John Crist is an American comedian from Lilburn, Georgia. Theo talks with John about what it was like coming up as a Christian comedian, they tell their first childhood Playboy stories and discuss the most important things they each took with them from being in rehab.
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As well, the Netflix taping, those shows are sold out in Nashville.
Thank you so much for the support.
And I will be running that material in Huntsville a few days prior.
That is the first week of August.
You can get tickets for any date at theova.com slash tour.
Don't buy through any other link.
It's a scam.
These jacked up prices.
I try to keep tickets at fair prices for you.
Today's guest is a friend of mine, a decent man and a man who has walked a road of very common road when it comes to humor.
And that's a road of struggle.
He's become a better friend of mine over the past year.
And we have a lot in common.
And we're going to get into some of that.
And just talk turkey about to embark on his fresh cuts comedy tour.
It is Mr. John Crist.
Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you about stories Oh Shine on me.
And I will find a song I've been singing just so I'll see you next time That's just the Lord's liquid right there, bro.
It ain't nothing to it.
Liquid death, man.
I don't know if I'd want to go with a dry death or a liquid death.
To die?
Now, what do you do now?
You got a real religious kind of history, you know?
Tell me about that.
Like, how do you kind of because sometimes I feel like you get not penciled in with religion, but you almost, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Chris, you know?
Like, it's not shocking to hear that.
They'd be like, or if I did that joke in my show, you'd be like, oh, this is like his, like, this is part of the thing.
You're right.
But, I mean, if you, well, if you live in America, let's say an average person's, because I grew up in church, my dad's a pastor.
I was homeschooled.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, homeschooled.
One of eight kids.
Wow.
So when you, so did your dad teach any of the courses or in homeschooling is the, is the, the mother?
The mom teaches.
The mom teaches.
Well, in traditional, well, see, there's two types of homeschool.
There's like homeschool, like if you're Serena Williams and you want to be professional football or you want to be a professional tennis player, you're like, I'll just homeschool so I can, and then there's like the cultural homeschoolers.
Those are like long jean skirts, Christian traditionally.
That's a different type of homeschool.
Like pale of water.
Yeah, that's a you're just like, where are they going?
They go, but they got one.
Right.
Yeah.
Books around a belt, you know, put up that type of stuff.
Yeah, very Willie and Nellie Olson from Little House on the Prairie.
Like, is that how it goes?
You're like, nah, not really, but sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So with homeschooling, man, so your mother homeschooled you.
Yeah.
Did your dad, does the dads come up with the curriculum?
Where do they get the curriculum?
It's you like have a, like, there's like a, there's like a group.
They have like their homeschool like textbooks.
It's like, but you buy all the textbooks, but then you use them eight times because my brother did it and then I do it two years later and then the little brother.
But all the like a math problem would be like, I wish I was making this up, but I'm not.
Like in Matthew 4, he had five loaves and two fish.
Subtract three loaves.
How many you, they're all like the, they're about the Bible.
Right.
Like all the, it's not like a train was traveling 60 miles an hour.
It's like a caravan of donkeys going to see the North Star.
It's like, okay.
So it suddenly like gets it in there.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, we'll slide the Bible in.
What?
So they'll sneak some facts in, huh?
That's true, dude.
Dang.
Yeah, we'll teach them, dude, one way or another.
Did you guys, like at Halloween, because I dated a girl for a little bit.
No Halloween in my house, dude.
From Nashville, right?
And she, at Halloween, they were only allowed to dress up as characters from the Bible.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When she was growing up.
Well, so do you know what she dressed as?
I don't know who she dressed as.
I think it was one of the women in it.
Here's the thing about the Bible.
It's kind of dude heavy.
Yeah, they're all written by dudes.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
And they educated guys, which is a little tricky.
Brenda should have got a book.
Yeah, she's at least a book.
Hey, this is how I see it.
You know, I used to have a joke in my show about there was a story in the Bible about Jesus and the prostitute.
That's the heading of the story.
And, you know, the prostitute, she gets her sins forgiven and she gets saved and all this kind of stuff.
She's in heaven now.
This is my bit, but like, she's like, yo, what's up?
My name's like Cheryl.
They're like, who?
I'm like, the prostitute.
Oh, what's up, dude?
You're the like, she didn't, she get a name.
Oh, wow.
She gets no name.
So in the Bible, they didn't even give her a name.
No, but there's, but that's not gender specific.
There's like Jesus and the man with leprosy.
He's like, dude, I had a nice job.
I had a family.
Right.
I had more than leprosy.
But for the book, it's like, we just need you to be leprosy.
We need you to be leprosy one.
There's no.
We need prostitute one.
We need leprosy one.
What's it called when you do a TV show and then somebody's in the background doing something?
Like, hey, can you release?
There was no release in the Bible Times about leprosy, guys.
Like, hey, we're just going to.
Right.
We're just going to take your story, bro.
And leprosy was pretty popular, I think, for a while.
You know, and if you had it, it was.
It was bad?
No, you're out.
You can't.
Oh, you can't party with leprosy.
No, no, no, no.
But I don't even know if that's how it was transmitted.
But they're just like, you're cast out.
I don't know, what is it?
What do you think it is?
A scab or something?
I think it was like a little something, and then your whole body, it got like your leg.
It would fall off.
I don't think so.
You would shed a limb.
Yeah.
You want to look that up, please, Sean?
Leprosy?
Bring up a limb shedding.
What is it?
But when you talk about something bad in the Bible, like, dude, he probably had leprosy.
Probably leprosy.
Infectious disease called Bibacilis.
So I don't know who he is, who that is.
Is he?
Transmitted via droplets.
That sounds familiar.
Yeah.
Nose from the nose in the mouth.
Dude, no masks back then, bro.
Wow.
The basilis is likely transmitted via droplets.
Yep.
It's curable with therapy.
There were 202,000.
You registered cases of leprosy in 2019.
What if you called a girl?
Hey, I can't come over tonight.
Why not?
I got leprosy.
I got leprosy.
That would be like, I mean, it says right there, 202,000 cases.
It's plausible.
But it's not, I guess it doesn't, it's not a death sentence now.
It's plausible.
But if you were like walking into something and you rolled an ankle back in the Bible, you're like, that's it.
That's it.
That's it.
If you rolled an ankle, you walk in with a limp the rest of your, that's it.
Well, we forget, you know, I will romanticize things a lot of times and think, man, you know, it'd be so nice to be on a carriage with my wife or with some like, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like old times.
Like old times.
I'll do that a lot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you start to think like what old times were really like.
And it was probably pretty sad.
Tough.
Well, you don't even have to go back that far to like, if you think about like, dude, when you were a kid, remember going to pick someone up at the airport?
You just like, I hope they're here.
Oh, yeah.
And you'd go around, circle back around.
You're like, maybe they're here this time.
Right.
And then you would just, there was no check-in disc.
There's no flight tracker.
There's no cell phones.
You just would keep going.
Yeah, maybe you stay for 30 minutes and then if you were there with your, he'd send you in.
Hey, run in there and see on the screen if it's here.
But you don't even know if he got on it.
Right.
Because you can't call.
But it was also so much fun.
I feel like to just go do anything then.
It was like everything was kind of like an adventure.
It was like, all right, let's go.
We're going to pick up our friend from the airport.
You don't know what's going to happen.
Right.
They were going to go up there to meet some so-and-so in the movie theater.
Maybe, but maybe not.
He might not be there.
Yeah, if your date didn't show, like you really got stood up.
Like you like, there was no way to like know why or.
This A is.
They could lie.
It was easy next time they saw you.
They could lie.
But remember when I did it.
Remember, I told you a couple of days ago about when you, I didn't get a text back from you and then it went to green.
And I was like, that's red alert in 2021.
Right.
But back then, he'd be like, he'll turn back up.
He missed a couple weeks of school.
What happened to him?
And then you just show back up.
What's up, dude?
He's around.
Yeah.
I don't know.
He's cutting the grass.
Yeah, where'd he been?
Yeah.
You don't know.
There was so much, such a mystery then.
There were so many.
But now it's like, you know, girls be like, hey, I noticed you don't watch my Instagram stories anymore.
You're like, oh, my.
Okay.
We know too much.
Wouldn't you say that?
Oh, now it's definitely too much.
You're like, oh, I saw you on your Instagram about, I don't need to probably know that.
Yeah, and you can't hide anymore.
You can't, like, I used to love to be able to make things up back in the day.
You could make up who your family was.
You could make up anything.
You can't anymore.
You could say you were a prince.
You could make up anything.
You're like, you're a prince, dude.
You know, you couldn't factory.
You couldn't check anything.
Small big bird sweatshirts.
That's a little questionable.
I don't feel like a prince would wear that.
You moved here to Louisiana?
Yeah, but it's kind of like we had a transfer situation, but they were like, all right.
Yeah, it was an exchange program at the castle.
That's like, dude, in rehab, you can't, no one knows.
You don't have any phones or nothing.
So no one knows you can make up stuff there.
Right.
Because this guy said he's from India and he's like, he had like, this is true.
Actually, he had like 37, like, not servants at his house, but 37 people worked at his house.
No way.
And you're like, that's a different, but you don't know anybody's name.
You don't know their whole name.
Oh, if I was anything.
He might be like Chuck.
Right.
You're like, I don't know.
He might, I don't know.
Maybe Chuck has 37 people working for him?
Oh, damn.
Chuck's hard as up.
Here's a question right here from somebody that came in.
Theo Vaughn's my favorite comedian in the whole world.
Smart choice, by the way.
John Christ is my wife's favorite comedian in the whole world.
I would like the wife.
I feel like the universe is about to implode.
How'd you guys connect?
Was it the national thing?
Did you guys know about each other coming up?
And John, what's it like for you to be on Theo's podcast?
Like, is this it for you?
You gonna blow now?
Just like the big...
Not going to blow me, dude.
You know what I'm saying?
No, no, no.
I mean.
I'm not trying to knock you or anything, but.
Okay, first of all, we got to hang with that guy.
Everything about that.
I don't know.
The guy's shirtless.
He's shirtless.
He was like, before I get to my question, I need to get some, I need to be involved.
Right.
We got a lot of backstory.
Sometimes I get nervous and take my shirt off when I do stuff.
I don't like to be shirtless.
You don't?
I just got to make sure my body's positioned right when you're shirtless.
Oh, really?
When you're sitting up like this, you know what I'm saying?
You don't look good.
Oh, that's true.
You know, it's like your body looks a little...
I wonder who came up.
Someone that came up with shirts are like, hey, we got to.
I wonder why.
It all goes back to, I think, how, like, I, like, even romanticizing what things used to be like, like, it was probably so hot.
People were so stinky.
Yep.
That's a thing you don't realize.
Someone was.
It smells horrible, though.
People were stinky.
People were dying.
Like, hey, do you want to marry, you know?
You got to go down to the river.
It might be three and a half miles away.
You want to marry Sarah?
Yep.
There wasn't any options for marriage.
I was like, do you want to marry Margaret?
Because that's who you.
There was no, like, that's why they say, like, hey, there's only, you know, very, very like a religious Christian.
There was like, you have a soulmate, one person on this planet for you that God has a plan for you to find this woman.
One person on planet Earth is 7 billion people.
Right.
And it happened to be the girl that lives two doors down.
What are the odds of that?
Out of that.
That's the time.
Wow.
No, this girl actually worked in my office.
She worked in your office and you hooked up.
7 billion people on Earth.
And the girl that was God's plan for you worked in your office.
Y'all are lucky.
Wow.
Dang.
God had the easiest plan.
Dang, dude.
That's the easiest plan.
Yo, that's a hookup, dude.
You found her.
You didn't even have to go.
Man, you barely had to leave the state.
You didn't have to leave the neighborhood.
She was right there.
You can't really say that's like not very romantic to say that there's a bunch of women that would be good for you to marry.
But that would be true, right?
Well, I don't know.
Like, how many do you think would be a good marriage partner for you?
Let's say I'm the loose nugget.
Okay.
I'm the loose nugget.
You might cut down on, you might do 5,000.
In America or in the world?
In the world.
Oh, wow.
A good amount.
5,000?
But then if you say, babe, you're the only one for me.
She's like, I mean, that's a hefty promise.
But it used to be a reliable, it used to be a fair promise to make, I think, to someone that you're the one for me.
And now part of the problem is there's so many.
Ones.
Well, there's also so many like ability.
There's so much capability to get access.
It's like, you know, they say you're only as capable as your options or whatever.
You don't, yeah.
Yeah.
All of a sudden you get some money, your sphere kind of, you get outside of the neighborhood a little bit.
Right.
Yeah.
All of a sudden you got a driver's license.
Now you can go to the next town.
You could get across town.
You could touch titty across town, man.
But back in the day.
Back in the day, you really...
That's it.
Or did you kind of hang in your high school?
No, I would hang at the other high schools because I ended up switching from one school to another.
In rival schools in two different towns.
And they were totally different.
One was like a real country town that I grew up in, and one was a little bit more like suburban.
You could kind of rich both of them.
Yeah.
Well, when I got to the fancier one, that was the first time a girl ever liked me.
And so it was, I had like a new beginning.
What age?
What grade?
Seven, eight, nine, 10 grade.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember walking across the gym and some girl was looking at me and I thought something had happened to me.
You know what I'm saying?
You might have glowed up.
You might have had a summer.
You might have to glow up somewhere.
I might have, man.
You got your braces off or something like that?
No, I needed braces.
So it must have been like this kind of make-a-wishy type.
But her name was Jenny.
I remember she was hot, man.
That was the first time you ever remember a girl looking at you in a way.
Dude, I can still feel her looking at me.
That's how nice it was to be admired by a woman.
We're still chasing that.
It might be.
I think I'm still chasing that admiration.
Did we answer the other guy's question?
What was the question?
I mean, we met, I think, I mean, I've known about you over the years, but I've seen you more.
I know where I met you.
We've talked about this before at the punchline in Atlanta.
And I did a guest spot for you.
Did you really?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
You were wearing sweatpants.
You were wearing elastic sweatpants.
I go, this man is unhinged.
Oh, wow.
But you were just, you came in.
You were like, what up?
Dude, what's crazy about now with me and you and then is like we ate like no one knew who we were.
Right.
No one was like trying, like we were trying to hang with fans.
Like we were trying, and they were like, nah, we good.
Remember those days?
Oh, like we would be like, what are y'all doing?
Right.
And no one would be like, ah, we're good.
Yeah.
And that wasn't that long ago.
They're like, I got a family, man.
I got a future.
They were like, hey, y'all want to drink or something?
They were like, no, dude, we like your hamster bone story, but we got to go.
Yeah, dude.
We wanted some fun to see if you had a couple free hamps out here.
Yeah, we're good.
Dude, they had good pie at that place at the punchline.
Great pie.
The new punchline.
Yeah, the new punchline.
But what's funny about that guy's comment is, which always happens, like, you're my favorite comedian and I'm his wife's favorite comedian.
It's like that.
That's very common.
You and I were at that bar one night, remember?
And some guy said, didn't some guy meet?
And he said, my wife loves you.
Is that good or bad?
I don't know.
I would trade you.
I'm joking.
With that guy specifically?
I mean, maybe without knowing his wife, not even knowing, be like, sight unseen.
That's a good call.
I'll take it.
Well, you know, Ralphie Mae?
Ralphie Mae said, R.I.P., he said, women are the ones that, you know, if you have a little, like a sexist, like misogynistic joke, people are like, yeah.
Like, first of all, women make the decision to come see you.
Guys will come.
But no, like, you know, those real like old school type comics that were very like, like, that's not a thing.
Like, women are driving the sales.
And if you're cool to women, you're, that's like, you know, like, only exclusively dude comics?
You know, any of those guys?
I don't know.
A lot of my audience is male.
Yours.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
What do you think from like the fight and stuff?
No, I think just from podcasting, just talking about stuff, being alive, a lot of my audience is just men that are trying to be alive.
Trying to live.
I think, yeah.
Do you know, have you ever looked at your Instagram, like the breakdown?
Yeah, I'm like 80% men.
I'm the exact opposite.
Really?
That is wild.
No.
Exact opposite.
Which I got a little bit, I feel a little bit, I feel some kind of way about that, but you feel some kind of way about yours.
No, I feel honestly, I just feel grateful that I found that I have some sort of connection with an audience.
Yeah.
So I think that that's really the most, that's kind of what feels like that.
I mean, yes, I think every comedian wishes there was like a bunch of big juggy that you're looking at your demographics and they have photos of this or this, is it?
Some breasty Muppets in the front, dude.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't think so.
Yeah, maybe.
But the big, dude, I remember the biggest breasts I ever saw as a kid was on this buddy.
On a guy.
On a guy, dude.
And I remember even touching myself to him once when I was young because it was the only ones we had at that age.
But what, you saw him?
Oh, dude.
He slept with him out.
What do you mean, out?
He slept with him, you know, shirtless or whatever.
I think it was real hot.
He was at that weight where it gets real hot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It gets hot easily.
Oh, yeah.
He's at that hot weight, dude.
You'd see his...
You know, you'd see the...
Yeah, so it was on high.
It was.
And you'll turn it off.
It doesn't turn off.
There's no off.
You've seen those ones that are like, is that going to fall off?
It's like a smell.
This one smelled very, I think it ran on kerosene or something.
It was really, it was authentic, man.
But I remember the wind would cool, would almost put a redness on tint on his skin.
Okay, yeah.
And he would rest.
And I remember one time as being of age at his house to be erect and just.
And he was.
He was asleep, thank God.
So you were sleeping in the same room with this man?
Yeah.
And don't call him a man.
We were both boys.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because I don't want to be some boy masturbating to a man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, when you were like, well, when you were like young, you were like, you wanted to, I wanted to be, like, me and my buddies would like, like, streak through the neighborhood.
Yes.
And it was cool to be like with your clothes off.
Yeah, it was curvy, really.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.
It was very like, and that's the tricky, like, when we, like, in rehab, you kind of do your, uh, like your sexual history.
They talk about that kind of stuff.
Like, what's the first time you had like a sexual anything?
Oh, really?
And I remember when I was, I had to be seven or eight, this older girl came to babysit us.
And I, we were playing freeze tag and I tagged her on the boob.
But I didn't know, you know, I didn't know, I didn't know much.
I didn't know why I wanted to do that.
But I just did.
So after you did it, did you feed, did it feel like?
That smelled unbelievable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
And that.
That's God, bro.
But I don't, it might be.
That's the way everyone's here.
Everyone is here because of that.
Right.
Everyone is here because of sex.
Right.
So it's interesting that sex becomes this taboo thing.
That's what, yeah, like Louis E.K. had a bit when he came through Zane's like two, three weeks ago.
Did you go watch him?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, man.
He said, I was out of town.
You know, we take things too far and people do stuff that is across the line, but he said, you, everyone wants to live in a world where Sarah at your high school went, what's up with Theo?
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And now you don't want to go be touching people inappropriately or going across, but you want to live in a world where someone goes, I wonder what she's up to.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And what's her name?
You know, Steph Curry?
Yeah, yeah.
So his wife.
Man.
Yeah, grown man.
His wife, you know, before kids, when he was coming into the league, she said she would always walk through, you know, the, you know, the hallways and people would holler at her and be like, what's up?
And then she said she had two kids, kind of like got a little bit older.
She said, I miss people like kind of.
Cat calling.
Yeah, no, no, again, not inappropriate, you know, but you like.
Let's not act like that world doesn't exist.
Right, right.
I mean, it's flattering.
Huh?
What's up?
Like, I wonder what...
Right.
Whatever that is.
Some see out, a sense of attraction.
Yeah, yeah.
We all want to be wanted in some way.
And then I don't think it's weird to be, you know, to be wanted sexually kind of, you know, at all, really.
And it also is the most natural thing.
Like, I get a feeling sometimes in my body that every part of me wants to climb out of my penis.
You got to go inward first.
Right.
I literally have a feeling sometimes, like, I just get this, like, this tense energy that everything I have or am wants to, like, if my whole body could fly out of my penis and just disappear then, and I'm done.
We had a good run.
And I feel like I'd be okay with that.
What happened to Theo?
You know what?
It's a long story.
But he won.
He's on top.
Yeah.
He's with the Lord now.
He went out how he wanted to go out.
Because it's also interesting, if that's the way that you went out, it'd be like an inverse of the way that you came in in a weird way.
Yeah, yeah, that's because everybody came into this world the same way.
Yeah.
And that's the real Lion King.
That's the circle of life right there, man.
Yeah, it should be some guy masturbating off a cliff.
You know what I'm saying?
But somebody else catching in, taking care of it.
Well, if you were like that, because they would talk about how, like, is it like a, is this like when you were like, you know, when you were with your buddies and you were like, let's like sleep naked or something like that.
Yeah.
They were like, was that inappropriate?
And they were like, no, that was just a boy trying.
Yeah, yeah.
And they were like, they want to make a distinction between, because if they're, if it's, this is a little bit graphic, not really, but like if it's two boys being curious versus a boy and an uncle, because he knows.
Right.
And then that's a problem.
That's trauma.
Right.
When you have the knowledge.
When one of them knows and is trying to do a thing versus it's too like, because, and then kids get in trouble for stuff that is just curious.
Right.
Don't put that in the same category because then that shame comes in.
You're like, oh, I thought I was, you're supposed to be a Christian and you're streaking.
Like, that's just, right.
That's kind of what you, or like, you're going to go jump in the girl's pool and you're going to, that's kind of just, but that's a tough line because then sometimes it can switch into, oh, I don't think that was, that wasn't appropriate.
Right.
It can switch.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
I mean, some of that stuff's tricky, dude.
I remember babysitting some family members one time or semi-family and the kids over there in the bed, you know, naked with his little buddy.
Yeah, yeah.
Two boys.
Yeah.
And so I just, I didn't say nothing to him or make them feel weird or anything, you know.
I also didn't go in and tickle them at that moment.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, you got to know when to tickle people and when to just let them be, you know.
They say, how do you know?
I think you just got to, that's something.
That's something you know.
That's, you know.
But I think people's, that governor inside of your head for what's okay sexually can certainly get altered.
Yep.
Yeah.
And get and get weird.
Like when I think of those Duggar kids, like the, speaking of religious families, like they have those Duggar children, you know, they're famous.
They're like 10 kids.
Yeah, 20 children.
How many children was it?
Pull up, Duggar.
I was going to try.
Yeah, yeah.
You were going to try out for the family?
I'm going to try.
One of my buddies was like friends with them, and I was like going to try to date one of them.
But they're like, that seems like a good, wholesome thing, but it got twisted up, right?
There's lots of stuff there.
But how, I think, could you not at this point, you have children, the age is so different.
19 kids and counting.
So you have kids, I mean, you can't even reach a light switch without touching another kid's breast.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you can't even.
There's just, there's not 19 showers in that house.
I know that.
There's not 19. Everyone can't get a hot shower.
Right.
Let's just, that's just the facts.
There's going to be a lot of like passing through in the restroom.
Yeah, there's a lot of can I get skinnily squeezed by.
Right.
There's a lot of.
Or can I shower with you?
There's going to be a lot of that.
Yeah.
Which is, first of all, really normal for kids, but then it can get weird when one of the kids is 16 and one of the kids is five.
It can get a little bit weird.
So if you say like, because then wasn't there a lot of like incest and stuff going on there?
I think there was just a lot of like, the one guy's had a lot of trouble with sex, sex addiction, Josh Duggar.
Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I just, and I don't know where it comes from.
I haven't read enough into it.
But wouldn't you, wouldn't you, like, if sight unseen, if something told you that story, you'd be like, yeah, that checks out.
It makes sense.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, yeah.
Makes sense.
All right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I could have it.
Yeah.
So when you went to rehab, when you say rehab, what did you go in for?
I mean, I, let's see.
Because I'm in half of them.
Yeah, so they put me with for five things because they were like, they like diagnosed you.
So I just went in there because I was just like, I was drinking a ton.
And I was real sad.
I was real sad on the road.
And I like, I just wanted to get out.
I just wanted to, we talked about this before.
The scary thing is like everybody, we go to dinner tonight.
Everybody at the restaurant is hoping for a better tomorrow.
Maybe if I get a job, maybe if I get a wife, maybe if I get a raise, maybe if I win the lottery, tomorrow is going to be better.
Maybe if my president gets elected.
And I was hoping in all these things and then I got them all.
Oh, I had money.
I had attention from women.
I had all my shows were sold.
It's unbelievable.
And that's the saddest because you realize, oh, the hope is not here.
You were hoping in all the better, everybody at the restaurant has a better faith because you're like, well, one day I might get it.
And you can live your whole day, your whole life hoping.
Right.
And then if you get it and you're still sad.
That's very disit's.
That's nowhere to go.
There's nowhere to go.
I can relate to that, man.
Yeah.
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Here's a question right here that came in from somebody.
Hey, Theo.
Hey, John.
I am Jenna from Minneapolis and seeing you both live.
Can't hide money.
Okay.
Can't hide money, she said.
Anyway, I have a question for both of you, actually.
You have both been pretty open and vulnerable about your addiction and sobriety and recovery.
And I would just be curious what your greatest gift from that has been and if that has affected your comedy or career in any way.
So thanks.
Gang.
You make them put them on video.
Yeah, they don't have to.
They can do video or audio.
I believe we've just been using video more recently because times have changing and people like that.
But I like when you got to sweet of her to send a question in.
You got to put yourself together for a video.
You're going to go on the, I might be on the podcast.
I'm going to tighten up.
I'm going to tighten up.
I like that.
She looks you put a church window in the back for you.
I'm joking, but as you put all those self-help books in the back for me.
There you go.
Very good.
What's that up on the top?
What's that say?
It's something from Hobby Lobby, it looks like very warm-hearted.
But look at her books, dude.
They're lined up by color.
Ooh, that's a little bit.
Look at the bottom books.
Can the audience see this?
Bottom books, bottom books.
Yeah, they can see it.
Yeah, she got the baby.
And dude, she loves those turquoise titles.
And she got a, ooh, she got purple on the bottom, turquoise white, white, and then dark on the top.
I like that.
That's the dark arts up there.
That's the organization.
Yeah.
That's a good question.
Well, I think you and I have a connection.
I mean, you and I, I mean, I just invited you the other day to an Al-Anon meeting.
So I'm still trying to figure out like.
No, we couldn't figure out what it was.
Yeah, that meeting is Al-Anon is interesting.
But that's like, it's like, you know what, all those meetings, all the anonymous, whatever they are, it's just like, oh, do you go to like CrossFit or are you going to 24-hour fitness?
Like, you're in there emotionally lifting, doing some reps.
Right.
And you got to face.
And so you're like, hey, you want to go to Al-Anon meeting?
I go, I go, yeah, I know the gym, the mental gym, right?
Yeah, I go there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I'll find something to take from there.
Right.
Yeah.
Mine was, well, for the earlier question, mine was alcohol, depression, workaholism, narcissism, and sex.
So all five of those.
Wow.
That's what they diagnosed me with.
They were like, you need to work on all of these.
I was like, wow.
Yeah.
And so when you go, like, cause the only thing I've done is I went to an eight-day facility recently and then I've Just been in AA, you know?
Yeah, I would like to go to more kind of longer term and just stuff because it was really good when I went.
What are some things you really got out of it that you didn't know about yourself before?
Well, all right.
So, if my situation is not similar to the Duggar situation, but grew up very like, this is the way life is, right?
And it's very, like, very, there's a lot of shame how I grew up, right?
So, all these things here, like, you know, when I was, let's say, 10, like, when's the first time you ever saw like a Playboy?
Oh, let me think.
It was September and it was.
No, no.
How do you know it was September?
Oh, it was September, dude.
Oh, it was.
Oh, you felt in the leaves were changing.
Oh, dude.
I was changing, brother.
I knew that, man.
I definitely was shedding skins, brother.
But yeah, it was September, and I believe it was in the early, it was in the 90s.
Okay, well, did you have any context of that prior?
Did you know?
And so you saw...
I didn't know what could be...
This is...
What did you think?
Oh, as soon as I ejaced out of my body, I thought something's wrong with me.
Okay, where did that come from?
Well, it came because I didn't know anything.
I didn't have any information.
Right.
I didn't have any information.
So then when I did that and it felt good, but then it also, it's on my person.
Yeah, yeah.
Then the semen on my body, I felt dirty because you have to then clean yourself up.
So I think there was an element of feeling dirty.
Mine was me and my brother were riding bikes over this dirt track, this old construction site that we had built these jumps and stuff down the street from my house on Lula Way.
And we were riding and we I saw a Playboy in the I remember this like it was yesterday, just like Jen, just like Jenny looking at you.
And I saw it.
Me and my brother saw it.
Oh.
And I, and I, I hadn't, we rode, we were like a mile and a half from my house.
We rode home as fast as we could.
And you already had, you picked it up.
No, no, no, we never didn't touch it.
Okay, we didn't touch it.
Did he see it too?
Yep.
We both looked at it.
We saw it.
And we had no context of this.
We didn't know.
And so we rode home as fast as we could.
Let's go.
Because we were like, we were scared of it.
Or we didn't, we, we were kids.
And we, I remember throwing our bikes down in the garage.
We ran inside.
We were, my mom was doing something.
We were breathing heavy.
And she goes, what?
Where you guys been?
And we said, we hid.
We said, nah, nothing.
And that's why I go back to why did we hide?
Why?
Yeah, why?
We didn't do anything wrong.
And then you know what I was, you know, you know the answer to this.
I was laying in bed that night.
What do you think I was thinking?
I'm a.
About that.
I got to go find that.
I got to go sneak.
Now I got to sneak back out.
Right.
And tell somebody I'm doing it and go back.
So now you're building up more secret.
You're building up whatever your set, whatever sex is to you at this point, it's very secretive.
And that, and that, it was from that day until 35 years old.
That it was very right.
Listen, if you just like we're like we like very and it was a lot of, and that's a lot of Christian growing up.
Christian is a lot of, like a lot of youth pastors.
Like when's last time you looked at porn and like a lot of, I had to report to my pastor every time I masturbated.
Wow.
Which is.
Oh, it would take me a month.
It would take me a month of straight talking to the man.
Like literally, we would have to have coffee delivered.
Hey, this is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you had to go into the confessional.
Did that help?
Does that help alleviate some of the or does it just feel like I'm reporting how bad I am?
Or is there a part of the template of that process?
Because I'm not as familiar with that process.
Part of the template of it is that there is some relief granted to you.
Well, you all learn pretty quick that you're like, all right, well, I'm just not going to say.
Because if I say, I'm notched down.
So I'm just not going to say.
Because it's a private thing anyway.
It's not like which.
So then you're hiding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then you're hiding.
But you think things anyway, fast forward until I was in rehab for four months and I thought, you know, my life is over.
Cause I was very Christian, very shame-based, very, to answer her question, I got out.
Everybody, dude, was like, dude, we love you, man.
Good to see you, man.
I hope you're doing well.
You're not going to say, I think I even can't wait to see you back on.
Whenever you come back to Memphis, we'll be there.
And it was, I'm telling you right now, I couldn't grasp that.
Because my whole life I lived with, if anyone ever finds out the truth about you, everyone's going to hate you.
And then everyone knew the truth about me and they go, we love you, dude.
Everybody, we're all on the path, man.
Let us know that.
And it was more lovable in a weird way.
It was kind of where our relationship started.
Maybe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was like, oh, this guy's fucked up too, man.
Yeah, what's up?
This is my puppy.
Well, I think you felt very safe with me.
And people, dude, I was in the I was in, I was buying a car.
I was buying a new car.
And this guy goes, hey, man, you John Chris?
And he said, my girlfriend is a big fan.
He's just like, I just want to let you know, man, I struggle with porn too.
I get it.
I go, what?
I don't need, I don't, I know.
I appreciate that you feel very like that we're all out here together.
Take the penthouse package out of this Kia.
I don't think I need this.
But you do feel very connected somehow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That you were like, oh, man.
And that's what I think a lot of people relate to your podcast because they go, that's, I see myself in that.
Right.
I'm with that.
Well, and I think it makes me relate to you, man, because you just want to try your best.
You know, you want to try your best and you're in a world where it's really hard.
And there's a lot of, and this is something we talked to Jordan Peterson about, like the level of capabilities that these companies and these organizations and these talking about religious or no?
I'm talking about, no, I'm talking about like pornography.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
Or pornography.
Or like the advertisement, the way that they have to grip you.
It's so strong.
Strong.
Yeah.
It's so strong, man.
And it's my relationship to alcohol, like I've been sober for 19 months almost, but it had to be physically taken from me for about a month.
And then I was like, I'm good.
So when somebody says to you, hey, I'm going to stop sugar or I'm going to stop caffeine or I'm going to stop drinking or I'm going to stop.
It's kind of disrespectful to the human body.
It's so strong, dude.
It's so strong.
Oh, yeah.
And you say, I'm going to start whatever that chemicals is so strong that you can't.
It's hard.
You can white-knuckle it for a couple days, maybe, but say I'm a...
Yeah, now you've been a separate from it long enough.
But that was a rehab is, first of all, it's not practical.
It's expensive.
Everybody can't do that.
So if people come to you or me and say, hey, how do I get help?
My hand was kind of forced in a little bit.
I got exposed.
I had to make a choice then.
But I don't know what you would tell me two years ago.
You couldn't tell me anything.
Hey, this consequences of that.
I didn't care.
Right.
What do you tell somebody that's in the dark now?
Man, it's a great question.
I don't.
It is.
Yeah, what do you tell them?
I said to my friends, just be a friend to that person.
This is what makes me emotional.
Just be a friend to that person that when it all comes down, you're the first person they call.
That's it.
That's it.
There's no giving them a pamphlet about the dangers of teenage pregnancies.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm not even a teenager.
Yeah, I don't know.
Some guys.
The pamphlets are unbelievable.
But yeah, trying to be there for somebody.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
And they say, like, if you say, hey, I'm going to go to this.
I'm going to go to, I mean, I feel like you've helped me a lot of ways.
Say in a meeting, you know, a new meeting is uncomfortable.
You don't know where it is.
Yeah, that is in there.
And you say, hey, I'm going to check out this meeting.
You want to roll.
Yeah.
Does it help?
Now, again, but I'm trying to walk past to the light, though.
Right.
But if I'm saying if you got a buddy that's out of his mind, what do you, you can't really, right?
I mean, you almost have to go with them.
You almost want to bring.
But you can't force them.
No, you can't force them.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Yeah.
So you just say.
I mean, I had a great talk about this with Chris DeLeah the other day, you know, because he had a lot of, I mean, he really, you know, he's really struggled with sex addiction.
He talks about it openly, and I don't feel like I'm talking about him outside of shop.
And there were some things he even did that were kind of like just like broken bro code type stuff, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And some of it's just, he was saying, look, man, I was so into my addiction.
I didn't, I thought everybody was behaving this way, you know, I didn't know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's interesting because it's like you get the opportunity to have some sort of affection or admiration from women that you never seen before.
Yes.
That you, I mean, if you remember the Jenny looking at you, I remember in this girl's basement after a basketball game at her, she was having a party with her older brother.
I looked her in the eye and asked her to go to prom with me and she said no.
Think.
Oh, that would have sucked.
But I have a couple memories like that.
Right.
Of it in college or at frat parties and stuff like that.
Where you looked a woman in the eye and said, do you want to do?
And they said, no.
And that.
That's hard.
So then you become a little bit, you get a little bit of success.
And then the girls be like, hey, what's up?
What are you doing?
It's like.
Right.
It's all the pressure is off of you.
A lot of the onus is off of you.
You're like, but you didn't even know that.
Now they're coming to you.
Right.
And you were like, what?
This is my.
And, but you, when you're like in it, you don't like all the, all you do in rehab, all these people were in there for all different things.
Yeah.
All different type of addictions.
Something that.
Well, crazily, I had a friend who was in there with you.
Yeah, really?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I forgot about that.
He was there with me.
He goes, he goes, do you know Theo Bond?
I forgot about that.
But 15. So the odds that there's 15 people meeting up in Arizona for sex addiction.
He goes, you know, two of them are friends with me.
That's how we reconnected because I got out of rehab.
I go, yo, nice.
Yeah.
And you go, yeah, that's my guy.
Today, actually.
That blows my mind.
Okay.
So all they would do in there is try to get you to see it from the other side.
Right.
Right.
So I like one of my main struggles and still is, is narcissism behaving.
I'm not a narcissist.
I have narcissistic capabilities or tendencies, which is different.
Right.
So like a narcissist would never go to rehab.
Right.
A narcissist would be like, hey, maybe I need to get some help.
A narcissist would never do that.
Right.
He would never admit that he has a problem.
Never.
Right.
Anyway, so like, let's say, for example, we're all meeting up to go to dinner at 5.30 in the parking lot.
We're all going to meet at 5.30 in the parking lot.
I show up at 5.45.
I'm like, it's, we're just, he's like, well, think about it from the other guy's perspective.
This guy was on the golf course, taking a nap, doing whatever.
He got up, changed, showered quickly to be out there at 5.30.
And he's standing there 15 minutes, nobody's there.
And then you stroll up.
Just willy-nilly eating a taffy.
You're just out here listening, singing a song, some Kenny Chesney.
Look at it from that.
I go, oh, that makes sense.
Right.
Oh, yeah, I could see why I would be pissed if I was him.
And that's the thing with Chris, and I'm not speaking out attorneys, but and me and everybody's.
You go think about it.
From the other person's.
And you go, oh, yeah, that person just came to your show and they were just a fan of yours.
And they're sitting with 5,000 people.
Not to brag or however many people are at the show.
Less than that.
And I'm saying Chris shows.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And then the guy from up there says, what's up?
Right.
And if you're a little bit insecure or a little bit lacking in any type of way and that, you're going to be like, yep, I'm yes.
Yeah.
But that's not good for that person.
Right.
Well, it's not, yeah, it's kind of a it used to be you would just have those kind of feelings and everybody would go home and they would people would have their imagination and their hopes yeah there was and then when you finally met someone that filled enough of the criteria and warmed your heart you would attach all those moments of like oh i admire i want this that i need connection you would attach them all to that person and you would hope that that that you guys together make something good right yeah yeah yeah yeah and
then now it's like we get so many the second we have an urge or someone else does we have the ability to put the urge onto a blockchain almost yeah through instagram or social media or on the dating site or on dating heads yeah i got a oh dude i used to go to casual encounters right i don't know if i even said this is that a uh this scary place no this was on craig's list oh here's the crazy thing is that i just i just said it was a place like it's a i thought it was
a i thought it was a one of those casual like a phone number you the ad comes on late at night i know what that is and see if because one of my problems in my 20s i would have a date set up and then you good bro yeah just sin in my throat building up it's the lord talking to you bro the lord baby's like go go ahead or the or the devil's trying to stop you from telling the
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without shopping around make it easy get all your options in one place for free by visiting thezebra.com slash theo that's thezebra.com slash theo support the podcast i remember yeah i get on casual encounters because there was the opportunity to have affection from women without any consequences yeah and this lady i remember i met her at a uh cafeteria which is a bad sign out the gate
like a school cafeteria like a college cafeteria or like a just like a cafe tyria it had all it had tyria it had buffet yeah yeah yeah it had a salad bar it had buffet and bar yeah you would go back with a new plate or you get a new plate if you wanted a new plate all right yeah so it's upscale all right okay yeah but she and i met there i didn't even know they sold tequila she chose it right she's a few years older than me she said come meet me at the cafeteria yeah i meet her there we have two tequila
shots in this like it was getting close to kind of closing time so i think they had kind of turned off some of the lights kind of by the kitchen but it was still pretty well you could still yeah yeah oh my then we went back to my apartment she made sure every light was out in the entire apartment she even took a little placard like a piece of paper or something that could be a placard yeah and she put it in front of like the uh playstation where the little light yeah was even blocked that no light
completely no light and then but it was it didn't start like this so she knew who what you looked like prior she knew what i look like prior to i don't know if she had like scars or she'd been in some fires okay i don't know and my hands i can't tell really that good if somebody has fire skin i think i just don't have good like feeling hands you know it's uh like i would felt it you would know i think i don't know maybe not it's like a scar isn't it it's kind of like a scarish yeah it would have to be pretty bad i think for me to feel like if somebody had been in a small fire i don't
think i would know yeah yeah yeah yeah but you know i i mean i haven't i i don't know i could have been i could have made love to someone that had been in a small fire and have no idea that's what i'm saying honestly i feel that i feel that but you're not you're not okay yeah we'll continue with the story so anyway we end up making love dude and uh pitch black pitch black yeah what was she wearing at the cafeteria full long sleeves long pants was wearing she looked like a little bit of a rock and
roll woman okay yeah like she listened had listened to rock and roll she'd been on the road a little bit yeah she definitely driven 200 miles to fuck some guy in a band like she looked but not the lead singer?
Like a she wanted the lead singer.
Yeah.
But who knows if she got him.
I don't know.
She was also 200 miles in.
She was attractive.
Okay.
All right.
There you go.
But you knew this before?
Was there a photo exchange prior to me?
Yeah, meeting a photo exchange.
Okay.
But that was like email?
Yeah, through email.
So that's what's crazy, bro, is to think that what's crazy is to think that in my mind, whatever sexual stuff had, you know, whatever things had built up in my head, my sexual foundation, it put me in that place where that was kind of, that was how I was.
And you kind of didn't, it was a slow progression and then you kind of found yourself there.
Yeah, I couldn't.
But over a little, little like sacrifices over, not sacrifices, but like, eh, I wouldn't normally do this, but I'll do it.
And then you get, then you get there.
Right.
Yeah, and then you're there.
Little things.
It's like, you know what?
I'll see what this is about.
I heard about this.
Let me just look it up a little bit.
Let me look at casual encounters.
Next thing you know, it's literally exchanging.
And then finally you're like, okay, now I'm literally walking across, you know, Wilshire in Los Angeles to go and meet someone at a cafeteria.
And, but like, no one...
No one does acts wrong.
Nobody on planet Earth.
I used to say, you know the guy that...
I think so.
It's not a conspiracy.
A guy flew, hijacked an airplane, flew it into the World Trade Center.
I can see it.
That's a true story.
I've seen it.
Oh, yeah.
He believed 911.
He believed he was correct.
Did he not?
Right.
Yeah, in his mind.
In his mind.
In his mind, he thought, I don't know what his rationale was, that America needed to be taken out, democracy, freedom, liberty, capitalism.
Islam needs to be number one, whatever it was.
And if that guy could convince himself that that is right, anybody can convince himself of anything.
Right.
Anybody.
And so maybe if you were like, for that, you were like, and I can relate a lot.
It was like, I'm in a lot of pain.
It doesn't, the consequences don't matter.
Or I'm going to, you're acting correctly to you.
Right.
In that position in that you're like, you are.
And everybody is.
If you're going to get on the internet and trash Taylor Swift, say she's a slut or she's the worst.
If you're going, you are acting correctly to you.
Right.
That she has a lot of money or she dumped her boyfriend or her music isn't good or she chose to be a public figure.
You have to tell a story before you do that.
Right, right.
Because if it was wrong, you wouldn't do it.
Even if you murdered someone, you shot them and they now later you'd probably realize, oh goodness, that wasn't.
But in the moment, you were correct.
Right, for you.
You thought that they deserved to die based on what they did.
They cheated on your girlfriend or they whatever.
You acted correctly in the moment.
And that's everybody.
And that's what's scary.
And that's what rehab is.
Like, think about the 2,000 people that are in that World Trade Center that are at work, dude.
Try, try.
And then when you do that, if you go into Starbucks, 9.30 in the morning, you scream at the girl for not having your coffee order right.
You have to get it out of your head that she is making minimum wage.
She woke up at 4.30.
She's been dealing with these people for four hours.
If you thought that your mind will not allow you to scream at her.
It won't.
Right.
Because, but, but when you're, and even if you don't relate to the other person, is if I'm in so much pain, I have to ease this pain somehow.
I'm going to take it out on anybody.
You're acting correctly in the moment.
And all rehab is trying to do is say, think about the guy that has a family that is in the World Trade Center.
And you go, and if, and if rehab is, if the process of change is correct, and maybe not instantly, but you go, oh, yeah.
And that's the process of transformation.
That's the whole thing.
Right.
Getting a perspective specialist.
That's it.
Getting a perspective.
But if you're in a lot of pain, I would do, at the time, I would do anything to that closing that hotel room door at night when I was on tour, it was like a prison cell, dude.
Really?
Being out on the stage and standing ovations, that was all fine.
But you, that thing closes, it's you.
You're just sitting there.
Yeah.
You just sit.
And now you nobody.
You a little hungry.
You go down, can I get a Snickers?
They're like, well, what's your code?
And you're like, you're helpless, dude.
And you want to ease.
I don't know why I got into like one of my no, anyway, if you like, I think.
If you'd like to accept the Lord, please raise your hand.
Sorry.
Sorry.
My bad, dude.
I got too deep, dude.
Well, I started to think, what is my story that led me to, because I wonder if I, you know, I go to some SAA or SLAA meetings and that's sex addiction and sex and love addiction.
We've been to a couple of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've been to some man and and and it's not as big a program as other programs, but there's definitely a lot of it, like a lot of connection.
Like I think when I was young, my needs were all met.
But you when I was you weren't lacking or you were I wasn't lacking for any like I had like you know, we had food.
We were very poor, but we had things, but my mother had to work a lot.
But I think my mother never adored me as a child.
And I know that sounds like a weird thing to say and people are like, boohoo, right?
Sure.
And that's fine.
I agree somewhat.
Like, you know, I don't want to dwell on it my entire life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But where I notice it affects me is when any adder, any opportunity for adoration presented itself.
That's what I needed.
That was before comedy, dude.
That was.
This is before comedy.
This is from being.
same thing.
You're like, dude, oh, you just got into this trouble a couple.
I go, no, I've been in this my whole life, dude.
Yeah, my whole life.
Needed extra.
What do you, yeah?
I've needed a, I just, when attention from women became available, I needed.
I remember my girlfriends growing up, I was, I was such good friends with their mothers.
And all my friends, I'm still good friends with their mothers.
Like, I just wanted yeah, there was just something like, and I also was kind of an, I was a real sensitive kid.
So like, and it's not a knock against my mother.
You know, she did everything that she could do.
It's just I needed an adoration.
I needed to be seen by a woman in the eyes and like adored.
You didn't need to be seen by what you needed to be seen.
And that was the easiest way to get it.
Right.
Like my, there was a guy in rehab that he would he's like one of the richest guys in his town.
Right.
Right.
And he was in, I don't know what he was in for, but he was the richest guy in his town.
And we would, everybody's addiction kind of played out in its own way.
So every weekend when we left, we had to say what we were doing every hour.
Like, I'm going to wake up at nine.
I'm going to go to breakfast.
Cause people, addicts get off track.
And if you, you're going to be at all these places and you can do whatever you want, but you just had to tell them what you were doing.
I mean, you couldn't go to like a bar or like a strip club.
And so this guy was the richest guy in his town, just relating to your story.
Every Saturday, he would go to the car lot, the new dealership.
Oh yeah.
And he would go in there and he would get Yeah, you know, the big ones.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lincoln.
And he would get pre-approved.
And so they all knew how much money he had.
And he would walk around that place like getting like just like you're getting it or I'm getting it from the crowd.
He got it by people knowing that he was rich.
Yeah.
And that's like you said, I needed it from women.
You didn't, we all have this like.
I mean, I need it from everyone.
For comedy, I need it from everyone.
He needed it.
And that was his way of getting it.
And he goes, well, dude, I'm not doing anything wrong.
I go, well, why don't you tell him?
Why don't you tell him that you're going to the car dealership?
And he never bought a car, but he just walked around there and they knew how much money.
And it felt like, does that make sense?
Yeah.
It was to another guy.
He's like, yeah, I go, that's not my thing, but.
Totally makes sense.
Yeah, I got it.
You need to go feel the thing that you, yeah, checks out, checks out.
Yeah, and wanting attention from women, it's also the tough thing about it is it's also something that's just in your nature.
So it's not like it's a cra like a foreign thing, you know, it's like this substance and this, and I'm not describing women as a substance, but it's this other, it's the other half of what it takes in the world to make life, you know, it's this, it's this magnet.
So that's also well, they say it's similar.
Sorry, finish your thought.
I can't.
Well, they say it's similar to an eating disorder where you have to eat.
But you know, if you've been working all day and you stop by McDonald's and get a salad, you're like, is that in your addiction?
No.
But if you're sad because your boyfriend broke up with you and you eat three double cheeseburgers, now you're eating, that's your addiction.
So sex, you can't be a monk and live in the woods.
You have to be amongst women.
You have to, and so if a girl comes up to you after the show and says, hey, I love your, I love your, that felt really good.
Like, like, like, is that, does that, like do it for you?
Well, I just noticed if I, like, I'm just attracted to, I get attracted to women pretty easily, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, like, I want, you know, I don't really know what it is for me because I'm not like chasing sex and trying to have sex every night.
Some of my friends were like that.
Yeah, I was never like that either.
I wasn't like that either.
I think for me, it was just more like, I, I want you to like me.
Yeah.
Period.
And then if you're a female and I'm attracted to you, then yeah, heck, I'd also like you to like me more, probably.
Well, you're, you're very.
I don't want to speak out of tune here, but knowing you personally, that you're very like after something happens, you're very like, did they like me?
How did that go?
Very, you kind of review it a lot.
Like I always said with the race, what do you want to say?
You texted me after the race.
Yeah, I went to the race and I didn't really say hey to your family.
I remember they were there.
But you, so you went into your head somehow and thought.
And I texted you, hey, I'm sorry I didn't say hey to your family.
Which is, but you did the same thing.
Remember when I said about the Ryman show?
You were.
Oh, yeah.
You go, but you don't, you can't be a comedian without that.
Right.
But like, I go, no, did they, they loved you and they know your friend.
There's a lot of people there.
And you said hi to them.
And you were like, did they like me?
Right.
I guess at the end that's what I'm looking for.
Yeah.
Do they still like me?
Am I still okay with them?
And maybe for whatever reason, you didn't get a clue that they did.
Right.
And so you're just following up to make sure.
Yeah.
Whatever that, whatever that is right there.
Yeah.
That's what definitely leads to.
That leads your whole everything.
They did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so that can be also what people go to sex and love addiction for.
It's like, it can be for affection.
It's not just like somebody like sneaking around, like putting their hole through like a bathroom.
Yeah, yeah, it's not it.
Which happened at LSU when I was there and I wasn't involved in it.
Okay.
And I do know who was involved in it.
This dude, yeah, this dude, Big Henry, and this other, this little white dude, bro, with a, not a mustache, but like a long sideburns that almost came to a mustache.
Real stupid looking thing.
But you heard about it?
I mean, I knew they were doing stuff, bro.
They were being real discreet.
You know, you can't be going to class in the bathroom every day.
So it's hot in here, too, guys.
The AC broke.
Let's get another question that came in here.
Oh, look at this guy in bed triggering, huh?
That's shirtless, bro.
Jesus.
Is there another person there?
Oh, my God.
I'm going to have to take my penis off and put it somewhere.
Oh, my city.
Michaela, we were wondering, our church cut VBS this week.
Y'all got any good VBS stories?
I know y'all both grew up going to that VBS vacation Bible school.
Well, I did.
Let me hear it.
Gang, baby.
That's unbelievable.
Because I was wondering what percent of my fans are your fans and your fans are my fans?
But do you think a lot of them?
I would say only probably 15% of your fans are my fans.
And vice versa.
Yeah.
I think we have different things.
Yeah, yeah.
But do you talk about VBS?
I haven't talked about it much, man.
You know what that stands for?
Vacation Bible School.
My dad would take us over there and we'd make a lot of arts and crafts.
Yeah, yeah.
It was arts and crafts every dude.
The Lord is in the glue, dog.
Oh, man.
But that was just the kid.
There were chicks there, though, too.
Oh, 100%.
100%.
But they didn't.
Your family didn't know what to do with you during the summer.
No.
And they send you up.
Anything.
Yarn camp.
Anything.
Horse camp.
Explorer camp.
Yeah.
Boy scouting.
Treasure hunting.
Nothing done matter.
Yeah.
Take these kids.
Reform pedophile meeting.
Something.
Yeah.
I wonder how, like, you know, like, if you're like.
Botany.
This guy looks like a good Baptist guy.
If he's probably from the South.
So then you get a step away.
Yeah, I could see him at least a Pentecostal or one of those new churches.
You get a step.
So Pentecostal, he's like a stepping, you keep stepping away.
Then you get Jehovah's Witnesses.
Then you get into, like, you get to, then it's, then it's the snake handling.
Then you're wearing an Iverson jersey.
Then you go.
So I wonder how far away from traditional Christianity were your parents that desperate to send you to camp that they would have said, hey, snake hand on the church.
You can't take the kids, dude.
It might not have been Christian as much as it was, like, take these kids.
I know, I'm dead serious, dude.
Yeah, dude.
Oh, you know.
Like, what are y'all teaching them?
Yeah.
Who knows?
It's free?
You're taking these kids for free.
i don't care what you're teaching them because some of those songs southern churches It gets quick, very quickly.
It gets real interesting, man.
And you're like, hey, get on.
Yeah, VBS growing up was, I used to work at them in college.
Did you?
Yeah.
In college.
I went to one in New Orleans.
I worked in the inner city of New Orleans teaching in VBS.
Really?
And in New York City, I did one.
And I mean, dude, it was.
There was no rules out there.
Because it's tricky because somebody else is, when you work at a church and you're like a missionary, somebody else is, when your boss is paying you, but is not there, the human being was not set up for that.
You're like, yo, I'm going to work in Nicaragua, but my boss is in Louisiana.
You want to set the alarm?
No, I don't.
No, I'm not setting the alarm.
Mara.
Dude, that's funny.
My dad's family was in Nicaragua doing missionary work when his parents.
And where was the money coming from?
I don't know.
And there probably wasn't much money back then.
I think it was 1910.
Now, here's a weird thing I did in relationships.
I painted a chair at Vacation Bible School Camp and gave it to a girl like 17 years later as an adult.
And now, look, if you want to end a relationship and end up on at least a list in a woman's head, some kind of list.
Give her a chair you painted as a child 16 years earlier as an adult.
And also drive it five hours to her, dude.
But again, in your mind, you were acting right.
This guy, Randy, when I was in vacation Bible school, he said he was from the other church.
He would come over.
He was like a, he was a, he had a red sports car.
And he was, you know, when you, at that age, you, you, the guy's in his 30s, late 30s, 40s, and he's single.
cool.
But now, you're like, why didn't this guy...
Where was his family?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Looking back on it, when your youth pastor is 25 and hanging with us on Friday nights, who's your squad?
Is it us?
And so this guy, Randy, would come.
He was a bigger guy.
He would always.
Big Randy, bro.
He would wear shirts to swim.
Oh, he would?
He would wear shirts.
But like, not like darker, like darker, like a black, no, white guy, but black shirt.
Oh, meaning you could see through the, you know what I'm saying?
Okay.
So he would do like, he went off the high dive.
And that was a real story, dude.
Fake plant, but it'll, I'm sure it'll take.
Yeah.
Dang.
But so when he.
And he loved doing that campaign.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But he would always, he wouldn't come out every day.
But when, when Randy started walking up, all the kids knew he about to, it's about to.
Here you go, Randy.
And he would do a huge.
Come on, Randy.
But everybody went.
And he was like kind of a rogue.
He wasn't attached to a church.
Like, these are from First Baptists.
These are from First Pres.
Randy just.
We was at 6th Baptist, I think.
Anyway, so he said, he said he promised, if every kid memorized Psalm 23, he would shave his head at the end.
Because he had like a long...
And he goes, I will shave my head.
He's an organ donor.
Yeah, 100%.
This kid, I think his name was Nathan and James.
Oh, yeah.
Two of my buddies.
If they could quote Psalm 23, he would shave his head.
And this kid got up there, nailed it, and he died in front of church.
It was an outdoor, it was like in a pavilion type situation.
Oh, yeah, a lot of pavilions.
Yeah, a lot of pavilions.
They were covered, but not at the sides.
Yeah.
I remember the, there's a funny, like, this must have been before this lady was working.
Me and my brother, my older brother, I asked, because I was going to put this in my act, but I never talked about it on stage.
I texted my brother like a year ago and asked him if this is true.
We were getting, we went forward for prayer.
Are you familiar with that?
Oh, yeah, you go to the front of the church.
Yeah, if you're convicted about being a sinner, which we were good kids.
Right.
You know, so they were like, you're, are you positive that you're, whatever.
We went forward.
Me and my brother were getting prayed for, but this woman, this woman was attractive.
This was an attractive woman.
Oh, yeah.
Touch me.
Yeah.
She was praying for us.
I mean, pray.
Yeah.
Touch me on the shoulder.
She was praying for us.
And I remember, I never forget this.
And this is before I knew what the word meant.
So she goes, just bless these boys.
Be with, like, they starts general.
The prayer starts general.
Yeah.
Walk with them.
Teach them your ways.
May they do your will.
Keep them out of trouble.
These type of things.
And then as you go on, you kind of get more confident you're hearing from the Lord.
And you start kind of guessing.
And she said, I will never forget this.
She said, I just pray that you, I just asked that, Lord, that you would break the spirit of masturbation in their lives.
And we didn't know what it was.
We did not know what it was.
We didn't know, dude.
I had to be 12, maybe.
Wow.
11 or 12. I was homeschooled.
I didn't know.
Masturbation.
It sounds like a place almost if you don't know anything about it.
And it's a spirit.
Oh, the spirit of masturbation.
Like it's, it's like.
Sounds like a ghost.
Like it's.
We asked our mom on the way home.
No.
We asked her.
I go, she goes, where did you, you know, youth camp?
She's thinking.
Yeah, you were out at the, you were on the during archery or the canoes and the kid that came up.
Yeah.
No, it was during prayer, dude.
But think about it.
Think about it from her perspective.
If you're these two, my brother was older than me, so if I was 12, he was 14. That's probably odds-wise.
Yeah.
I mean, you.
Right, right.
Yeah.
She just guessed wrong.
She just guessed wrong, dude.
Dude, I remember biking over to my friend's house like five miles because they had porno over there.
And I'd go over there and look, look at it.
Dude, I'd go and use his bathroom for like two hours, dude, on a Sunday.
Just in there just absorbing porno, dude.
Just like, I remember even just, I would lay down and just put the magazine on my skin and just absorb the porno.
That's what you, at the time.
But that's what I needed, man.
And then somebody had chiseled a set of tits in like a tree outside, back of our apartment building, and people would be out yerking all day.
Yeah.
I swear to God, man.
And it was good looking, man.
I mean, it was for out of course.
It was an artist.
He could have sold that if it wasn't on the tree.
I mean, yeah, it got like these larvas in it or whatever.
It messed up.
Yeah, they messed up the thighs.
They got the larva.
Yeah.
She used to be hotter when she was in her prime.
It had some varicose.
When she was in her prime, it was varicose breasts after a while, after a couple of years.
But the first year and a half, first 18, 19 months, that stuff was out there.
You'd see people out there, man.
It was our Mount Rushmore, dude.
What city?
Huh?
What city?
Covington, Louisiana.
Covington, Louisiana.
Up on McGee Street, praise God.
I bet that's still there.
And we used to do Peep and Tommen, too, and that was big when I was young.
Again, you've got to differentiate curiosity versus...
Because I, same.
Or like you just look to see, but that you weren't.
Dude, I remember my buddy and I, one of my closest friends, would sit there and sat there naked one time under a blanket.
Okay, not same.
Yeah.
He might be on the bottom.
You don't know this one, but yeah.
And we're just like touching each other's shoulders and stuff.
And it was hella gay, bro.
We didn't know at the time.
You didn't know.
Yeah.
We wasn't being gay.
We was being children.
That's the difference.
Yeah.
Because they always say when there's a difference of an imbalance of power.
Yeah.
That's when it gets like someone that's your boss, someone that's a parent, someone that's age, some kind of someone that like.
Yeah, this was even Steven.
Yeah, so that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Which is also tricky because once you come into power or you come into influence or you come into something that you're doing.
Right then it's automatically granted that without even you realizing maybe they should it just should come with like hey you got it also comes with this so just be like you don't know when the transition happens you're like oh now i remember jay moore talking about um right you're like now do women like me just like is it it has nothing to do with me now now it's different there should be some sort of a little they should send you a mail or something that says hey bubba now you're different now like you just need to take this into context like if a chilies if
the chili server hooks up with the other chili server no problem that's that that's a saturday that's two for one that's plus dessert yeah but when the manager or the boss hooks up with the waitress which happens all the time or maybe that's not a good example but like if no yeah then you that you can't that's an imbalance you can't do that because you because she's if you say hey do you want to come over she's your you're her boss right well the
weird thing though is in your head for some people the power never really changes you're just excited to finally have a way to to meet women or you like women and you're excited about getting to see them or be naked around them and now it's like fuck now you can't do that yeah it's like again when you're the waitress and the waitress that's fine but that now now all of a sudden i see he's he's right now now what about these text messages that we send each other yeah we're like well that's scary to anybody dude if a girl came out like dude
i there there's escorts out there that i've texted some real you know probably some poignant information to you know yeah and not know the newbie pics i don't send nudies yeah yeah but um but stuff yeah but things like if i would be ashamed you know i might be a little proud of myself but also like depends because the spelling was depends on the screenshot yeah but there's definitely like some combos that would be like man i that was not just embarrassment yeah yeah that's how we feel like not not Not that,
but.
And the world doesn't care.
The world is more about, like, well, let's see the embarrassment more than about what is the content or what's going on with this person.
You know?
Yeah, yeah.
Remember that at the race, the race, so I've made jokes about like the mayor, Mayor Cooper.
Yeah.
I've said like at my comedy shows, the mayor's corrupt, like because he's raising taxes or whatever it is.
I made jokes about him.
I go, dude, we have some great comedians in this country.
Dude, Nashville's got some amazing comedians, Nate Pargatzi, Theo Vaughn, Mayor Cooper.
But then at the race, he came out and did the and they booed him.
I heard that.
So, and I immediately like, rehab, if it does anything, it'll move you towards empathy.
Yeah.
And I go, oh, I don't like this.
This is a man.
I saw him.
I didn't make eye contact, but I go, this is a guy that now he might be corrupt or he might, but he's trying to serve.
I don't know.
But I go, we can't, this is not the way.
Right.
And I felt, I felt empathy.
I go, I don't, I wanted to DM him.
And I'd be like, hey, dude, it makes me cry to think about it.
Like, I was, I don't.
Right.
I was there.
Sorry how that probably felt.
I can understand how that felt.
And I go, I've made fun of you on my show.
I just want to let you know that I've been through my own stuff and you didn't deserve that.
Right.
That crowd is probably a lot of conservatives in the crowd, I would get.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe that wasn't, he shouldn't have taken that gig, right?
He was probably doing it to try and grab some faiths with conservatives.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Get back in with the city.
But he canceled it.
Possibly.
And he canceled races at that track for all during COVID.
Oh, well.
And so maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they knew that.
Yeah, they all knew it.
It was not the move.
But I remember I went to the Hawks game, the Hawks Sixers game about a month ago in Atlanta, and Ben Simmons plays for the Sixers.
Yeah.
Kid is a phenom.
I remember he played at LSU, dude.
An all-star, right?
This kid was a million-dollar contract, and in the playoffs, kind of dunking passed it.
And he was very timid.
And I remember being there crushing him, dude.
And then somebody was like, I read on ESPN or somebody like 22 years old.
And I go, I feel some kind of way about this.
Now this kid's in his hotel room with a phone.
Right, but see, that's where it gets weird is when we, do we, it's tough.
That's the tough thing about being a comedian.
Yeah.
Because you're like, it's tough to be empathetic, but also want to be able to just rip on stuff and be funny and be a sports fan.
And be, Bill Burr said that, remember Burt Kreiser asked him if he ever wanted to meet the president.
He said, no.
He goes, I never want to meet him.
Because if I meet him, then I can't crush him.
Because I empathize.
I know Donald Trump.
He's a buddy of mine.
I can't.
Right.
And that, and that's, but that's not the right way to live.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, it's tough.
It struck you, dude.
It's tricky.
Look, I think that's one of the battles of everything.
But also, it's like we've also created an environment now where there's constant information about everything.
So there's so much tough to be empathetic for that you almost get exhausted.
That you can't be like the refugees.
You're like, I don't.
Yeah, I mean, I felt even on this past weekend, on some of the solo episodes, we'll talk a lot about like, you know, trying to listen to things that are going on with people.
And I love it, you know, and I love like, cause a lot of people I'll call privately and just chat and stuff.
And, you know, it's important to me.
And you can tell sometimes that it feels good to them to connect with somebody.
But you can't take on everybody.
Sometimes having to, yeah, it's like it's like, yeah, you feel like, how I can't do, you can't do everything.
Nobody can.
And sometimes we want to.
And sometimes like, like, I notice I'll text people and ask how they're doing sometimes.
You've done that to me.
And the truth is, I do that, I feel like, because, I mean, one, I care.
I want to know.
I want them to know somebody cares.
But also, I wish people did that to me.
We all do those things, you know?
I remember I was in my deepest shame when I was in the real, real darkness.
a green room that overlooked the parking lot.
Of what?
Of the show.
It was, it depends on the night.
Was it in Baton Rouge?
No, it was in the South, though.
Maybe at Jackson or some city like that.
And I remember our green room, we had a window, looked out over the, and it was an hour before the show.
And that line was hundreds of yards.
And these people were so excited.
Oh, this is their Super Bowl, dude.
And I was like, I was like, and I was in a dark, dark place, and I couldn't watch it.
I go, you got to take me out of here.
I can't.
I never experienced that before.
But I'm a comedian.
All I want to do is that.
Right.
To go like, this is my guy, dude.
This guy makes me laugh.
We drove four hours.
We got the tickets.
Here's the tickets.
The truck.
This, it's going to.
And I couldn't.
My shame wouldn't allow me to.
Why?
Like, what is it you think?
Like, you're ashamed.
Like, what?
Well, I know.
I think it was like these, if, if I felt worthless, so when people drove four hours and say, we love you, that was hard for me to.
Because I saw, it used to be just a big crowd.
Now I saw a guy and his wife and their friend.
And I go, it made it.
I go, I can't look at this, dude.
This is, or like, dude, the lines wrapped around the, I go, I can't.
It's hard for me to mean, it's hard for me to feel like, it's hard for me to see that I mean something to someone.
When you don't, when you're working on meaning something to yourself.
Or when I felt like, I think I felt for a long time that I didn't mean anything to anyone.
Yes.
For me, that's a lot of it.
And when someone says, someone watches this podcast, connects with you and says, hey, the closest Theo is coming to me is eight hours.
I'm going to drive to see him.
Would that DM make you nervous?
Oh, it just makes me feel like.
It almost makes me feel sad a little bit, not for them, but it just makes me feel not sad, it makes me feel it makes me feel like I'm never going to be able to do something to repay them.
That they've saved your life, kind of, in a way.
Yeah, just like, man, they're doing this.
Like, man, I'm not worth that.
You want to say, hey, well, next tour or don't come to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't do it.
Don't go out of your way from me.
But they...
It's their world, and you have to let them have their joy and stuff like that.
And that thing inside of me, don't go out of your way for me.
It's like.
All you ever wanted was for someone to go out of your way.
Don't go out of your way for me.
God, that makes me emotional, dude.
And look, man, I'm not saying any of this stuff.
Like, I'm not like, you know, I'm not in some Debbie Downer thing or anything like that.
But everybody, comedian or not, everybody could relate to that.
But it's like, yeah, I think I'll always just.
Somebody said, hey, Theo, of all these comics, of all the shows, we're choosing you.
Right.
And even if it's a monetary exchange, you're giving them a thing.
Right.
It's like, man, it's just...
It feels like...
But they have decided you are...
Like, if I went to...
And then it makes me almost jealous that I wish I could decide that I'm worth that.
Yeah.
You're like, which is when I got out of rehab, everybody said, dude, we love you.
I go, what?
If you went to prison tomorrow, I remember when I was in rehab, there's a month, or there's three weeks where there's a blackout period.
You can't talk to anybody, right?
Nobody, and I got after three weeks.
And I thought my life, that was when I was close to wanting to end my life.
But after three weeks, there's a whiteboard.
And when you have a letter or a note, they write your name and your last initial.
So it's three weeks, I hear nothing.
And all of a sudden, I walk in, John C. And granted, think about I was in Wickenburg, Arizona with a bunch of dudes and your buddy.
And I didn't know, knew nothing of just trying to, they tell you when to go to the bathroom, when to eat, when to sleep.
And it said, John C. And I went up there.
And they had a little like, you know, when back in the day, when like you called the office and the boss is gone, but they write a little Samantha called from accounting.
Right.
Give you the little away, whatever that was.
And they hand me this message.
And I looked at it.
I was right in the atrium there.
This is like one of those moments you remember forever.
And I said, he said, your parents are coming to see you.
Your parents are coming.
And you didn't know they were coming?
No, I didn't know they were coming, but I thought I ruined it.
I go, why would my, I embarrassed the family name.
My dad's a pastor.
My mom works at the school, the Christian school.
My dad's in politics.
John Christ is on Fox News, CNN, USA Today.
What do you mean?
And they cared.
And it was like for a week.
They came for a week.
And that's all I ever wanted my whole life is my parents to say that like they care.
And I was like, and I wanted to tell them, tell them I'm not to come.
Tell them I'm I'll be done and whatever.
You know what I'm saying?
And it was like, I was so shocked by that, that they wanted to do that.
I think.
But what year?
This is your parents.
Why would they, why would they not?
Where did you get that idea?
Like, where did you get that idea that people wouldn't?
It just happened.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know where that thing comes from.
Where did you ever get that idea that your parents, when you were in the most amount of need, this is their child that is struggling?
Why would you think that they wouldn't come to see you?
I don't.
I don't know.
That's what the whole process was.
That's how it landed on us.
Yes.
And every day, dude, every day, I don't want to make a bigger deal about this than it is, but like, you know, if you're in rehab, a guy would get a piece of mail once every three weeks.
Maybe someone would get a piece of mail from a wife or from a child or something.
Every day, stacks of mail for, and I didn't know these people.
Really?
They either, through my management company or through my family of a friend of a friend, people were like, just stacks of mail, dude.
And all these people didn't really know me that well.
I mean, my family did, but it was people like, hey, my daughter is the GM of the club that you worked at in Denver, and she likes you.
And I have the same story, and I need to tell you that it's okay.
I have to, I'm compelled to get this message to you.
Wow.
They were so moved, but it was all people that have been to the dark.
Right.
That have looked the devil in the eye.
It was all of those people.
And for me to refuse, I don't, to not let them love you is.
Right.
It's almost the same.
Right.
And that's, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When somebody says, hey, Theo, comedian or not, you're my guy, dude.
You need something.
It's like, that can't be.
And now we're always thinking someone wants to take something from us.
Someone wants to be.
You comedian or not, that thing, whatever that is, that's really.
It can't hit me.
It's like, what do you mean?
Like, if I'm not something extremely special, you can't just.
You'll never see me.
That's what I always felt like.
Never.
Like, unless I stand out as much as possible.
And go over.
Right.
Then you'll never be seen.
And what happens if you're never seen?
That's a death sentence.
Yeah.
For a guy like me, death sentence.
Oh, I think it's a death sentence for any human.
Yeah.
And what's scary is when everything happened to me, like people were saying the most horrific things about me on the internet.
And but everything happened.
It was stuff like things came up.
Yeah.
Some lewd information with people.
Yeah, yeah, that I was like sexting girls.
Sexting girls.
There wasn't anything.
No, it wasn't.
Yeah.
And non-traumatic.
And nothing non-consensual.
Nothing.
It was just a guy being a and and but also when you attach it with Christianity I was working in church when you were working in churches and stuff like that everything has a different taboo which is fair right and I say I've said that's a good point I've said it's interesting if you work at a company and they said you can only wear jeans on Friday and you wear jeans on Thursday and you get fired that's you knew the rules right of the company either that might be a BS rule but you knew I knew when I worked in churches that you can't get hammered and bring girls to your hotel
room right and I did that right and so that if that and you get fired fair not no moral is this a good guy or a bad guy those are the rules spoken or unspoken I took the job right fair yeah it's a good point yeah if it had just been comedy clubs and stuff it would be different but when you have churches and stuff it's different sure which is like the worst the worst you know I'd read all these comments and people saying these most horrific things yeah it's horrible but the you know that my buddy's joke about this my buddy's in the group text he
goes you know what you know what comment hurt the worst this is it's kind of funny but it's kind of like some guy goes who's John Christ oh man which you get that totally you do you're like it's all but but people are talking about me if Donald Trump is on the front of the New York Times he wins he wins no matter what it's saying Nobel Peace Prize or got caught with a hooker yeah if he's on the front people are talking about him as a narcissist
you win and somebody goes who is this it was it crushed me dude you're like that's tough dude that's tough yeah I think when I was growing up there was such little I had a sister that was real sick she had a liver disease when she was born so she needed a liver transplant and uh and so she got any affection my mother had she got and she got to be around nurses like people that were real caring yeah yeah
yeah all a lot of attention a lot of attention yeah yeah yeah and the rest of us just didn't get it we just didn't get it uh and also here's one thing i want to say about that kind of stuff is like i could have gotten it but i didn't feel like i got it so that's another thing like if you ever want to parents this and that like if you ever want to talk to your parents about stuff like one way to do it is you can say that's a great point i didn't feel this is how it felt to me so that way it's like you're not attacking them like and
they're not the end they're not and they're not the enemy like uh you're like hey like my pastor who would ask me if i masturbated like i would like to talk to him now be like hey this seemed like a little shame based but also that guy was trying to help yeah he was trying to help he now it wasn't it wasn't but your parent like my dad was like oh he was gone a lot at conferences you're like yeah but i had eight kids i needed to get the money to right it was it kind of wasn't you you didn't get the love
the way you wanted it right you wanted your dad to play catch with you right but you wanted a certain type of serving and it's they didn't have that that's it you wanted some thousand island all we got is ranch at this house and the crazy thing they didn't have it also because nobody ever gave it to them that's where you also are like a lot of us are suffering the g the genetic the third generation of something that happened generations ago um my parent i my my buddy isaac when i went i was homeschooled first eighth grade then i went to private school damn
and i was always hanging with him and he would uh every time his parents they would leave him out hey you're going to the movies leave the car off the phone off the they would go we love you isaac i love you and i never no one ever said that to me in my house no one ever said john i love you no it just wasn't did my parents love me that my parents my mom said she when i was at rehab she i said she said she would give her life for me she said that to me and
i believe that right and she would but does that make sense i never i go how come and you get a little bit of a scar maybe because you're like well why didn't you tell me that yeah but their parents never that you know what if they don't know yeah they don't know but so here's the thing then if you have children you could tell you know get specific with them sometimes about how you feel if you think that they may not know and because i think in my house i think my mom always just assumed we knew also that of course we
love you theo right of course i love you of course we're a family unit we never knew any of those things we felt like we were on your scavenging out on your by yourself yeah to get and and and so then yeah yeah but you got to get if you didn't get that and i felt like i needed to get everybody in the world to love me so i could get my mom to love me by default look at all these people that are at my shows right surely and then what's odd what's very odd which is like our relationship is like you burn your life to the ground
and that's when your parents show up but they to be fair they came to every comedy show they could within six hours they will come to it they they you know what i'm saying but that's what meant the most is when they came john c oh man dude that should be my new name dude yeah it's interesting once you're in kind of some of the recovery world it's interesting to have somebody else to talk to about this kind of stuff you know so i appreciate you man i appreciate you being willing to just even when you and i are out of here or whenever wherever we are you know i feel
like we're always willing to kind of talk about some of this kind of stuff and we've been we've been in in to be fair we've been in the light and the darkness together we've been in meetings together oh yeah and then we've also been oh yeah trying to holler at girls i was trying to buy drugs that one night at that freaking bar man jesus christ thank god but it but yeah but we but but you you you're like i don't know one lady got her glasses stuck in her nose ring that lady was out of her mind but
you don't have any kind of like uh yeah when it's when it's past the the point of like i'm not here to get anything from you and you're not here to get anything from me because whatever i have you have and whatever you have i already have so if you said hey and we and i And I've said probably in the past year that we both kind of come and gone from the darkness to the light.
You know, there are periods where I struggle.
Oh, yeah, you're heavily shadowed.
But all you're doing, but you're not doing anything.
You're just challenging your own kind of newer set of boundaries.
And you're just like, hey, do you want to go to a meeting?
I know.
When I say no, and then I start isolating or yeah, you just want to kind of not be in the light.
But every time we go to a meeting, it's like whatever that is.
That's Christ, man.
That's Christ.
Yeah, you make a joke out of it, but it's not Christian.
But it is, man.
Seeing people connect, seeing people touch.
Remember that guy at that meeting?
That last one when he was crying?
He was sitting right next to us.
Grown man.
He was so happy because his wife was better.
Grown man had gotten a divorce balling, dude.
And he went, how many people were at that meeting?
50?
There's a lot of people there.
And he started talking about...
And he just started he fell apart, man.
Yeah.
And you got to wonder how many people are walking out everywhere tonight.
Just close, close to coming undone, dude, you know?
Especially in today's world, we want to get anything that feels human.
It resonates with you in a chord that's on that.
When that adult man broke down and started crying because the wife that had left him was, was she doing, her health was doing better or something like that?
Yeah, she was too good.
I don't want to compromise anybody.
He's a couple years sober.
Yeah.
And he goes, I'm so proud of, and I'm just so that she's healthy.
And that's too much.
I mean, it's not too much, but it's the, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what, but you can serve him by just by being there and listening.
It hits that heart harp, dog.
And say all the way in.
That goes all the way in, bro.
It plays that heart harp.
John Chris, if you guys haven't seen a lot of John's videos, they're so, dude, I am so envious, dude.
You, Kyle Dunning, and there's a couple guys that I'm just so envious.
I love Kyle.
That makes such creative and entertaining stuff.
And go check it out.
You have a new tour that's going on, too, this fall.
Yeah, fall tour.
Every theater you're coming to, I'm probably going to the week before, the week after.
Cool, man.
And some even bigger ones.
I know you're going to be down in Baton Rouge, too.
So I think I might try to go down and do that, go down with my family.
Remember that one time you came on my show?
Uh-uh.
Yeah, you did.
It was my show.
Oh, at the end of the day.
Yeah.
I thought he was too edgy.
I didn't either.
I go, did you tell him that it was like a church crowd?
I go, no, he's a comedian, dude.
I mean, he said that joke about the guy about by the fence.
I shouldn't have told that one.
But I say the same thing, dude.
Go see Theo show, man.
You'll love it, dude.
Thanks, brother.
I appreciate it, man.
Love you, bro.
Thanks for coming on.
And yeah, we'll have to hit a meeting soon.
Same to you, brother.
Gang.
Now, I'm just footing on the breeze.
And I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself on mine shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you a story.
Shine on me.
And I will find a song I will sing it just for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
The answer may shock you.
Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
Sometimes I won't.
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
You have three new voice messages.
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else.
So great.
Hi, Sweetheart.
Easy to.
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
John Maine.
Sorry, sir, but our ice cream is broken.
I think Tom Hanks just butt dialed me.
Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
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