story too. | ||
| Well, it's just, I wouldn't have had this experience if it weren't for my job, where, you know, the one upside is I can talk to a lot of people. | ||
| You know, you could have people's phone numbers. | ||
| You can call them. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Why is he calling me? | ||
| Okay, I'll take the call. | ||
| Like you have the chance to actually meet people that you hear about. | ||
| But I think for most people who have normal jobs, like, how would they ever wind up at Oliver Stone's house? | ||
| They wouldn't. | ||
| No. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So they would never know that they, not only that he's a good guy and worth listening to, but also that they've been lied to. | ||
| They have no idea because they're never going to get out within, you know, a thousand yards of Oliver Stone or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So the deception is really subtle and incredibly effective. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, what it's taught me is, is just to go, just to, you know, trust going back to basics. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And, and not until I have an experience with a person that, you know, that I, I, I can't rely on the opinions of others because of, you know, just how, you know, however they've chose chosen to see the world. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know, or experience the world. | ||
| You got to spend the weekend in Moscow. | ||
| That will make you as angry as you've ever been because not because, you know, you know, I'm not Russia. | ||
| I'm not moving to Moscow. | ||
| I don't want to move to Moscow. | ||
| I want to live in my country. | ||
| I don't love Russia for some weird reason. | ||
| I just, I was angry because I was like, this is nothing like I thought it was. | ||
| I'd never been here. | ||
| It's very hard to get there. | ||
| You're not going to go there by accident. | ||
| You have to really try to get there. | ||
| Probably won't even succeed. | ||
| I did succeed. | ||
| And I learned, like, oh my gosh, they've been lying about this. | ||
| And so then I tried to say, you know, we've been lied to about what it's actually like. | ||
| You can make your own judgments about the politics and Putin or Ukraine or whatever. | ||
| It's totally up to you. | ||
| Decide what you think about that. | ||
| But the physical reality of that city is undeniable to anyone who walks through it. | ||
| And so I say this and it's like, shut up, Putin's dude. | ||
| I was like, no, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm not defending Putin. | ||
| Or maybe, you know, whatever. | ||
| It's nothing to do with Putin. | ||
| Look at the city. | ||
| This is insane. | ||
| And you lied about it. | ||
| And I'm mad at you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shut up. | |
| It's like that will blow your mind. | ||
| Don't go there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, because you don't need the aggravation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| No, no, no, no trips planned there anytime soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, you kidding me. | |
| I was there in 94. | ||
| Oh, when it was tough, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we shot, it was bad. | ||
| I mean, not the worst film, but it should have been a great film. | ||
| And it wasn't. | ||
| It was a disappointment. | ||
| It's called Terminal Velocity. | ||
| It was a skydiving thing with Nastasia Kinsky. | ||
| And what was she like? | ||
| She was pretty cool. | ||
| She was pretty cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's sexy and fun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what happened to her? | |
| She's still around, right? | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I think she was dating Quincy Jones at the time. | ||
| And so they, their relationship was a little bit bristly, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So she'd be on the phone with him and her trailer. | ||
| And then she'd come out of the set and at times, you know, was still carrying the tail end of that conversation into the scene. | ||
| But I had a terrific time working with her. | ||
| I hope she's doing well. | ||
| But so we went there just for like four days or it was myself, Chris McDonald. | ||
| Anyway, and I get to the airport and Chris and I, just on the way there, I mean, how long is that flight? | ||
| 14? | ||
| Quite long, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, we're hammered. | ||
| And I'm in the airport and there's a guy before I can even like find my bags who's who's up in my face screaming, taxi, taxi, taxi, taxi, right? | ||
| And I don't need a taxi. | ||
| I know there's a car waiting for me. | ||
| I don't speak Russian, you know? | ||
| And I'm like, I'm fine. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He's like, taxi, taxi, taxi. | ||
| And I'm just at some point it somehow got to fuck off, right? | ||
| I bet pretty quickly. | ||
| No, it did about two minutes. | ||
| I was trying to be patient, but I did say fuck off out loud. | ||
| But it wasn't like fuck off. | ||
| It was this fuck, you know, fuck off, man. | ||
| I just kind of threw it to the, to the, to the clouds. | ||
| And I guess fuck off there means something a lot different than it means where I come from. | ||
| And the guy lost his fucking mind. | ||
| It's pretty tough here, too, I would say, even in English. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he started repeating it, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. | |
| And he, he tried to go. | ||
| He tried to get to me. | ||
| And so whoever was with us had to get between the two of us and like keep this guy from like really doing some damage, you know, at the airport. | ||
| At the airport. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I, after that, I only saw the hotel and I saw the set where we shot and my trailer. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like, okay, this is the rules are a lot different. | ||
| Well, 94 was kind of a famously low ebb, I think, for Russia. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's my Russian airflow. | ||
| Lots of killers. | ||
| So you were, you're on a media tour for the book and the dock, and you were doing Rogan last week when Charlie Kirk was murdered. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You were actually in the middle of the interview? | ||
| We were. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And like we just had the bathroom break. | ||
| I said to Joe, I said, is it cool? | ||
| Can we pause so I can I can hit the head? | ||
| And he says, yeah, we, you know, we can, we can wrap it up pretty soon. | ||
| And I said, well, um, let's just cover, let's just do a couple more minutes at the end, just cover one more thing and then we can wrap it up. | ||
| He's like, you got it. | ||
| And then so the producer pauses and and as soon as he, as soon as we're clear, he says, Joe, there's, there's, there's breaking news and it's really bad and it's everywhere and it's really bad. | ||
| And Joe's, no, he says, Joe, don't look at your phone. | ||
| And Joe's like, tell me. | ||
| And he says, breaking news really bad. | ||
| And Joe says, what's going on? | ||
| And he says, Charlie Kirk's been shot and he's clinging to life. | ||
| And it was just, it was suddenly everything was different, you know, for all the wrong reasons. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was just awful, awful. | |
| And Then we like 30 seconds later, we go out into the lobby and one of his security guys says to Joe, he just died. | ||
| Charlie's dead. | ||
| And then it's what went from bad to just, it's as awful as it could have been, you know? | ||
| And it was, I hate to say it, it felt surreal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It always does. | ||
| I don't want to be disrespectful. | ||
| That's not disrespectful. | ||
| That's the experience that every person has when something that shocking happens. | ||
| We sit together and then we couldn't really get the details. | ||
| Then we went, we finally wound up in the bathroom. | ||
| And Joe said, we need to talk about this on the air. | ||
| And I said, yes, we do. | ||
| And so we came back on. | ||
| And then I guess what they've been playing a lot is us coming out of that moment. | ||
| And for me, it was that it was, I immediately went to fatherless children, husbandless widow. | ||
| And it was just that, that part of it breaks my heart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and it's just, and for what? | ||
| And for what? | ||
| You know, I mean, I, I, I, I've been as mad and as in complete disagreement, just absolute total, you know, nuclear frustration with people and have never thought like, well, now this is, this has to be the next logical step. | ||
| This is the thing that I now must do because of how they've made me feel with their words. | ||
| It's just that that's where we're where we've arrived. | ||
| It's where we're at, you know. | ||
| If that's the case, we can't stay here. | ||
| No. | ||
| We can't. | ||
| And what his wife said at his memorial, pretty powerful, you know, is a, is if you thought you were going to silence him with that, this will be my, my cries, my tears will be, will, will be the battle cry that you'll hear around the world. | ||
| And she's not wrong. | ||
| No, she's not wrong. | ||
| That happened in the first hour. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But yeah, you just take the politics out of it, take all of it out of it. | ||
| And it's a, it's, it's, it's a father that, you know, that loved his children and his family and his wife and just, you know, and was committed to the things that he, you know, was so passionate about. | ||
| And all he asked people to do was, you know, just debate me, you know, and he set the example of showing up that prepared, you know, and challenging others to be equally as prepared, you know? | ||
| And even if they weren't, even if they stumbled or fumbled or didn't, couldn't get their thoughts or, you know, didn't look the part or whatever, he never demeaned. | ||
| He never belittled. | ||
| He never criticized. | ||
| He didn't do any of that stuff. | ||
| He wasn't there to make fun of people. | ||
| He was there to inspire. | ||
| He was there to, you know, maybe just create just even just the tiniest little spark of something for someone to maybe feel something a different way. | ||
| And that cost him his life. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You don't want to live in that country where that happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| And it does, you know, it makes people that are in the, you know, that have to be in the public for their professions. | ||
| You know, it's like, do, you know, I'm sure a lot of people are feeling that, you know, that there may be a little more censorship, you know, personal censorship. | ||
| You know, of course. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, whoa, that's, that's what the deep end looks like now. | ||
| I think I better just stay in the kiddie pool for a minute, you know? | ||
| There's no question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And like everything else bad, it divides people from each other. | ||
| So all of a sudden, you know, people don't want to be near each other. | ||
| You know, it causes physical separation. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which is hell. | ||
| It's what we do to prisoners. | ||
| It's what we do to prisoners. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| I think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't want to be shut in alone. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's the worst thing. | ||
| And this just divides. | ||
| It makes people suspicious, makes them hate their neighbor. | ||
| Everything about it is evil. | ||
| And I think it's just important to say that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So I want to, and I never do this, but I just really believe in it. | ||
| I want to end on a product testing moment. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| I want to do that because, as noted, you know, I don't drink and I'm happy with that. | ||
| And I've discovered a product called Athletic Non-Alcoholic Beer, which has convinced me that non-alcoholic beer can be amazing. | ||
| I discovered the same product, athletic. | ||
| So I just, there was such a stigma, you know, 23 years sober, I never had a non-alcoholic beer because I'm straight. | ||
| And then they sent me this and I was like, wow, that's incredible. | ||
| Just the taste. | ||
| So now I'm like all about non-alcoholic sugar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| It's the greatest thing ever. | ||
| And it doesn't make you as fat as other things that I like actually out, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah, for sure not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so you have a non-alcoholic beer. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I do. | ||
| And I'm not a spokesperson for this. | ||
| I'm a co-founder. | ||
| And a consumer, I assume. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, it's quitting, you know, booze eight years ago that, you know, I said always love beer, still like beer. | ||
| And, you know, tried like you did, pretty much all the non-Alecs that were out there. | ||
| And I'm not here to shit on any of them. | ||
| But they taste like urine. | ||
| A lot of them do not. | ||
| Not that I would know. | ||
| But the good ones are good. | ||
| They're not for me, they're not great. | ||
| And I thought, well, how can I affect this? | ||
| How can I, you know, how can I make this better, not just for myself, but for the world at large, you know? | ||
| And so I aligned with three companies in partnership with Silent Spirits, with Ryan Perry, who's the gentleman that was with me today. | ||
| Yeah, great guy. | ||
| With our brewery partner is Harpoon out of Boston. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And our distribution is zero proof. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so, but unlike, you know, just being like invited into a finished product and being the pitch man, which would be the normal thing for a celebrity to do or sorry, an actor, right? | ||
| I've been working on this as long and as passionately as I have with the with the book and the doc. | ||
| And it was interesting because kind of the mantra in my house with my kids and excited about the things I was doing, it was always, it was always book dock beer, book dock beer. | ||
| These three things were happening at the same time and were evolving at the same pace. | ||
| And then we didn't, we didn't realize until this tour actually started that we got to a place where we can start taking orders like first week of October and shipping through e-commerce a couple weeks after that. | ||
| So this isn't like because it has no ethanol, you can ship it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And this is something that I was in on the development of this and in on every stage of building the recipe. | ||
| And I'm not a beer expert. | ||
| I'm an expert on what I like and what I know to be, you know, the different levels of quality, you know? | ||
| So, so, and they were, they were really relying on me as not just a co-founder, but a consumer, you know, and it's, there's another thing that's kind of cool is that just during this, this eight years, the amount of people that I'll see at a restaurant or a ball game or just on the street, they'll come up and say, man, I always wanted to have a drink with you. | ||
| And, you know, I'm glad that you're sober, but I'm sad that we can't do that. | ||
| Now we can. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| Now we can have a drink that you can. | ||
| I feel that way. | ||
| And so I'm going to taste it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| This is Wild AF. | ||
| I guess you can fill in the acronym as you so desire, alcohol-free or whatever that might stand for. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Now you can tell I've been off my game a little bit because I totally screwed up the head. | ||
| It's all right. | ||
| There's going to be some foam slurping at the beginning. | ||
| That's all right. | ||
| That's all right. | ||
| I'm barely German. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's great. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| It's excellent. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That just tastes like beer. | ||
| Well, it is beer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's actual. | ||
| No, I mean, it's, it's actual beer just without the alcohol, you know? | ||
| So what you realize when you have it is that, and I drank beer, you know, in the morning for years and really enjoyed it. | ||
| But it was the alcohol that I was looking for, but it was also the alcohol that made it not that great. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So when you take the alcohol out, the hops really come to the fore. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And hops are just an amazing plant, kind of astringent. | ||
| I think they're a relative of cannabis, actually, which I don't smoke, but still, aren't they? | ||
| Hops related to marahuna, yeah. | ||
| Well, whatever it is, they have this really flowery, interesting taste that's a little bit biting that offsets the inherent sweetness of the malt. | ||
| But they're kind of like overwhelmed by the ethanol in a normal beer, but they come out in this. | ||
| Do you feel that? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I do. | ||
| And it's, you know, it's a, it's a craft lager. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And what I, the, the model that I was urging to, you know, not to get deep into the science of it, but please do. | ||
| Well, I don't have the, I don't know the science. | ||
| Just make it up. | ||
| No, I was like, you know, you're using nuclear technology for the first time ever in the brewer process. | ||
| That's, that's what we're doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's just like, you know, what, what, like our, our target is, you know, like, what, what's, what's a great beer that, that is commonly served at a ball game, you know? | ||
| And I want it, I want something that, that, that, you know, that, not, not, not mirrors that. | ||
| Obviously, eclipses that is more, it feels a little, just a little more, a little more full. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A little fuller, you know. | ||
| And an eel, not fake watery. | ||
| Should we give it the spaniel test? | ||
| What is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I. Oh, the spaniel test. | |
| I'm just going to let them. | ||
| I've got my spaniels. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come here. | |
| And I'm going to let them know that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that a pass or a fail? | ||
| No, no, that's a full pass. | ||
| Now, this is a legit grouse dog. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We went yesterday. | ||
| She's got an amazing nose. | ||
| And if this dog doesn't like something, it's immediately obvious. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| No, she liked it. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| I'm not going to let her have any because God knows where that tongue has been. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And also, you know, there's obviously a tie-in with wild, with wild thing. | ||
| That's why the badge is the profile of that character, which is kind of cool. | ||
| But wild can also be, you know, connected to how people perceive me for so long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why do they perceive you that way, do you think? | |
| I mean, just a little Charlie Sheen joke there for me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The universe of evidence, perhaps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was fairly overwhelming. | ||
| There wasn't much debate about that. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But yeah, it's alcohol-free. | ||
| It's as. | ||
| So when you drink this in the morning, you feel no guilt at all. | ||
| None. | ||
| None. | ||
| Because I got to be honest, I legit enjoyed beer in the morning. | ||
| I mean, it's just a- Yeah. | ||
| I did too, for sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And of course, I haven't done that in a long time. | ||
| But this is a way to get your breakfast beer in with no downside. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I started drinking it. | ||
| And all I had to work with for the longest time was the prototypes. | ||
| But they would send it to me as it kept evolving. | ||
| And I was drinking it during workouts. | ||
| What were the other people present thinking, I wonder? | ||
| There's Charlie Sheen. | ||
| He's drinking beer during a workout. | ||
| It does seem like a tiger blood thing. | ||
| I was just working out in my bedroom alone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wasn't like in a gym. | ||
| But I heard somewhere years ago that the German weightlifters used to chug beer to get all the carbs and stay. | ||
| Earl Schwarzenegger did it. | ||
| I mean, that famous movie of him from the 70s. | ||
| He's like drinking a giant dynamo. | ||
| He's been pumping iron. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I just do it on a on a rower. | ||
| Drinking on a rower. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On like an erg thing? | ||
| You know, like when you're on a rower. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not while I'm actually like holding the can and rowing, but I would pause and have some, have some pops and then. | ||
| Would you ever shoot like bedroom video of that and put it online? | ||
| I mean, I didn't. | ||
| I don't, I, I, I, I try to shoot as little bedroom video as possible, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is the new Charlie Sheen. | |
| But no, I, I, I, I think people are going to really, really respond to this. | ||
| Well, I already have. | ||
| Oh, good. | ||
| So has my dog. | ||
| So anyway, Charlie Sheen, thank you for taking all this time. | ||
| This is amazing. | ||
| It's been great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's, it's, it's an honor to be here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's an honor to have you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show. | ||
| On one level, that's not surprising. | ||
| That's what they do. | ||
| But on another level, it's shocking with everything that's going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics with the wars when the cusp of fighting. | ||
| Right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more. | ||
| And that is totally wrong. | ||
| It's immoral. | ||
| What can you do about it? | ||
| Well, we could whine about it. | ||
| That's a waste of time. | ||
| We're not in charge of Google, or we could find a way around it, a way that you could actually get information that is true, not intentionally deceptive. | ||
| The way to do that on YouTube, we think, is to subscribe to our channel. | ||
| Subscribe, hit the little bell icon to be notified when we upload and share this video. | ||
| That way, you'll have a much higher chance of hearing actual news and information. |
Export Selection