#99 John Crist - Beating Cancel Culture

John Crist is a successful comedian with over one billion video views and is the host of his hilarious podcast "Net Positive." Crist is widely known for his viral videos like "Honest Football Coach," "Every Parent at Disney," and "Brands that need to be CANCELLED." Crist's remarkably successful online presence was backed by a relentless touring schedule that initially favored christian audiences and churches rather than the typical theatre circuit. In this episode, Crist recounts his meteoric rise to fame that was ultimately sidelined by the #metoo movement and cancel culture that swept the nation in 2019. Shawn and John share deep conversation that wrestles with topics like faith, hypocrisy, mental health, and personal growth. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://helixsleep.com/srs - USE CODE "HELIXPARTNER20" https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://betterhelp.com/shawn https://moinkbox.com/shawn https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner John Crist Links: Tour - https://johncristcomedy.com/tour Website - https://johncristcomedy.com Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/1WDTVibOGGSPSyv3MkUeVc?si=f4226da8ff334dd4 IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnbcrist X - https://twitter.com/johnbcrist Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@johncristcomedian Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:30Shawn Ryan?

  We've all heard a lot about cancel culture in the recent years. And unfortunately, it has become part of the American way as the downward spiral continues. But this is a success story. This is about a guy who was canceled by his own community and beat it. Pretty amazing. The hypocrisy behind it is pretty incredible. But, um, look, this was an awesome episode. There's some gems in here, and, um, I made a new friend out of it.

• 1:13Shawn Ryan?

  So, pay attention. If you like what you're watching, please like, comment, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. And if you're feeling extra generous, head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review, even if it's just one word. That really helps the show. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome my new friend, one of the top stand-up comedians in the country right now, Mr. John Crist. One last thing. This guy is probably the funniest person that I have ever met. And, uh, that is a nice change for this channel. A little comedic relief. All right, love you all. Enjoy the show.

• 1:58Shawn Ryan?

  See you soon.

• 2:05Shawn Ryan?

  John Crist, welcome to the show, man.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, man. It's an honor to be in here. I didn't know you were in Nashville.

• 2:12Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not. I'm in Franklin.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. No, you're right. No, you're right. No, this is not Nashville. If you're telling somebody from out of town, you're from Nashville. But if you live in Nashville, this is not Nashville. You're correct.

• 2:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How long you been in Nashville?

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Man, I get, let's see, 2018 is when I moved here. I lived in an apartment and then I bought a house here in 2019.

• 2:35Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:36Shawn Ryan?

  You like it?

• 2:36Speaker 03

  I love it. Yeah. I didn't know anything about it. I lived in LA.

• 2:40Shawn Ryan?

  You were living in LA?

• 2:41Speaker 03

  I lived in LA.

• 2:42Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, well, let's see. Good for my career. Sent me to rehab, though, so.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  That's pretty much the sum of it.

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. It is a, yeah, I didn't know. All I knew about Nashville was the comedy club. There's a comedy club down on 8th Avenue. And I just Googled the closest apartment to there. And I just said, I want to, I want, can I get one? And they're like, well, do you want to come view it? Or I go, no, no, no, I trust, or whatever. Just I'll, I'll have a one bedroom.

• 3:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  They're like, that's not really how it works. That's how I moved here.

• 3:23Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you move here?

• 3:24Speaker 03

  To, for my career. So we started touring by bus.

• 3:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we started touring by bus and you can't do it out of, I mean, if you bus out of LA, you got to.

• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I mean, you're gonna go three days.

• 3:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  You know, a bus driver can only legally go 10 hours.

• 3:41Shawn Ryan?

  I did not. I did not know that.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  So he can't drive. If you go more than a 10 hour drive, you gotta have another driver.

• 3:47Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:48Shawn Ryan?

  Who keeps tabs on that? What do they have, like a punch clock in there?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  I guess they got a license or something. I mean, I'm assuming if you are the biggest of the big, you gotta, you gotta way around it, I'm sure.

• 4:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  As there always is. But there's, like, when I, we get, you know, in those big Star Coach buses, right? So we go, we, we go night to night. So like last weekend, we did Columbia,

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Wilmington and Savannah or whatever, like they're within a couple, six, seven hours of each other usually. So the drive's overnight. And I get up to the. Cabin in the, when I wake up in the morning, I go out and this, the front cabin, he got sunflower seeds, Red Bull, nicotine, uh, energy drinks. And I go, dude, there's seven people back here that are relying on you to be this. You know what I'm saying? This is your, I'm sure he's like hitting himself. I'm like, this is terrifying.

• 4:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  That he's, he's got, smells like cigarette smoke up there. You got nicotine, sunflower seeds, energy drinks. I mean, I go, so, cause we don't know where he's come from. We don't know if he's.

• 5:07Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, you're good to go, right?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Well, if he's ego, maybe you assume that during the week, the five nights when he's not driving us, he's still staying up at nights and sleeping during the day. No.

• 5:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  I don't know. I never asked, but there's no way, right? You assume that he lives like that. And I go, is anyone else? That's what we talked about at breakfast. Like you just see things differently. You're like, oh, he's, I go, is this not?

• 5:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Concerning to anybody?

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, right. Most people don't even ask, you know? Most people don't even ask. They're just like, oh, it's, I'm sure everything will be fine.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  And we don't, there's no seat belts. We're all sleeping at a, I mean.

• 5:53Shawn Ryan?

  How many people you tour with?

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Uh, usually we go out with like the two other comedians, a tour manager, maybe like a light guy and a video guy.

• 6:00Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Maybe somebody, yeah, six or seven.

• 6:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. But everybody thinks a tour bus is, uh, for rich people. But it's about 2,500 bucks a day for a tour bus. But if you had to fly and hotel all those people.

• 6:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  It'd be more expensive. So you're like, oh, this guy's got a bus. I'm like.

• 6:21Shawn Ryan?

  Negative.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  No, no, it's not like that. Yeah, not at all. Yeah, we're just trying to, yeah, we're doing it the cheapest way we can.

• 6:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, John, let me give you a quick intro for those that don't know you. I don't think there's a whole lot of people that don't know you, but you're a stand-up comedian, host of the podcast Net Positive, author of Delete That. You've been canceled. And you're one of the few people that came back after that. And most important of all, in my opinion, is you're a Christian.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Believer in the Lord. Yes, sir.

• 6:54Shawn Ryan?

  Believer in the Lord.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  All those things have been more or less true throughout the course of the whole journey, but yes, yes.

• 7:01Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right on. But, uh, well, for about the past week, I've been researching you and listening to all your podcasts and watching your stuff. And I just, man, I love the message you're putting out and

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Thank you, man.

• 7:15Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's really good. It's positive and, and you seem to be an open book. So.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, no reason not to, no.

• 7:23Shawn Ryan?

  I appreciate that. But, uh, you know, kind of what I want to do, my specialty here is pretty much life stories. And so, you know, what I tell everybody is this is your platform. I'm just here to facilitate and, and, and guide you in the journey. So.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Well, that's unique because we, we do the same. I got a big podcast and you go, you know, I'm sure people,

• 7:49Speaker 03

  what's beautiful about it is that I'm sure people petition you to kind of come on, whether it's a, anybody that has any kind of, I'm promoting a book or I'm a politician or whatever, and it's yours. And you get to say, no, we're good.

• 8:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  And that's, that's wild. It's really truly, and I go, Theo Vaughn is a comedian buddy of ours, lives in town, and he's huge, huge podcast. And he goes, dude.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  All you gotta do is just talk to the people you wanna talk to. And if you wanna talk to them, the listeners will feel that. If you don't wanna talk to them, don't have them on. I don't care how big they are, or how famous they are, or how anything they are. If you're like, dude, I'd have gotten, I. He goes, don't have them on, and that's the way your podcast, people are gonna connect with it, and it's gonna grow.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  And we've been doing that since day one.

• 8:45Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I've been, that's what I do.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:47Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? And how do you, how do you, how do you find your guests? I mean, you're a busy guy, so you're on tour all the time.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:00Shawn Ryan?

  We get your podcast, which takes up time. I mean, how do you, how do you find who you're into? I guess is what I'm saying.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Man, I was, uh, I was listening to the, somebody told me about a podcast with J K Rowling, from the author of Harry Potter, and I listened to it, and I go, man, I would love to talk to her. I would love to talk to her. I'm, uh, I grew up, I'm thirty nine, so I grew up in the nineties, early two thousands, in like Eminem. I would love to talk to, just because I'm so curious, it's about so many things, and that guy's personal life. And, and, and he influenced me, makes, I make fun of it now, but it was Eight Mile, and, uh, Fast and Furious.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Those, you know, the movie, your favorite author, comedian, or movie, or music, or band is from probably about ten to fourteen.

• 9:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  When it was, right, that you were like, old enough to like, learn. And you just, this world was like, I mean, Collective Soul, and The Counting Crows, and like Hillsong are still like my favorite bands. Cause they were like, The Fugitive is my favorite movie with Harrison Ford.

• 10:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Came out, and, I mean, I was so undone by that movie. You know what I'm saying? It was like PG, I was, I grew up very, very conservative and Christian, and it was like PG thirteen is this guy that was like framed for killing his wife, but he didn't, he was trying to like prove his innocence. I mean, it's, you look back at it now, and it's kinda silly, but you're like, that.

• 10:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Was.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  I cannot believe this. I cannot believe this, you know?

• 10:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  And I wonder, we don't have it much anymore, but.

• 10:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding. You know, we, yeah, I wanted to, you know, we had a, we had started a really good conversation at breakfast.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:56Shawn Ryan?

  And so before we get into your life story,

• 11:00Shawn Ryan?

  you know, I'm kind of wanted to just talk about that, but you know, we were talking about all the, all the lies.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  That were being told ever since, we'll just say ever since 2020.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 11:14Shawn Ryan?

  Right. It's kind of when the veil started getting lifted.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:18Shawn Ryan?

  And now

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  people are digging, you know, caused everybody to start digging and, and, and, and the lies just keep on coming unveiled.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Well, it was on, I was talking about a podcast on where the guy goes, if he saw a UFO, right? Saw UFO and he goes,

• 11:44Speaker 03

  prior to, A, prior to the internet and but prior, but it was a guy. You would have to go out back behind a trailer and there's this crazy guy that was saying these things. About, oh, that guy saw UFO, but he's,

• 12:01Speaker 03

  he lives down the end of the cul-de-sac. We don't talk to him much anymore. And now you, you don't realize how many of those people there that exist and through the internet that they've all, like now they have A with podcasts like this, or just communities on the internet that those people can all gather. Which before they never could. It was this one isolated incident here and there and that goes, I saw this. And this guy goes, dude, I saw that. And the other guy goes, I saw that. And now you have a, these big communities of people and whether. Whatever it's from, whether that be the government or the military or and you go, dude, same.

• 12:39Shawn Ryan?

  So many things, man.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:41Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:42Shawn Ryan?

  The FDA.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:43Shawn Ryan?

  The CDC.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:44Shawn Ryan?

  The government, the, the, the, the money coming in from

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:49Shawn Ryan?

  China to the politicians, the whole, the pandemic.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:54Shawn Ryan?

  The sexual orientation.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:57Shawn Ryan?

  The, it's everywhere, everywhere you look.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:01Shawn Ryan?

  Not even just sexual or gender, what are they, gender ID?

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Gender ID?

• 13:06Speaker 03

  And you go, that's like the, um, somebody told me the like, uh, uh, like, uh, crime, uh, podcast and like true crime.

• 13:15Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  It's so, it's so compelling because we all live under the same, as humans, we all live under the same rules. So if you told me, we're not that close, but say we're buddies and you go, I gotta go down to Shreveport for the weekend. I got a contract down there. I gotta meet a buddy down there for a bit of an old military buddy. I want to go see. I go, all right, sounds good. Right?

• 13:42Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  And then if you go, and I go back to Shreveport and then you keep like, or that's like, you're like, why, what's going on? You know, like it, it, it, you, everybody watches those crime documentaries. Like this cop called that person three times before and you go, why did he do that?

• 14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Right? Cause we're all, we all live under these general rules and whether it's, whether it's crime or sex or drugs or fame or power, you go, why did they do that? Cause we all live under the same rules.

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  And so when you go, no, no, no, no, no. Right? You're watching that and you're watching the crime documentary. You go, well, this guy got fired from that job too. And you go, what's going on? And that's what everybody's, we're now doing that in real life. You go, what? Hold on. Whether it's about a, obviously the government or why are they making moves like that? My girlfriend is always like, why are you like, I go, what's the guy doing? What's his motivation? And then you go, you go, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Whether it's somebody.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  We had a guy that's like on our, on our, would tour with us. And he was like, he would do it for free. And I go, why would he tour with us for free? That doesn't make any sense. And it wasn't, he wasn't a comedian, but he was in our crew.

• 15:14Shawn Ryan?

  Looking for the angle.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I go, babe, why would he? That doesn't make any sense. Why, and then, then I find out later that he's trying to be a comedian. I go, oh. And it's, and I'm now at peace with it. It settles to you because you go, oh, that makes sense. That behavior makes sense now.

• 15:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  And you see a lot of people go, what? Like if you're, if you keep going to, let's say you don't know anyone in Shreveport. Like, why does he keep going down there every weekend? That's abnormal human behavior. If you have a family and a job here. And then I go, what is, why? That doesn't make sense. And then you find out, oh, he's, he's running off with a woman down there. He's, you know, he's doing whatever. You go, oh, okay.

• 16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Got it. Cause we all live under the same rules, the same temptations, the same addictions, the same human.

• 16:13Shawn Ryan?

  The pattern of life is very similar.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Very, very similar. And you see someone like, there's, there's a guy at our church that is so good. He's just so, he cares about people so deeply. And he calls just, I am just checking in. And he's got all these people that he visits and I go, there's no way.

• 16:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Cause I'm a cynic. I go, there's no way.

• 16:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  And then some, and then he has like a big podcast. And then he's like, he's like, I saw this lady at the grocery store that was in need. So I bought her a car. And I go, yeah, but for the podcast. Or like, but for the book.

• 16:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying?

• 16:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  And I'm like, yeah, but I'm a little too cynical about everything. But I think a lot of people that listen to this are like.

• 16:58Shawn Ryan?

  I know what you're saying. You know? Yeah, there's always, you're saying that there's always, there's always an ulterior motive. It's not just out of the kindness of your heart. Why would you want to tour with me for free?

• 17:09Speaker 03

  But it kind of is.

• 17:11Shawn Ryan?

  And then when you get, when you do understand the angle in certain circumstances.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 17:17Shawn Ryan?

  It brings you peace.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:19Shawn Ryan?

  You're like, okay.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  It settles your, like if, um.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Let's say anyone that you think is uh misleading or a charlatan or so. Let's take a mega church pastor that has a private jet, right? And he's going around doing these like healing crusades and like people are falling over. And you watch that on TV, you go, no, right? You go, mm, and then if that guy that or let's say Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, or whoever you think whoever the opposite of you is. And then if he came in here and he goes, yeah, when I was a kid, my dad was a preacher and I always I enjoyed reading the Bible and explaining it to people. But then it kind of, I was a little bit more gregarious in my messages and people started to like that.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  So I started to kind of do it more. And then they I started going on the road. And then I did this healing thing once and people like kind of gravitated around it. And then I got this private jet and he goes, I don't. It all kind of blew up and now I got three kids in college and I gotta pay for that. So I'm just doing, we would be like, oh. Yeah. Not not that you disagree, it's still, you go, oh.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  You're cool with me. I mean, I've been in rehab where every day a new person checks in and they tell you a horrific story about how they got there. Yeah. But then they tell you from day one, how they grew up, what their dad was like, what their parents were like, what their childhood is like in the schooling. And you go, not that you let anybody off the hook for any behavior. And I've talked about, you've seen people come in there with murder charges and I mean horrific, horrific things. And you go, you sit like this and the guy tells a story and he's weeping. And you go, man. You want to give him a hug, every person. Yeah. And that would be the on either side. Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  You go, man. It's a good point. If all the way back like the people that were,

• 19:28Speaker 03

  have been radicalized on the other side that are fighting again, if all weapons down, you go, man, I was a kid and.

• 19:37Shawn Ryan?

  No one really accepted me and there was this either gang or militia or milita- that gave me a place of, right? Man, I got a great example of this. Oh, yeah. I thought you didn't talk much. I don't, but I don't, but. Go for it. I had a Navy SEAL on who was a transgender. Yeah. And, you know, we had kind of just spoken about it a little bit, but, um, you know, that is something with kids that I'm absolutely 100% against. I'm, I don't, I don't like it. It doesn't like, don't put it in my space. It's fine, whatever, you know, but, but I never

• 20:20Shawn Ryan?

  thought I would get along with somebody that had done that, right? Yeah. And then, and, but I wanted to, his name was Chris Beck and, uh, he, he went by Kristen Beck for a long time, came on the show. And when we dug into that man's childhood. Yep. And he has since, uh, transitioned back, you know, to be, to be in a man. But when he talks about his childhood and how that happened, it, it totally changed my perspective on understanding how this could happen to somebody, you know, and. You just go, oh. Yep. Right?

• 21:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. He was abused, severely abused as a child. His sister wasn't. Yeah. So he started dressing up in women's clothes at a very young age because he didn't want to be a woman or a girl. He just didn't want to be him because he saw his sister not getting the shit knocked out of her. Yeah. You know, three or four times a day and sexually abused and all these things. And that's how it stemmed. Makes, and you go, yeah, I get it. Yep. And then fast forward through his entire SEAL career and he's trying to get therapy on PTSD and traumatic brain injury and, you know, all the. Kind of shit that we go through and you know, you've been to therapy, you've been,

• 21:42Shawn Ryan?

  I'm assuming you've been to therapy several times.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Once or twice.

• 21:47Shawn Ryan?

  If you've been to rehab and you know, the first thing they do, at least when my therapy sessions is go into your childhood.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:55Shawn Ryan?

  He goes into his childhood, he says that immediately, you know, that, that hey, you know, I used, I was abused, I used to dress up in women's clothes, the therapist immediately turns it and we're gonna write a book.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:06Shawn Ryan?

  And it's okay to change.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:09Shawn Ryan?

  And, and.

• 22:13Shawn Ryan?

  And love bombed him.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:16Shawn Ryan?

  With that entire community and so the point is, you know, it totally changed my perspective on, on how that can happen and, and.

• 22:29Shawn Ryan?

  It just changed my opinion on a lot of things.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you go in a, in a

• 22:37Speaker 03

  direction of the love or acceptance.

• 22:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Right?

• 22:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  So if you're, if you're, I talked about this, where if you're growing up in the inner city and you don't, your parents are not around and it's scary and this gang goes, hey, we will accept you, we will love you, we will have your back no matter what.

• 23:02Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  And then anytime you get into any kind of situation, you have us.

• 23:09Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  You go, oh, you go as an outsider, you go, why is this gang activity or why is this crime activity, why or whatever, not that you let anybody off the hook, the actions have consequences, of course, but you go.

• 23:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you're looking for for protection and you're looking for acceptance.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  And safety and some and no matter what, this group, they got your back.

• 24:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and so, yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  And it's that everywhere, whether it's your country club or your political side, or your church, or your job, or your family, some are healthy, some aren't, you go, this is.

• 24:23Shawn Ryan?

  Very true, very true. It's just, it's just, it's just the human condition, right? Looking for acceptance.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  And then by nature, unfortunately, by nature of being in that gang, you have to hate the other gang.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  That's the kind of how the gangs work.

• 24:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, very true. But, well, hey, let's start digging in, but before we do, everybody gets a gift.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Do I open it here?

• 24:48Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  I open it on the pod?

• 24:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, let's see what we got here.

• 24:53Shawn Ryan?

  It's my shameless plug to Vigilance League Gummy Bears.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:56Shawn Ryan?

  Legal in all 50 states.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. They're not weed in them?

• 25:00Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  No weed in them?

• 25:02Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  What are they gonna do for me? They just taste good.

• 25:05Shawn Ryan?

  They just taste amazing.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  Really?

• 25:06Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  You should get these in Buc-E's.

• 25:12Shawn Ryan?

  I still haven't been to a Buc-E's.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  You've never been to a Buc-E's?

• 25:14Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Thank you, man. That's very kind of you.

• 25:16Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  You've never been to Buc-E's? It's a sight to be seen.

• 25:18Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I hear.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:20Shawn Ryan?

  Everyone I talk to has been to the biggest Buc-E's in the country.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  And they're all pretty big, I think.

• 25:25Shawn Ryan?

  So what is the biggest one?

• 25:27Speaker 03

  I mean, have you ever driven by one?

• 25:28Shawn Ryan?

  I've never, I've never seen one. I know there's one down in Huntsville.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Dang. Oh, yeah, they're about, yeah. Couple hundred miles. Yeah, they're, they're all around the south. It used to be one or two of them, and now they're huge.

• 25:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  But then again, there, I mean, they're, they're probably

• 25:44Speaker 03

  200 gas pumps, right? Or, or more, and it's like a, you can buy, it's like a.

• 25:51Shawn Ryan?

  It sounds like a Walmart gas station.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  But still, the same, the same thought process, you go, how? How is that, right? How are they doing this? Or, or, or who?

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Who put in the money for like, right, there's three gas stations on that exit? And somebody goes, dude, we're gonna. Right? And they got, they got advertisements, billboards all down the interstate for 20 miles in each direction. And this is gonna be the, like, the business model. You just go, what?

• 26:25Shawn Ryan?

  But it's working.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  But I think.

• 26:27Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody's talking about, I just had Deadmau5 in here a couple of weeks ago. He had a Bucky shirt on.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Really?

• 26:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  So it's working. Yeah.

• 26:35Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  But what if you found out that Bucky's paid him to wear that shirt on your podcast?

• 26:41Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think that happened, but.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  No, that way, yeah, yeah.

• 26:44Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Wait, what?

• 26:46Shawn Ryan?

  What a slut move.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Have you heard all this stuff about, uh,

• 26:50Speaker 03

  all the, all the like military, the military like stuff on TikTok?

• 26:54Shawn Ryan?

  What is it?

• 26:54Speaker 03

  It's like a bunch of like hot girls and they're kind of like dancing in like the barracks and stuff like that and being like, they're like milita, they're like glamorizing military life, but they're not ads.

• 27:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  But

• 27:10Speaker 03

  they're not not. So you're like,

• 27:14Speaker 03

  it's like for, i- i- if the goal was to recruit more people to the military, this makes it look.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  But you're like, well, what if they, you know, those kids that like are for the Democratic Party, but you didn't know they were like paying them all that money to, in essence, put propaganda out on TikTok. You're like, oh.

• 27:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Oh, those guys are getting paid? And then you go, oh, right? You go, oh, okay, got it.

• 27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  So you're looking at it like, well, that is a pretty smart tactic by the military if it is to.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  They're like, it looks like a fake, like base or something. They're all kind of dancing on it and like having fun. Like, well, this is, if, if this is combat, this is, and we want to get better people in the military, I guess.

• 28:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It brings up a good point. I think you're giving the military way too much credit, but.

• 28:09Shawn Ryan?

  Unfortunately, the leadership over there just is not that intelligent. But, um, but hey, it's been a minute since I've been in there. Maybe things have changed. I highly doubt it.

• 28:21Shawn Ryan?

  Although, things have definitely changed, but I don't think for the better.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:25Shawn Ryan?

  Not what I'm hearing.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, me neither. Not what I'm hearing either.

• 28:28Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, but anyways, let's, let's dive in.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 28:32Shawn Ryan?

  Let's start this thing. Where'd you grow up?

• 28:36Speaker 03

  I was born in Norcross, Georgia. Northside High School, Northside, sorry, Northside Medical Center in Norcross, Georgia. And one of the third of eight.

• 28:53Shawn Ryan?

  Eight?

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, third of eight.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  And we lived in Lilburn, Georgia. My parents had a, a train.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Like a train, there was an old train station. And they bought a house right next to the train stop and it was from 1896, our house. And then we, they, my dad has been working on that and we lived in that my whole life. In Lilburn, downtown Lilburn, Georgia.

• 29:19Shawn Ryan?

  Where is that?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Maybe like 30 miles north of Atlanta.

• 29:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now it's like Atlanta.

• 29:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  It's like Franklin or like, soon this is gonna be Nashville, but it's a kind of a suburb now.

• 29:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's been absorbed.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  We own it, they own it now. Yeah, it's way, same with my city growing up way different than it. Now it's way different than it was.

• 29:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Then, but yeah.

• 29:46Shawn Ryan?

  So one of eight kids, how many brothers?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Two older brothers. And then right below me is two more, a boy. It goes four boys, girl, boy, two girls, so four, five boys, three girls.

• 30:06Shawn Ryan?

  That's a lot of siblings.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, which my youngest, I mean, I'm.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  I was out of college before she even went to, I mean, we're just so different of, she's my sister, obviously, but.

• 30:19Shawn Ryan?

  Are you close with them?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  I mean, you can't necessarily, you can't be close to all seven, but there's some I'm closer than with than others, but you have to do anything for them.

• 30:28Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody gets along?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  For the most part.

• 30:31Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's great.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  That's a lot of people say, yeah, everybody's still following the Lord. Yeah. Which is a miracle.

• 30:39Shawn Ryan?

  Good deal.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  That is a miracle. Yeah. Everybody's, you know, on different sides of political issues and Christmas always is a little bit of a.

• 30:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay. There it is. Yeah. We talked about that at breakfast.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Well, that's everybody though.

• 30:52Shawn Ryan?

  On my side of the family.

• 30:55Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:58Shawn Ryan?

  Always interesting times.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Was unique growing up. I mean, just the same story told about the trans guy in the military is I was kind of.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  There wasn't a lot of attention from parents to kids. No, actually there was a ton, but it had to be divided by eight.

• 31:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Right?

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  So as a kid, you wanted to.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Get a, or get even before, like I would say, like, if you're like a.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Stripper, you're like, that attention is better than no attention. That may be unhealthy and that's not, but that is better than zero.

• 31:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Doing something that like, quote, performing for love. That transaction is better than no love.

• 31:48Shawn Ryan?

  When did that start for you?

• 31:51Shawn Ryan?

  When do you remember first acting out or doing, doing?

• 31:56Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, you, you wouldn't even know it was acting out. I guess you were just doing what you, like you wake up and you're like, I mean, I remember.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  Maybe nine or 10 or these, we, so we were homeschooled. So we kind of stuck in this. We were homeschooled and kind of lived in our community there. We didn't really, we played sports kind of in our local community, never really. And then we went to church. So that was our only really places where, and so at church, there was other people and there was girls there. And I, I remember as early as that age of going to church to see these girls that I knew and they loved me. What I thought, I mean, at the time, but they thought I was so funny. And I would always come with like stories or like things from the week. And they were like, where's John? We're looking for John. I went, when's John coming?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Is John gonna be here? And that was like my, I mean, you could say I've been going to that well still today.

• 32:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  The same, you know what I'm saying? I, and I, they loved me. They thought I was so funny and they couldn't wait to see me. Right? And you go, and now look what I do for a living now.

• 33:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  There you go. That checks out.

• 33:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it does. It does make sense.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:14Shawn Ryan?

  Would you, I mean, did you feel, were you tight with your dad? Are you still tight with your dad?

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, me and my dad, or we talk. It's, it's, uh, my brother was more, my brother, it's funny because he builds homes. And my dad loved to, uh, work in the garage and stuff like that. Is always building stuff and, you know, remodeling stuff. And I had no interest in that. I didn't really, I was into, um, I would say like that, what I do, like art, or maybe more like music or more theatrical type things. And he was always building and I would never want to do that. I would never want to go down there or like hang out.

• 33:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  And my brother, yet right younger than me, loved it. And I can remember every night that my, I could hear them in the garage, my dad and my brother like working or like, I don't know, whatever they were doing. And I didn't really, I didn't feel excluded in it. I feel that I could have gone down there whenever I wanted, but I just wasn't in it. Yeah, I didn't have no interest in doing that. And as, you know,

• 34:25Speaker 03

  A dad. He was, he, he, he would be like, I, I gotta go to work to provide for these eight kids. That's my way of like showing love is to like, look at, you got all the, you got shelter, you got meals, you got all that. And you know, as a kid, you, as an adult now, you're like, well, I needed a little bit more than that. But he, my dad does love comedy. Or he think, what he thinks what I do now is awesome.

• 34:57Shawn Ryan?

  He likes it.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Awesome. Yeah. Which is like, we got something to connect with over that.

• 35:04Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause he's a preacher. And so he was, he's kind of helped me in a lot of ways in the comedy. Like I remember he told me one time, he's like, I looked up and I saw this sign at a restaurant and it said, open 24 hours. And he goes, yeah, to me it's open 24 hours, but to the crowd, it's open 24 hours. Cause you're looking at the sign.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Does that make sense? Like simple things like that, that he was teaching me about public speaking or like how to, I'm looking at the sign and it goes open 24 hours, but to the, to you watching, the sign goes this way.

• 35:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Things like that, that he's like, yeah, he always kind of had some like tips and like things that would help me early on in comedy. And I think in a lot of ways, I said the things about church that he kind of couldn't say.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Cause he had all the same kind of.

• 35:57Shawn Ryan?

  He appreciated that.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. He, he liked that I was saying it.

• 36:00Shawn Ryan?

  What it like, what, do you have anything in particular?

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Man, I would, I mean.

• 36:05Shawn Ryan?

  You have so much content out there. It's hard for me to.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  I remember early on, and this is when I was at church in, in Colorado, I did the, I did the Christmas party at the church. And I go, is it just me or are all these female worship leaders like very attractive?

• 36:26Speaker 03

  And that, it was just like, how do you, can you say that? You know what I'm saying? It's like, I can't believe he just said something out loud that I know everyone in here has thought. All these women that were like singing were knockout gorgeous. And that's like, you can't say that.

• 36:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  But I said it and they were just like.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  And no one disagreed, by the way, no one disagreed, but they were like, dude, that is wild. And I did an impersonation of the guy that was hiring the women to sing. And I was like, oh, not hot enough. Or like, that's so like, out of bounds, you understand, for like, that culture.

• 37:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  And that's kind of what, that's kind of the, it was things like that, that if you, you've, obviously, people in just comedy, that's not a dirty joke, but it, whatever, what makes something dirty is, is, it goes beyond what they're allowed to say. Like, there's jokes in the military that you're like, I can't believe he said that.

• 37:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  It's like, that's, that's the beauty of comedy. See, it's true, but it's wrapped up in a humor enough that it can be digestible.

• 37:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:34Shawn Ryan?

  Makes, uh, makes a lot of sense. But, so you weren't, uh, you weren't after your parents' attention. You were after your peers.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Any attention.

• 37:44Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, um, I mean, I think I, at the time, it was, because I see my brother, who was, who doesn't, uh, at least outwardly desire it or have the need for it as much as I do. Because that, that need was always kind of met.

• 38:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Does that make sense?

• 38:03Shawn Ryan?

  It does.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that he was kind of like, I'm, I'm, I'm good, I'm stable. I'm, and my, my girlfriend, who has a great relationship with her dad, I always say, I'm so thankful to him and her for that, because that solved a lot for me in that relationship, you know what I'm saying? There you go. Man, that, that's such a need, everybody has a need somehow. But if that's kind of, I mean, could you imagine waking up and having no needs? Like, you were good. Like, the definition of an addict is like, at the deepest, is

• 38:44Speaker 03

  like, I gotta wake up and I gotta, I have so, these, like, I gotta find the needs, I gotta, I gotta satiate these voices, or I went through alcohol or drugs or whatever. I, I'll steal, I'll rob, I'll kill, I gotta get it. Versus someone that was...

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Complete.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  I don't even know if that person exists.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  That you can go do great work on the earth, but you don't need. You hope the podcast does well. And you want to do, you want to be proud of what you're wearing. You need outside affirmation, but if it doesn't, you.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Doesn't affect who you are as a person.

• 39:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  If everyone on the internet was screaming that you were.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  A liar, a cheater, then you'd be like, well, I'm, I'm still.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  I don't know if that person exists. I never met him.

• 39:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me neither.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  They don't, they, everybody kind of needs it some, some way.

• 39:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you, and we've talked before about how you, you want to. Whether it's in the military or even this podcast, you want it to do well. Right?

• 39:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know if that's all attention. You know what I mean?

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Well, like you look at the, like Michael Jordan or like Tiger Woods. And you read some of those stories about. Their relationships with their parents and their, and Tiger Woods was.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  You know, up as a teen putting at night until like his hands are bleeding. And Michael Jordan just. Trying to get his dad, his dad loved that he played basketball and trying to be the best at it for his, right?

• 40:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  And then Tiger Woods.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Both of their fathers had passed away and then they kind of. It shook their whole foundation.

• 40:41Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  You know, because they didn't know what quite what, when did Michael Jordan, remember his dad got shot?

• 40:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Remember that?

• 40:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  And after that, he was like, well, maybe I'll. His whole world crumbled because he was like, I'm trying to maybe if I get. Four championships or five, then maybe whatever this mythical illusion that your dad would.

• 41:02Shawn Ryan?

  Be proud of you.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Maybe if I got this and then, and then of course.

• 41:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  He got shot and then he goes, well, I don't.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  What's?

• 41:15Shawn Ryan?

  What's the point?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  What do we do? Why even wake up? What's the point now? Right?

• 41:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  I understand that kind of

• 41:23Speaker 03

  place of confusion where you go, I don't even know what because you lived your whole life for that.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  And now that's gone and you go, well, you know, what's the point of waking up?

• 41:38Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to figure out

• 41:43Shawn Ryan?

  the direction that just you wants to go without all of the external influences and, and, and desires and all of that. And, um, so, yeah, it's, it's

• 41:58Speaker 03

  And if you could eliminate all of those things, but you, they're still so

• 42:03Speaker 03

  intertwined into your psyche and into your, into that you, you, no one's like my, I remember talking to my financial advisor at, we were sitting backstage at the Opry like two years ago and she was kind of looking at the where I was in life and the, and the income. And she goes, John, you're, you're, you're free.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  You can do whatever you want. So you don't, you don't even have to work anymore. You are free. So tomorrow,

• 42:35Speaker 03

  what would you like to do?

• 42:39Speaker 03

  That's, that's crazy, dude, right?

• 42:42Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any idea?

• 42:44Speaker 03

  What I wanted to do?

• 42:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Well, like, well, like, I was like, we're all

• 42:51Speaker 03

  working to, first of all, you gotta eat. Everybody's gotta eat and they gotta have shelter. So that's the kind of, it's kind of short term you gotta cover. But then once you, once you

• 43:01Speaker 03

  I, I had a bunch of these things that I wanted to make creatively and comically that, that I knew were not commercially going to be successful. And I made, I made them last year. Cause I was like, oh, you

• 43:17Speaker 03

  You can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. What do you want to do? And I was like,

• 43:25Speaker 03

  oh, I wanted to make this show called, it's called First Time Visitors on my YouTube where we just go to churches. We go to all of them. Cause I grew up

• 43:35Speaker 03

  at the Atlanta Vineyard was the church and we probably passed on the way to my church, we passed 20 churches, maybe 30 on the way to mine. And these, we weren't allowed to go to those, weren't allowed to go to those youth groups. These guys are preaching the wrong religion. They're, they, they don't tuck their shirts in. They, these guys drank. These are not the right ones. Ours is the right one. So after my whole life got shaken up in 2019, they're being canceled. I go, well, what is the truth here? Let's go to, let's go to Catholic church. Let's go to Pentecostal church. Let's go to a black church. We go to an Asian church. Let's go to church in South America.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  What are they doing in there? Cause I wasn't even, I was forbidden to go to them. And you go into them, just like we talked earlier and you go, oh, these are, these are good. These are good people, just like, just like we're trying to be. Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  How would you approach them? I mean, what was?

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Well, we would go, so I started doing it on my Instagram story. This is what you wanted to do? Yeah. When you, when your financial advisor? You can do whatever you want. This is what you wanted to do? And I go,

• 44:50Speaker 03

  what is going on in, in the

• 44:56Speaker 03

  Anglican church? I drive past it every, it's at 9:00 AM, Sunday morning. Never been in there. 30 years, never been in there. What are they doing in there? This is a black church, Salem Creek Missionary Baptist Church. There's a primitive church. They're all within a mile from me. There's a Mormon church. There's a Jehovah's Witness church. And you go, I wonder what they're doing in there.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  There's a Scientology church right by my house. Have you gone in? No, I haven't gone in. I was just gonna ask you if you went to a Scientology church. Well, I'm scared to go in there because they're not, they don't have a service. There's not like a Sunday morning meeting. Okay. There's a bunch of classes, so you can't just go in. Yeah. So, but if, if, what are they doing in the, in, in, according to the way I grew up? Mormons are not Christian. And Jehovah's Witnesses are not Christian, but Catholics

• 45:55Speaker 03

  kind of are Christian to to how I was raised. I don't believe it anymore, but but I would never, I would be, I would not be allowed to date a Catholic.

• 46:02Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 46:02Speaker 03

  No, never.

• 46:04Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Never, dude.

• 46:05Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 46:06Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 46:07Shawn Ryan?

  Just curious.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  I don't, yeah, I was never.

• 46:08Shawn Ryan?

  I grew up Catholic.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, really?

• 46:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  They were, it was, it was other than. And we were just.

• 46:15Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you go, because we went over to

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Morocco. I went on a Christian mission to Morocco in college, which is Muslim. It's in Northern Africa. And I was like, wait. And I met so many nice people there and so many friendly people in the culture. And so I believe when I go, wait, so my religion, according to my religion, all these people are going to hell.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Right? And I was like, wait, but these aren't like,

• 46:51Speaker 03

  these are regular people. Or they're like me, or they got kids, they like sports. We're talking about, I'm like, all right. It just like rattles you a little bit because you always think they're other than, or they're, you know, they're like, oh.

• 47:07Shawn Ryan?

  I'm really interested in this.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:09Shawn Ryan?

  We, we.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  So am I.

• 47:10Shawn Ryan?

  I told you at breakfast that I'm pretty, I'm relatively new to faith. And, you know, one of the things, and I'm excited to be here, by the way.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 47:20Shawn Ryan?

  You know, one of the first things that I noticed about, about going public about, when you, when you go public and say, hey, you know, Jesus is my savior. It like.

• 47:37Shawn Ryan?

  Instantaneously.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:41Shawn Ryan?

  There's like a switch in people's brains that go, oh, now I can freely judge you and tell you exactly how you want to live and how everything you're doing is completely fucked.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:51Shawn Ryan?

  And you don't belong in Christianity. And if you don't believe in Jesus and Christianity the way I do, then you're a piece of shit. And, uh, and man, I tell you, it didn't take long. It did not take long for that to happen.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  A warm welcome.

• 48:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, right?

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:08Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, but where does that like, where does that come from? Because, you know, and I have, I have a few different mentors.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:16Shawn Ryan?

  And they all have different ideas.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:19Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, and different, um, perspectives on things that I have questions about. And I like to hear a lot of perspectives.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:27Shawn Ryan?

  Because it helps me develop my own. But, you know, the one thing that everybody seems to agree upon, that, that, that of the ones that I like to talk to is that it's, it's your relationship. It is your relationship with Jesus. It's your relationship with God. And so what is it, you know, you grew up in this, that's, um, this is a serious question. What is it that, that, that, that this, this group of Christians, what is it that they think that they can just judge everybody? I mean, the whole thing in the Bible is don't judge.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's in there. That's one of the main themes.

• 49:08Shawn Ryan?

  Why are they judging everything?

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:13Shawn Ryan?

  Just drives people away.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, because there, there's so, I mean, from my house to your house, there's, I'll pass 50 churches on the way home.

• 49:23Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Right? But we live in the South. So why, why is there one across the street from the other one? Well, this guy decided. Hey, instead of khakis, I'm gonna start wearing jeans. And somebody, same as what they did to you, they go, jeans is not respectful to the, right? And he goes, ah, I don't, that doesn't, to me, that doesn't, I don't feel any conviction about that. I can love Jesus and wear jeans. All right, I'm gonna go start my own.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Now, we're at the jeans church, and this guy goes, dude, we're gonna have, I think we're gonna have like electric guitar, like a tar solo. And those people go, that seems

• 50:08Speaker 03

  too far for us. The Bible that I, I don't, this is more of a sacred, like taking your hat off during prayer. Some people go, well, right? It's just a sign of respect, a sign of, and this one goes, well, I don't, I don't, I'm not doing that. As he goes, well, you're not under this, because you have to live.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  In the box. It's, but everybody has their own box. Everybody has their own box that you decided, if you decided, hey, in my box, someone cannot be gay and be Christian.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  All right, so any, any, any of that behavior is, other than it's, you can judge it, right? So somebody says, I'm gay and I'm a Christian.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  What, right? It's, they're gonna go, all right, well, we, right, or, or whatever, and I'm a Christian, or I cuss and I'm a Christian. Some people go, you can't be, you can't say the F word and be Christian. I'm sure you've heard from these people. Oh, I.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  And, and the short amount of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you go, I didn't, that's not, I didn't grow up like that. And, and if you were like, well, I used to cuss way more, and now I cuss less, or whatever, the, whatever the continuum you're on of, of trying to be a more moral, you're like, I'm doing great. And somebody that doesn't ever cuss is like, you're bad for the brand.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Which is, that's why there's so much division among, in the faith, because it, to a lot of people, you're a great person, and I've experienced the same, and then to a lot of people, you're a bad guy. And you're like, wait.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  What? What?

• 51:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's very confused. Like the military, you're all on the same team, for the most part, fighting the enemy. And you're like, the Pentecostals don't like the Presbyterians. You're like, oh, I thought we were all...

• 52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think religion is an indoctrination?

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Well, yes. And I've heard a lot of, from religious people, I've heard a lot of, we don't want to indoctrinate the kids, right? With drag shows at school, or some of the books, right? Or the, a lot of the gender conversations. We don't want to indoctrinate the kids. Well, I was indoctrinated.

• 52:46Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  Heavily. I had to go to church every Sunday. I know, memorized so many Bible stories, so many, all the scripture, the youth camps. I was forced to go to them. Now, I, you would say, you're indoctrinating your children currently. You would say, for good. Right?

• 53:12Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  You're telling them, hey, this is what I, what you and your wife have passing along to them. This is the way to live, that we have found this the most successful. We are going to pass that on to you. So, work hard, don't lie, show up for school. And somebody else that doesn't, they'll parent that doesn't, hey, if you're having a mental health day, or you're having a tough time, don't go to school. We, I never had a sick day, or a, never missed a day of work, ever. That was not what we did in our family.

• 53:48Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  You just didn't, you told them that you were going to show. I never quit any kind of sport. You can, you said you were going to do it. And then if another parent currently doesn't believe that, they will indoctrinate their, everybody's indoctrinated.

• 54:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  You have to, to, to, there's no person that is out here that's not.

• 54:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, you're indoctrinated since birth.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  Yes, and even if it's not religion, the

• 54:19Shawn Ryan?

  No matter how

• 54:20Speaker 03

  patriotism.

• 54:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  Or like, you're indoctrinated to yours, like, well, I don't know, we always just stood for the flag and then there's other, obviously, there's people in the world that are like, we're against y'all. Well, this is my team.

• 54:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, and everybody's more, some people are more loyal to the flag than others.

• 54:39Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that, uh, see, I don't know what, what

• 54:44Shawn Ryan?

  what I'm trying to get at is there is, there is, and I do not know how to put this into words, but

• 54:56Shawn Ryan?

  there's religion, like Catholicism, like Protestant, like Jehovah's Witness, like Mormons.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:03Shawn Ryan?

  There's practice, and then there's actually just the truth, or what would you call it? You know, your relationship.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  They call it a religion versus a relationship is what I've heard about that a lot.

• 55:16Shawn Ryan?

  That's kind of what I'm getting at.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  So if you

• 55:19Shawn Ryan?

  At what point, so yeah, that's perfect.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you, if you say, hey, I got to, um, the five pillars of Islam or Catholicism, right? I got to be, to go to heaven, I'm not Catholic, but you got to be baptized, right? And, and you gotta be, you gotta give to the church, attend the church, do the perform the ritual, is there communion?

• 55:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, there's communion.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Like a lot of rituals.

• 55:45Shawn Ryan?

  There's reconciliation, there's

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Oh, confession.

• 55:48Shawn Ryan?

  All that kind of stuff.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, right, and then Islam has alms to the poor, pilgrimage to Mecca, the, the things that you have to do in the religion to be

• 56:02Speaker 03

  a member of it.

• 56:04Shawn Ryan?

  At what point did you kind of realize, or, or kind of push that aside, or have you?

• 56:14Speaker 03

  So in, so I started getting, I was making, basically, me showing up to church and trying to impress the girls. I was kind of on that road. I just started kind of doing the announcements at church, like being the funny guy, right? Around the church and I was in this like,

• 56:34Speaker 03

  you know, you're in with the pastor, or you're cool, or you have more clout around church, or you're a big deal when you go in there, right? It's like a social community. And I remember,

• 56:46Speaker 03

  I wrote a story about this in my book, about how

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I was, there's, I came up big in like the purity culture, where like no kissing until marriage, like sex is, if you go have sex, you're, you're, you'll, you're gonna die. God hates that, because our parents so scared of it, right? It's the one thing that is, don't do it, never kiss a girl, never, right? So

• 57:11Speaker 03

  that was how I was raised, like, no, there's a lot of like checking in.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  I remember going to like, we'd have to go to church early on Sunday mornings and report to the, our pastor, if we had like masturbated or looked at porn that week. It's like a, kind of a check-in. And if,

• 57:35Speaker 03

  if you had, if you had, you were kind of like, it's not good, but if you didn't, you were like, these were things that kind of committed, these were communicated kind of subtly, right? That you're like, the purity is important to be a virgin till marriage, all these type of things, so.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Then I started putting these, these videos that I was making at church, at church, I started putting on YouTube.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  And that's how my career, like all the jokes that I was, that I was telling you about going to church, and I was like, kind of irreverent about the whole thing, started to get traction outside of my church community. And then

• 58:20Speaker 03

  It all kind of, it kind of blew up where every people recognized me on the street. What's up? Are you the guy that makes those videos? And then I started touring as a comedian, but I was like drinking a bunch. And like I was, it was kind of.

• 58:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 58:39Shawn Ryan?

  Before we get into the.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I went from 10 years old to 30.

• 58:42Shawn Ryan?

  Debauchery.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, what happened?

• 58:45Shawn Ryan?

  So, so at 10 years old, you started making jokes and all this.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, just making, well, I would see like,

• 58:56Speaker 03

  like I knew, like, let's say, for example, like the, the, the church was trying to raise money. Cause I knew my dad was the pastor and he was like, we need to raise money for this building project or this wing of this or whatever. And then I would see like a sermon on like the importance of giving. And I'd be like, wait, I knew the behind the scenes of it. So I was like, wait, I know God didn't tell you this. I know that the, you know, I know that we need money for the thing. And so I would see the backside of it and the front side of it. And what they were saying to the people, but I was at home. And I was like, and so these are kind of things that I was just like whispering to my buddies.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  I were like, look at this, just kind of like, I didn't. And so that was the basis of all my joke, like one of the first video that ever went viral for me was this video called Christian Girl Instagram. So there's a phenomenon on Instagram where Christian mostly would women would do it where they would, their Bible would be open. They'd have a highlighter, they'd be like, mm, and they were there with a cup of coffee with like a journal and like everything was ornately like, look how good of a Christian I am. And the video was like, here's how to make the best to get the most likes. Here's how to make the best arrange the best photo.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  Cause it was like, dude, I know you read the Bible for four minutes and this photo took 30 minutes.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  And everybody was like, holy shit, dude. Like, I can't believe this exists. I can't believe this video, it was like a fake tutorial about how to get more likes on your Bible Instagram photo. And it was such like a. And people were so hurt by it because people did it and it was true. Yeah. And the truth is the only thing that's ever offensive. And it was at the time, this is, it was like, it was jokes like that, that you were like,

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  I can't believe this guy, this exists out loud now.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  And so I would, I just went down on that road to not, I mean, but I did it from the inside because I'm still obviously a believer and I, we're very active in my church now. It's like, I'm not pointing fingers at y'all. I'm like, we're, this group is nuts. Yeah. But I love them and I'm still in this group. How, how old were you when you started that? I mean,

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  probably, I was always, I was always active in church and doing it kind of like privately, kind of like, this guy. Like I remember I showed up at church and they had a,

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  the, the, the reserved parking spots for the pastors all up front. And I was, I did a fake pastor welcome videos, like you're welcome to our church, like we're here to serve. Okay, sorry, not, don't worry about the sign, but we are here just like Jesus to put other people in front of ourselves. And then it kept panning over to the sign of like, all right, now, you know what I'm saying? You're like, okay, well, not, okay, sorry. This is just for, I didn't mean this, but what, what I'm saying is that we welcome everyone and your guests are important. And it kept, right? And I remember a guy

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  came, a guy came to my show, a pastor came to my show and he came to the meet and greet one time and he goes, he had a reserved parking spot for the pastor and he signed it. And he goes, I just want to give this to you. And we, I was so moved by your message that we took our pastor parking spots down.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  So I was always that, I do it professionally now, but I was always that guy. Yeah. Just being like, Calling it out. Kind of, yeah. And then you go, hmm, that doesn't,

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  that doesn't make sense. Or, and it was like, I had this, uh, video called private jet pastor, where I was like a pastor on a private jet. And I was like, we rented a jet and I was like, listen, we need money. No, not, it's not for me. I need to get, you know what I'm saying? It's just like,

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  That was the best way that I knew how and still is, by the way, to, to expose it. Is to make, make light of it.

• 1:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  To be like, this pastor, that's not gonna go anywhere, but you make it so funny. That you're like, gosh, dude, this is, it's so true, though. It's so, and that's what everybody kind of gravitated around that. And, and then it was, but it was like. I was still in it, though.

• 1:03:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  So I'm still in the. You know, the purity culture is what we call, there was, there was like a. When we were 12, 13, we went to this ceremony, it's called True Love Ways, where you agree to, you sign a certificate and agree to be a virgin until marriage. And you all, now I have a joke about it now at my show, because I go. We all signed that at 12 and 13, and some of us didn't know how hot we were gonna go on to be. So like, I go, no, I go, this guy plays the flute and he collects Pokemon cards. I'm on the same virginity contract. I got skills, or like, I got, I turned out to be popular. And it's like, it's a joke, obviously, but it's like.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  All these things are, I mean, there's things about the military that you go, that, that was crazy.

• 1:04:27Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  But you love it, and you would do anything for the, look, I mean, you would do what the, that, time in the military, you'd, you'd do anything for those guys, but also. You've even made jokes on here, like, I don't know if they're that smart over there.

• 1:04:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  But you're one of them. That's why you can say that.

• 1:04:44Shawn Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  If somebody from another, if somebody from somewhere else was making fun of our military that they weren't very smart, you would be pissed at them.

• 1:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  Probably right.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you're allowed to, because we know that you, you almost gave your life for it. So you're allowed to.

• 1:05:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. So you're craving attention and comedy started at about age nine to 10.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, informally. I mean, I always remember being, all my family would say, well, you were so shy. But whenever you would tell stories, they would just be. You were shy, you were timid. Shy, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still am, still am a pretty introverted. I mean, do it on stage, but that's not, that's for, I don't, whenever I would go out anywhere, I don't wanna attract attention or be, I wanna, yeah, keep to myself. I do it professionally, obviously, but yeah, it was always. I couldn't really.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Just like we talked about this whole time, I couldn't make sense of a lot of things. And I go, that doesn't, what you say, I remember in, in, I went to, I was homeschooled and then I went to a small Christian school. And they said, you gotta tuck your shirt in. You gotta tuck your shirt in, cause that's the, whatever the rule is. That didn't make any sense to me. And I probably got detentions and written up and suspended so many times, cause I just didn't, I didn't agree with it. I didn't, I didn't think that was a good rule.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  If he's like, hey, nobody can bring a gun to school, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. Or no, or you gotta show up on time, you gotta be in here at eight o'clock, cause that's when the, the bell rings. Yeah, that makes sense, that scene, but that didn't make sense to me. And I never, I was grew up very.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Very legalistic and drinking alcohol, sex and alcohol were the, were the.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  No, we, I mean, my parents don't drink, still have never drank, uh, but everyone in my, all my siblings do, which is funny. But I remember at twenty two, I went to this Christian internship. And the rule was no drinking. And that's when I started drinking. No kidding? Cause I go, no, I don't, I'm twenty one, I can do, I, the law says that I'm allowed to, and I don't agree with this. And I'm not, not doing that. Yeah. Not doing that. Yeah. So you got a problem with authority? Yeah, dude. But that's what comedy is. That's what comedy is. They go, my not.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  I have this, uh.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Downtown Nashville, it's funny because everything, all this paid parking now, everywhere you gotta pay for parking everywhere. And it used to be in 2018, there was no paid parking anywhere. And now they have the barcodes, you know, the QR codes and you just gotta, and I go, I'm not, I'm just gonna start not paying. I'm never gonna pay. And I go, I'm gonna pay the tickets. If I get them, I'll pay the tickets. And I bet over the course of a year, that will be cheaper. I mean, I'm down there three times a week or anywhere and I go, I just don't pay it.

• 1:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  What's cheaper?

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, well, currently, I mean, I track it on my, I track it in my glove box on my, a piece of paper. And I'm like currently plus $320 or something like that. It's January, so we just started the year.

• 1:08:20Shawn Ryan?

  By not paying it?

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  By not paying.

• 1:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  You're coming out ahead.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, way ahead, way ahead.

• 1:08:23Shawn Ryan?

  I'm doing this. Close all the time you save just by like, oh, wait, what chapter do I have to download? Who do I have to text?

• 1:08:30Speaker 03

  Who do I, what do I gotta say? Yes, I just don't pay any of them.

• 1:08:34Shawn Ryan?

  And you've never been towed?

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  Once.

• 1:08:36Shawn Ryan?

  One time?

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  I got towed once and I got booted once.

• 1:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  But so I towed once, that was $3.50 and I got booted once, it was 75 bucks. And I never pay. But again, not, that would be, I mean, it's probably a terrible, if somebody's watching this, like, I'm gonna start doing that. I mean.

• 1:08:55Shawn Ryan?

  Which you just set a trend.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I don't like, I don't like, if you, like, if you, from a, from a, let's say, a moral standpoint, is, is, is that stealing?

• 1:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  In terms of, back to your, in terms of, would, all right, nobody would consider that to be not Christian. According to what we've talked about, some people, some Christians have a problem with your behavior, some don't, right? So if you.

• 1:09:28Speaker 03

  You've held somebody up and took their wallet. That's stealing, right? If somebody, if you watch someone else's Netflix, you take their password and watch movies. Is that stealing? Technically, it is. That is stealing, but culturally, that is very accepted. Right? So what you're talking about in terms of morality, is that stealing or no? If you go to Chipotle and order a water cup and you put a Sprite in there, is that stealing or no? That is stealing. And the Bible says, thou shalt not steal, but we don't take that serious.

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  If you buy a pair of shoes, wear them one night for an event, return them, or not a pair of shoes. Let's say a jacket, return it. I used to buy props for videos all the time. I need a couch, go buy it. I don't like this couch, return it. Is that stealing?

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  That's borrowing. Some would say, because the company is not losing because you're returning. But if everyone did that, the company would be out of business. But Walmart, they have theft. They understand a certain percentage of their products are, will be stolen. That's built into the price. Yep. So morally, you could justify that.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  And that's why there's a church on every block, because you would say, well, I would never do that. And they go, I don't know, we don't have a problem with it.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  And you're like, but that, my box does not allow for that. My box does not allow. I know there's, they're Pentecostal, they gotta wear full-length jean skirts. The women have to wear skirts because any type of skin showing is, or you know, there's the Muslims that have the whole, you've seen them in the airport, the full wrapped, everything. So you're telling me, every one of my shows, every weekend, there's, there's women, there's Pentecostal women in my hair that, or not in my hair, in my show that have never cut their hair. They're in my show, not in now, in 2024. So you're telling me the God

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  that you've claimed to give your life to has mandated that you not cut your hair?

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  And they don't wear makeup either.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  And you get up every day and wear a skirt and don't cut your hair and don't wear makeup. We're Amish people. I grew up Mennonite. My parents were Mennonite, they made a Mennonite college.

• 1:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  You grew up Mennonite?

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  My parents did. I did not. My parents left the Mennonite church to go to what you would call a Pentecostal church.

• 1:12:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  So, but the Mennonite broke away from the Amish. And there's Amish people, there's thousands of them in this country that drive a horse and buggy. Have you ever seen them?

• 1:12:32Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. I see them around here all the time.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  All the time. And that's a religion. So you're telling me

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  that the God that you serve

• 1:12:46Speaker 03

  does not allow an engine or a hairdryer or a generator? Or you're pedaling your bike to work?

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  And a motorcycle, you could get there way easier, make more, and they said, no, this is the way we're choosing to live.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  And that's hard. Is that not?

• 1:13:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  On the surface, you drive by and you go, oh, that's cute, right? That's cute. They got a horse and buggy in there. Like, no.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  They don't have a cellphone because of their religion.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  And everybody just kind of goes, oh, whatever. I go, no, not whatever. That's wild. But then we're down there, we go Christmas amongst the Amish every year. We go down in Sarasota, Florida, and we Christmas in that community because we're kind of still in that community. And they're like, my sister-in-law, she goes, do you think they see us with all their cellphones and cars? And I go, dude, they're way happier than we are.

• 1:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Way happier. Way happier. So you might go, well, who's winning here?

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  So your kids want to be on your iPhone, on their iPhone, but not if you were like, hey, an hour is long enough.

• 1:14:13Speaker 03

  Do you not?

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  So you've said this is too much to them.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  You're just farther along down on the scale.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  If they want to sit and eat Sour Patch Kids and watch the iPhone all day, you would not allow that.

• 1:14:30Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  Because why?

• 1:14:36Shawn Ryan?

  Because when you give your phone to a kid, you're not giving your kid access to the world, you're giving the world access to your kid.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're not ready for that. So all the stuff that we know or learn or have exposed about whatever, are we, are we, I envy the Amish people sometimes.

• 1:14:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you.

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  Don't you?

• 1:15:01Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  I'm like, man, I'm trying to live like y'all. I'm trying to live like y'all. They all, they at night, they all go out and they play volleyball.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  And everyone sits around and watches and they just drink coffee. No one's, there's no police.

• 1:15:17Shawn Ryan?

  And they're probably all in the moment.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  All in the moment, no cell phones, no alcohol. I envy, I'm, I'm trying to be like, y'all, we're not winning by having all this other stuff.

• 1:15:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. If you, I wonder what the average life expectancy of an Amish person is.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  Well, they came out and said there, there's no history of, uh,

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  most of them don't get vaccines or anything like that, not the COVID vaccine, just any of them.

• 1:15:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  And there's no, there's no

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  autism. This is going to be a conspiracy theory, but there's no, there's no disease.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Amen. I just.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  That's not verified. Someone's going to fact check me on that. That's not totally true, obviously, but there's like, they're like, those are people are,

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  they're doing it right.

• 1:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  Not us.

• 1:16:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, there's a, have you seen that, I can't remember if it's on Netflix or Amazon or whatever streaming platform, it's lived to a hundred or something.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  That was pretty interesting.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Shawn Ryan?

  Some simple lives.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  About what, yeah, what you're putting in your body and what you're doing and what you're, yeah.

• 1:16:23Shawn Ryan?

  The stress.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  And yeah. And it'll, it will.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  It will, it will communicate to you that it is not,

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  it can't do what you're asking it to do, you know? It will, the body, it does have limitations and you can, yeah. The idea, the Amish,

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  they get up and they put their hands to the, to the ground and work and plow and then come in and have a dinner and sit around with the family and everybody talks to each other and is known and is seen. Obviously, the Amish community, there's problems, and I don't speak for them, by the way. But you go,

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  man, whoever's making fun of them, it's not gonna be me. Yeah. Not gonna be me, bro. Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  You're a philosophical human. That's pretty. I try to,

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  somebody said, uh, a comedian, like, you know, a lot of comedians are like depressed or a lot of comedians commit suicide or I think a lot of everybody commits suicide. We just hear about the comedians, a comedian, but we

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  go around all day and we take everything in, take everything, just the world, the news, the people being treated unfairly, lies, and we try to

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  verbalize it as a rainbow, what everybody can, it's helpful to people and sometimes

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  you say I'm a phys, uh, what'd you say it was? Philosophical. Sometimes it, too much goes in and it doesn't. I just, I just like, I'm like very, like a very, very, very sensitive to

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  the world and I just, I, everything, I, I receive everything. Why does he doing that? What's going on here? What's going, and then I just, where some people get just. How do you offload that? I just went to, well, I mean.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Maybe you don't. Maybe I don't, yeah. I mean, comedy would be the outlet for it, but I have like,

• 1:18:46Speaker 03

  I have three word documents on my desktop, on my phone, on my computer. There's a green, yellow and red. So I got a show this weekend in Nashville. I do about an hour of material. Green is like what's working, right? Yellow is like what's a joke that's not really polished up yet. It's not really done. It's kind of in the, there's some funny parts of it, but it's not done. And then red, red is jokes that I've written and tried and they don't work.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  So the green document is probably

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  six pages. The yellow document is probably 14 pages. The red document, well over a thousand pages. Interesting. Well, and I never deleted a thought ever. Well, and I write them in my phone. And then I articulate it, kind of write it and then just,

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  and it's all back there. And there's, everyone's like, how do you memorize? An hour, I was like, I don't have to memorize it. It's all

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  in there all day, all day, every day.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  Have you thought about offloading any of you?

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  About the, well, so if I have a,

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think of a, like we have a podcast that we do every week, obviously. And you go, you talk about,

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  that doesn't make sense. And we make fun of something, right? We make, we make light of something to help us deal with it. This guy, instead of,

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  A situation where there's probably a healthier way to deal with it. We get, I get on this guy on the news, or this politician, or this whoever is. Ah, that drives me crazy. Get on, talk about it, have a good laugh, post the video, everybody laughs at it. You're like, alright. I feel better. Like, I used to have a joke about how, I used to have a joke, speaking of what we talked about earlier. I was like, I don't know anything about tools, or manual labor. And I said, I have, I used to have a joke in my show for the longest time. I go, my dad, my car was smoking one time, and my dad goes, let me check the engine. And I popped the trunk. And it's not in the trunk, but yeah.

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

  And then I go, my dad goes, I can fix this, go get me the Phillips. And I said, and I came back with the neighbors. I go, how are they gonna help us? Right? So, but that, but based on what we've already talked about on this podcast, that comes from a real place of pain. Right? Yeah. I, I, I have a sincere insecurity about not knowing how to do stuff. If me and you were like, we're grilling out together, let's go start the grill. I don't, it's funny, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to check the propane, or turn on the thing.

• 1:22:03Speaker 03

  I just, I don't, if somebody was like, hey, go check the engine, or the car, put in some fluid. I just don't know how to do it. And I've never learned, and it's a, it's a legitimate insecurity. Really? But I have a joke in my show, I say, my girlfriend, she brought me her car, and she's like, hey, can you fix this? And there was a tire, it was a, the light on the dash was a tire with a lightning bolt in it. And I was like, I don't think that tire's getting electricity. And that's, that, that joke helps me feel better. Yeah. Cause everybody laughs at it, and it's all silly. Now I go, ah.

• 1:22:46Speaker 03

  And that's what comedy is, you take, that's a real insecurity, or me at times being, not being poor, or, or not being able to attract women, right? And you make... A joke of it, everybody laughs and you're like, okay, I'm right. Right. And then it's, it's, it absolves itself. Now that security, that insecurity still does exist, but that certainly helps me with it. Yeah. So you. If you asked me, hey, let's go out into my, let's go out into the garage and we're gonna look at my,

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  I don't know. I don't know what's going, I don't know cars. I like to drive them, but I don't know anything about them. And so if I go to the mechanic and he's like, oh, you're gonna, it's gonna be 300 for this, 400 for this. I made a joke in my show about how the guy came over to paint my house, to paint the three interior rooms. And I was like, legitimately, is this $300 or 30,000?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  I don't know. I just don't know.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Like if he was like, hey, it's gonna be 16 grand for this, I'd be like,

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  I might be like, that seems like a lot, but I would be like, all right. And it's a real insecurity, but I make, make light of it and I feel better. Yeah. And that's a lot of people, by the way, if you're, if you're at your office and your boss comes in and with this HR thing and you're like, you sit there and you go, you wanna have your job, right? So you go, okay. And then you and the guy in the cubicle, you go, this. Right?

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  It's a coping mechanism, but for real pain though. Yeah. And that's every, any great comedian, that's what he's doing. Interesting. That's what he's doing for sure. I was at a, I sat at a show with,

• 1:24:39Speaker 03

  Tim Hawkins, who's a comedian, a buddy of mine. I was at his show and he's, he's making a joke about a CPAP machine, wearing a CPAP machine. I've told this story before, about how it's not romantic. And you go, you ever been in your wife with a CPAP machine? He's like, maybe, he's like, I'd look like Darth Vader trying to initiate sex or whatever, whatever the joke is. And I saw, I was kinda side stage and I looked out in the crowd and there was an older couple and they were. Dude, undone, laughing at this joke, just undone. Now, why?

• 1:25:13Shawn Ryan?

  They can relate to it.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  Yes, dude, and it was a real source of either blocking intimacy in the bedroom or uncomfortability or insecurity for him to have to wear it because he snores. And this, this joke, I witnessed it. What this joke did for them freed them. Because he was, he's embarrassed by it. The dad, you got a sleep apnea, you got to wear this thing. And the wife is like, well, this is like, it's uncomfortable, but it's human. It's life. And they didn't know how to, it's a, it's a barrier to, and man, he made this joke. And they were crying, dude.

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  And I go, God, what you've just done for that, for that couple? You cannot repay.

• 1:26:02Shawn Ryan?

  Do you see that a lot up there?

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  Yes, all day.

• 1:26:05Shawn Ryan?

  You got anything that's hit you the hardest? That really is just ingrained in you?

• 1:26:10Speaker 03

  Uh, man, I mean, there's so many, that my jokes?

• 1:26:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you.

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, there's, I mean. I used to have this joke about, the people were like, about, about, um, the military. And I go, I wake up every day and I hope we don't go to war because like, if we had to have a draft, if we had to have a draft, I go, you realize civil war, or it was 18 to 25 year old men. If we had to do that today, we're done. I go, we, it's like, like, I mean, like, you ever been shot? No, I've been triggered. It's like the, you're like, oh, God. And everybody's, everybody's dying.

• 1:26:57Speaker 03

  And they were like, all right, man, tomorrow we march. And I get down behind the stool and was like, is that? Is that ragweed out there? Can we delay the battle till April? Because my allergies are really flaring up. And it's like, I haven't seen the enemy, but they've tweeted me some very hurtful things. And like, and everybody's like, oh, my gosh. That's so funny, because not probably related to military, but they've looked around at 18 to 25 year old men.

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  That's what you see. Yeah, and it's no knock. It's not knock on the military. It's just like a guy that's in his 60s looks at it and goes. And that's that probably. That has been happening throughout the course of human history for forever. I'm sure the generation before you thought you were weak. You know what I'm saying? That's probably going on for forever. But you go. It, gosh, that's so therapeutic for me to hear. Because I've thought that in my head. And as I've never verbalized it like that. Or it's and it's so, that's the whole hour of the show. Yeah. And you go, you ever been to?

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  Have you ever been to McDonald's? Like, late at night and you pull and they make you pull up into that parking spot of shame? You know, it's like not. Like, we were not ready for what you were about to do here. Like, you gotta pull up. And you're like, it's not embarrassing to be there. But like. When Christ returns, you probably don't want to be there. It's just like the idea, it's like, it is a shameful experience. And you and that and that trash can at McDonald's comes up and comes over. Because they don't, you don't even want to get out of your car. They don't want people to see you. Just like, get rid of the evidence. Because it's like.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  It is shame, it's a shameful experience. You go, gosh, you don't want, it's not your proudest moment. Yeah. And you. Verbalize that in a way that lifts the shame. Or lifts lifts the. The societal burden of that. And I see a lot of comics that.

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  They are going through so much turmoil in their own personal life that you go into their comedy show and it's their therapy session. And I tell all the comics, younger comics, if you're gonna be great, you have to go into that comedy club or theater arena and lift the burden for them. You have to lift the burden for them. Those military tours that we've done, like you have to go in with humor and lift the burden. I've gone to comedy shows where I feel heavier leaving because the comic is depressed and broken up with his girlfriend, or maybe even racist in a little bit, or they're preaching

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  at you, or they have some kind of agenda and they're just like, and you go, versus, oh my gosh, dude, I can't, that's such a, I mean, there's so many transcendent comedy bits. When comedy's done well, you'll never forget it. It speaks to you so much.

• 1:29:55Shawn Ryan?

  When did you, when did your, when did you start? What age were you when you started?

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  Twenty-five.

• 1:30:01Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty-five years old?

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:03Shawn Ryan?

  What got you into it? I mean, we talked about the videos.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  So I went to, well, he's in the, he's big in the news now, but I was at a house party in Phoenix, Arizona, and I was walking to the bathroom and there was these two girls in the living room watching The Pimp Chronicles by Cat Williams. And I, he was wearing this green suit, and I looked over there and I was, I go, what is this? And he's so much control over that crowd and so much, he was preaching, he was preaching, he was saying truths, but in a way that was so digestible and so funny. I stood there, I didn't even sit down because I was like, I didn't know them, and I go, this is the, this is the wildest thing I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  This is the wildest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I was twenty.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  I was in my twenties, I had to bend in my twenties. And then I started, uh,

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  writing jokes. That's where the green, yellow, red came in, probably right then. No kidding. I started just, I had a piece of paper, I didn't have cell phones couldn't type notes in them and you could text with them and call, but I just started writing down things that I thought were funny. Just things that I thought were funny or just, they weren't even punchlines. They were just like, oh, that's weird. Or like,

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  what? Just inconsistencies that I saw in life, like the,

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  the first joke you'd ever come to is like, how come?

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  If you watch a commercial for a prescription, the side effects seem worse than what they're curing. Right? So be like, you cure this headache, but you have risk of pneumonia, loss of limbs, heart attack, death, and you're, death? But I didn't know, I'm not a professional comedian at the time, so I didn't know, I just go, huh? And I just wrote that. That seems weird. And then I just, and then in 2009,

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  I went to the, I lived at my parents, I lived with my parents. And I started going to open mic night, not to perform, just to go. So you watch a professional comedian, Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Burr, whoever you love, and you're like, I can never do that, but go to open mic. And you go, oh. And I didn't have the courage to do it. But I was just watching it and I would go every Tuesday and I would just watch and watch and I go, I'm better than these, these guys. I have to be. I know I'm better than these guys.

• 1:32:39Speaker 03

  And

• 1:32:41Speaker 03

  one, it was probably May of 2009, cause I, June 23rd, 2009 was the first time I ever did it. I went to the lady that was at the door, older woman, and I go, hey, I wanna,

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  I wanna do it.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  And she looks at me, I'll never forget, she goes, you wanna do comedy? I go, yeah, I wanna do it. How do I do it? And she goes, well.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  She goes, she looked down at her paper, looked at me, she said, what's your name? I go, John Crist. Then she goes, June 23rd. You got two minutes. You got two minutes to do comedy. And this, this comedy club seats 70 people. It's not big. And that was a month from when she told me. And she had seen me around enough to know I was not serious about it, but knew I would. And so they gave me two minutes. And I didn't, for that month, I didn't. I didn't sleep. I didn't barely eat. I couldn't, I just kept to myself. I was so like, I mean. The barrier to entry to comedy is an awesome job and you can do it, you could do it tonight. You could do it tonight. There's open mics in Franklin. You can go down there and they'll say, I'll give you, we'll give you five minutes.

• 1:33:48Speaker 03

  And they will introduce you as a comedian.

• 1:33:51Shawn Ryan?

  Where at in Franklin?

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  Anywhere. I mean, there's, there's a bunch from downtown Nashville. There's, there's open mics everywhere.

• 1:33:56Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean.

• 1:33:57Speaker 03

  Why would everyone not want to do it? It's scary. It's terrifying. It's terrifying.

• 1:34:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's where I was going is, you know, we had just talked about you being an introvert.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Shawn Ryan?

  So was that a sporadic decision or did you? Was that planned?

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  I mean, I think I, I don't. I'm trying, I've never been asked that. I'm trying to rectify that in my head because I don't, I don't. Gather that to be. It sounds crazy. I don't gather that to be an extroverted activity. It obviously is. I mean, I go now in front of. Thousands of people and I don't think anything of it. I'm not nervous now, but.

• 1:34:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:34:38Speaker 03

  But I, but I get off, I'll get off. Stage or something and we'll go into like a. Restaurant and they go, dude, send this, this is not what I asked for. He fries instead of tater tots. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying anything. You know, I don't want to. And now I'll, I'll talk bad about the waitress behind her back or something, you know? But I very, I don't, I don't, yeah. I don't want to attract any kind of attention. It's, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. But I went. The first. Time I did it, I remember.

• 1:35:15Speaker 03

  I mean, when someone new now comes into the green room, we know that they're new. They're terrified, terrified. And the guy goes, well, he goes, is it your first time? I go, yeah. And he goes, well, think about it this way. And I was throwing up. I threw up in the bathroom. Two minutes. And he goes, think about it this way, they can't kill you and they can't put you in jail. No matter what happens here, they cannot kill you and they cannot. I never forget that. He goes, they cannot kill you and they cannot put you in jail. And that gave me some kind of confidence, I guess. I was like, okay. And I did it and I go. My first joke, I said, my, I,

• 1:35:59Speaker 03

  I said, my skin gets kind of dark in the summer and people ask me what race I am. And I said, I'm not white, I'm more like wheat. And no, not, no one laughed.

• 1:36:08Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  No, and I go, well, my dad, sorry, that's confusing. My dad's white, my mom's nine grade. And it was just like, I mean, two minutes is so long. If it's bombing. I mean, so long. And it was, it was horrific, but I was so stoked when I left there.

• 1:36:36Shawn Ryan?

  You were stoked?

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  I was stoked. I was like, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. I had a black, a 1990.

• 1:36:42Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on. So you bombed your whole, you bombed the whole two minutes?

• 1:36:46Speaker 03

  Bombed.

• 1:36:47Shawn Ryan?

  And then you left and you felt amazing?

• 1:36:49Speaker 03

  I was on 10.

• 1:36:50Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:51Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know you bombed it? Or is this like?

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  I knew I bombed. And I was like, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. But that's probably the greatest high I've ever experienced.

• 1:36:59Shawn Ryan?

  It was the rush.

• 1:37:00Speaker 03

  I felt so alive. It was so immediate and so real. I felt so alive. And somebody told me like, if you do something and you're terrible at it and you want to come back and do it again, that's how you know that you've, you're made for that.

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  They go, oh, I'm gonna figure this out, right? Some of the gifts that people have made for that that wooden table that the guy made you down there with the bullets in it. Unbelievable piece of art.

• 1:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:30Speaker 03

  But the first time he did it is probably horrific. And he goes, man, I loved it. I love to make it. This is not good. This is not good, but man, I'm gonna figure this is awesome. The whole process of it is unbelievable.

• 1:37:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Speaker 03

  And I mean, I I immediately went home and I was like, because it's like if I tried to tell you how to drive a car, but you'd ever even been in one before. I was like, you gotta just

• 1:37:56Speaker 03

  you gotta just get in one, you know, here's the gear shift, here's the steering wheel, here's the, you gotta, if you haven't seen it before, I can't even tell you how to do it. But once you've driven it, you go, oh, oh, okay, I got it. And I was immediately inspired to figure out how to do it better.

• 1:38:10Shawn Ryan?

  Were you already making the YouTube videos before the?

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  Not before I was doing live stand up, no.

• 1:38:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so this is like.

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  But I was like being funny guy at my church.

• 1:38:21Shawn Ryan?

  Way different. You're comfortable with those people.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  And those people also like you. They know you.

• 1:38:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  But I was like, yeah, I went over to the, going over to the comedy club, I was like, oh, this is gonna, I kinda came in like a little bit of bravado and they were like, not here, buddy. And we love seeing that, by the way, comedians love seeing that from YouTubers still now. They come over to the comedy club and I go, I'm gonna, and they just because it's live.

• 1:38:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:49Speaker 03

  It's not on, it's everybody know, and when you play music,

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  you can or can, well, how do you know if Metallica had a good or a bad show? You probably not know. If a comedian is bombing, you know. And I still happens to me every week, not, I've done, but if a joke doesn't land and I go, usually I'll, as a rescue line, you're like, oh, well.

• 1:39:13Speaker 03

  If you can't try a new joke on Thursday night in Charleston, I don't know where you're gonna try one. Or a rescue line to kind of, because you have to acknowledge it didn't go good.

• 1:39:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:21Speaker 03

  Because there's nowhere to try it.

• 1:39:23Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that's the whole, that sounds like.

• 1:39:24Speaker 03

  That's why it's so, it's so. It's such as like watching comedy on Netflix versus going to it live. Because Netflix, if it's a bad joke, they just edit it out. And if you do have an hour long Netflix special, you've probably shot an hour 20. And they took out all the stuff that didn't flow right. They moved things around. They edited this way to, you have multiple cameras. They make sure that, and you also have laughs on other jokes that you can put onto those jokes and turn it up. I mean, there's a million things you could do to make it. But when you're there live, it is.

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  I mean, I still get a little rushed talking about it. It's awesome. And you go.

• 1:40:07Speaker 03

  If I did a joke to you, I thought of a joke, I did it to you, you got a different sensibility than someone younger than you or older than you, or Republican, or Democrat, or from a different area of the country. Where you go all different cities in the country, they like different things. So I can't practice on you because you might be like, that's hilarious. But everybody don't think it's hilarious. You have to have, unfortunately, a group, a sizable group of people to try it to live. Otherwise it doesn't work, or you don't know if it works until you do it. And that's what we all live for, that balance.

• 1:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  So you got home, you're amped.

• 1:40:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Shawn Ryan?

  That you just did your first stand up and bombed it.

• 1:40:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Shawn Ryan?

  I mean,

• 1:40:54Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I wasn't expecting that.

• 1:40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Shawn Ryan?

  That most people would not have, have

• 1:41:01Shawn Ryan?

  gotten any enjoyment out of bombing their.

• 1:41:04Speaker 03

  But maybe, maybe, maybe let's say I got a, I got a. A hint of a laugh on one of the jokes or something like that, or maybe I did a something on stage where there was a potential or something that I took some kind of something from it.

• 1:41:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Speaker 03

  I must have, I must have.

• 1:41:24Shawn Ryan?

  I get it. I mean, I've, you know, I've done a couple of, I'm scared shitless to be on a stage.

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  Oh, are you?

• 1:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  I just did my first speech last year.

• 1:41:33Speaker 03

  Terrifying.

• 1:41:34Shawn Ryan?

  It was.

• 1:41:34Speaker 03

  It was, and you do this.

• 1:41:36Shawn Ryan?

  The second one was too. So was the third and the fourth. No, I did, I did, I mean, whatever, I, I, I, I think I did really well. You know, the, the audience received it. I couldn't have asked for a better audience.

• 1:41:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  Every single time.

• 1:41:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:53Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 1:41:54Speaker 03

  You thought you did bad post or you were nervous?

• 1:41:57Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I just don't like, I'm an introvert too. I don't like being on stage and, and, uh, but I guess what I'm getting at is I, I can understand how that feeling could be addictive.

• 1:42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Shawn Ryan?

  You know, of being up there. It's, it's, it's an adrenaline rush. I love adrenaline too.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  Tremendous, tremendous adrenaline rush. There was a,

• 1:42:26Speaker 03

  I think, I don't even know if they tell the story, but there was a guy in rehab that was a, I remember him telling a story about these, like, he was a,

• 1:42:37Speaker 03

  like an average guy that was a dentist, you know, or I don't know, a dentist, just had a normal job and he got into a, like anonymous sexual encounters on Craigslist. And he goes, dude, it was such a rush, like such a, oh my, like the whole experience was such a high. Now, there's obviously a tremendous amount of shame in that. And when you do it, and you're like, I feel terrible about myself. Which, but he goes, man, my average life was so.

• 1:43:10Speaker 03

  Boring. Is so boring, dude. It was so boring. And he goes like, just logging on, just going, because you know, delete your history or your whatever. And he's logging back on to Craigslist and like, just looking through the, whatever, the solicitations or whatever. It was just like,

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  and I was like, that's not my thing. But like, I, I was like, I was with him. I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I,

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  You can understand. Yes. Yeah. Or like the go into, I've never done any kind of drugs or anything like that, but I could imagine going,

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  looking for, it's just like such a high. It's because it's dangerous. And it's like, but like a lot of people, like adrenaline

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  is. Adrenaline is an addiction. You can speak to that more than, but, but maybe I could relate, but I don't consider comedy to be that, but it is. I've never thought of it that way, but it, it, that was what, the first time I experienced it, and I did not do well. I go, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. Yeah. And that's different from any kind of, someone has Jerry Seinfeld, why he never wrote a book. He's like, how come he never wrote a book? He's like, because I can't hear the laughs.

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  Meaning, I can make a YouTube video, or I'll make the, I still make sketches on the internet and those go viral and that is still a secondary high, I guess, or a, when people, a lot of people watch it, or if it goes, sets a record or something, but not, not compared to the,

• 1:44:47Speaker 03

  the live, not compared to the live show. Yeah. I even thought, dude, I even thought about, and I don't know if this is

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  a negative way to think about, we live in Nashville and that, that, that, the girl that shot the school is like, dude, if you're, and I think she was, uh, I don't know what her personal life was, but it didn't sound like it was going good. If you.

• 1:45:12Speaker 03

  Put a gun into the back of your car and drive up. You know what I'm saying? I mean, my God, that has to be, especially if you know this is probably going to end in your death. This, this, what I'm about to do is if I start this, this is going to end in my death. Right? And even if I, I imagined the, um, it sounded like that girl was, had some, was trying to figure out her sexual identity. And, um, didn't seem like employment was going particularly well, right?

• 1:45:55Speaker 03

  And also, um, still lived with her parents, right? And she was in her mid, and she went to, she went to a Christian school. I think that one when she was little, right? So imagine this situation. This girl's can't find anyone to love, can't find a romantic partner, struggling for employment, uh, cast out by the community like that she grew up. And if you, you go down that, you drive past that like gun store and you just go, huh, right? And, and the life, the, the reality of your situation, it's all addiction.

• 1:46:38Speaker 03

  The reality of your, your current situation is not good. You don't have a job. You don't have, it's, it's bad that your reality that you live in is bad. Go by that gun store, you go. I mean, if she walked onto a school with a gun, that had to have started. Yeah. And then, so then you go, I wonder if I, and then you, it, it's a sense of power. I feel a sense of it, just speaking of it. And you, everybody has out, has, has cast you out of the democratic, capitalistic, whatever society we live in, has, has, has said that we don't.

• 1:47:14Speaker 03

  We don't, right? You go in there, you go, man, if I and then you pull into the parking lot. And then you go, let me just go in. Let me just look, right? And you look around and you go. And they were like, I wonder if I just bought, I wonder if I bought one. I bought, and I have handguns and I, it is a, I have a joke about it. Like I have it in my glove box in my car and I'm like, nobody messing with me, you know what I'm saying? And so you go, now you have power. So you do now have power, which in the reality of everyday life, you had none. You have none, you have no representation.

• 1:47:58Speaker 03

  You feel like the government is against you, right? Then you go, man, if I, every single time there's a shooting, it seems like they have a room in their house that, that has the, the maps or the, right? So the, so the, the reality of the world you live in is untenable. You go into your room, lock the door and you have all the maps and all that. You're a god in there. You have the most power. It's like a video game. You have the most power. Oh, man, if I did that, then they're gonna, right? It's terror, obviously, but you're, you have the most attention and the most power. And then, I mean, you imagine your, your reality is terrible.

• 1:48:42Speaker 03

  And every time you go into this world, it's, you're a god. And you live in that, you could go, you go out and you work at McDonald's or wherever and your boss tells, you gotta pick up after yourself. You only got a 10 minute break. You gotta get in here, you gotta drop the fries. Your parents are like, how come you didn't clean your room? And you're, you can't afford gas in your car. And they're like, we need insurance, right? All of the life. And then you lock your door and you go into this world and you are of infinite value, actually the most value. And not that, obviously you condone any type of behavior, but I don't know her or I didn't know that, but I go.

• 1:49:26Speaker 03

  That's it, that, that reaction, you go. You don't even get it. I can't even say, I imagine I get it, but you go.

• 1:49:39Speaker 03

  Whatever that response is.

• 1:49:41Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. Hmm, yeah, it uh.

• 1:49:48Shawn Ryan?

  It makes sense.

• 1:49:49Speaker 03

  It makes, that's all, that's all. You go, why would you, and that's a story, maybe that's a story that I've made up in my head to

• 1:49:58Speaker 03

  help me rationalize that, because that, my uh, I don't like people when they try to take advantage of situations like that to try to make themselves be more, I'm not a part of it, but my two, my best friend, his kids go to that school. And I got a call that there was an active shooter and I live

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  10 minutes from there and I was at home. There's an active shooter on that campus. I got in my car and I got my gun. And I went there.

• 1:50:29Speaker 03

  And I was like, I not

• 1:50:32Speaker 03

  good and evil, we talked about that at breakfast. They're like, I will not, I don't know, I don't know what I can do, but I, I I will not, I, if I can do anything to prohibit this from happening, I'm willing to do that.

• 1:50:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 03

  In a second, and you've thought, obviously, you're in the military, you've thought that a million times. You're like, I no.

• 1:50:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Speaker 03

  Right?

• 1:50:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Speaker 03

  And that was just instinctual. I got in my car, grabbed my gun and I went there.

• 1:50:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting, yeah. I actually, I went in there to afterwards to help them come up with a new security plan.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Shawn Ryan?

  What a uh

• 1:51:10Shawn Ryan?

  everything.

• 1:51:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it was bad.

• 1:51:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, but if you don't, if you don't, if it's, it's.

• 1:51:19Shawn Ryan?

  I hadn't seen anything like that in a long time.

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:23Shawn Ryan?

  And then there it all was.

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  You see that video? You see that video?

• 1:51:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:51:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't even know, he goes, I mean, I don't even know who that guy is. I think I met him, actually, we did a celebrity softball game or something together. I shook his hand, but he goes, hey, we're, how many we got? Two, where are they at upstairs? All right. And just that, okay, you've seen that on video games. You've seen footage, that was real and it's on YouTube.

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  And you go, my God, dude.

• 1:52:15Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm, I'm, I wouldn't even say secondarily a part of it, tertiaryly a part of that.

• 1:52:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. But, um, what were we talking about before this?

• 1:52:42Shawn Ryan?

  So back to your first comedy skit. We got into all of that.

• 1:52:48Speaker 03

  All kind of roads.

• 1:52:50Shawn Ryan?

  You're terrified, went home or did the skit, bombed it.

• 1:52:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Shawn Ryan?

  Instantly became addicted and.

• 1:53:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I never heard it said it like that, but I guess so.

• 1:53:02Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, how did you improve in, in, in, I mean?

• 1:53:08Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:53:09Shawn Ryan?

  I would say it takes a lot of courage to get back up there after you bombed, but you loved it.

• 1:53:13Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I couldn't wait. Well, somebody told me that, um,

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  like, you know, Dale Earnhardt Jr., the first time he ever got into a car,

• 1:53:28Speaker 03

  he already knew how to do it better than anyone, better than people that were dropped because he'd seen his dad do it his whole life. And I remember I had a meeting with an agent in Hollywood and I'd been doing comedy like two years. And they go, they watched my video, they go, how long you been doing it? I got two years. And he goes, what did your dad do? And I go, my dad was a preacher. He goes, ah, that makes sense. Meaning like I saw a man.

• 1:53:55Speaker 03

  Get up, welcome everybody, connect with the crowd, communicate a few points, wrap it up and dismiss. I'd watched that every Sunday live for my whole life. And so that, just the idea of you being around it, it wasn't comedy, but my dad was funny. And that was very funny on stage. So I immediately, I think I immediately got offstage and goes, oh, that was not good. Okay, I gotta fix, I gotta set that up differently. I gotta communicate that joke better. I should move this joke instead of at the beginning, I should move it to the end, because that's maybe a little bit more of a harsher premise. They

• 1:54:36Speaker 03

  should get to, they should like me first before I say that, because it might seem kind of aggressive if they don't like me yet. And so I was thinking all of these things, because I think I just learned, I knew what being bad was. And I see comics now, they're like, dude, I killed it. I go, you think you, you think that was killing it? You're done. You're doomed. It's like comics can't really help each other that much. They can kind of point you in the right direction, but if you can't figure out those things, then you, you're never gonna be, you're never gonna make it. It's you, why is this not working? You have to figure that out.

• 1:55:19Speaker 03

  If I help you figure it out, you're never gonna get there. You have to figure that out.

• 1:55:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  Why am I unlikable? Or why am I, why is this joke not working? Should I fix it? Should I get rid of it? Should I?

• 1:55:32Shawn Ryan?

  So could, could you breed the crowd? And I mean, had you just restructured and, and

• 1:55:37Speaker 03

  I mean, it's trial and error. At the beginning, it's pretty much trial and error.

• 1:55:39Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't change the whole?

• 1:55:41Speaker 03

  I probably threw out that whole two minutes. Yeah.

• 1:55:43Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, all right, for sure. I made a joke about how, it was something about giving a guy a homeless, about how, there was a homeless guy, and I had like some change in my pocket, but I didn't want to give him the quarters. Because I was like, well, not the quarters. And I tried to, in my pocket, I tried to separate, or I don't know what the joke was, but it's such a funny idea. I mean, the joke was obviously terrible, it didn't work. But it felt like, like I was, that it's a jerk thing to do.

• 1:56:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:16Speaker 03

  I heard the crowd communicate that to me. Now, they didn't say that, but it's a

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:56:24Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:56:25Speaker 03

  They do, they, they will tell you, the crowd will tell you what is working with it. Even if the jokes aren't good, the premise they like, and they'll, they'll be like, yeah. And then you just gotta fix the jokes, but they will, if you listen to them,

• 1:56:39Speaker 03

  they will communicate to you what they like and what they're into.

• 1:56:43Shawn Ryan?

  So when you're coming up with these, I mean, you got your phone now, but I mean, you know, when you tell me, you know, comedy comes from pain, from insecurities, from truths.

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:57Shawn Ryan?

  These things happen, I mean, are you writing every awkward moment? Moment now it happens during the day and, and figuring out how to

• 1:57:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:05Shawn Ryan?

  turn it into something?

• 1:57:06Speaker 03

  All day, every day.

• 1:57:09Shawn Ryan?

  Are you ever in the moment?

• 1:57:11Speaker 03

  Uh, I mean, if I, I'm trying to think if, like my girlfriend says, if I'm like in church or something, or at a restaurant or something, I pull up my phone, I just type it. But I, I, I feel like

• 1:57:23Speaker 03

  that's the most in the moment.

• 1:57:25Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm, I'm, I go, what, what? Like you, when you, when we set up this podcast, I was up here, you were like, I'll be back in like five minutes. And I'm, I was like, looking around and I go, what is this? What is this? These four presidential pardons. It like all this other thing kind of, for the most part, made sense to me. But then I go, what is that? And I Googled it. And I go, who is this guy? And what were these presidential pardons, which I didn't know about, which seems like a pretty significant to get that from the president seems significant. I go, what's going on here? And I, I, you were gone. I go, I want to know.

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  I didn't just sit in here, I was like, wait for you to come back. I was like, oh, this is, I've never been in an environment like this. And I was like, what is this? And I want to look it up to see who, what the story is. How did they, and then I was like, I'm going to ask you about it when I get back. The very.

• 1:58:23Speaker 03

  Taking everything in about this whole experience. And that's what comes. Sometimes it just goes in and it's nothing, but you're like, what did I see the other day? I was like, we are, we, me and my girlfriend were on a hike and we had a waterfall. And I was like, this hundred foot waterfall, whatever. And I was like, imagine these particles of water about to go over this. My girlfriend was like, what? I go, no, think about it. You're like in the ocean, your whole life. You get into like a river and then you're going down a stream and you're like, dude, this is. And then you're about to go over this waterfall. This has to be like your Super Bowl. She's like, that's, that's insane. That's an insane thought.

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  I go, I don't know. Just think about that. I mean, the water particles, but it's like a different.

• 1:59:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  That's how my brain works for good and for bad sometimes.

• 1:59:16Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:18Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I was getting at is, you know, a lot of business CEOs, they're always, they're always.

• 1:59:23Speaker 03

  Thinking about a business.

• 1:59:24Shawn Ryan?

  Thinking about how can I build bigger business? How can I expand? How can I do this? I'm, I'm one of them. I'm always thinking about.

• 1:59:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Shawn Ryan?

  I'm an ideas guy and how can I improve the podcast and what other business segments can I get myself into? And so.

• 1:59:39Speaker 03

  By default.

• 1:59:39Shawn Ryan?

  Who am I going to interview? What am I going to interview him about? How am I going to talk to this guy?

• 1:59:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and it takes me out of the moment in a lot of times because my mind is there. And so that's what I'm asking is, you know, does the. Are you constantly thinking about how can I improve my, my stand up game? And I'm assuming.

• 2:00:03Speaker 03

  Is this a.

• 2:00:04Shawn Ryan?

  I probably shouldn't be making assumptions, but you always need to be developing and, and to keep yourself fresh, right?

• 2:00:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:10Shawn Ryan?

  So does that interfere with being in the moment? With family, with your girlfriend, with whoever.

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. If I, you find maybe going to things or going to events or something because. It's some humor will become, or it's more ripe for choosing activities. Because it's more ripe for comedy or a good story or inspiration for something. Yeah. Yeah. Which takes you out of.

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  The reality of this, of the situation. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:53Speaker 03

  I guess I don't even know what a, what a

• 2:00:57Speaker 03

  a bar would be for not doing that. I don't know what a precedent would be for not doing, because I always, I guess I've always lived like that.

• 2:01:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is just being a hundred percent in the moment. You know, if, if it's, if it's Christmas morning.

• 2:01:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Shawn Ryan?

  And you and who's your closest?

• 2:01:18Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  Girlfriend?

• 2:01:19Speaker 03

  Me and my brother and my girlfriend Lydia. Yeah.

• 2:01:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Are you thinking, are you a hundred percent there?

• 2:01:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:01:25Shawn Ryan?

  Or are you thinking, you know, never?

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I made a video a couple of years ago about the six different types of gift givers. Or some kind of joke, right? So you see somebody or a gift receiver. So you open a joke, open a video or open a, and you don't love it. You're like the, oh, my God, this is the best. Like, yeah, I guess I receive everything. I visualize and take everything in and then I,

• 2:01:57Speaker 03

  could I make this into something? Yeah, at all times.

• 2:02:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably not for good.

• 2:02:03Shawn Ryan?

  Does that bother you at all?

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  No, because that's like by default, I just do it. It probably bothers other people.

• 2:02:09Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think?

• 2:02:10Speaker 03

  Oh, is this gonna be a bit? Yeah.

• 2:02:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think you'll ever have kids?

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do. Yeah.

• 2:02:21Shawn Ryan?

  That's when it came to me. That's when it started bothering me.

• 2:02:25Speaker 03

  Oh, when you weren't in the moment?

• 2:02:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:29Speaker 03

  When you're seeing, experiencing their stuff.

• 2:02:32Shawn Ryan?

  When?

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  All they have is the moment.

• 2:02:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:02:35Speaker 03

  They don't, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:38Speaker 03

  What about in the military?

• 2:02:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, in the military, I didn't have anything else to think about. I was single.

• 2:02:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I didn't, I mean, I had my parents and my siblings, but that's all I wanted to do was that. And so it was very, it was, I mean, it was simple to be in the moment, especially when the action starts.

• 2:03:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, you know, I'll bet that's, you know, probably very similar for you. I bet it's very easy to be in the moment when, you know, when you're on stage.

• 2:03:10Speaker 03

  And you could always, some people have said, is it, uh,

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  what if you're having a bad

• 2:03:17Speaker 03

  day? Or what if you're depressed? Or what if you're something in your personal life? If you're sad? I go, there's never, there's never been any kind of reality of any type of situation that a, a, a good comedy show hasn't cured for me, at least in the short term. Not long term, but in the short term.

• 2:03:42Speaker 03

  Up there and

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  killing it, there's nothing, there's no, you couldn't possibly have a problem. It would, it wouldn't exist.

• 2:03:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:56Speaker 03

  No?

• 2:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. When did you, when did you really start gaining momentum then?

• 2:04:05Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take?

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  About 2000.

• 2:04:10Speaker 03

  Seventeen, maybe.

• 2:04:15Shawn Ryan?

  And you're the first, your first.

• 2:04:17Speaker 03

  First time I, like, people started, like, recognize me outside.

• 2:04:20Shawn Ryan?

  And first, uh, excuse me, first, your first time at open mic was?

• 2:04:25Speaker 03

  2009.

• 2:04:26Shawn Ryan?

  2009, so almost eight years.

• 2:04:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, in, in.

• 2:04:34Speaker 03

  Obscurity, by the way. No, I mean, we didn't have any money. We didn't have, well, we just were obsessed with doing it. We didn't care. We didn't. No one ever thought about being famous or being anything. We were just like, we're obsessed with doing it.

• 2:04:46Shawn Ryan?

  Who's we?

• 2:04:47Speaker 03

  Uh, me and my comedian buddies. And then now I was living in, I mean, we would. The, the, the underbelly of the, of the comedy scene is. Before, any comic you know that you've seen on TV, there's thousands of comics that are, are you never heard of? And just going to open mics and driving to doing hotel or doing shows at hotel bars and college cafeterias and.

• 2:05:19Speaker 03

  Uh, corporate Christmas or just for a hundred bucks, two.

• 2:05:24Shawn Ryan?

  Whatever they can get into.

• 2:05:25Speaker 03

  And wherever you can drive to do it, if you can make it there, you would do it.

• 2:05:29Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 2:05:29Speaker 03

  And we were just obsessed with doing it.

• 2:05:31Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how do you get into it then? I mean, who's, who reaches, who?

• 2:05:34Speaker 03

  If you do like open mics for a while, there's like some local, like, um.

• 2:05:40Speaker 03

  Guys that'll book one nighters or typically a guy that's a headliner would have seen you and go, you want to come with me?

• 2:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:05:47Speaker 03

  Like if he sees you at the open mic and you're funny, he goes, you want to come with me to.

• 2:05:52Speaker 03

  Portland or whatever, and you can do 20 minutes in front of my show. And then I got this one nighter in Spokane the next night and that's going to be 200 bucks. And maybe if I can. Do three of them, I can afford to fly out there. I mean, just, but I don't remember being unhappy. I mean, I look back at those, I was like, geez. And I was doing a lot of, because a lot of my jokes were Christian.

• 2:06:18Speaker 03

  I was doing a lot of churches, but not like a ticketed event. No one knew who I was, like a youth group. Lock in, uh, cause I was like, I was safe to hire because I was clean. So youth group lock in of Valentine's Day, date night, a mission trip fundraiser, just here, we got a comedian, he's going to come up and. Tell some jokes.

• 2:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:06:43Speaker 03

  And I, but then you were starting to make like, I mean, I remember I drove from Denver, Colorado, where I live to. Amarillo, Texas for $700. And I thought this was the most, I mean, dead.

• 2:06:57Speaker 03

  I got that check. And I was like, you giving me this check to do jokes? Like, I was the richest man. Oh, gosh. I had a Honda Civic that was black that couldn't, that with the window wouldn't roll all the way up. And I thought I was the

• 2:07:12Speaker 03

  the richest man on earth, man. Oh, gosh, dude. I thought this was, I was like, I'm robbing these people. I'm robbing these people. You keep, you, you know, obsessed I am with doing this? You let me, you paying me to do this?

• 2:07:28Speaker 03

  I didn't even want to even tell anybody that I was like making money. I mean, they were probably like,

• 2:07:33Speaker 03

  we just didn't care. We didn't even, I mean, it was unbelievable. You guys would always travel together? Yeah, different people, but you'd always the same kind of group of guys that you'd be around. Yeah. Gotcha. Did anybody else make it, make it big?

• 2:07:47Speaker 03

  Let's see. One, my buddy that writes, that I came up with, one of my buddies writes for Jimmy Kimmel. He's a writer on the show.

• 2:08:01Speaker 03

  Another one of my buddies.

• 2:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, not really. Right on. I mean, there's guys that have had success and then of course, I mean, but in terms of, there was a couple of comics around there that were, that have had TV shows and

• 2:08:22Speaker 03

  this and that, but not from the guys that I came up with. Now, a lot of them are still on their way to, some people, they don't hit until they're 60. Yeah. So you're not saying that stuff is a failure. They're just, they haven't.

• 2:08:36Speaker 03

  Did you have a mentor or was it, you just figured this all out on your own or?

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  I'll say the closest guy to a mentor would be a guy named Tim Hawkins, who took me around. He was, he was like a

• 2:08:48Speaker 03

  doing like mega churches.

• 2:08:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 2:08:51Speaker 03

  And he was like doing, and he brought me along with him. And so now you're in front, now it's

• 2:08:58Speaker 03

  seventeen, eighteen, and now in front of like four thousand people, churches. And which is like, I knew everything about these people because these are like my people. It's like if you there's like, if you went back and did like a military reunion or something, you would be better equipped to speak to them than me. Because you're like, I know these people. I know exactly what they think. I know, even if you weren't a comedian, you were, I was like, I know, I was

• 2:09:30Speaker 03

  flying ahead in the religious

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  group. Because if you do a comedy show at a bar, you get paid seventy-five bucks because there are a million people that can do it. If you go to a church, like you said, you're getting paid seven hundred and fifty dollars because who else is going to do it?

• 2:09:50Speaker 03

  There is none. There's a handful of

• 2:09:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Speaker 03

  religious comedians or that would do, could do a show in a church. There's like

• 2:10:00Speaker 03

  a handful that are good. So then I just kind of went in that direction.

• 2:10:04Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 2:10:05Speaker 03

  Because I loved it making those kind of jokes because those are the people that I knew. And so I just kind of

• 2:10:13Speaker 03

  just the checks became bigger and

• 2:10:19Speaker 03

  everybody started to recognize me on the street everywhere. And that was, of course, as, you know, I grew up, it was

• 2:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  How did you handle that, the fame? Did you like it?

• 2:10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude. I was obsessed with it.

• 2:10:31Shawn Ryan?

  You did? Okay.

• 2:10:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  It's just interesting.

• 2:10:34Speaker 03

  At the beginning, at the beginning.

• 2:10:35Shawn Ryan?

  You say you're an introvert.

• 2:10:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but then now you're getting noticed on the street, you're getting noticed at restaurants.

• 2:10:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:42Shawn Ryan?

  You know, probably at the airport a lot.

• 2:10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't probably like the, the

• 2:10:49Speaker 03

  Interaction of it, I didn't like privately, but I'd like to be known and seen.

• 2:10:54Shawn Ryan?

  You like the affirmation?

• 2:10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't like the, yeah, the, the conversation or anything like that, at least at the time, but I'd like to be, it was kind of a validation that my, I mean, somebody come up and saw like a video that I posted on YouTube and you're in the Dallas airport and somebody, I did this like honest football coach, it was like one of the first videos that went viral for me and somebody's like, dude, are you that football coach? I'm like, this is, this is what? It's like, it's a, it was like out of body experience, yeah, at the time, yeah.

• 2:11:31Shawn Ryan?

  Eventually you say that you started living two different lives.

• 2:11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's start to go down that rabbit hole.

• 2:11:43Speaker 03

  Uh, so let me think. So I go,

• 2:11:50Speaker 03

  I probably didn't,

• 2:11:53Speaker 03

  I never drank, like I, I never drank and to like wanting to get drunk or nothing like that until, I guess,

• 2:12:07Speaker 03

  I was probably like the same guy, like the same guy I was back before, I didn't have a public life. So my private life, everybody kind of knew who I was, right? They knew, my roommates knew, I was very known and very seen. And then I feel like once I started performing in these churches and that, so there's no,

• 2:12:32Speaker 03

  if First Baptist Church calls you and say, we want to, we want you to, this probably happened to you, maybe not, but now it might happen to you if you've professed faith, say, we want you to come speak at our church.

• 2:12:45Speaker 03

  That's probably going to start to happen to you. Now, what is the moral

• 2:12:50Speaker 03

  code that you're supposed to be following? Cause like we said earlier, all these churches have different rules.

• 2:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:57Speaker 03

  So I'm, I'm trying to think of a situation like I remember.

• 2:13:03Speaker 03

  I went to do a show at a church and I was dating a girl or talking to a girl that lived in that town. Or maybe it was regional to her and she met me there. Right? So I spent the night on Saturday night in that city. So she was there and she spent the night in my hotel room. And so the next morning, we're gonna go to the church to do, I'm gonna do the comedy show. Now, my comedy show is the same in the bar, in the church, in the comedy club, everywhere. It's just me talking about growing up in church. My dad's a preacher and it's just funny observational humor. So I remember

• 2:13:47Speaker 03

  I go, hey, well, the pastor is coming to pick me up at 8:30 a.m. Can you drive your car over to the church? Cause we can't be, I, I'm not, you're not my wife. I can't be leaving the hotel with you to go preach at a church. Not preach at, you know what I'm saying?

• 2:14:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:14Speaker 03

  And but I was like, but in the comedy club, I was, that's not a duplish, that's not a duplicitous?

• 2:14:20Shawn Ryan?

  I know what you're saying.

• 2:14:21Speaker 03

  Duplicitous? I don't know. That's not a dual life. That's like, it's not, but so then there's this little departure where now I kind of keep this secret. I'm gonna go over here. Now, I'm not saying come to Jesus, but I'm doing my, it just, they prop me up. I'm not gonna blame anybody because all, all these things are my own choices. But I go, hey, you just drive over later. And then I'll be like, oh, here's my friend that happened to come by.

• 2:14:53Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:14:53Speaker 03

  Right? Or here's, maybe I was my girlfriend, wasn't my girlfriend, but like, here's the girl I'm dating. Oh, she's here. Right? That immediately looks.

• 2:15:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you were, you were letting people that you don't know that you made assumptions on how they think that you should be living your life. You let that dictate how you, how you, how you live.

• 2:15:14Speaker 03

  And if I said, let's say that gig was at the time, let's say $1,200 or something like that. And I had to fly to St. Louis to do it. So make. Six hundred bucks, I'd pay two hundred bucks in taxes, maybe make three hundred bucks or something.

• 2:15:27Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:28Speaker 03

  If I go, hey, I'd be happy to do it. I'm dating a girl that lives in Nebraska. She's gonna spend the night with me at the hotel and then I'm gonna, is that okay? I mean, I would never do that, but I should, but then to keep your life where there's no secrets or there's no hiding or there's not nothing like that, right?

• 2:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:50Speaker 03

  And then they would obviously have been like, no, we won't, we wouldn't hire you. So you're like, all right, like I wanna, I'm just gonna try to

• 2:16:01Speaker 03

  manage this somehow. I remember going to a

• 2:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, looking back, do you think they would have said, no, absolutely not?

• 2:16:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:16:08Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 2:16:08Speaker 03

  Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah. But I remember going to a Texas Roadhouse after, after a show with like some people from the church. Maybe the pastor was there and some of the elders of the church after the show, right? And I go, I was, I go,

• 2:16:31Speaker 03

  I remember going to the bartender or something, I was gonna, let me walk to the bathroom and I go, hey, I'm gonna order a, a double vodka soda or something, but can you bring it in a Sprite?

• 2:16:47Speaker 03

  And in a Coke, like a soda cup, not an alcohol cup, because these people can't know I'm drinking. So, you know, so it's just starting to be like a little bit.

• 2:16:58Speaker 03

  Now, am I a believer? Do I love, do I follow the, the Bible? Do I want to be more like Jesus? All these things? Yes, but I was also, and then you get bigger and bigger in that community and then the

• 2:17:12Speaker 03

  the hiding has to become more and more. I mean, it sounds silly to somebody that's just a regular person, but in this community,

• 2:17:19Speaker 03

  these are like the

• 2:17:20Shawn Ryan?

  No, I mean, everybody can relate to it somewhere.

• 2:17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would imagine, you know, they were like, wait, what? Yeah, but in that community.

• 2:17:29Speaker 03

  Those are like the big like. But now, I never really said I wasn't that. I think just by making jokes about Christianity, they assumed.

• 2:17:41Speaker 03

  This guy's going back to read his Bible in the hotel every night or something. I don't know.

• 2:17:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't.

• 2:17:49Speaker 03

  Honest with who I was as a person. And then that started like the.

• 2:17:55Speaker 03

  The more and more of that behavior and the more and more shame in that behavior and then just.

• 2:17:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. I mean. It was obviously a lot of pressure on you because I read this in an article when I was researching you. And this is a quote from you. Every time I had a sold out show or, you know, the line was around the block. I could see all these people lined up to see me and I was like. I got too close to these shades because it's so uncomfortable for me. For all these people who have driven hours, but if they knew the truth about me, they would hate me.

• 2:18:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:18:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and so, I mean.

• 2:18:35Speaker 03

  More. So now you get, now you get to a.

• 2:18:43Speaker 03

  Hey, well, let's just have like, instead of like doing, let's just do like a tour bus and now you got a. Hey, now you got a. A road manager and now you got a agent and now you got all the, and now they're like, I mean.

• 2:18:59Speaker 03

  Sold out shows up all at churches. And then you were like, I go, man, I'm.

• 2:19:07Speaker 03

  You know, getting drunk or, you know, bringing a girl to my hotel room or something. I thought and. Hindsight, not true, but I thought. That based on the way I grew up with the.

• 2:19:23Speaker 03

  Shame around sex and, and performatory lifestyles. Like, man, if these people knew that I wasn't this, I think all of these people would, there would be nobody at this show. That's what I thought at the time.

• 2:19:38Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how bad did the drinking get? Was it, was it?

• 2:19:40Speaker 03

  I mean, no, because I didn't, I mean.

• 2:19:44Shawn Ryan?

  Or was it, was it accepted by, let's say, the majority of society today?

• 2:19:51Speaker 03

  I went on Burt Kreischer's podcast and I said, one time in the airport, I had a drink in the morning.

• 2:19:57Speaker 03

  And that was about as dark as it got.

• 2:20:00Speaker 03

  I had a layover in the Dallas airport and I got two shots of,

• 2:20:05Speaker 03

  I don't know, vodka or something like that. Cause I didn't wanna, I wanted to sleep on the flight. So again, it's like, when I went to rehab, I remember there's all, that's getting ahead of the story a little bit with all these people that done all these,

• 2:20:17Speaker 03

  on paper, way more horrific things than I did, but my shame was similar to theirs. So I was like, I'm, I relate. I was all, you know what I'm saying? My shame was, cause I was like, man, if all these people knew that I was, I would, I consider it to maybe if you were like a,

• 2:20:34Speaker 03

  if you're like a health instructor about like, and you have a, a podcast about clean eating and somebody saw you in line at McDonald's. You'd be like,

• 2:20:44Speaker 03

  bullshit.

• 2:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:45Speaker 03

  We, no dude, not because eating at McDonald's is inherently bad, but you told us that you were not this guy.

• 2:20:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:54Speaker 03

  And it was, is that, does that explain it more?

• 2:20:57Shawn Ryan?

  No, it makes sense. I mean, I'm, I'm gonna, I'll just bring something. I don't give a shit, whatever. But, uh, you know, I'm, we talked about, I did psychedelics and, and, uh, and from psychedelics, I have not watched any porn since then. I haven't had a drink since then. I haven't had coffee since then. It changed a lot of things in my life, man. And, um, and anyways, so I am partial owners and, and, uh, and, and in a joint business venture with Laird Superfoods.

• 2:21:30Speaker 03

  Yep. I've, I've heard.

• 2:21:31Shawn Ryan?

  You got me into performance mushrooms. I started reading about mushrooms and the benefits of brain health and da, da, da, da, da. And people have made assumptions. Telling, you know, thinking that I am Mr. Clean. I eat everything clean and dude, I don't eat anything. I don't, I'm not, I'm not Mr. Clean. I'm into brain health and

• 2:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  ever since I came out and talked about performance mushrooms and how, how layered superfoods has the cleanest supplements. Now everybody points the finger at me about those gummy bears. Sorry. Guess what?

• 2:22:09Speaker 03

  And now it's

• 2:22:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'm human and I fucking like candy. And if you don't like candy, then don't fucking eat it. I really don't give a shit.

• 2:22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:17Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:22:18Speaker 03

  And that's a

• 2:22:18Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody wants to point out, I can't believe you're selling these. It has the, these ingredients. It's like, dude, just don't fucking eat it.

• 2:22:26Speaker 03

  I never said I was that.

• 2:22:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:27Speaker 03

  I never said I was that.

• 2:22:28Shawn Ryan?

  Put that shit on me.

• 2:22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. You assumed I was that guy.

• 2:22:31Shawn Ryan?

  Assumed that that's what I am.

• 2:22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:33Shawn Ryan?

  But guess what? I still like gummy bears.

• 2:22:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:35Shawn Ryan?

  And if you hate me because I still like gummy bears, then fuck off.

• 2:22:39Speaker 03

  We can

• 2:22:39Shawn Ryan?

  I really don't care.

• 2:22:40Speaker 03

  I'll survive. There's a guy, there's a country artist here in town that got a, a drunken disorderly at a bar and we're like,

• 2:22:48Speaker 03

  yeah, we, who assumed he wasn't that?

• 2:22:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:51Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying? Like, that's like, like, yeah, but if you, like, who, if you, I've always, cause I've been sober for four years, but I, I always hesitate now in a conversation like this. It's a little bit more, you can discuss it a little bit more freely, but I go, if I post

• 2:23:12Speaker 03

  the, I remember being one year sober and I got the coin from the AA meeting and I was like, if I post this on Instagram, you'll get a lot of, oh dude, congratulations. You get a lot of love, but then if you start drinking again, it's gotta be in the closet.

• 2:23:29Speaker 03

  Because you said you were this guy and that, that maybe there's a lot of like encouragement that you could gain from it and support you could gain from it. But like, I don't want to go back to living to a place where if I cause you prop, if you prop yourself up to be

• 2:23:46Speaker 03

  Anything, a guy that, a guy that then you're like, oh, if you prop yourself up to be a pastor and you're like, wait, that guy's, that guy just flicked me off in traffic. There's no problem with that. Everybody does that all the time. But he said he wasn't that. And he's communicated that he was better than us and ashamed us for doing it. And now I see him doing it, just like all the politicians when they said, you have to wear a mask. Remember that mask everywhere? And then we saw them at the hair salon or at the gym with no mask. And we go, dude, we don't have a problem with anyone wearing or not wearing an outfit. You told us. It's the, it's the hypocrite, it's hypocrisy more than the.

• 2:24:30Shawn Ryan?

  But you weren't saying that that was you, right?

• 2:24:33Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I didn't, I did not say it.

• 2:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  You were letting people's assumptions control.

• 2:24:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I didn't, and looking back on it is I took all the gigs.

• 2:24:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a difference between saying, saying you are this, you know, in preaching this and da, da, da, da, da, and being a hypocrite, rather than, you guys asked me to speak here.

• 2:24:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:55Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't say anything.

• 2:24:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. I don't think that message is going to go very well PR wise.

• 2:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  Probably not.

• 2:25:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know what I mean though. Listen, I knew, I knew,

• 2:25:08Speaker 03

  I knew the rules, the unspoken rules when I accepted the gigs. I knew that. I knew that you couldn't get drunk at the Chili's after that. I knew that.

• 2:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:17Speaker 03

  But I took them anyway. I mean, it probably, either I was a pretty poor and I needed the money or I just, and I like to tell jokes and I like the, I like the people a lot. The, the, the Christian.

• 2:25:33Speaker 03

  I love those people and I still do. I haven't been back to a church in four years. I go to church, but I haven't gone back to work at one, but

• 2:25:43Speaker 03

  yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit there, but I like, I do.

• 2:25:47Speaker 03

  I, I, I am those people.

• 2:25:49Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not, I hope I'm not coming across like I am a.

• 2:25:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not against those people.

• 2:25:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, not the least. I don't feel that.

• 2:25:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, and I'm not that familiar.

• 2:26:01Speaker 03

  You're on our team now, bro.

• 2:26:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm not that familiar with with that, you know, particular community. I just, I don't know the rules. So to, you know, what I'm saying is from an outsider looking in, it seems like those were assumptions that they have made. Yeah, I mean, maybe nobody at those mega churches has a drop of alcohol.

• 2:26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:26:25Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 2:26:26Speaker 03

  Look, look at, um,

• 2:26:31Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think when you got a, you got a,

• 2:26:35Speaker 03

  somebody in the NFL that gets like a domestic violence. You're like, oh, or like,

• 2:26:42Speaker 03

  I guess, did I assume that that guy, you know, he never, or somebody gets a DUI or a golfer, you know, some celebrity gets, and you go, well,

• 2:26:56Speaker 03

  I don't know, if somebody like, let's say,

• 2:27:01Speaker 03

  that's very synonymous with their brand or something like, you know, Kid Rock did the whole thing with shooting up the Bud Light. And you're like, well, that's, that's what he does. Yeah, we know what we know of him, but if you're like Kid Rock is in, in Kid Rock, I saw Kid Rock at church. You go, you did? You're like, what, what do you mean? Well, from what I gather of him, let's not use Kid Rock or let's use anybody. Wait, I thought he was, why'd you think that? From what I have ingested of that person, celebrity online, I get they people, they gather things about you that you've said are not true. You didn't say, but they gotta put you, they gotta.

• 2:27:41Shawn Ryan?

  They're, they're put you in a box with their, with their own assumptions.

• 2:27:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then I look back, like I've had, there's a lot of pastors that I've gone to churches that are, that have had different kinds of scandals or different kind of, and I, and I've made up my mind early on, I go, I'm not following any man anymore. Like if you have a faith in Christ and your pastor.

• 2:28:04Speaker 03

  Has a scandal, whether it be financial, or family, or sexual, or whatever. And if that shakes your faith, that you, I don't know how much of a believer you were from the beginning.

• 2:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  That's a great point.

• 2:28:20Speaker 03

  That I don't believe in any man, I'm not finding out man, man can help you and definitely lead you and help you be accountable and help explain the faith to you. But if somebody else, a human being falls, that doesn't rattle my faith. I'm trying to think of who the most Christian people are that we know, maybe Tim Tebow or somewhere, somebody that's very publicly a Christian. Justin Bieber, I guess that he's a really, somebody that you look up to be a moral person.

• 2:28:53Speaker 03

  If you saw in the news that tomorrow that that guy had a DUI or a domestic situation, you'd be sad for them, obviously, but it wouldn't rattle my faith.

• 2:29:07Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think there's anybody on, I cannot, you know, a domestic violence thing, that's different. A DUI, that's different, you know, you could kill somebody doing that.

• 2:29:24Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think I would ostracize anybody for having a drink or sleeping with a woman.

• 2:29:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:30Shawn Ryan?

  I just don't.

• 2:29:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but that's just me.

• 2:29:33Speaker 03

  Well, that is what, I guess there, whether, so there's a lot of, about that time, 2018, I started to get more and more popular. And then I started to get more, like, there started to be a lot of, like, whispers of those things online, like on Twitter and stuff like that. We're like, wow, at First Baptist Church, did you know that John Crist is sleeping with women or not, not being sexual with women or whatever?

• 2:30:13Speaker 03

  Like, a lot of just, he said, she said, and a lot, again, a lot of my videos, you understand, my videos at the time were very.

• 2:30:24Speaker 03

  Very controversial

• 2:30:28Speaker 03

  two Christian people. Like, some people were like, dude, this is too far. This is too sacrilegious. I can't believe, is this guy a Christian or not? Because what is this, what are these? They're so inflammatory, the, the, the

• 2:30:47Speaker 03

  the jokes. They were so, made so, some, most people were like, this is unbelievable. And a lot of people were like, this is too far.

• 2:30:57Speaker 03

  Both at the same time.

• 2:31:00Speaker 03

  And so there was a lot of

• 2:31:04Speaker 03

  that most of what was being said was from peers, other people that were attempting to be a voice in the Christian culture. And things like that. And I remember I was, I had a flirtatious relationship with one girl. And then she found out that I had a flirtatious relationship. She was sending me photos with one of her friends. And that obviously, you can't do that. And then that's what, that's what started publicly, started speaking out against me. And that goes kind of spreading around. So now I'm getting way bigger and that

• 2:31:45Speaker 03

  is like swarming around on the internet.

• 2:31:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:48Speaker 03

  And that's

• 2:31:51Speaker 03

  I remember looking back at those times and, and, and

• 2:31:56Speaker 03

  those were horrific.

• 2:31:58Shawn Ryan?

  Did it feel like it was?

• 2:31:59Speaker 03

  This was about 2019.

• 2:32:00Shawn Ryan?

  Was it everywhere or did it feel like it was?

• 2:32:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wasn't anywhere. Felt like everywhere.

• 2:32:05Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:32:05Speaker 03

  Nobody knew or cared, but in my head, I was, it's like kind of what we talked about at breakfast. I was

• 2:32:14Speaker 03

  oh my gosh, and there's so much money, there's so much money that was being made and checks that I'd never seen before. And I'm not going to say, hey, stop this train because I need to. I mean, I was in so much shame, dude, you don't understand. I mean, you do probably understand, but.

• 2:32:35Speaker 03

  Gosh, I remember getting offstage at a church of like 5,000 people and seeing like a tweet about how John Crist is like a sexual predator or something like that. And I'd never had sex with anyone. But in that community, it's you can't have a girl coming out of your hotel room. You can't be sexting with a woman. You can't do any of that. But I'm not a pastor, but I was on stage.

• 2:33:04Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:33:04Speaker 03

  At church. Just I was drinking more and more. I mean, I look back at it now and it's like, that is crazy that that all happened.

• 2:33:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:17Speaker 03

  But it's.

• 2:33:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, were you? Well, I just, I.

• 2:33:21Speaker 03

  You can ask any question you want.

• 2:33:22Shawn Ryan?

  I had, I had created my own assumptions when I, when I was doing my research and reading about you. And I mean, I know why you went to rehab and we'll get into that in a minute. But I mean, I was, my, the picture that I had painted in my head was a, was a devout Christian who took a turn in life and the fame got to him and things became easier to get and things got pushed on you and, and I mean, it happens to a lot of people.

• 2:33:57Speaker 03

  That's the, that's the.

• 2:33:58Shawn Ryan?

  The booze, the women.

• 2:33:59Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 2:34:00Shawn Ryan?

  Like, it just comes with, it just comes with it.

• 2:34:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:34:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I was, I mean. But I mean, I was expecting.

• 2:34:07Speaker 03

  No, that's the whole story.

• 2:34:08Shawn Ryan?

  To hear you slamming around Broadway every night, you know, belligerent, drunk and.

• 2:34:17Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, there was no.

• 2:34:19Shawn Ryan?

  Five women on each arm.

• 2:34:20Speaker 03

  No, dude, I mean, it was, there was no, just the idea that, I mean, I remember somebody said that I was like sexting. They were like, John Crist sexted, sexting with women or something like that. And that was, that was it. But you can't. Again, in that, in that framework of the religion, they, they hold that so, that's, I mean, there's a scandal over there every other week.

• 2:34:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:53Speaker 03

  It seems like that nobody can, that, that.

• 2:35:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess you and I was desperately trying to keep this quiet or something.

• 2:35:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man, this is like, this is some good insight and it's, you know, we, this is some good, I need to hear this stuff. Because now it's, it's starting to make sense, like the hate that I was talking about that I've received from the Christian community, from particular episodes that I've released, or

• 2:35:23Speaker 03

  Which is crazy.

• 2:35:24Shawn Ryan?

  Or how I live my life. Now it's starting to make sense that, you know, they, it's

• 2:35:31Speaker 03

  And they, they

• 2:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  I don't agree with it, but at least it makes

• 2:35:35Speaker 03

  It makes sense, which we talk about. Yeah, we're like, I like, you go, what, this doesn't make any, or like, what, what am I? I, I looked back on the time, I go, will you tell me?

• 2:35:47Speaker 03

  What? The, now this is an impossible question to answer, but like, tell me what the rules are then. So I'm a single man, so am I allowed to date?

• 2:36:02Speaker 03

  Probably. Am I allowed to date? Multiple women at one at a time, one every three months? Am I allowed to have one drink? Am I allowed to have two drinks? Am I allowed to have one drink on the road, three drinks back home? I'm allowed to, um,

• 2:36:17Speaker 03

  can a girl spend the night in my hotel room if we have two queen beds? Can we have one king bed but not touch? Can we only cuddle? Can we make out? Like you, you know what I'm saying? It's silly to verbalize, but like, what?

• 2:36:32Speaker 03

  What of your? What food would be okay?

• 2:36:36Shawn Ryan?

  It's

• 2:36:37Speaker 03

  With the gummy bear, the anti, so are you allowed, what if they're sugar free?

• 2:36:41Shawn Ryan?

  Obviously, my way of life isn't working for you unless I live exactly within your parameters, which is impossible to know because I cannot read your fucking mind.

• 2:36:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, but keep in mind, what you say on this podcast? And what I was saying and still am saying as a comedian and any comedian is saying, by the way, is people don't like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's disagreeable to a lot of people. Now, a lot of people love it and a lot of people love my, but it's, but it's, it's

• 2:37:17Speaker 03

  dude, the more it's, it's, that Christian girl Instagram video is

• 2:37:25Speaker 03

  So much of a slap in the face to anyone who did that sincerely. Does that make sense?

• 2:37:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 2:37:34Speaker 03

  It's silly now, but you go, I mean, such venom from my jokes. And it's that that was combined with it. So you go this, I mean, we went after everything, every sacred cow in Christianity. We went after like some people raised their hands like this. Some people raised their hands like this, some people like all the, I can't believe he's saying this. And I was just going after everything. So it was making us so, and everyone was loving it. But the people on the other side were the very, obviously the very religious

• 2:38:18Speaker 03

  were furious, dude furious. Which I look back now and that's a sign of that you're going in the right direction. And, and the people that the three or four people that were loudest and trying to cancel me were other, uh, wannabe like influencers.

• 2:38:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, go figure.

• 2:38:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:42Shawn Ryan?

  I knew that, I knew that was gonna come out.

• 2:38:44Speaker 03

  It all makes sense now, but at the time, dude, yeah, at the time it was, yeah. And it was just.

• 2:38:50Shawn Ryan?

  People threatened by your success.

• 2:38:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. What they wanted to, it was, I remember it was they all, we are all kind of on the same trajectory of the next big thing in Christianity, whatever. And then they, then they turned on me. It gets, dude, this story, by the way, gets, if you're mad now, you're gonna get so pissed.

• 2:39:14Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it just, it, it makes me sad because. It turns so many people away.

• 2:39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:22Shawn Ryan?

  From believing.

• 2:39:24Speaker 03

  Cause they don't wanna be a part of that group.

• 2:39:26Shawn Ryan?

  Why would you?

• 2:39:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:28Shawn Ryan?

  It's stepping into the judgment zone. It's, it's like, hey, you wanna be judged?

• 2:39:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:33Shawn Ryan?

  Come to our church. We will judge the shit out of you, shame the shit out of you.

• 2:39:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:38Shawn Ryan?

  And humiliate you until you leave.

• 2:39:41Speaker 03

  Publicly, until you leave. Cause that says then our box can stay.

• 2:39:45Shawn Ryan?

  Cause that's what Jesus wants, right?

• 2:39:46Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:39:47Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, that, and so it is, it's infuriating. It is, it is infuriating.

• 2:39:54Speaker 03

  Well.

• 2:39:54Shawn Ryan?

  But keep going, keep going.

• 2:39:56Speaker 03

  Alright, so there's more and more of these like

• 2:40:02Speaker 03

  groundswells of like these, man, John Crist is, like, I remember

• 2:40:10Speaker 03

  there was a story about a girl that came over to my apartment. And then she like, she got in trouble with like her boyfriend, because she had a boyfriend. She, we didn't do anything, but she came over and we hung out and then like everybody was like everything was my fault somehow, like it was like John Crist is a abuse and like the stories that they wrote about me, they were like, he, I was in, I would bring girls back to my hotel, but I was like, I was on a tour bus. There was no hotel to come back to. I was with six other people on a bus. There was no, you can't bring a girl onto the tour bus? There's, like, I could go line by line through my, the article that canceled me, like, this is inaccurate, this is inaccurate, this is inaccurate, this is inaccurate.

• 2:40:52Speaker 03

  But if you, if you remember anything about 2019 was so scary.

• 2:41:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:01Speaker 03

  With the Me Too movement, that people were like, Hollywood producers were like quitting their jobs like preemptively. They were like, hey, back in college, I got drunk and this girl came over to my, hey, just, remember that?

• 2:41:15Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I remember.

• 2:41:16Speaker 03

  They were like, hey, just so I don't get in the news, I'm gonna just, I'm out.

• 2:41:20Shawn Ryan?

  It went so, I mean, it just went.

• 2:41:23Speaker 03

  It was so scary and it combined that with Christianity. And it was terrifying, dude. It was fame, Christianity and sex. It was like, not even actual sex, but like sexual activity. It was terrifying. And then, so

• 2:41:44Speaker 03

  this, um, I've started.

• 2:41:49Speaker 03

  Dating a girl in 2019. I publicly announced I was dating a girl and then that was like on the news. So when I'm like Us Weekly or like People Magazine, right? And so there was women that I hadn't either closed, I hadn't talked to them in forever, but they, I would always, I was, what I am guilty of is if I regret anything, it is lying to, now you shouldn't lose your job for that, but like I would tell women,

• 2:42:34Speaker 03

  I'm on the road. If I was only off the road, I could settle down and be in a relationship and you know, all these types of, I just, so there was women that thought that I was gonna be in a relationship with them one day, or that I said that I love them, or that is what I, I still feel, I was misleading. And I still, that is what I regret. Do you think a lot of that came from your own guilt of not wanting to tell them like, look, uh, this isn't going anywhere? Same with the church, like if I like, hey, this is just like a, I'm just like a fun flirty thing. I would, I don't want to say that. Yeah. So you just kind of allowed it to go on. It was very careless with, with

• 2:43:14Speaker 03

  women's emotions for sure. And looking, and now being in a healthy relationship, you go, oh my God, I can't believe I strung that woman along for so long, or made it feel like we were dating, or that, that I don't, I don't love that. But the rest of the stuff is. You don't regret it? No, dude, or no, not, no. Good. If you need to, I'm not here to apologize for it. Yeah. Or anything like that. If you, like, they they're all very.

• 2:43:49Speaker 03

  Very, very consensual relationships. But at the time, that relationship went public and that's when a couple of these women found each other online. And then there's this Christian magazine that spent six months researching me. So every, every, it's tabloid magazine, if you believe it, Christians have tabloid magazines. Every, um, every time a woman would tag me in a photo, they would reach out to them, "Hey, do you have any inappropriate relationship with John Crist? Do you know him? What's your relationship with him? We heard he's messing around with women."

• 2:44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Holy cow.

• 2:44:32Speaker 03

  Six months, doing all this research, flying people down to their studio, interviewing them.

• 2:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious? They like, spent 100% of their energy and time on taking you down.

• 2:44:46Speaker 03

  And they got, they came, the headline was, uh, John Crist involved in sexting and manipulation of women.

• 2:44:53Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:44:54Speaker 03

  That's correct. But in, but again, if you don't live in this world, this seems, this seems so dumb. And I'm hearing myself saying it out loud and it does feel dumb. Or it seems silly. It just seems silly. And then they, I'd never forget this. So they had this, so someone emailed my management team and they go, "Hey, we've had, we've been researching John for six months and we know everything. We know everything and we're gonna, and we're gonna release it, we're gonna release it tomorrow."

• 2:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  You're making this sound like they're releasing the Epstein list.

• 2:45:42Speaker 03

  I thank you, dude.

• 2:45:44Shawn Ryan?

  Like, what the hell?

• 2:45:46Speaker 03

  He was like, he cuddled with a girl in the Hampton Inn.

• 2:45:49Shawn Ryan?

  We saw that shot that he took in the airport and, uh, you're going out, buddy.

• 2:45:54Speaker 03

  This is enough of this. Yeah. So, but they sent it to our...

• 2:46:02Shawn Ryan?

  What is the management team's?

• 2:46:04Speaker 03

  Everybody's terrified because we all live in this Christian community too. So we know everybody.

• 2:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:46:12Speaker 03

  They're all every, I mean, I have an agent in Hollywood and he was like, what?

• 2:46:18Speaker 03

  He was like, what?

• 2:46:19Shawn Ryan?

  He's like, I don't get it.

• 2:46:20Speaker 03

  He's like, what? He go, yeah, what's the problem? Except for any comedian, that sounds like a Thursday.

• 2:46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:24Speaker 03

  And like, yeah. So they sent us this email like, we're gonna go public with all our every, all, all of it. And they didn't tell me what it was, by the way, which is the possibly the most unethical journalistic practice that is ever like, they don't know. Tell me what they've found or that like, you want to make a statement? And the misstep we made is acknowledging it. We acknowledged the article, wrote a statement and canceled the tour.

• 2:46:59Speaker 03

  And that's what it wasn't, they had, they had no voice and they ever would have a voice. But I put fuel on that fire because of my own shame and I was so scared.

• 2:47:10Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, were you legitimately ashamed?

• 2:47:22Speaker 03

  When it came out?

• 2:47:25Shawn Ryan?

  Had it not been for any of that?

• 2:47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Would you have been looking back now? Are you ashamed?

• 2:47:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:47:34Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:47:34Speaker 03

  Now, I was ashamed, like,

• 2:47:39Speaker 03

  most of the shame came from, like, I was in church.

• 2:47:45Shawn Ryan?

  I understand.

• 2:47:45Speaker 03

  I was in church my whole life and I, when I would go to church on Sunday morning, I told this to my dad, I remember after the whole situation, I goes, I've been in church my whole life and most of the, what I'm going to church for is to get freedom from this burden of shame, which at that time in my life was via like masturbation and porn. I felt a lot of shame about that.

• 2:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:11Speaker 03

  I felt a lot of shame about that practice. So I was going to church to relieve myself of that shame, that God was gonna.

• 2:48:23Speaker 03

  Free me of that shame, but the shame

• 2:48:27Speaker 03

  came from them. The shame came from the church. You know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?

• 2:48:33Shawn Ryan?

  It does.

• 2:48:34Speaker 03

  Like I, somebody else wouldn't have shame from that behavior that I was doing. I had an extreme amount of shame from it.

• 2:48:40Shawn Ryan?

  Had you never been in that environment, you would have never felt the shame.

• 2:48:43Speaker 03

  No, because I tried to explain it to my other friends and they're like, what? Right? They're like, what's wrong with that? Or like, but in the, in the world I live in, this was no coming back from it.

• 2:48:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:59Speaker 03

  And that's, by the way, I didn't learn that when I was, got canceled. I thought that my whole life. Like dude, I remember like, you know, my founding, finding a Playboy when I was 10 and like being

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  that was the worst. I found a Playboy when I was riding my bike when I was 10 and I, I stopped and I'd never seen a naked woman before. And I stopped and I looked down.

• 2:49:25Speaker 03

  And I was like,

• 2:49:28Speaker 03

  of course you're 10, you're like, they was undone by it. And I remember

• 2:49:33Speaker 03

  running home and not telling anyone. Immediate shame.

• 2:49:38Shawn Ryan?

  Did you bring it with you?

• 2:49:39Speaker 03

  No, I was in, I was like, and I was like, I remember my, my mom being like, what happened? Where were you? And I was like,

• 2:49:46Speaker 03

  right? And then I remember at night wanting to go back.

• 2:49:52Speaker 03

  Right? And that whole feeling is that was that, it was that. So you go, oh man, this is bad, or I shouldn't do this, right? And then you're like, I'm never gonna do that again. And then you're like,

• 2:50:07Speaker 03

  want to secretly send your brothers to play at their buddy's house so you can ride back and go look at it again.

• 2:50:16Speaker 03

  Man. But it's so forbidden.

• 2:50:21Shawn Ryan?

  I get it. I get it. I know what you're saying.

• 2:50:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:50:24Shawn Ryan?

  I do understand what you're saying.

• 2:50:25Speaker 03

  So I remember that one of the most.

• 2:50:29Speaker 03

  They were like, we're gonna release this article and your, your life is gonna be over and, and right? And

• 2:50:37Speaker 03

  I remember. They were like, we're gonna release this article at 10 a.m. or something like that. And I was like, I was at my house.

• 2:50:48Speaker 03

  And I was. You know, 11 o'clock comes around, nothing. Noon, nothing. One, nothing, right? No article. And I remember being in such turmoil that I go.

• 2:51:03Speaker 03

  And such shame. That I thought to myself, if they don't release this article, I'm gonna.

• 2:51:10Speaker 03

  I'm gonna put, so, so we can be done with this. Because the last five years I had been living in this, to try to, and I was like, this is.

• 2:51:19Speaker 03

  Whatever y'all think about me, put it out. Put it all out. So we can just be done. I don't want to have any of this career. I don't want any of this. Like, I just, I don't, I won't even do comedy anymore. But I'm not doing this. So whatever y'all have to say about me, everybody say it. Everybody get on the internet and say whatever you want to say about me and then. We'll let the chips fall where they may.

• 2:51:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I have another quote from it. It said, if they hadn't broken that story, I think I would have.

• 2:51:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, same, yeah.

• 2:51:47Shawn Ryan?

  You'd come to a point where you were so tired of the double life that you couldn't keep up. Couldn't keep up the good boy Christian image anymore.

• 2:51:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:51:55Shawn Ryan?

  And you needed an out.

• 2:51:57Speaker 03

  I don't, yeah.

• 2:51:58Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, this stuff got so into your head that you, you were, you were contemplating suicide.

• 2:52:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude, this, I mean.

• 2:52:07Shawn Ryan?

  How long?

• 2:52:08Speaker 03

  I didn't know how to get out. I didn't know how to.

• 2:52:13Speaker 03

  I didn't know how to get out of, of this. Scenario. Cause I was like, these, these, the. It was so big, the, the touring was so big. And then.

• 2:52:31Speaker 03

  It was more like I was like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I wanna be alive. I didn't wanna be, I didn't wanna do any of it. I hated it. And every, the bigger, every, every time I got something bigger and bigger and bigger, a Netflix special, a sold out show, an opportunity on a TV show, it came with a lot of shame because it's just bigger. I go, then now more people are gonna hate me. When they find out I'm not a practicing Christian the way they, I would like, they think I am.

• 2:53:01Speaker 03

  And I feel bad, I feel, a lot of people are still in that. They still live that way, by the way. A lot of people. I'll bet they do. And I feel terrible for them. I go, dude, you gotta come over to this side.

• 2:53:15Speaker 03

  Yes, that article came out and it was on, I didn't have my phone on me. And I was like, I was like, is it bad? And my sister was like, yeah, not, not is it bad? The, the content or the article, though, it was. Yeah, how bad, how bad is the damage? I go, where is it? They go, CNN, Fox News, LA Times, USA Today, everywhere.

• 2:53:40Speaker 03

  Christian comedian caught, whatever. Just for the headline? Yeah. And nobody ever read the, nobody ever read the article because if you read the article, you'd be like, oh. The lead article, um, it's a girl. So the girl, um, came to, we went rollerblading on Venice Beach. It's funny, my buddies texted me, they're like, dude, the most concerning part about this is that you went rollerblading. I was like, okay.

• 2:54:16Speaker 03

  I was like, my buddy called me, my buddy called me, he goes, hey dude, I'm concerned. I go, yeah, I know dude, I'm sorry. He goes, no, you were rollerblading? I go, yeah.

• 2:54:26Speaker 03

  And then I remember my other friend, one of my other friends called me, which I go, fair, fair, fair criticism. I remember another- Please don't write an article about that. Not the rollerblading.

• 2:54:40Speaker 03

  Like, I remember that I worked with another comedian, a female, that I've been on the road with. And I remember, I mean, comedians have the worst sense of humor. She calls me, she goes, John, I read this article. I go, yeah, I'm so sorry. She goes, no, I'm upset. She goes, I've been on the road with you for two years and you never did anything with me. I was like, dang it.

• 2:55:03Speaker 03

  All right, this is not helpful. And then I might, that the girlfriend, I've told this story, the girl that I was dating that last year, I go, hey, this article is going to come out about me, so I'm just preparing you. You might be in it or you might be a part of it. She calls me, she goes, I read the article. I go, yeah, it's not good. She goes, well, now I know this is a lie because this girl said you tried to push her up against the wall and have sex with her and I was dating you for a year and you never did that to me. Or like, or something in the release, like, this is not, you don't, you've done none of this. Yeah, but it, like, the girl, hold this, this whole story about how I was,

• 2:55:43Speaker 03

  I mean, she, she came over that night and we were drunk, but we never kissed, we never touched. And she was actually smoking weed that night. I never mentioned anything about that. I don't smoke weed, I never have smoked weed. She wrote me a note that says, let's do it again soon, love, Val. And that, and I still have that note.

• 2:56:09Speaker 03

  And she was the one that's like, it was, it was, none of that's true. And, but I, but I was in no scenario at the time to defend myself. Yeah. Remember that time in 2019, there was a, all right, well, listen, okay, you were just had to take it. Everybody just had to take it. And I, and what's, what's like, Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports and that Johnny Depp trial that people are like, we-

• 2:56:38Speaker 03

  You can't just do, like, we're not saints, but you can't just crush us. And we're just, and there's a couple of people publicly that in the last two years have been like, have fought back. And that, and that have kind of ended that whole. Yeah. Move, they were like, am I, am I perfect? Of course not. Did I make a lot of mistakes? Of course. Was I careless with woman's, women's hearts and emotions? Of course. But did I do anything against anyone's will? Absolutely not. Did I do anything illegal? Absolutely not. Was I not a good guy? Was I not? Was I guilty of not being a good Christian? A thousand percent. But that doesn't mean that you should take away someone's livelihood. Yeah.

• 2:57:21Speaker 03

  And that's what the crazy part about it was back then. Is that I go, well, what do you want me to? What, what's the, like, I envy, I envy the guys that, that were, I remember I did a show at a prison. A maximum security prison back at the time. And I go, man, these guys seem so free. They're in here, but they're like, hey, if you kidnap someone, you go to trial. They say, here's the evidence. Here's how long you have to serve. Here's how long you have to pay for this crime. Murder, tax evasion, whatever. And when you complete your sentence, you are free. And there's a, there's what, there's a path back to good

• 2:58:05Speaker 03

  or a path back to reconciliation. With cancellation, it's you're done. There's no way back. Yeah. There's no forgiveness or restitution or, or there's none of that. It's you're done forever. You're done forever. And I go, what's the, what is? I'll admit that I wasn't perfect. What's the penalty? Do I sit out for a year? Do I get my social media taken away? Do I, what's?

• 2:58:33Shawn Ryan?

  How, I'm just curious, how big was your? I mean, you probably don't remember, but you've got a very significant following now.

• 2:58:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:42Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you got, uh, I think, close to a million on YouTube.

• 2:58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like eight million or so total, yeah.

• 2:58:50Shawn Ryan?

  You know, on, uh, on IG, I mean, whatever, I checked your stats, but back then, did you have a, did you have a voice? You know, through your own socials to address the controversy?

• 2:59:05Speaker 03

  I wasn't, I was like popular in Christian circles, but not like in the, in the mainstream like I am now.

• 2:59:12Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:59:13Speaker 03

  So I was big there, but everybody, all the headlines in like CNN and Fox News were like, Christian comedian. Like, no one knew who my name was.

• 2:59:20Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:20Speaker 03

  They, they were like, it was relatively unknown.

• 2:59:23Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so you, you literally, you didn't, you, it would have been impossible for you to get a voice to?

• 2:59:29Speaker 03

  I could have said.

• 2:59:34Speaker 03

  But I knew, cause I'd always still worked in the comedy clubs and I knew, I go, this just sounds so silly.

• 2:59:39Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:40Speaker 03

  You're like, you're gonna come make a, a post and admit what? You're like, I don't even know how to address this. I wouldn't even know how to.

• 2:59:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:49Speaker 03

  What to say?

• 2:59:50Shawn Ryan?

  I was just curious if that thought had crossed.

• 2:59:53Speaker 03

  Or like, it's like, try to like, address it before something came out or something?

• 2:59:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, or even afterwards. I mean, it's just defending yourself.

• 3:00:00Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I, I.

• 3:00:02Shawn Ryan?

  Because?

• 3:00:03Speaker 03

  At the ti- let's see, at the time, I just stopped, I just turned everything off and went away.

• 3:00:07Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 3:00:08Speaker 03

  Went to rehab.

• 3:00:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:00:10Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they canceled your, your keynote speaking engagements, your comedy tour, your book.

• 3:00:15Speaker 03

  I canceled them.

• 3:00:15Shawn Ryan?

  You canceled all of those?

• 3:00:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:00:18Shawn Ryan?

  Did you cancel the Netflix?

• 3:00:19Speaker 03

  No. Okay, so what happened was, they said, we're gonna have this, this article's gonna come out tomorrow, right? So the article came out and, um, my manager at the time.

• 3:00:36Speaker 03

  Asked me if I wanted to tour that weekend. And keep in mind, I was touring in churches.

• 3:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. Nowhere but church.

• 3:00:45Speaker 03

  At the time, I was about 70% churches. I was doing theaters too.

• 3:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:00:49Speaker 03

  But mostly churches.

• 3:00:51Shawn Ryan?

  So 70% of your business in your livelihood.

• 3:00:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they go and I, but I also had a Netflix special coming out that Thanksgiving. And I was on the late night show. They were coming up. That was all about to be released. And then my book was also coming out. So it's kind of the perfect storm for them to come cancel somebody right when they're doing something.

• 3:01:12Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:01:14Speaker 03

  Of value, which by the way, every time I've done something of value since, that's the only time those, these people come out of the woodworks. When you have a new comedy special, you release a tour, you sign a book deal, that's when those same people come out. Every time you do something of note.

• 3:01:29Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:01:30Speaker 03

  They appear, which is ironic, but so the article is going to come out. And my manager at the time said, do you want to tour this weekend? Cause I had shows about to go on the road and I was in so much shame and I was so, I mean, everybody was calling me. This, that, this article was everywhere, everywhere. And I was either going to have to address it on stage or, and I said, I don't want to, I don't want to tour this weekend. And then, so my manager, which all these choices were wrong in hindsight. He goes, well, let's just cancel the rest of the tour.

• 3:02:15Speaker 03

  The, it was probably Thanksgiving and we had another month of the tour or something like that. And so all the, when the, when mainstream media picked up the article was Christian comedian cancels his tour amidst allegations. So if I wouldn't have acknowledged it, it would have just.

• 3:02:38Speaker 03

  I canceled and then Netflix pulled the special because I canceled my tour. Okay. So it was kind of a domino effect because I and I put up in that article, I put a statement in it. Cause I was so scared and it was, it was like a tabloid. Yeah. I fueled that fire and I didn't even know what was in the article. Okay. So you, yeah. Cause I was so felt so guilty from the, I go, I admit I've, I've done wrong and I need to clean up my life. And I've been making some poor choices that don't honor God or whatever. I don't remember what the statement was, but I didn't even know what the article and the rating, the article, you're like, oh, there's nothing in, there's nothing of significance in here. Man.

• 3:03:20Speaker 03

  So we, we were just so scared that we, we, is it like a bad management choices and, but I was just in a terrible place and I look back and I'm not.

• 3:03:37Speaker 03

  I've been sober since that day. And I'm in a relationship with a woman that I love and, and I'm honest and healthy and so.

• 3:03:51Speaker 03

  And my career is now bigger than it was before. Uh huh. So.

• 3:04:00Speaker 03

  It's easier, let's just say it's easier to forgive. But there's also been people that that has happened to, and they never have a chance to return. And I understand why they're upset. Cause you can't just, you can say whatever you want about somebody on the internet, especially if it's around sex. That is.

• 3:04:22Speaker 03

  It's a death sentence. Yeah. You go, oh, so and so accused of, doesn't matter that it gets dropped in court two years later. And that went through, do you know that, uh, Trevor Bauer, the baseball player and that punter for the Bills both got accused of things and fired from their jobs with sexual things, fired, cut from the team. And it's now been proven that they, they weren't even in the same building and in the same room. And it's like, well, he's the guy that. Yeah. Did I still?

• 3:04:57Speaker 03

  I still carry around that people's to this day. And most people don't know or care. That's why my shows are bigger than they were before. But you still carry around their reputation.

• 3:05:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:08Speaker 03

  Of your past.

• 3:05:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it, it, uh, man, I just. I think that, do you think that's going away?

• 3:05:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it, it, yeah.

• 3:05:23Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it just happened to, it, it's so, it happens so often that it's losing the.

• 3:05:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:05:30Shawn Ryan?

  In a way, it's unfortunate. You know, like when we were talking about 2019, the, I think.

• 3:05:38Speaker 03

  Gosh, dude.

• 3:05:38Shawn Ryan?

  I personally think that the, the, the, the racism type stuff.

• 3:05:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:05:45Shawn Ryan?

  Ev- ev- everything that could be.

• 3:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  They're saying math is racist, you know?

• 3:05:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you look back on that and you go, yeah, you, what you don't want to be.

• 3:05:57Shawn Ryan?

  It sucks because it's, it's like now when there's a real problem.

• 3:06:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:06:01Shawn Ryan?

  Now, when there is a real problem, it would be, it won't, it won't, it won't see the light that it should see because it is, it's just been hammered.

• 3:06:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and which I've like, dude, like, there was, like, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and like, there was real, there was real.

• 3:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 3:06:21Speaker 03

  People doing bad things. And you, but if you lump these like words that are like, like the, the wording of these like, are so aggressive that are like, all right, either say, say it or don't. You, cause you can't just lump these people in with abuse and like, mental turmoil and like, manipulation and like, you can't say that, what, you can't just, but it's so, those words are so scary.

• 3:06:50Shawn Ryan?

  They're, well, I guess what I'm saying is the word.

• 3:06:53Speaker 03

  Racist is like.

• 3:06:54Shawn Ryan?

  Losing, the word is losing its, its value.

• 3:06:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:06:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and sexual allegations.

• 3:07:00Speaker 03

  What does that even mean?

• 3:07:01Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly. You know, I mean, it would, I can't, it happens every week. I mean, Russell Brand just went through it and it's, it's every time somebody does something that people don't like.

• 3:07:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:07:12Shawn Ryan?

  You're either a racist.

• 3:07:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:07:14Shawn Ryan?

  Or you have sexual allegations against you. It's like. It's losing, it's, it's just-

• 3:07:20Speaker 03

  And now everybody's like, alright dude-

• 3:07:23Shawn Ryan?

  It's like the little boy that cried wolf story.

• 3:07:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, unfortunately, for the real victims, for the real, there is real racism.

• 3:07:34Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm getting at.

• 3:07:35Speaker 03

  Like, you didn't post a black square on your Instagram, you're racist. Stop.

• 3:07:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:39Speaker 03

  You're, you're, you're, it's so disingenuous to the actual racism that's going on and the actual abuse that's going on. I mean, this is, this is not the battle to be fighting.

• 3:07:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:07:53Speaker 03

  And no, and not one person on that other side that is, I've, I've-

• 3:07:57Shawn Ryan?

  It's, you've diluted the word into nothing.

• 3:08:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, unfortunately.

• 3:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  You're overused. And sexual allegations, you have diluted the actual act-

• 3:08:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:09Shawn Ryan?

  Into nothing.

• 3:08:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:10Shawn Ryan?

  Because nobody knows what's real anymore.

• 3:08:14Speaker 03

  And you're not, yeah.

• 3:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  That's a shame.

• 3:08:16Speaker 03

  But it's, and it's, and it's based in the whole thing.

• 3:08:22Speaker 03

  I like that you bring up racism because the same type of thing is in, um, based in shame. So like,

• 3:08:30Speaker 03

  the left always like, the anti-fat shaming, anti slut shaming, anti, there's no shame, but the shame is, is their greatest weapon against someone. Like, now there's no shame, right? So it's now, what is, what is, if you talk in Bible terms, what is now, what was in the dark is now in the light. So, I'm good. Or I'm not, there's no, the moment that that story came out, that's the best I ever slept in years.

• 3:09:01Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:09:02Speaker 03

  Best I've slept in years, dude. And I go,

• 3:09:06Speaker 03

  "Well, whatever happens now, happens now. There's no, there's no..."

• 3:09:12Speaker 03

  And there's nothing in the article, obviously, or there's nothing of merit in the article. There's a bunch of he said, she said. And I was like, I wish I wouldn't have never acknowledged it. It would've just fizzled out.

• 3:09:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:22Speaker 03

  Possibly, yeah.

• 3:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it also says that you were virtually shut out from just about every church after the-

• 3:09:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:09:31Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, are you still shut out?

• 3:09:33Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, in a lot of ways. I don't-

• 3:09:36Shawn Ryan?

  You never went back, did you?

• 3:09:37Speaker 03

  No, I haven't.

• 3:09:41Speaker 03

  It's a-

• 3:09:45Speaker 03

  It's that the relationship with a religion is tricky because the Christian community, the real Christian community that was around me, saved my life. So, I mean, dude, I was getting texts and letters in rehab by the hundreds. Dude, we love you. The same thing with you. Everybody makes mistakes. We support you. Anything we can do for you, you let me know. I was getting so built up and so encouraged, but publicly, I was getting just crushed. So it's tricky for me to say,

• 3:10:26Speaker 03

  I've abandoned those people because those people kept me alive. The people in the church, if you go to church, there's a, there's a whole group of Christian people currently that love you. They love your work. They just aren't saying it, but they, they listen to your podcast and follow you and they, but there's also a very vocal, very, very minority group of people that are vocal about you. The loud ones. And these aren't them. These don't represent them. They're not, they're, they're, they don't wish for reconciliation or forgiveness. If they're posting publicly about you, they wish for your destruction. They wish for your embarrassment, for your shame and your destruction. If somebody, I've gotten, I've gotten private DMs

• 3:11:11Speaker 03

  from people that said, hey, we love your comedy. We just thought that this joke was offensive because we have, and I'll listen to that because that's someone that's, is trying to help. That's a fan. If somebody, if you say something incorrect on this podcast, somebody will message you privately, hey, I just want to let you know that that didn't happen like that or happen like that. You can correct this if you want, but that's someone trying to help you. Someone tweeting at you publicly is trying to crush you. They are not for your good. And so if you say, hey, as the Christian community outed you, the Christian community kept me on earth. Gotcha. In a lot of ways. So I don't want to, now there,

• 3:11:56Speaker 03

  there were so many people that reached out to me that were like, what, what, what, how the whole thing came down, my whole belief of, my whole life and the childhood is because.

• 3:12:12Speaker 03

  I went to rehab, which was like a, I really didn't have anything to do. And I was off tour and it was kind of like a PR move at the time. Mm hmm. They're like, we'll go to rehab, I guess, which is like absurd that I would be there. But it was awesome. Actually, everybody should go to rehab. But I remember going there and uh,

• 3:12:41Speaker 03

  yeah, I had my relationships with my family and my, my parents obviously still loved me and care. I was like, everybody's gonna hate me and everybody's gonna excommunicate you. And everybody's like, no, dude, everybody's sending me letters, everybody encouraging me. And then I remember my sister, I talked to my sister and I said, this is kind of, I wasn't in the healthiest place at the time. I go, how many followers did I lose? Cause I had like, you know, however many, four, four million followers at the time or something. She goes, how like, how many followers did I lose? And she goes, none. And I was like, under some, just like we talked at breakfast, that I should kill myself. Like, where did you, where'd you get that?

• 3:13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, people were screaming very loudly on the internet, but

• 3:13:30Speaker 03

  there would be more, if you want to build the evidence that you're a child of God, that you're deeply loved, you're flawed but deeply loved. And, or if you want to build the case that you're a bad guy, you could build both of those cases easily. And you could probably build the one that you're a, a son of God and of, of infinite value. Much easier than you could build the one that you should leave this planet. Mm hmm. Much easier. So everybody, everybody was like, yeah, dude, we love you. And then I started coming back and then.

• 3:14:05Speaker 03

  I remember my agent was like, well, this is like eight months later. I didn't do anything for a long time because COVID happened right after that. And we did a show. We put a show, no, the first emotional moment that I had, I never said anything online for eight months. I said, hey, I need to get some help. I need to take care of my personal life.

• 3:14:26Speaker 03

  And I remember me and my assistant, we decided to come back to the internet eight months later. And I didn't know what people were gonna think. I didn't know what people were gonna say. I didn't know what to do or nothing. And me and my assistant, Eleanor, were sitting in my kitchen.

• 3:14:48Speaker 03

  We're sitting in my kitchen at the coffee table there on the, and I had these new headshots taken. And you know, on Facebook, if you post your new headshot, it goes into the feed. It's like so and so posted a new headshot and no one had heard from me in eight months. No one knew, I mean, my family knew where I was, but no one knew if I was, if he's never gonna come back again. And people, we didn't, no one knew, haven't heard from him. We don't know his side of the story. It's just a horrific time that's embarrassed himself all over the internet and no one knew. And I was like, well, if we're gonna post next week or something, we should get some fresh headshots or whatever.

• 3:15:31Speaker 03

  So I went, I did a photo shoot and I pressed, my assistant was there. We weren't really thinking anything of it, but I pressed upload and it must've gone into the feed.

• 3:15:44Speaker 03

  And the support was, I mean, I will never forget that the rest of it. I was like, oh my God, he's back, dude. I'm so glad. I can't believe he made it. We freaking love this guy. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for, oh, I can't wait to see what he has to say about COVID. Oh, man, I couldn't be, this is, this makes my day. People were like, I'm crying. I can't believe this must mean, it was like, it's like, almost like, I don't wanna compare it to anything in the military, but you're like, you're done, you're out of hope. And you see like a, like the light flickering in the, and you're like, oh my God, maybe. It's a, and it. It was just

• 3:16:30Speaker 03

  And we were just sitting there, man, we were bawling, dude, we were bawling. And we were just like, and why, why was that so significant? Because this

• 3:16:43Speaker 03

  This goes against all, my whole life Of if anyone ever figures out That you're a human, that you Saw Playboy, that you kissed a girl, that you smoked a cigarette, that you, anything, if they ever figured out they'd hate you. And that was the, I go

• 3:17:06Speaker 03

  That must not be true. Then now these people knew everything. These people knew everything. And they were all like, we, dude, I can't believe, and they were all tagging their friends, John's back. I can't believe John, it makes me emotional to talk about, but it was like, I will never forget that the rest of my life. And I didn't mean it to It wasn't for that. It was just like a We didn't, we were just do, run some, going through some work on the counter or something like, she's like, well, let me upload this. And then we kind of got back to it. And she's like

• 3:17:38Speaker 03

  And it was like

• 3:17:41Speaker 03

  How loudly That spoke to me. And I think that's what got me into like, oh, what, then it sent me on this road of like, oh, what else of this Institution of religion have we created that's not true either? All of this, and you go, oh, and, and the shame was, if, by the way, if you

• 3:18:06Speaker 03

  Are very religious or you read an article about me and that, and that information, You can't Watch my videos or something based on that, that's fine.

• 3:18:16Speaker 03

  You're allowed to do that. If you think this, my, my behavior is Irredeemable or beyond the, you can't let, that's fine. That's fine with me. And if you're, like you said, if you don't like you because of these gummy bears, that's fine. That's silly, but that's fine with me.

• 3:18:38Speaker 03

  And man, I wish, I wish.

• 3:18:44Speaker 03

  I wish other, I wish that feeling on, for others. And I don't know how to, I'd say that at every single one of my shows, I go, dude, someone commits suicide on this planet every 40 seconds, every 40 seconds. And we went to my cousin, my cousin, um, grew up like me, very religious, very strict Christian household. And we went to his funeral two years ago, he committed suicide. He committed suicide. Oh, man. We went to his funeral and there was 2,000 people there. It's 2,000 people at his funeral.

• 3:19:25Speaker 03

  So you go, wait, if he would have known, look at all these people that love him. Look at all these people that flew from all over the country to come show their love and in support of his family, but that loved him. How, how did you get the message that there was not one person on this earth that cared about you and that you were gonna end your life? Does that make sense? You're like, dude, look at, how did you, how did you receive this message? That everyone, that there was no purpose for you on earth, that you, there was no

• 3:20:06Speaker 03

  love for you, that everyone, if they knew you, did drugs, that they would hate you? Where did you get that from? And I see a lot of people that I, at all of my shows, I go, I just wanna let you know that there's a lot of people struggling in here with depression or hopelessness. And you're thinking, you've had thoughts about not being on this planet. And I just wanna let you know that you're not alone. And there's a lot of other people in here that are fighting that same battle. And you lay your head down on the pillow tonight, having those thoughts, that you are not alone. And I, I'm there with you. And I'm on the other side of this now, but you're a good person. You deserve to be on this planet. There's a God that loves you and cares about you. And now, I come back with, with.

• 3:20:54Speaker 03

  Just tremendous purpose now. Like it's jokes, it's jokes at the show, but it's not joke. It's so much bigger than that. It's not silly, just telling jokes. It's like, man, I have to, the people that kept me alive and all those people, my family, obviously most important and most personal to that, but professionally like, man.

• 3:21:21Speaker 03

  Somebody told me that it's not at the beginning of your career, it's about getting laughter. When I went for two minutes on that, it's about getting laughs. And now it's about giving laughs. I, I, I know what it is to sit in that crowd and I love those people so much that I wished, obviously in,

• 3:21:46Speaker 03

  make them laugh for an hour and give them a night out that they'll never forget, but I, that.

• 3:21:54Speaker 03

  I just, I think I'm just so aware of the, I've seen so many people from rehab, dude, that have relapsed, they committed suicide. I mean, so much addiction, so much in this laughter for however long you're in there. Or even my videos, dude, people come to me all the time or like, somebody came up to me. Everybody now is like, dude,

• 3:22:16Speaker 03

  it's so awesome to see that you didn't, that you didn't old give up. Yeah. And I, and I, gosh, dude, there's the, the owner of the, the owner, not just the owner of the Suns, the Phoenix Suns, who I don't know him, but he loves, I'm guessing he owns an NBA franchise. He must be thrilled about that. And he got the same thing, uh, whether either sexual or racial, some allegations. And he fought, and he sold the team. Damn. And he probably made a bunch of money, but I go, gosh, dude, no.

• 3:22:54Speaker 03

  You know, not that, not that there, there's so much nuance in this conversation that not that he hasn't maybe done some bad things. And not that I didn't need to be accountable for some things. My, but like, dude, you can't just, we're all out here. Yeah. And if you, somebody says, I always find myself always defending celebrities that get canceled or they get, and granted, the world's not a perfect place and there's bad people all around, but it's like, no, dude. Or if you.

• 3:23:22Speaker 03

  God, people have like a heroin addiction or people have an addiction. They just like, like, give themselves over to it. To let it take them, right? Whether it's a fight, if you're not, might not be fighting addiction, but you're fighting to get off your couch and go work out. You're fighting to pull into McDonald's or go home and cook yourself some broccoli. You're fighting instead of to yell at your kids, to be kind to them and extend love to them. We're all, we're all fighting. And then when you see somebody just go,

• 3:24:00Speaker 03

  they give themselves over to it. You go, no. Or that somebody,

• 3:24:09Speaker 03

  I mean, to, to,

• 3:24:13Speaker 03

  for me to be like sober from alcohol is

• 3:24:23Speaker 03

  a miracle. Whether you're, whether you're a person of faith or not, or that I'm in a relationship, it's like, dude.

• 3:24:33Speaker 03

  But to get to,

• 3:24:39Speaker 03

  ah, man, they won. It's like, no, dude. Yeah. You know? And I feel that's so heavy for people. And there's reconciliation that needs to happen and forgiveness that needs to happen. And lifestyle changes that sure need to happen, all of that. But you go, ah,

• 3:24:59Speaker 03

  I mean,

• 3:25:03Speaker 03

  I'm just thinking if I were like,

• 3:25:09Speaker 03

  I like worked at like a restaurant or something like that. And I go, I just don't wanna. And you, you go, no, dude. You gotta, that's like every movie, every dude, the guy, you know, the guy gets whatever. In every movie, he's like, ah, you know, and he goes, dude.

• 3:25:31Speaker 03

  God, I remember sitting on the,

• 3:25:37Speaker 03

  like in rehab, and I remember, I remember this, that my therapist was like, dude, we can,

• 3:25:45Speaker 03

  we can shut it all down if you want.

• 3:25:49Speaker 03

  All of it. You, at any time, could turn these cameras off, deactivate the socials, let's say, move out, 30 miles out, get yourself a farm.

• 3:26:04Speaker 03

  Right? You could at any time, by the way, at any time. But if you are, there's, there's significant opposition, it's like, it encourages me when people are opposed to your ideas. And it should encourage you. Cause we could, I could,

• 3:26:25Speaker 03

  you'd be done with this whenever you want, but they go, if you want to come back,

• 3:26:30Speaker 03

  there's gonna probably be some, some uncomfortable conversations that you're gonna have, and there's gonna be some opportunities that people are gonna pass you over because of, but if you would like to,

• 3:26:44Speaker 03

  you can continue to, to work. And I go,

• 3:26:48Speaker 03

  yeah, for myself, but there's so many people, that's all they ever say to me. When they see me on the street, hey, man, we just wanted to let you know. They say it in like,

• 3:26:58Speaker 03

  shrouded terms. They go, hey, just wanted to let you know that

• 3:27:03Speaker 03

  we've always supported you. Or, or something like that. Or we, did we know that everything that you've been through, and we, we were always praying for you. Or, or, meaning, we acknowledge, we, we were fans of you, we saw what happened to you, or what happened in your life, and we were, we were wishing, or hoping, or praying that you

• 3:27:27Speaker 03

  would continue to do the thing that you loved, or for the reason that you're put on this planet.

• 3:27:32Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, but that feels good.

• 3:27:34Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 3:27:36Speaker 03

  I need, and

• 3:27:41Speaker 03

  yeah, I don't, again, it's easier to forgive when

• 3:27:50Shawn Ryan?

  you're doing good.

• 3:27:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I don't, and

• 3:27:58Speaker 03

  What do you say, I mean dude, what do you say? What do you say to all those people that?

• 3:28:04Speaker 03

  Not to the situation, but lost their job because they didn't get the vaccine? And they're just... They didn't come back. They didn't get their job back. Or the guy that said he was racist and he got fired. What do you say? What? Those are real, real life consequences. That people have gotten fired from their job for...

• 3:28:33Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know what to tell you, man. You know, it's a...

• 3:28:39Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta keep fighting, you know?

• 3:28:41Speaker 03

  You have to, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  And not everybody buys into that bullshit. I think a lot of it's in the head, you know?

• 3:28:48Speaker 03

  Well, that's what, that's what I, I realized, because I was in my own head prior. And then you go, oh, everybody

• 3:28:57Speaker 03

  thinks this about me.

• 3:28:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:59Speaker 03

  And then the, the very, very clear message is like, no, they don't. Everybody thinks I'm a monster. Everybody thinks I'm like, no, they don't.

• 3:29:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:08Speaker 03

  No, they don't. And it's, you're, I mean, yeah. You're in your own...

• 3:29:13Shawn Ryan?

  Worst enemy.

• 3:29:14Speaker 03

  Oh, by far. And those, those messages

• 3:29:19Speaker 03

  that are, they're just, they're not true.

• 3:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  How, did you know how you were gonna do it? How you were gonna commit suicide?

• 3:29:27Speaker 03

  I never, all right, so in, in rehab, there's, um, there's like a one, every day you had to fill out your form of how you're feeling. Do you have any anger? Do you have any suicidal thoughts? Are you depressed, right? Because they kind of want to monitor. And it was a one through 10. And there's like, once you get past...

• 3:29:48Speaker 03

  Eight is like when you have like an idea of like a and I was I was always in the type of if a car comes through this intersection and T-bones me, I don't Gotcha. care. Or I remember if this plane goes down, I don't I remember back in probably 2018, I was driving to shows and I lost my my cell phone died. My cell phone died for whatever reason. I was trying to get from Detroit, Michigan to the Adirondacks in New York and my phone died and I was trying to drive and

• 3:30:29Speaker 03

  that phone is always it is still kind of a distraction for me. You can always look on and there's silence your demons because you can just scroll and and I remember that there was like there's no music. It was nothing. It was just silent and it was so loud. The voices were speaking to me so loud. I got it's funny now, but I got five tickets in the course of like a few hours. Because I was just I didn't I didn't. It's funny now, but I didn't care. I go in fact, I want to die or I want to go to jail. If you take me to jail, that's a that's a wave in the hey, I can't do this anymore.

• 3:31:14Speaker 03

  I'm in jail. John Crist went to jail. Oh, good. That's a way out of this time. I was I was I wanted to say that that was about that. I was flying, dude. I was flying. I got pulled over twice by the same cop. What is He was like, what? So I went from I went from Michigan. So it's like you think that that these cops would know of each other, but they don't. Or like if you get a ticket, I was in a couple of different states also. So like, there's no way that cop writes a ticket. He's not putting it in maybe until that night or something like that. And I was like, are y'all not talking to each other?

• 3:31:57Speaker 03

  It's funny now, but gosh, I didn't want to.

• 3:32:04Speaker 03

  I remember flying, driving, and it was ice and snow. And I was in like a Ford Focus in like upper New York. And I was like, if I go off this bridge or that, I don't.

• 3:32:15Speaker 03

  But that's, but that's all addiction. Dude, if you get blacked out, if you get blacked out, how far down the I want to end my life on a scale of one to 10 is that?

• 3:32:30Speaker 03

  You're not going to actively take your life, but you're very reckless, if not externally with your body. There you go. I don't want to live. I don't want to be in this reality either. Take a couple of painkillers. It's not, it's not suicidal, but it's definitely an escape. And you know, it's funny about, about rehab. And everybody should do this, by the way. And I went there. There's no, obviously, there's no women there.

• 3:32:55Speaker 03

  There's no drugs, no alcohol, no sex, no caffeine, no sugar, no fiction, no TV, obviously, no fiction books. And even if you like to work out to get a runner's high, they take that away from you. So there's no escape

• 3:33:16Speaker 03

  from your, the reality of your situation. And everybody comes in there and they've blown their lives up. And they're all, and you, there's no escape.

• 3:33:28Speaker 03

  And that, you can only do that under the,

• 3:33:32Speaker 03

  the supervision of a therapist, a professional. But like, everybody's going to go escape today. Everybody, this is an escape for a lot of people. Hopefully it'll help a lot of people. But like alcohol is an escape. The internet is an escape. Tele, TV shows an escape.

• 3:33:48Speaker 03

  Caffeine, nicotine, sugar, that you can, you can alter

• 3:33:54Speaker 03

  the reality of your current situation. And everybody's looking for that. And rehab.

• 3:34:01Speaker 03

  There's a lot of them that I don't really agree with, but if you go there and you take all that away,

• 3:34:09Speaker 03

  all the escapism away, your body, at least mine did, will, over time, and mine took about, probably over a year, I was in rehab for four months, but

• 3:34:22Speaker 03

  will recalibrate, it will fix itself. Like, I go, so you're telling me I would go to a baseball game and just sit there with a Coke? And just have a good time? No way.

• 3:34:42Speaker 03

  And that has absolutely been the case. So you tell me I'm just gonna go play around a golf and just be in the sun and just like,

• 3:34:50Speaker 03

  have fun and they go, over time? So you are in the moment? Maybe, yeah. I mean, if you would have told me going to play with my nephew

• 3:35:02Speaker 03

  is fun, I would go, when you're at the, when you're at the height of addiction, you go, you're either trying to do it or trying to arrange the scenario where you can go back and do it. All times.

• 3:35:18Speaker 03

  And they said it's like if you, if you cut your finger, if you cut your finger, your blood will rush to it, clot, scab,

• 3:35:31Speaker 03

  scar and heal. It will do it. You don't have to say, you know, now if it's too big, but you don't have to tell it to do it. It'll just do it. And your body the same way with sadness or, now granted, I was on antidepressants for a while, but if you remove all the other stuff.

• 3:35:52Speaker 03

  And communicate with therapists and people that you love. And it will. Your mind will heal itself. It will. Now, it's impossible to do without.

• 3:36:04Speaker 03

  I was literally, like, the first day you go into rehab, you're like, you're in an acute ward, like, not a prison cell, but like a, like a hospital room. You're there for like, I mean, they take away your shoelaces because they don't want you to hang yourself or asphyxiate yourself, kill yourself. They take away your belt, because you come in with a bag. Take away your belt, because they don't want you to hang yourself with it. They took away my hair gel, because there's alcohol in it. So these are like, they'll take away everything that you could possibly use to harm yourself, right? Nail clippers, all of that. Then you're there for two days, and I was like, they're a pretty

• 3:36:46Speaker 03

  regular guy. They, they could talk to me at the beginning. They're like, oh, you're free to go stay in the dorm. After like, two days, right? Ah, you're good. So then, but I still have supervision. I have to be with someone 24/7. After like, five days, they go, alright, you can go out on your own, right? After

• 3:37:03Speaker 03

  three weeks, they were like, alright, you can use the phone. Meaning, you can, right? So you're, after 45 days, they were like, you can have your car. After another, they're like, you can have your computer back. And then after three months, they said, you can go home for the weekend. Go do it, go home.

• 3:37:25Speaker 03

  And then come back here on Monday and report back

• 3:37:29Speaker 03

  how you're doing. And get more and more freedom. Now I can drink whenever I want. There's alcohol all here. And I'm like, I'm good, because I built up the, this is not

• 3:37:40Speaker 03

  a temptation for me. Now, it was, at the time, to see that, I mean,

• 3:37:46Speaker 03

  it's too much. And there are times that, there were times of sadness, or times of where you go, man, I wish I had a cold beer or something like that, maybe. But it's, but it's, I'm strong enough to

• 3:38:00Speaker 03

  not. But that takes time. I mean, that's the beauty of the, the process. If anybody says that people don't change, or people don't, that's a lie, dude. That's just a lie.

• 3:38:14Shawn Ryan?

  But you didn't go to rehab for drinking, did you?

• 3:38:18Speaker 03

  I went to rehab, they checked me in for, they do like assessment for their alcoholism, narcissism,

• 3:38:28Speaker 03

  sexual, they didn't say sexual addiction, like some sexual proclivities or something like that. Major depression and workaholism, narcissism, sexual depression. And.

• 3:38:46Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it was the addiction to attention.

• 3:38:48Speaker 03

  All the stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that's wild that you say that because I was in, when I was in rehab, they were like, you can't, you can't

• 3:38:58Speaker 03

  talk to any women or drink. I was like, all right. Like, I don't know, that, okay. That was, all right. And I remember this.

• 3:39:08Speaker 03

  So they have family week in rehab. So everybody's family comes to visit. There was another

• 3:39:15Speaker 03

  guy that was having a, this is probably a month into rehab. And no one knew who I was out there. No one, you just said your first name and they're like, they don't tell you, you don't even say what you do for a living. You're just out there. And this guy, his wife came to family week. This is the first time I'd seen like an outsider. And this is so against the rules of rehab or, and the anonymity of the whole thing is this, his wife walked up to me and goes,

• 3:39:43Speaker 03

  I just want to let you know that I'm obsessed with your comedy. And I was like, ah, like, does that make sense?

• 3:39:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:39:50Speaker 03

  Just, I was like,

• 3:39:54Speaker 03

  I was, dude, I was high. Literally high from that. It was, that's all that I, all the way back from my childhood, that's all I ever wanted to be seen and noticed and loved. And I was in, and this woman came up to me and just like, I just want to let you know, I'm like obsessed with your videos. And I was like,

• 3:40:17Speaker 03

  And you can see it in my countenance now. I was like, what up? Like, I was like, oh, and I, and I, that's been,

• 3:40:25Speaker 03

  that's been the fight I've been on since then. Is that, it's not alcohol, or women, or, or workaholism, or depression. It's none of that. It's that. It's...

• 3:40:40Speaker 03

  I remember going to, uh, I'm the only person in the history of rehab that's ever been banned. The two places I was banned from, you know, most people are banned from, can't go to the movie theater, uh, can't go to

• 3:40:55Speaker 03

  the bar. Obviously, you can't go anywhere there's alcohol. You can't go to strip club, obviously, because we had our cars there. It was like a step down facility at the end of it, not at the beginning. But the only places, the only two places I was not allowed to step foot in were Chick-fil-A and church.

• 3:41:17Speaker 03

  Chick, Chick-fil-A? Because those are like, it's a very religious place. And especially it was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where it was like a lot of Christian people live. And I've made so many jokes about Chick-fil-A, and Chick-fil-A is like a Christian organization. I went into that Chick-fil-A one time, and it was like, uh, everybody's like, what up? John Crist is here, taking photos, texting the friends, yo, get down here, John Crist is here. And it was awesome. Like fulfilling all of that drug of like attention and love. And I was like, they're like, all right. I was like, but I love Chick-fil-A. They're like, all right, if you want to go, if you want to go to Chick-fil-A, drive through online. Meaning like, I know that's your thing.

• 3:42:01Speaker 03

  And then church, every, anytime I would go into a church, it would be a thing. And they were like, no more church. No kidding? Or if you want to go to church, drive 30 miles out into the country and go to that small First Baptist church. No, I want to go to the big,

• 3:42:15Speaker 03

  the big one. Gotcha. To get your, your dose. Yeah. And there was a guy...

• 3:42:24Speaker 03

  There was a guy, I always tell this story, it's a very, there's a guy in rehab that loved to cook. So we all have these apartments and he would cook for everybody. Every Friday night, oh Jim's cooking, Jim's cooking, what are we doing? We're doing pork chops, mashed potatoes, oh Jim's cooking, it's gonna be awesome, everybody come over there. Right? We'd all go, we'd talk about it all week, what are we having at Jim's on Friday? He would cook up this master meal, unbelievable. Saturday and Sunday, oh dude, Jim's was incredible, dude, remember that? Filet he cooked up was beautiful and they go, Jim? No more cooking.

• 3:42:59Speaker 03

  And he was like, why? He goes, cuz that's where you get

• 3:43:03Speaker 03

  your drug. Everybody loves you for the cooking and you think that you have to cook for all these people to love you. And we want to communicate to you that these people would love you if you'd have brought nothing to the table.

• 3:43:19Speaker 03

  And all these people in your life currently that we love you for the podcast, oh it's unbelievable, the podcast, what if you took all that away? And you were like, who is?

• 3:43:31Speaker 03

  They don't even say your last name in rehab, like my name's John. And you just show up, you go, my name's Sean, what's up?

• 3:43:39Speaker 03

  And people love you and accept you there. Then all this other stuff. You can take it or leave it. And everybody, by the way, in rehab, they couldn't do their main addiction cuz they were in rehab, so they found some kind of alternate way of like, yeah, there was this guy that was super, super rich, like uber rich. And every Saturday when he had free time, he would go to the car dealership. And like have them run his credit and he's like, I'm looking, he would look at different cars to buy. Cuz he was a god on that cuz they knew how much money he had. And they were, they like flexed, it's like the main addiction, you can't do it cuz that's why you're in rehab, but you'd find alternate ways to get your Yeah.

• 3:44:25Speaker 03

  And everybody has one, by the way. It's just a matter of how reliant you are on it. You know, some people love Instagram. And if you took that, I know some people that if you took that side away.

• 3:44:39Speaker 03

  Dude, they'd be dead. They'd be rioting in the streets, literally. If you took that site away from them, or took away their platform, or took away their... That's why everybody's a workaholic. Because dude, if your personal life is falling apart, your kids don't want to be around you, your wife doesn't want to be around you. But at that, dude, there was a guy, last story I'll tell. Another guy in rehab with me. He was a ER doctor in three different hospitals, worked 24/7. ER doctor, he was, he grew up very poor, became an ER doctor, and he was gonna commit suicide. He was gonna wait till his son's birthday on Monday, and then he was coming, he was gonna shoot himself in his office on Tuesday.

• 3:45:21Speaker 03

  And he was drinking, he would drink vodka before emergency surgery to calm himself down. That's how much he was not sleeping. He was like... But think about being an emergency surgeon. He was in like Brownsville, Texas, or something like that. You are a god. You're literally hold people's lives in your hand. As an emergency surgeon, you pull into that parking lot, you pull your Mercedes right up to the front, they put the gloves on you. You're like, the savior. If you don't, if you don't leave your son's soccer game, and come up here and fix this guy who has a collapsed lung, he's gonna die. You are the savior.

• 3:46:05Speaker 03

  And he was so addicted to that, just like me with comedy. He was so addicted to that that he didn't, never took time off. And he was drinking to complete surgeries. That's how much he needed the affirmation and love of that job, and was not comfortable with his personal life. Does that make sense? It got so... He's like, I have to have this, but also, this is also killing me at the same time. And he couldn't, he couldn't continue that lifestyle, and he was gonna wait till his son at his birthday party on Sunday, he was gonna shoot himself in his office, and then on Monday. Damn. Because how do you get out of that? Because he was like, and they were like,

• 3:46:49Speaker 03

  "All these people need me, all these..." And I'm a god in there, by the way. And you're making so much money, but you hate yourself, or the person that you've become. And it can't continue, but you also can't stop it. And mine was...

• 3:47:09Speaker 03

  I always tell people that to

• 3:47:12Speaker 03

  man, it's so much better on this other side. It's or just do you be honest about who you are or whatever? Just tell them and but I didn't do that. My hand was forced, not forced, but I was exposed, if you want to call it that, not I like. Why don't you just go to your wife and say, I have a drinking problem? Why don't you just go to your boss and admit that you've been embezzling money? Because these are the things, these are the things of shame that if you

• 3:47:40Speaker 03

  I'm not going to say this to them because he might hate me. That's that's a source of shame, right?

• 3:47:47Speaker 03

  So go tell them, well, I didn't tell. I was told on. Does that make sense? And I chose the right direction post, but I don't. There's a girl that is a friend of mine that she cheated, she's single, but she cheated. There's a married guy that she cheated with or something that's friends with her parents. And she goes, I could never tell my parents. I go, why not? She's like, I'm going to take that to my grave. And she's depressed and sad. I go, man, I was like, I was joking around there. I was like, give me your phone. Let me, I'm gonna call him and tell him. Not really, I wouldn't do that, but I go.

• 3:48:18Speaker 03

  Man, so you think your parents?

• 3:48:24Speaker 03

  If you told them about this, what you've been beating yourself up for for 15 years, you've told, if you told them that

• 3:48:33Speaker 03

  they would hate you and outcast you to the family. And that's why you've never told them that. And that you've already

• 3:48:43Speaker 03

  any shame that anyone tried to heap on me on the internet or publicly? I've already experienced by myself 10x, 20x. So if I said, hey, if you if I told my parent, if they, that girl told her parents about that affair. They would hate me. I bet their their parents, if they're any kind of parent that loves you or cares for you, that you've already put yourself through 15 years of that. And you would have been gonna live the rest of your life with that secret, they're probably heartbroken that you'd have to carry that.

• 3:49:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I bet you're right.

• 3:49:14Speaker 03

  I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure, but.

• 3:49:18Shawn Ryan?

  Well, any good parent wouldn't want their kid.

• 3:49:20Speaker 03

  Yes, that you said.

• 3:49:21Shawn Ryan?

  Carrying that around.

• 3:49:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm not a parent, but I go, just because I'm on the other side of it. She was telling me this story and I go, people are comfortable telling me stuff because I don't that my all minds on the internet or that no one feels judgment from me. So there you go.

• 3:49:38Speaker 03

  All right, why don't you tell them? She goes, I could never, I could never tell my parents.

• 3:49:51Speaker 03

  That seems like a tough way to live, man.

• 3:49:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:53Speaker 03

  Doesn't it?

• 3:49:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it does.

• 3:49:54Speaker 03

  Prison you made for yourself.

• 3:49:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:49:57Speaker 03

  Not, not from anyone. And it's, it's seems so scary. Yeah, I don't know. It seems so scary, but on the, on the back end of it, it seems so silly.

• 3:50:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's um.

• 3:50:12Shawn Ryan?

  Sad that people internalize stuff for that long.

• 3:50:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 3:50:17Speaker 03

  I remember, I remember I told my, it's funny now, but I was, when I was probably 20.

• 3:50:26Speaker 03

  Three, maybe, or something like that. And I was working at a company, doing comedy, like part time, working at like a desk job at a company. I admit, I was looking at porn on the computer of the um, of the my boss, of the computer at the company. And I was either overcome with guilt or shame, or I just kind of tell the truth, I don't remember. I told my boss, it was like crazy now that I look back on it, but I was like, I just want to let you know that I've been dishonest with the time I've been spending here and I've been looking at pornography on the, on the computer.

• 3:51:01Speaker 03

  And he goes.

• 3:51:04Speaker 03

  Man, he goes, dude, that's crazy. I can't believe you just said that. He goes, I've, he's like porn's not my thing, but I've struggled with a pill addiction for a long time. And I have, I have prescriptions that I have, and my wife keeps them in a locked cupboard, and she's the only one that has the key. And I, I don't have power over that. And I respect the hell out of you for coming to say that. We'll do anything we can to, we can move your desk to somewhere more public, or we can do anything, or we'll do anything we can to help you.

• 3:51:39Speaker 03

  You're like, wow, right? That's like Jesus or something. I mean, no, that's, you go, what?

• 3:51:48Speaker 03

  Oh, anyone that, anyone that would come to, I can't imagine anyone of my employees or my family or anyone that would come to me in

• 3:52:03Speaker 03

  humility and admit something that they had done that I would not have forgiveness for. I shouldn't say that totally, but like, you go, oh, dude.

• 3:52:15Speaker 03

  Let me know how I can help you.

• 3:52:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:52:17Speaker 03

  You know, there might not be, or there might be obviously consequences to where you go, oh.

• 3:52:24Speaker 03

  But this, I mean, you'll take yourself to places that are, I mean, look at everybody, you know,

• 3:52:32Speaker 03

  it's sad to see, really. It's sad, especially in a country like this, that you have of material everything, that people have lived their entire lives in, in

• 3:52:45Speaker 03

  shame and depression and sadness is, is, is really, really, really unfortunate.

• 3:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, yes, it is. There is definitely a mental health crisis just snowballing in this country. And nothing's, nothing is getting in its way.

• 3:53:05Speaker 03

  Really not.

• 3:53:06Shawn Ryan?

  Not yet.

• 3:53:09Speaker 03

  If you're talking about good and evil, I mean.

• 3:53:15Speaker 03

  It's depressing to see, it's embarrassing to witness over and over and over and over, whether it's addiction, or suicide, or...

• 3:53:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:26Speaker 03

  There's so much good, there's also so much good in this, my life and in this country, that there's so much to wake up for, and there's so much meaning in life, it's beautiful, man.

• 3:53:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:53:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, on that note, let's take a, let's take a quick break. Let's do it, bro.

• 3:53:48Shawn Ryan?

  I want to tell you about this business venture I've been on for about the past seven, eight months, and it's finally come to fruition.

• 3:53:57Shawn Ryan?

  I've been hell-bent on finding the cleanest functional mushroom supplement on the planet, and that all kind of stemmed from the psychedelic treatment I did. Came out of it, got a ton of benefits, haven't had a drop of alcohol in almost two years, I'm more in the moment with my family, and that led me down researching the benefits of just everyday functional mushrooms. And I started taking some supplements, I found some coffee replacements, I even repped a brand, and, you know, it got to the point where I just wanted the finest ingredients available, no matter where they come from. And it, it, it got to this point where I was just gonna start my own brand, and so

• 3:54:40Shawn Ryan?

  we started going to trade shows and, and looking for the finest ingredients, and, and doing that, I ran into this guy, maybe you've heard of him, his name's Laird Hamilton, and his wife Gabby Reese, and they have an entire line of supplements with all the finest ingredients, and we got to talking, turns out, they have the perfect functional mushroom supplement. It's actually called Performance Mushrooms. And this has everything, it's USDA organic, it's got chaga, cordyceps, lion's mane, miyataki. This stuff is amazing for energy balance, for cognition, look...

• 3:55:27Shawn Ryan?

  Just being honest, see a lot of people taking care of their bodies. I do not see a lot of people taking care of their brain. This is the product, guys. And so, we got to talking and our values seemed very aligned. We're both into the functional mushrooms. And after a lot of back and forth, I am now a shareholder in the company. I have a small amount of ownership and I'm just, look, I'm just really proud to be repping and be a part of the company that's making the best functional mushroom supplement on the planet. You can get this stuff at layered superfoods.com.

• 3:56:11Shawn Ryan?

  You can use the promo code SRS, that'll get you 20% off these performance mushrooms or anything in the store. They got a ton of good stuff. Once again, that's layered superfoods.com. Use the promo code SRS, that gets you 20% off. You guys are gonna love this stuff, I guarantee it.

• 3:56:39Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 3:57:00Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, we're back from the break here and we're just kinda leaving rehab. We got some loose ends to tie up.

• 3:57:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's funny.

• 3:57:17Shawn Ryan?

  Cause everybody, it's very, it's a very, um...

• 3:57:23Speaker 03

  Anybody who knows anything about me, I remember post 2020 is had a very

• 3:57:33Speaker 03

  emotional feeling on me. It brought up a lot for other people. Everybody, there was nobody that's like, hmm, it was either like this guy is very, very polarizing. This guy is unbelievable. Protect him at all costs. He's the voice that's speaking truth, the power and his video, the free. This guy's unbelievable. And then there was the, this guy should never work again. This guy should never speak, doesn't allow, she should be off social media, doesn't. We got it. It's everybody had, or there was a very, everybody had an opinion on me.

• 3:58:16Speaker 03

  Very, there wasn't like a, anytime my name got, it goes like, ah, this guy, or is that the guy that, or, or I love it. Is everybody had a side of me. Yeah. Which was like now.

• 3:58:34Speaker 03

  Now I'm like free of, I don't care anymore. You were like, you're trying to manage your image, make sure to silence anybody that was speaking now. It's like, dude, say whatever you want. Post whatever you want. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and get back to work. I'm just gonna go ahead and, and I'm gonna keep taking, keep taking shots and less of my, I take shots, but less of my, all that comedy is just, you write what you think about all day. It's not like you are thinking about other things, then you come into work and you gotta research this.

• 3:59:19Speaker 03

  You think about what we talk about and what you talk about in your podcast all day. This is you. Yep. So I write, I write less about the Christian like subculture now, cause I just don't know about it. I still talk about my Christian childhood and like how my faith interacts with the world now, but I don't. There's a lot of insider baseball.

• 3:59:47Speaker 03

  Jokes that I don't even, I don't really know anymore. Cause I just think it's kind of.

• 3:59:54Speaker 03

  And there we were talking on the break, and maybe it's similar to you, maybe not. If I see a big, a pastor with a private plane,

• 4:00:05Speaker 03

  flying all over the country, has a prayer cloth that he's selling for $90 on the Christian station, and he's making all this money, I just think it's silly. I'm not mad at it anymore. Is that, would you're, you feel about the military, is you're like, it's just, you've, I feel like, conversations I've had with you, that you're at peace with the past.

• 4:00:30Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 4:00:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you have opinions about it, and yeah, you can still get fired up about it, but it's just.

• 4:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  It is what it is.

• 4:00:38Speaker 03

  It is what it is. And I, and you have a lot of friends in the military, I have a lot of friends in, in the faith circles, but it's just. And my, my relationship with Christ is, is closer than it was before. But if you, I mean, dude, I remember going downtown on Broadway all the time, and I would,

• 4:00:59Speaker 03

  like, if anyone wanted to take a photo and put my alcohol down, or hide my alcohol, or, or, and now, I don't even drink anymore, but I do, I would have like a, or I usually drank like a, a sugar-free Red Bull is what I like to drink. And they put it in the same cup as they put all the mixed drinks in, and I like, it's like, dude, if you see me down here and having a good time with my buddies, or my girlfriend, or something like that, and, and you, and this photo turns up on the internet,

• 4:01:28Speaker 03

  all good.

• 4:01:30Speaker 03

  It's, that's not a, that's not a conflict with who I am claiming to be now. You know what I'm saying?

• 4:01:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:37Speaker 03

  Okay, it's, that's not, that's not news, where it was the news before.

• 4:01:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:43Speaker 03

  So it's like, I don't know.

• 4:01:46Speaker 03

  There's nothing scandalous about it, there's nothing secret about it, just like, all right, yeah.

• 4:01:51Shawn Ryan?

  So you, what you're kind of describing is you're not.

• 4:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  And it sounds weird, but I mean, it's, it's the, would I be incorrect in saying it is the church that kind of brought you down?

• 4:02:07Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 4:02:07Shawn Ryan?

  At the beginning?

• 4:02:08Speaker 03

  I would say the, the, the, the, not, not, not the body of Christ, like Jesus intended in the Old Testament, those people that were, you know, feeding the sick, helping the poor, not those, that church, but the institution.

• 4:02:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I meant.

• 4:02:26Speaker 03

  Of the church, yes.

• 4:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I meant.

• 4:02:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:02:28Shawn Ryan?

  The institution.

• 4:02:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Not the, not the, the body of believers, but yeah, the, the, the institution and that moral code or those.

• 4:02:36Shawn Ryan?

  The brick and mortar.

• 4:02:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  Buildings.

• 4:02:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:02:40Shawn Ryan?

  And the people that go in them.

• 4:02:41Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 4:02:42Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, is what brought, is what tried to cancel you and, and.

• 4:02:47Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting because they, they propped me up with my mainstream credentials. They propped me up, this guy has a Netflix special, this guy, uh, is going on the late night show, this guy has a book deal, and they tried to cancel me with my Christian credentials.

• 4:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:03:06Speaker 03

  He says he's a Christian, he says he's good, because these things you can't, you can't cancel me without the faith.

• 4:03:13Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:03:14Speaker 03

  Because there's not, there's nothing, there's nothing there.

• 4:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:16Speaker 03

  But if you bring the faith part into it, but if you just have the faith and not the mainstream credentials, there's nothing to cancel.

• 4:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:03:25Speaker 03

  Because I go, I don't know, this guy's just, there's no, it's no problem. But it became bigger, the once you, I mean, that's everybody, once your podcast got on the map, people started, hold on, hold on, who's this guy? They want you to be good, but not too good.

• 4:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:41Speaker 03

  Where they go, nah, it's getting too, this guy's getting too big.

• 4:03:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:45Speaker 03

  Which.

• 4:03:46Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, you don't, coming out of it now, you're appeased with it, you're not necessarily against the brick and mortar church.

• 4:03:58Speaker 03

  No, not at all.

• 4:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  You just.

• 4:04:00Speaker 03

  I think, I think, I think the brick and mortar church.

• 4:04:06Speaker 03

  Might be one of the last hopes for this country. Really? If dude, if the, if the. The same thing that brought you down. Yeah, it's filled with, with greed and selfish people and pride, but if, but that. I mean, there's, dude, everybody needs a

• 4:04:30Speaker 03

  community in this country. Everybody needs somewhere to belong. And there's one of those on every block. Dude, the Catholic Church is the richest landowner in the world.

• 4:04:42Speaker 03

  The Catholic Church. Because look at every downtown, there's a huge Catholic Church there.

• 4:04:50Speaker 03

  All over the, all over the world, by the way. You go to New York City, there's like

• 4:04:56Speaker 03

  Sears Tower, World Trade Center, and there's boom, this, I mean, you know how much that land is worth? And there's nobody in there, by the way. Nobody. There's nobody in there. That's a different conversation for a different time. But I, I said, man, if every. Let's have that conversation. I want to hear your thoughts on that. I've not heard this before. There's never, there's no, dude, go to, there's nobody in there. Go to any, there's nobody in there. Yeah. In those pews?

• 4:05:23Speaker 03

  Nobody in there. So what's it there for? Well,

• 4:05:29Speaker 03

  there's a bunch of churches in Nashville that, that, in like in 12 South, that's like a growing neighborhood. And this is a, I went to one of those churches because I was going to all the different churches. It was like, whatever the church is, two blocks from my house.

• 4:05:46Speaker 03

  There was four people in there. There was a pastor who was like a volunteer because he had another job. And first of all, the building's paid off. So they have no mortgage. They're all in disrepair. No reason to

• 4:06:01Speaker 03

  clean them up, but they don't owe anything. All you have to do is turn, that church, all you have to do is turn on the lights

• 4:06:09Speaker 03

  on Sunday and the air conditioning for four hours. And that's the only expense you have.

• 4:06:17Speaker 03

  And you can raise the offering enough to pay for that, but there's nobody in there. And that piece of land alone is worth $2 million. Has to be. I know that neighborhood. And you go get rid of this church and put up.

• 4:06:34Speaker 03

  Anything here. And but it's owned by the denomination. So the Southern Baptist Church and the PC USA Presbyterian, like all their own, these denominations. The Southern Baptist Church has 280,000 churches, dude. I mean, maybe not that, but it's so that a lot. Dude, drive from my house to your house. I'll text you when I get home. I'm gonna tell you how many churches I passed. And it's, it's, it's. If I, my theory wasn't this, is if every church

• 4:07:17Speaker 03

  Googled their radius. So if you have a church here, you have a church here. You Google your radius, you're in charge of all these people. Their mental health, their groceries, making sure their kids get to school. Just the basic needs of their community. You're in charge of, just draw the radius around your church. And when there's another church, they go to that one. So whatever you live, whatever church is closest to you, you can rely on them for groceries, for help, for a ride to work. For if every church committed to do that,

• 4:08:02Speaker 03

  would solve it all. It really, I really, really would. Cause there's some people in those churches that are so kind and giving and loving. There's obviously some people that are just humans and knuckleheads, but.

• 4:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, you're right. I mean, there's, there's literally a church on every corner.

• 4:08:23Speaker 03

  Every corner.

• 4:08:24Shawn Ryan?

  In Tennessee.

• 4:08:25Speaker 03

  Every corner.

• 4:08:26Shawn Ryan?

  And so why isn't that happening?

• 4:08:31Speaker 03

  Well, they, no, no, okay, so I, when I used to perform in churches, I would go, so like I would get a booking request from Lexington, Kentucky, right? I would say, my, my booking fee is $3,000. This is back in the day. And then another church, and they go, we can't afford it. Another church from Lexington, Kentucky, we, we want to book you. And I was like, $3,000, we can't afford it. And then another, there would, three would come in from the same city. This is just an example. And my agent, who lived in LA, who goes, why don't we just combine all three of those? They all split it, and you can come do a comedy show in Lexington. I go, you don't understand, that would never happen. He goes, why not? I go, there are competitors with each other. Yeah.

• 4:09:15Speaker 03

  I go, he goes, what do you mean they're competitive? I go, where's the show gonna be? Whose venue is the show gonna be? So you're telling me the other, the competitor church is gonna send all their constituents to another church that has a better sound system, cooler seating, better parking lot, coffee shop in the front, serve donuts before the service, better sound system? They're gonna go in there for fun, a fun comedy night? Why would they ever do that? Why would they ever do that? Where is it gonna be? They're not gonna send their congregation to another church?

• 4:09:59Speaker 03

  Because look at me growing up, I never went into any of them. It's not like there's a bunch of fast food restaurants, you go try them all, decide which one you like best, and on Sunday, you can go choose all the ones you want, because you're on the strip, and you can go wherever you want. Taco Bell, Arby's, McDonald's, no. You go to yours, and by nature of you going to yours, you disagree theologically and fundamentally with the other ones. And so there's no working together, there is the homelessness in the city, or...

• 4:10:29Speaker 03

  Whatever issue that the city is facing, like the church could solve all of it. The church could solve all of it, dude.

• 4:10:39Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you. You know, one of my questions is why, like you hear about all these mission trips, you know, and everybody goes all over the world to help all these people, but

• 4:10:53Shawn Ryan?

  you never, I guess I can't say never, and I haven't been around that many, but I don't ever see anybody helping our own.

• 4:11:03Speaker 03

  In the neighborhood, yeah.

• 4:11:04Shawn Ryan?

  It's always overseas.

• 4:11:06Speaker 03

  Yep. There's a, um.

• 4:11:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why is that? Why do you think that is?

• 4:11:13Speaker 03

  There, well, there's a couple of verses in the Bible that's like, go, be therefore into all the world and make disciples of all people, which is like all the world.

• 4:11:23Speaker 03

  All the world in the Bible times wasn't all the world that it is now, we didn't know about.

• 4:11:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:11:28Speaker 03

  You know, we didn't know how big the, we just go to everybody, right? And the, um, there's a,

• 4:11:35Speaker 03

  I think there's a little bit of the white savior type complex.

• 4:11:41Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:11:42Speaker 03

  They were gonna, you're not gonna save a guy from your neighborhood. He's as lost in terms of godless as, as anybody, but you're not gonna save him. But you go to, we're rich compared to anybody else, anywhere else.

• 4:11:56Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:11:57Speaker 03

  Go there and say, you have,

• 4:12:02Speaker 03

  I mean, we've, I've done it all over the world and Honduras and Peru, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya. I mean, I've been to all of them on missions with my church. And it costs, I make a joke about it in my show. I mean, it costs

• 4:12:19Speaker 03

  $4,000 to go over there for a week to build it, to build a,

• 4:12:25Speaker 03

  bath house. We'd be like, there's guys over there that can build.

• 4:12:29Speaker 03

  They can build.

• 4:12:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:12:30Speaker 03

  What do they want, what do they want? 15 teenagers from America to come over? They don't, they have to redo all this work as soon as we leave, if we did anything. But you can go back, you can go back in your, in, on.

• 4:12:46Speaker 03

  You can take some photos of going over there and everybody wins. Similar to the military in a lot of ways where you come back to your church, the church has sent you, right? You raised all this money. Church sent you over there, you come back and present at your church. Look at this photos of me digging a hole, look at this photos of me, look at it, we.

• 4:13:02Speaker 03

  Look at it, we did it. We, I remember one day, we were in Honduras and we were so eager that we, you know, we bought all these clothes and gloves and sunscreen and hat, all these things ready to work, you know, boots. Bought everything, backpacks. Now Jean bought it to go out into the village or whatever and there was this.

• 4:13:24Speaker 03

  There was this pile of cinder blocks, right? A pile of 500 cinder blocks ready to make this. They were making a shower, an outdoor shower for the village or something like that. And they, and the guys that were ready to build it, the locals weren't there yet. They didn't, they didn't come that day because it was raining or something and we.

• 4:13:46Speaker 03

  We were so desperate to like work and sweat that we just moved the pile of cinder blocks. Moved them all, we moved the whole thing.

• 4:13:55Shawn Ryan?

  We need to get this pile of bricks.

• 4:13:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:13:59Shawn Ryan?

  Right over there.

• 4:13:59Speaker 03

  Cause that's gonna be, yeah, and we literally, dude, we were sweating and moving and people taking photos and you're like, we're, we didn't do nothing.

• 4:14:09Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 4:14:09Speaker 03

  And it's, and it, but, but, but.

• 4:14:12Speaker 03

  We felt good. That's, that's honest truth. It felt, we got home, back to the bus.

• 4:14:22Speaker 03

  And that's what's kind of coming undone a little bit about, about the, the, the formal faith practice in a good way. They are like, hey, maybe we weren't.

• 4:14:34Speaker 03

  What if some guy from Russia came over here to Nashville, started telling you how to, how to live and you go, dude, we don't need your help. Yeah. We don't, we're good, bro.

• 4:14:45Speaker 03

  Then you look back on it, I look back on it, I don't, I don't.

• 4:14:50Speaker 03

  Not mad, it's some awesome, awesome memories, man. Similar to your stories, it was like, oh, it was unbelievable. It was a great time. Man, it was funny, it was kind of a little bit misguided, but a lot of the problem with.

• 4:15:05Speaker 03

  The Christianity today is there's a lot of defecting like.

• 4:15:14Speaker 03

  They call them deconstructionists, right? So they're deconstructing the faith. They're leaving the faith, right? They're, and it's a lot of just people.

• 4:15:28Speaker 03

  I worked at a church for 15 years and I got fired and I learned the underbelly and the truth over there. And now I'm on TikTok and I'm going to tell you how Christianity is. I was like, dude, you're just like, this is not going to solve it for you. Yeah. You're, you're, you worked at a place, you worked at an institution for 15 years or 10 years or five years, or you volunteered there and you thought it was different than what it was. And those people didn't turn out to, let's say, you were down on your luck and nobody at the church called you, or the church wronged you in some type of way, right? Or I make a joke about you didn't get accepted to be on the ministry team, or you didn't

• 4:16:13Speaker 03

  get accepted to be on the worship team because you're not, you can't play guitar, you, your voice sounds, you suck, you're not good. And you like, they turned me down for the worship team. I'm leaving here. I'm like, dude, all these people are adults. And it was like, unfortunately, I think you're, your stance on your past and my, it's like, dude, that's the way, that's the way to take it. It was what it was. I'm at peace with it and I'm not, you're not, I don't see you on a crusade down to the, through the downtown or screaming, you're just, you're very practical and you're very realist and every decision that you've made in your life, you take ownership for and you take responsibility. I don't see you pointing fingers at anybody.

• 4:17:00Speaker 03

  Or this, it was this guy's fault or it's this guy's fault. Like, yeah, that's not going to get, I don't, for me to carry around.

• 4:17:13Speaker 03

  Any kind of unforgiveness, or I still I get worked up about it every now and then, but

• 4:17:20Speaker 03

  so what? My, my, it, it happened. Yeah. It happened. So you telling me, I got a buddy

• 4:17:31Speaker 03

  that, um, I'm trying to say this in a, in a way that's diplomatic, was wronged by a friend. Hates his guts, want anything, anything to do with him, right? I think it was financial, right? Hates him, don't want anything to do with him. And it, it's happened, they're not friends anymore. I go, okay, so your,

• 4:17:55Speaker 03

  your plan for the rest of your life is to wake up in the morning and

• 4:18:04Speaker 03

  strap on that anger and unforgiveness and that, that, that cannot be the way. And I think what you, what you've uncovered in, in your, in your discovery of Christ, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is the realization that I've come to. So this guy said,

• 4:18:28Speaker 03

  first of all, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, don't, right? Don't envy, um, don't lust. And hey, look, put others in front of yourself. Forgive others. Look out for the poor. Ask for forgiveness when you need it. Admit when you're, the, the principles that this man lived by and instructed us to live by.

• 4:18:55Speaker 03

  That is the way. That's the way. That is the way. And, and, and revenge is not the way. Anger is not the way, like, and we've, we've, I shouldn't speak for you, but I've tried them all. I've tried all the other ways. Like Jordan Peterson says a lot about that, is that even if you don't believe in.

• 4:19:19Speaker 03

  That the the principles of of Christianity, this to have the the happiest life or family or this is the way. And I haven't found any evidence. Fortunately or unfortunately, that I've found even more evidence for that now currently after everything I've been through.

• 4:19:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm with you.

• 4:19:42Speaker 03

  What what's the other way? You're gonna go, somebody wrongs you, you're gonna go kill them? You're gonna go talk bad about them behind their backs, wish for the do I wish the people that said those things about me, do I wish for their death? No. The people that have said bad things about you on the internet, do you want them to die?

• 4:20:07Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:20:08Speaker 03

  No, you don't. Do you want them to? What level of suffering do you want them to have? You know, do you?

• 4:20:14Shawn Ryan?

  That varies.

• 4:20:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Of course, of course it does. But you're like, oh, do I? I mean, I thought about that, but I was in I was when I was in rehab, I was so angry, dude, I was so angry. I remember telling him, I go, I wanted to, I wanted to kill them, dude. I thought they I wanted to literally kill them. And I would journal about it and I and I'm just. I don't wish for their destruction. I don't wish for their unhealth. I don't wish for their, I goes for anybody.

• 4:20:48Shawn Ryan?

  It uh, it's, yeah, it's, it makes you happier just to leave them alone.

• 4:20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:20:57Shawn Ryan?

  And forget about it. And, you know, I mean, there's just so much that goes into it. You know, if you really, really want to piss these people off.

• 4:21:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Then get more successful.

• 4:21:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:21:08Shawn Ryan?

  Because nothing pisses them off more and ruins their day than getting bigger and more successful.

• 4:21:17Speaker 03

  And never.

• 4:21:18Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 4:21:19Speaker 03

  And do never.

• 4:21:21Shawn Ryan?

  On top of that, you're, you're literally wasting your energy and your time.

• 4:21:26Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  Time and energy you will never get back ever. To torment or get revenge or whatever.

• 4:21:35Speaker 03

  Or even thinking about it.

• 4:21:37Shawn Ryan?

  You're putting your life on hold.

• 4:21:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:21:40Shawn Ryan?

  To do something that's, it's not going to bring you.

• 4:21:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:21:44Shawn Ryan?

  Any goodness, any fruit, any, anything, nothing.

• 4:21:48Speaker 03

  I remember, I remember I was, uh, like my book, I had a book, a book deal that was huge. I was gonna tell this, uh, prior to my cancellation, my book got, uh, there was a person that was one person that kind of instrumental in, in that coming undone. And when my book, um, uh, we, we, the book deal was still in place, so we wrote a whole new book after, then told this story. Not, not to the in-depth that we're talking about now, but told all of these, and it went on the Amazon, uh, bestseller list.

• 4:22:26Speaker 03

  And I, and I, in, in my own health, I go, I want to send her a gift basket with the book in it signed, like as an avengful, spiteful. Very, and I go.

• 4:22:43Speaker 03

  I don't want to do that.

• 4:22:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:22:44Speaker 03

  That girl has a family and has kids and is going to get them from soccer or whatever. And, and like, that's so embarrassing. And I'm gonna, all these years later, she probably just said those things out of, she hadn't thought about it since that day.

• 4:23:04Speaker 03

  And I'm, like, use whatever motivation you need to for good. And use it to motivate you, and if somebody beats you in the basketball game, like you can, if, if not liking them inspires you to practice better and weight train more to, in order to beat them the next year, great, but.

• 4:23:25Speaker 03

  What, what are you gonna do?

• 4:23:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:23:28Speaker 03

  Send up, like, tell them, even the people like I'm gonna, I was on the top, um, top ten touring comedians in America last year, top twenty. And so that article came out and I could like screenshot it and send it like.

• 4:23:45Shawn Ryan?

  They'll see it.

• 4:23:46Speaker 03

  They know. Yeah, or, or, or even they don't. Me doing.

• 4:23:51Shawn Ryan?

  Or they won't.

• 4:23:52Speaker 03

  Or me doing that is, is a sign that they won. All the rent that there, that, that's living in my head rent free.

• 4:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:01Speaker 03

  And it's a, to let, to, to.

• 4:24:05Shawn Ryan?

  They'll see it.

• 4:24:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:24:07Shawn Ryan?

  They will see it.

• 4:24:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:24:09Shawn Ryan?

  Just get on with your life. That's, that's kind of what I was getting at is just concentrate on, concentrate on yourself, get more successful in the revenge.

• 4:24:21Speaker 03

  It's nothing to do with that. Yeah, there's nothing to do with that.

• 4:24:24Shawn Ryan?

  That.

• 4:24:25Speaker 03

  And, and, and also.

• 4:24:26Shawn Ryan?

  Immediately desire, it's gonna happen anyways.

• 4:24:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:24:29Shawn Ryan?

  If you just improve your own life.

• 4:24:31Speaker 03

  And, yeah, and, and. It doesn't have anything to do with them and that's, nor did it ever. Nor did it ever. Have anything to do with, it was you and me and me. And some of the decisions that I made. Those are my choices. And I, if like I have a, if you have a, if the guy that sold you this warehouse turns out to be a crook and he forged the papers and he, you never owned this and he backed you out of the deal and you lost, you're like, well, I,

• 4:25:11Speaker 03

  unfortunately, the only way forward is like, I should have done better. I picked the real estate agent. I choose, I choose, I chose to go into business with this person, or there's just bad people that exist and I'm gonna learn from it and I'm gonna be better, but to wake up and, hey, you might not go into business with someone around here and you can learn from it, but.

• 4:25:39Speaker 03

  You and I know these people. They're just strap it on every day. And you go, that cannot be the way. That cannot be the way. Whether you're a Republican hate Democrats or Democrats hate Republicans, or whatever it is, or whatever group you're in, or whatever the other group you're in, or anger it. To absolve yourself from it and forgive.

• 4:26:13Shawn Ryan?

  That's the ultimate freedom.

• 4:26:14Speaker 03

  If there is, that's the, if there is another way, let me know. I haven't found it.

• 4:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  I think the thing that took me the, maybe the longest to learn is that, you know, forgiveness isn't always just for the, the person you're forgiving. It's for yourself. It really does set you free.

• 4:26:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, for, or forgiving yourself. There you go. Hey, at the time, with, with the tools that I had and the information in front of me, that was the best decision that I knew how to make at the time. Or even if a guy, I told a story before about it. In rehab, they told us a story about a girl that was being molested all through her childhood. And she was an alcoholic. And they were like, she started drinking at like a young age. And they go, alcohol saved her life. Cause it's too heavy of a reality to deal with.

• 4:27:26Speaker 03

  And the escape, that was all, that's the only card she knew how to play. That's the only thing she had to escape from the reality of her, of her situation. So at the time, not to compare our situations at all, but like I was very sad and a lot of shame. And like going down those roads was the best card I knew how to play, at least in the short term, to handle that. And now I'm not there anymore in life, but I don't look back at that guy and.

• 4:28:04Speaker 03

  Shame him, or like, what an idiot, or like, what a loser, like, I can't believe he wasn't more of a Christian, or whatever, whatever. I look back, and I go, man, I wish I could talk to that guy, tell him that I love him, tell him that I'm proud of him, and tell him that he's a good man, and tell him that this is what you're doing here, and helping these people with the gift that God has given you is such, it's a tremendously honorable and noble thing. And if you slip up, or there's tremendous hardships that come with it, and we just want to let you know that we're with

• 4:28:45Speaker 03

  you, and you're not alone, and we love you. And if you do screw up, we don't turn our backs on you, we don't cast you out. And that's, that's what I would say to that, what I would call an inner child of mine back in the day, and I can say that to myself now. That's big, man. I'm an adult. Yeah, we're not, you idiot, you what a loser. Somebody told me a story about, I was in a, I was in a, was in Iowa, maybe? I was in

• 4:29:26Speaker 03

  an airport Holiday Inn. This is like, at the height of my, just being an idiot, and being sad, and like, drinking a bunch. And there was a girl that was, that was at the show, that I just did a show at a church, and I was sitting at the airport bar, Holiday Inn, drinking, and trying to text this girl to like, maybe decide if we're gonna meet up, or I don't know what we're gonna do. Kind of, I had visioned this as like, the low, and I remember, like, if, either with a therapist, I think it was a therapist, if Jesus, the man of Jesus, walked by and saw me in there.

• 4:30:09Speaker 03

  My therapist was like, what would he say? And I go, well, the Jesus I know that I learned about growing up would be like, I'm embarrassed of you. I can't believe you're drinking such a bad influence. You represent my name and you're telling everybody you're a Christian. Look at you pursuing these addictions are terrible choices. Don't call yourself a Christian. I'm embarrassed of you.

• 4:30:36Speaker 03

  Don't call anybody, don't tell anybody you're a Christian and be better.

• 4:30:44Speaker 03

  I don't, and he goes to the man of Jesus from, read the book, would sit down next to you and he would go, you are, it looks like you're pretty sad.

• 4:30:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, man, I get that. I know sadness. Looks like you feel alone. I get that. I've been alone before.

• 4:31:07Speaker 03

  I don't, whatever you're about to do, whatever you're about to do tonight or are already doing, I get it. And I'm mad at you.

• 4:31:16Speaker 03

  I have a better way for you that is probably going to be a little bit more difficult, but more rewarding. And I got a better solution for you. If I see my quote, children behaving in this certain way, I'm not, I'm bummed and I'm sad, but I'm not, I get it. I understand. Jesus' best friend died. All of 12, 11 of his best friends left him.

• 4:31:41Speaker 03

  People think Jesus, you read about the man of Jesus, that he's a miracle worker and a famous guy. Dude, he was at the time that everyone needed him the most, all of his best friends left him. You don't think he understands loneliness? You don't think he understands pain? You don't think he understands anger? You don't think he understands injustice? You look at him like a guy that can turn water into wine or a guy that hugged children or whatever. I was like, if he was a hundred percent God and a hundred percent man, he, he felt all of those emotions that you feel that you've been, yeah. He goes, man, I'm really sad that.

• 4:32:26Speaker 03

  I didn't get this opportunity. I got turned down for this TV show and I just wanna drink until I pass out. He goes, "Yeah, that's sad. That's sad that you got turned down for that. I would be sad too."

• 4:32:39Speaker 03

  Or, "Man, these people said things about you." Yeah, I understand that.

• 4:32:45Speaker 03

  I would be bummed out too.

• 4:32:49Speaker 03

  And that...

• 4:32:52Speaker 03

  That's a different religion. Whatever you're asking at the beginning, that's a different religion. It's still the same name. But that's way entirely different than you better be in the church pew at 9:00 AM and you better come to the boast services and you better have your shirt tucked in and you better say please and thank you and memorize all the Bible verses or you're gonna be punished. That is a different... I wouldn't even call it a religion.

• 4:33:16Shawn Ryan?

  It's your relationship.

• 4:33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's... It's under the... Christianity is what you call it, but that's... It's an entirely different relationship. Yeah.

• 4:33:33Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move in... Let's start moving into when you got back into comedy. You know, we had talked about your debut back on social media.

• 4:33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:33:42Shawn Ryan?

  And all of the support that you...

• 4:33:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:33:47Shawn Ryan?

  That you got.

• 4:33:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:33:49Shawn Ryan?

  And how motivating and touching that was.

• 4:33:53Speaker 03

  The first video I ever put out, and this is how I knew I was kind of in a healthier place, because my publicist and agent manager at the time was like, "Hey, it's probably not..." When I got home from rehab, they're like, "It's probably not best for you to come back yet publicly. Take some more time off." And then I go, "Well, can I make videos?" Not, "I didn't ask. I can do whatever I want." It was like, they go, "Yeah, knock yourself out." I go, "All right, I can make stuff? I don't care if you publish it or not. I just wanna start..."

• 4:34:26Shawn Ryan?

  Getting back into it.

• 4:34:27Speaker 03

  "Making stuff, that what I was put on this planet to do." And they're like, "Yeah, knock yourself out." And I remember I shot probably 10 videos or more, and we were deciding on, "I'm just gonna come back." And, uh... I posted this video that is still the biggest video that I've ever posted. The first video I posted back was called, uh, Brands That Need To Be Canceled Immediately. And I went through Walmart and I was like,

• 4:34:58Speaker 03

  Rebel Ice Cream? Absolutely not. You support the Confederacy? Get rid of that. Oreos, separating the blacks and whites? Get rid of that. Uncle Ben's? Mm-mm. And I like, I went through every, all, everything at the grocery store. Uh, Granny Smith? That's ageist. Absolutely not. We're not, Granny's is not something that's funny. And I canceled everything as a joke. I went through Walmart, canceled. It was like, white rice, brown rice, brown rice. Why do they have to be separated? Canceled, right? Like, just making it, cause cancel culture was so... Prevalent at the time. So prevalent. And now it's a joke. Now, if you say something across the line, someone goes, oh, you're canceled.

• 4:35:41Speaker 03

  It's a joke because cancellation is now a joke. Because it went so far that everybody was like, you get fired from your job for like sexual harassment, that's probably, but it went now, now you look at a woman and you're fired. Or you go, okay, this has gone too far. And what the comedian is best at is looking at the culture and go, mm. And I made this, this of my first video back and everybody was like, oh my, like this is a, this is ballsy to come back with this. And it went through the roof and, and to,

• 4:36:23Speaker 03

  to an audience that never even knew of me. Cause I wouldn't make it, I would never make a joke like that living in the, in the Christian kind of subculture or bubble. Yeah. And a lot of people listening to this are like, that was the first time I ever heard of you too. That like, and that video went everywhere. And bigger than the, the Christian subculture that I had ever been a part of. And, and it was, and they, how'd you make that video? And I go, well, I wasn't...

• 4:36:59Speaker 03

  In this like.

• 4:37:01Shawn Ryan?

  You weren't chained.

• 4:37:02Speaker 03

  Yes, you can say whatever you want now. Now you can say whatever you want. And I, and I, in a lot of ways, I didn't know if I'd ever work again anyway. I go, well, now I can tell the truth, the whole truth. And I, I talk.

• 4:37:17Speaker 03

  You're similar in a lot of ways, but I went down to Monroe, Louisiana to be on the, the guys from Duck Dynasty. You remember that show?

• 4:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:37:26Speaker 03

  I went on their podcast like a month ago. And those guys are very outspoken with what they think. And they're very, very Christian. I would say they're, they're right wing. And those guys, all they do is they hunt for ducks on their land. And also they have a podcast, but they don't, they have tons of money. And they're not even on social media, really. That some of the younger kids are, but the, they're not on social media. And everybody's like, these guys are, I go, no, these are the guys to trust. Cause they have no reason to lie to you. They live off the land. They like to hunt.

• 4:38:11Speaker 03

  They have plenty of money. They have this podcast, they don't even check the stats if it's going good. I mean, they might, but like, does that make sense?

• 4:38:20Shawn Ryan?

  Like. Yeah, it's not their primary concern. They don't give a shit about fame. They don't care.

• 4:38:24Speaker 03

  They don't care. So like, these guys are, these guys are lying.

• 4:38:27Shawn Ryan?

  They have nothing to gain.

• 4:38:28Speaker 03

  They're not lying because they have no interest in lying. Why would they? And everybody, outside of money, fame is always like, you, you want this podcast to do well. So nobody's a hundred percent out of the quote game or wanting to do well or whatever. But I go, no, these are the guys to trust. And if you got a guy that, this guy has an unbelievable podcast, but he's like, he's on the payroll of this mega church. And I go, okay, then if that's where the money has come from, then we can't trust it. We can't totally trust it. You know what I'm saying?

• 4:39:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:06Speaker 03

  So there's a lot of these people with like voices that.

• 4:39:11Speaker 03

  Joe Rogan, you go, well, no, he doesn't. He, yeah, he wants to be successful and he wants to be famous, sure, but like, he doesn't have any interest in lying to you. He just wants the best. I don't know him personally, but like, he just wants to hear the best conversation. And if you think this and you think this, let's get a compelling conversation and have it. And he has plenty of money.

• 4:39:36Speaker 03

  But, but, you know, the government, you're like, oh, they have like with the ESPN that is like,

• 4:39:46Speaker 03

  Pfizer has commercials on ESPN.

• 4:39:52Speaker 03

  And you go, yeah, which that's fine. It's, it's a democracy, but they have vested interest in communicating that you should take this vaccine, which is, by the way, I got no problem with anybody deciding whether with the new, on either way of that, but at least, no, they're not being honest. They're, they're, they're, the information that they're selling you is what is best for them to get this, to get this sponsorship or where them, it's usually money or power. Where in politics, the same, where is it flowing from? And you go, oh, that makes sense.

• 4:40:31Speaker 03

  So me coming out of cancellation and, and I thought burned it all to the ground. So I got nothing to defend. I got nothing to hold on to anyway.

• 4:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:40:46Speaker 03

  I mean,

• 4:40:46Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense.

• 4:40:48Speaker 03

  I didn't know, I didn't know I would ever come back to be doing stand up ever again. So why not?

• 4:40:57Speaker 03

  Tell everybody how you really feel about can't, now you gotta do it in a funny way. I'm a comedian, but you gotta do it in a funny way. And we, I mean, there's so many ideas that came out of.

• 4:41:07Shawn Ryan?

  You had nothing left to protect.

• 4:41:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a better way to say it.

• 4:41:10Shawn Ryan?

  You'd been, you'd been broken down to, to the bare minimum.

• 4:41:14Speaker 03

  They took everything. Louis C K said, all they, all I have left is my birthday. So he said, at his cancellation, he goes, all I have left is my birthday and they will not stop until I'm. Begging for money in the streets. They want to take everything from you.

• 4:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:41:30Speaker 03

  They will not stop until they take everything. All I got left was my birthday. So then you can say the truth.

• 4:41:43Speaker 03

  And so can everybody, by the way.

• 4:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  How long was it before you went back on stage?

• 4:41:50Speaker 03

  I would probably say about a year.

• 4:41:53Shawn Ryan?

  A year? So you got out, you started making videos. It took you a whole year.

• 4:41:58Speaker 03

  Maybe, maybe nine months, maybe.

• 4:42:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:42:01Speaker 03

  Something like that. Yeah, maybe 10 months. It had to be at least 10.

• 4:42:05Shawn Ryan?

  A long time.

• 4:42:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:42:07Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not trying to trip you.

• 4:42:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm trying to think of the timeline. I mean, it was November and I got out in March, April, May, June, July, something like that. Yeah. I didn't come back till July, so yeah.

• 4:42:18Shawn Ryan?

  How many more videos did you make in that time period?

• 4:42:21Speaker 03

  Oh, tons. And one of my best, some of my best work has been ideas that I've had since then. In that I wish I could go back in a way to clean my mind again. I mean, it was just so.

• 4:42:39Speaker 03

  I wish everybody could go to rehab for like a month. Just like you just get, you just graduate from college and you just go until death. That's crazy. And everybody's got two weeks of vacation.

• 4:42:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:42:52Speaker 03

  Until death. That's wild, dude. That is wild.

• 4:42:56Shawn Ryan?

  It is. It is.

• 4:42:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I went back, I remember I put a show on sale. Actually, I put a, it was at Zany's, a comedy club in Nashville. And my manager at the time, Andy, I put the show on sale and he called me

• 4:43:15Speaker 03

  an hour later and said, the show's sold out.

• 4:43:18Shawn Ryan?

  No, in an hour?

• 4:43:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:43:22Speaker 03

  And I mean.

• 4:43:28Speaker 03

  I wish everybody could have that feeling. I wish everybody, I wish, I mean, the the feeling of like acceptance and like love I felt from that and still do, by the way, every time I get now. That's crazy. I never really thought about that. I used to that the quote you read with the line. I felt so much shame from that. Why are these people here? They don't, if they knew the truth about me. And now every person that comes to my show that shows up, I feel so loved and accepted and honored that they would come to the show. Man, what a gift, dude.

• 4:44:08Shawn Ryan?

  You know, do you think that's because you know for a fact now that people they love you?

• 4:44:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  Like it sounds like before, well, that wasn't.

• 4:44:17Speaker 03

  It was a dishonest transaction and that wasn't really me and they were loving. Yeah. And I, I thought a lot about if you go to a church, like if you are a member, let's say First Baptist, Lexington, Kentucky, or something like that. Let's say you're a family, you go there, you give, you tithe 10%, right? Tie 10% of your income there. And they announce, hey, in two weeks, we got this comedian coming in on Saturday night. You're gonna, this is a good outreach for the community. Invite your friends. We're gonna pack this place out. You, you invest a significant amount of time and money at that institution.

• 4:44:58Speaker 03

  When they announce they're doing something, you want it by nature to do well. You don't care who's coming in here. If it's like, we got an a cappella group, we got a square dancing, you want it to be, you, you you got season tickets for the Preds, you want them to do good because you, you got a lot, you got a lot, but you got investment in there. And so when I was doing all these churches, I didn't even know if they liked me. They were just, the institution told them, hey, this guy's coming. Now there's a lot of people might have been my fans since back then, but like the transaction was so dishonest. And now it's like, dude, I'm coming to Lexington. 65 bucks, 55 bucks for a ticket. I don't know much. I think 40 bucks for a ticket.

• 4:45:44Speaker 03

  In that range, if you watch my videos, like them, I'm coming to your city. We'll make that exchange. I'll give you the best two hour show you've ever been to. We'll make that exchange and it's

• 4:45:59Speaker 03

  fair.

• 4:46:01Speaker 03

  You wanted McDouble, I got a dollar. We'll make that trade. Everybody wins.

• 4:46:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:46:07Speaker 03

  There's no

• 4:46:10Speaker 03

  seek, there's no, it's, it's, it's a fair trade. And that's been nice. And to see all those people that you may have lost a handful of fans, maybe, but

• 4:46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:46:24Speaker 03

  More, yeah.

• 4:46:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it seems like the theme of the show is just be yourself, man. That's the most freeing thing.

• 4:46:35Speaker 03

  But what, yeah. And I wonder, cause you I feel like are there. I feel like, we're not, or not, can be a hundred percent there, but, but we're, but what our situations,

• 4:46:50Speaker 03

  how did we get here? You know, how did your, how did your, why are, why are you not still in the military?

• 4:46:57Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 4:46:59Shawn Ryan?

  You just

• 4:46:59Speaker 03

  Really sure what you're getting at. Well, I'm saying, what, what if I was still on that road?

• 4:47:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:47:05Speaker 03

  What if you were still on that road? And what if you were, what if you just decided

• 4:47:11Speaker 03

  to make a career out of it?

• 4:47:14Shawn Ryan?

  Then I'd be in a very different spot.

• 4:47:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think you'd be in a very, and you wouldn't be, you would be,

• 4:47:20Speaker 03

  I don't know if you probably know the things you know now, but if you did see these inconsistencies or whatever, you're just, I'm just gonna.

• 4:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:47:29Speaker 03

  You know?

• 4:47:30Shawn Ryan?

  You know, the thing, so I just gotta fill the audience in a little bit, cause that conversation that we had.

• 4:47:34Speaker 03

  Oh my, you can cut it then if you want to.

• 4:47:36Shawn Ryan?

  No, it's all good.

• 4:47:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:47:37Shawn Ryan?

  The conversation that we had was about, um, was about military industrial complex and things that I can see that, that, that, that, that, how do I describe this very shortly?

• 4:47:49Speaker 03

  Corruption. Let's just call corruption. Things that you don't see.

• 4:47:53Shawn Ryan?

  You don't see that kind of stuff when you're in the military because you're, you're on a very specific mission.

• 4:47:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:47:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 4:47:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:47:59Shawn Ryan?

  You don't have much peripheral

• 4:48:01Speaker 03

  And you shouldn't.

• 4:48:02Shawn Ryan?

  Into that.

• 4:48:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:48:04Shawn Ryan?

  There's no time to dig. And it's not until afterwards you start seeing those kinds of things, but you know, when it, yeah, I mean, the military was me at the time.

• 4:48:16Speaker 03

  Same, same.

• 4:48:17Shawn Ryan?

  That was me.

• 4:48:19Speaker 03

  It was the ver- yeah, it was, I don't, I don't, I wasn't going into those churches like I'm gonna try to mislead these people and I'm gonna try to. I was, I was, that was me at the time as well. Yeah, and so you said, you said the.

• 4:48:34Speaker 03

  What's interesting about this podcast, just be yourself.

• 4:48:43Speaker 03

  There's a lot of people that I know that are, that are not.

• 4:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 4:48:47Speaker 03

  Right?

• 4:48:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, even, even when I got out of the agency, one, one thing that I did, you know, I told you I was teaching guns and tactics.

• 4:48:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:48:57Shawn Ryan?

  And shit like that, right? And, uh, and, and.

• 4:49:03Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's one thing about me is I'm, I've always been very authentic and.

• 4:49:07Speaker 03

  Even when you were in the military.

• 4:49:09Shawn Ryan?

  Even when I was in the military.

• 4:49:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:49:11Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, you know, I got out and I looked at, I did kind of a market analysis, right? On, on what everybody was doing. And.

• 4:49:22Shawn Ryan?

  The thing about, that I noticed about social media is guys that had gotten out before me. You know, that I knew really well, whether it was a SEAL.

• 4:49:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:49:33Shawn Ryan?

  Whether it was an agency operative or whatever, it wasn't them. Like, I know them, some of these guys I've spent 10 years with.

• 4:49:42Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 4:49:43Shawn Ryan?

  And then you see them on social and it's like, that's, that's.

• 4:49:48Shawn Ryan?

  That's not the dude that I spent the last 10 years with.

• 4:49:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:49:51Shawn Ryan?

  This is a character.

• 4:49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  You've created yourself a character. To do the things that you think that people want you to do and do and act how they think they want you to act.

• 4:50:04Speaker 03

  This is not, I know, I've been in the.

• 4:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 4:50:08Speaker 03

  I've been in the, to the bottom with you and this is not you.

• 4:50:10Shawn Ryan?

  And that's a trap.

• 4:50:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:50:12Shawn Ryan?

  And that's a prison. That's a chain.

• 4:50:14Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 4:50:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know, because you build the character.

• 4:50:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:50:18Shawn Ryan?

  It's not the real you.

• 4:50:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:50:20Shawn Ryan?

  And then you're fucking trapped in that character.

• 4:50:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:50:22Shawn Ryan?

  And it's impossible to get out.

• 4:50:24Speaker 03

  They don't know what, yeah, and then you, I think there's a lot of people that are in so deep that they become the character.

• 4:50:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:50:30Speaker 03

  And they're like, I'll just be this.

• 4:50:32Shawn Ryan?

  And so when I did, when I saw that, you know, I never, I was like, man, that's gotta be exhausting. Whether it's, whether it's the funny guy, you know, making.

• 4:50:47Shawn Ryan?

  Jokes all the time, just obnoxious. I'm not talking about stand up comedy.

• 4:50:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:50:53Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and it's, it's like, man, you're creating that. And now people are going to expect that from you every time they see you. And that shit's gonna be exhausting, or if it's the tough guy, you know what I mean? And, and I'm too tough.

• 4:51:07Speaker 03

  That's not you either, yeah.

• 4:51:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's, you know, like, now you have to live in that image. You're going to think that you have to live in that image for the rest of your life.

• 4:51:17Speaker 03

  Cause it's being, it's probably being publicly praised.

• 4:51:21Shawn Ryan?

  And they're, and they're building these massive followers.

• 4:51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, people like it.

• 4:51:25Shawn Ryan?

  Millions of, millions of followers. And it's like, you're fucking trapped now, man. Because everybody expects you to be that, and that's not you. And it's exhausting to be something that you're not.

• 4:51:38Speaker 03

  And so that is what.

• 4:51:41Shawn Ryan?

  And it sounds like that's kind of what you fell into.

• 4:51:45Speaker 03

  I'm not.

• 4:51:45Shawn Ryan?

  In the early days was. You, you, you.

• 4:51:52Shawn Ryan?

  You were, you were trying to please instead of just being.

• 4:51:56Speaker 03

  You had gotten the.

• 4:52:00Speaker 03

  I had gotten the. The rewards or whatever from it, just like somebody's getting a lot of followers. You're like, well, this feels good. And so.

• 4:52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Until it doesn't.

• 4:52:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, like we've, we've, we've.

• 4:52:14Speaker 03

  On our podcast, we've had like, all right, I'm gonna start a podcast. Now, we're gonna talk about whatever. And then we get, we get. I was like, hey, we can never. Go down a road that where we say something and that we're scared of someone dropping us. When the ad is dropped, because then we're going back. Into the old thing. I go, you say whatever you want to say. And if somebody says, hey, this is beyond what we're comfortable with, that's fine. There's lots of advertisers out there. We're not gonna get into the business of going. This is what I think about.

• 4:52:53Speaker 03

  Life or society or my community or the politics or, but I.

• 4:52:58Shawn Ryan?

  You've already proven to yourself what can happen by just being you.

• 4:53:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you've been down that road before. And if somebody says, hey, we don't approve of this content for the pocket, that's fine. It's not a measure of me, but I have to keep saying this. Cause that is who I am. And obviously you got friends and family members and things like that. Relationships that you want to stay loyal to, but if you go, if you work at any, any big institution and you are sacrificing yourself to things that you don't believe in, I'm not talking about, I don't believe in showing up for work at eight.

• 4:53:45Speaker 03

  I'm not talking about that. I'm saying if they stand for something that you do not stand for, and you're putting that aside to continue to work that you're in a prison, you're in prison.

• 4:53:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:53:57Speaker 03

  You are.

• 4:54:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, I'm a hundred percent with you, man.

• 4:54:03Speaker 03

  It's, I mean, you go, hey, they're making us.

• 4:54:08Shawn Ryan?

  It's really hard to describe this, you know? You don't get it until you do it. And that's, that's what's sad is you see so many people out there living their bullshit lie that they've created to please other people.

• 4:54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  And it's, you're, if you're listening to this and you're that person and probably a

• 4:54:29Speaker 03

  Lot.

• 4:54:30Shawn Ryan?

  A, I would bet the majority of the people listening to this are putting a facade out. It's not actually them. You're living in a fucking prison. And when you stop that, and when you just be yourself, be true to yourself, stand by your values, put down the facade, I mean, it's, it's, it's, dude, it's just freeing. You're free.

• 4:54:58Speaker 03

  That's how I feel. And you went, you go, man, that's why I look back on it at all. I'm not.

• 4:55:10Speaker 03

  I would be, I mean, imagine if I was still doing that. Still performing in those institutions and but secretly drinking a bunch and. That seems to me so sad.

• 4:55:25Shawn Ryan?

  On top of that, I mean, just, you know, the, the, the transgression of your story. I mean, you, you had put false limitations on yourself.

• 4:55:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:55:38Shawn Ryan?

  And when those limitations.

• 4:55:39Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  When, when you got rid of them, look what happened, man.

• 4:55:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:55:44Shawn Ryan?

  And you, yeah.

• 4:55:47Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know how, how much bigger you've thrown, but it sounds like you've quadrupled.

• 4:55:54Speaker 03

  I got a buddy that his wife is, um, he works for a company and his wife is, is scared to death that, uh, he's gonna get fired.

• 4:56:08Speaker 03

  Lives in perpetual fear of him getting fired, right? So, cause they got, you know, a couple of kids, they're in school, they have a house with a mortgage. Very thin margins, I'd imagine. Uh, and how does, how was the staff meeting? Is that, is, do they like your presentation? Did they, and, and I go, just pervades the conversation at all time, this fear, this fear, fear. And I, after what I had gone through, I obviously didn't verbalize this, but I thought to myself, I go, I wish I, I wish he got fired. Cause you could realize

• 4:56:46Speaker 03

  it's not that scary.

• 4:56:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:56:47Speaker 03

  You know what?

• 4:56:48Shawn Ryan?

  There's another door.

• 4:56:48Speaker 03

  There's it, or, or like, okay, what's the worst that can happen? He's gonna go work at Home Depot for, you can make 50 grand a year there, you go make, work at Home Depot, you can work at a gas station and make 80 grand. And then you're gonna, you're gonna get back on your feet. And that's, you're gonna maybe make a year there and then you're gonna find a whole new life. You're gonna find a whole new life and that fear is now gonna be gone. Cause you're like, dude, what are you scared of now? What am I scared of now?

• 4:57:20Speaker 03

  I'm not scared of nothing. I'm not scared, any my business manager or manager agent could call like whatever this is, is nothing compared to what I have experienced, which makes you strong. And living in this perpetual fear of losing health or the school or the job or the whatever the things we set up out here. Yeah. If your house gets robbed or, I mean, obviously protect yourself, but I'm not. What could come at me, even death?

• 4:58:03Speaker 03

  I'm not scared of anything. There's significant, significant challenges facing myself and you every day. Am I scared of anything? Cause I already, my biggest, my biggest fear that I could ever, my greatest nightmare that I could ever possibly imagine happening to me, happened. Publicly being humiliated on every news site in the country. And here I am.

• 4:58:47Shawn Ryan?

  Ten times better than you were before.

• 4:58:49Speaker 03

  Let's go, baby.

• 4:58:53Shawn Ryan?

  Well, man. This has been a hell of a conversation.

• 4:58:57Speaker 03

  What a ride, man.

• 4:58:58Shawn Ryan?

  I wanna, I wanna start to wrap it up, but how's the tour going?

• 4:59:02Speaker 03

  Real good. We just started. We got two sold out shows at the Ryman this weekend in Nashville.

• 4:59:08Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:59:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:59:09Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:59:10Speaker 03

  No, we have, we have three. We never have done that many.

• 4:59:13Shawn Ryan?

  Three at the Ryman?

• 4:59:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, this weekend.

• 4:59:19Speaker 03

  You can come down if you want to. I might.

• 4:59:23Speaker 03

  Sold out, though. I know a guy, I know a guy who can find you a seat. We'll take you up on that.

• 4:59:30Speaker 03

  But, uh, anything else big coming? Oh, man, we're on tour. We just announced the last leg of our tour. That goes from now until about June. And then I think we're ending the tour. We have about 160 cities that we've visited on this tour. Which is unbelievable, really, really, really unbelievable. And then

• 4:59:57Speaker 03

  we got a project that I can't talk about yet. It's coming in the fall. Oh, right on. Oh, yeah. Exciting. Oh, yeah, man, absolutely. Well, I can't wait to hear about it, man. Thank you, brother. It's an honor. It's an honor to come down. There's a lot of people that talk. I said I was coming on this podcast. Like I said, there's a lot of people that that really, really love you. They really listen to and really, really appreciate what you have to say. And I

• 5:00:24Speaker 03

  I know I used to listen to the Bill Simmons is a sports writer. And I worked at this nine to five cubicle job and I couldn't wait for his he did a Friday mailbag, like an article and he would and I couldn't wait for Friday at about 2:00 PM for that mailbag to come out and I just consume it. There's a lot of people that make art or content. That you, I'm sure you know this, that people say that they, how they interact with this podcast, but it's really Ralphie May, who was a comedian that died a few years back.

• 5:01:06Speaker 03

  And I remember talking about going on the road with him and he goes, keep doing the Lord's work, man. And there's a lot of especially in this, in this city, Nashville.

• 5:01:17Speaker 03

  Everybody on Wednesday or Thursday night loads up the tour buses and goes out. A lot of them, mostly country music and entertainment, loads up the tour bus and goes out into the country. And we all see them all coming back. If you, on these interstates, you'll see them coming back on Sundays or Mondays, depending on if they are all coming back. They're driving either south or north back into the city. And it's, a lot of times, I look at it like the, like it's wartime. And these entertainers or musicians are all loading up and going out into the country and bringing people joy and happiness and entertainment.

• 5:02:02Speaker 03

  And then we all come back and come back on Monday morning. And it's, I think everybody with a podcast, I feel the same about that you're putting out this content that people are, live in varying degrees of hardship. And your content provides a respite from pain for a lot of people.

• 5:02:23Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, Ben.

• 5:02:24Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 5:02:24Shawn Ryan?

  That means a lot.

• 5:02:25Speaker 03

  It's true. It's true.

• 5:02:28Shawn Ryan?

  I got one other thing that I would like to say, because I did beat up the church a little bit. You know, what I do want to say is, you know, what's helped me is it is all about your relationship with Christ.

• 5:02:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:02:43Shawn Ryan?

  Doesn't have anything to do with the church.

• 5:02:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  And just keep that in mind.

• 5:02:49Speaker 03

  And whatever, yeah, whatever anyone said in there or maybe says on TV as a representative of Christ. You know, people have said all, and said and done all kinds of things in the name of Christ that have been wrong. A lot of the human beings that have done all that, yeah.

• 5:03:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:03:14Speaker 03

  But it's a

• 5:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, saved my life 100%.

• 5:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, brother, this episode is going to bring a lot of hope because a lot of people are struggling, you know, and that's, that's one of the beautiful things about this show is the people that come on here always open up the struggles and, and are an open book so that people can get a glimpse into, into it and, and relate. And I'll tell you, man, a lot of lives have been saved by listening to this. So, yeah, thank you. It was an honor to have you. Keep spreading the good word.