#382 – Bert Kreischer: Comedy, Drinking, Rogan, Segura, Churchill & Kim Jong Un

Bert Kreischer is a comedian, actor, and podcaster. Check him out on Bertcast, 2 Bears 1 Cave, Something is Burning, and the new movie The Machine. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings – NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour – ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free EPISODE LINKS: Bert’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/bertkreischer/ Bert’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/bertkreischer Bert’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bertkreischer Bert’s Website: https://bertbertbert.com/ 2 Bears 1 Cave: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-i3EV1v5hLeT91DuXckUf6tsbMfLgZno Books mentioned: Life of the Party (book): https://amzn.to/42lHjKg PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (05:08) – Hemingway (08:34) – Putin (11:53) – Churchill (14:15) – Kim Jong Un (16:15) – Drinking with Joe Rogan and Tom Segura (24:42) – Father (28:33) – Shirtless (30:38) – Tom Segura (41:27) – Joe Rogan (44:16) – Dating advice (52:24) – Key to success (1:02:36) – Sleep and working out (1:11:51) – History podcasts (1:17:15) – Road trips (1:23:46) – Beer (1:33:14) – Exercise (1:38:56) – Life of the Party (1:46:39) – Drinking (2:05:11) – Greatest comedian of all time (2:07:59) – Advice for young people

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

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Bert Kreischer, a stand-up comedian, podcaster, actor, and a man they call "The Machine." I've been a fan of his comedy and podcasts for many years, and I highly recommend you watch him on BurtCast, Two Bears One Cave with Tom Segura, his cooking show called Something Is Burning, and finally, the new movie that tells the story of the man, the legend, The Machine.

• 0:28Lex Fridman?

  And now, a quick use second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Eight Sleep for naps, NetSuite for business management software, and ExpressVPN for privacy and security on the internet. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfridman.com/hiring. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, none of these ads in the middle. I try to make them interesting, but if you must skip them, friends, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.

• 1:06Lex Fridman?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep and its Pod3 mattress. As Bert and I talk about in this episode, naps are the portal to happiness and joy in this life. He talks about naps on the tour bus. And I have to say, I've taken quite a lot of naps on buses, Greyhound buses, public transportation. I've taken so many buses in my life. So much of my life I spent being completely broke. And public transportation was not just the only means of transportation I could afford, but really, I found joy in it. The simplicity of it, the waiting in the cold and in the heat, the camaraderie that you're all in it together.

• 1:52Lex Fridman?

  There's a way of being with strangers on the subway or on a bus that all the diversity of humans are all right there. You get to kind of people watch like subtly, like this is what's possible in this world and it's beautiful. Anyway, as he talks about taking a nap on a cold tour bus and me taking a nap on a hot Greyhound going from Boston to New York or something like that, it's heaven. But what's truly special is a nap on a cold mattress at home, which is what I do with 8 Sleep. Check them out and get

• 2:33Lex Fridman?

  special savings when you go to 8sleep.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. They manage everything, all the mess, all the complexities of running a business, the financials, the human resources, the inventory, if you do that kind of thing, e-commerce, if you're an internet business, and all the many messy business-related details. Running a business is tough. I'm thinking about hoping to do it. But of course, when I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about all the idea stuff, the engineering, the design, the products. But that's not just

• 3:15Lex Fridman?

  what a business is. It's all the glue that makes the thing work. And for that, you should be using the best tools for the job and NetSuite is that. You can start now with no payment or interest for six months. Go to netsuite.com/lex to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. That's netsuite.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. The service, the software I've used to protect my privacy on the internet for many, many, many, many years, back when it was a big sexy red button. I think it's a different color button now, it's still big and sexy, but

• 3:56Lex Fridman?

  the colors change, but the essence of the thing remains the same. You should obviously be using a VPN. This is the best one. This is the one I've used. This is the one I love. Everything's super fast, works on every operating system. Yes, including Linux, all the different flavors of Linux. As I talked about with, I think, Jimmy Wales on a podcast about Wikipedia. We talked about that there is, every single Linux distribution has a Wikipedia page. Maybe I'm misremembering that, but the point is they're all beautiful in their own little way. And in all of them, ExpressVPN works. It's wonderful and it works fast. Simple thing done right.

• 4:37Lex Fridman?

  Go to expressvpn.com/lexpod for an extra three months free. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Bert Kreischer.

• 5:08Lex Fridman?

  I read somewhere that you like Ernest Hemingway.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Love him.

• 5:11Lex Fridman?

  There's a quote, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Do you agree with that?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  I agree. I agree. Well, I agree with that with journaling. Because I can't write, I can't write stand up. Like, I can't write a bit, but if I journal, I'll find something that I go, just write. Kind of writing where you're, the pen's moving faster than your brain and they're kind of like doing it together. The thing I liked about Ernest Hemingway, this is so stupid. I'm a little dyslexic, so I'm not a good reader. And so he wrote very simply. And it wasn't until after I read a bunch of Ernest Hemingway. I was working at Parsons Noble. And this person said, "Don't you love his titles?" And I was like, "Yeah, Sun Also Rises." And they're like, "Yeah, but, no, The Sun Also Rises." And I was like, "Yeah, Sun Also Rises." And they're like, "No, The Sun Also Rises."

• 6:02Speaker 01

  And I went, "Oh, oh, yeah, that is fucking badass. Yeah." And then I'm like always late to the party with anything. And then that night, we were all doing coke. And it was like 5:00 in the morning and we ended up on the roof of my apartment in Greenwich Village. And it's like, I'm a sunset guy, I grew up in Florida, but sunrises in New York are electric blue, like electric blue. And I was like, the sun also rises.

• 6:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, he was so good with just a handful of words. The simplicity, the choice of words, like basically his process is carving down.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Write drunk, edit sober.

• 6:46Lex Fridman?

  Write drunk, edit sober.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he was good at like, at like, a small amount of words to get a point across. I'm the exact fucking opposite.

• 6:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's also said, the first draft of anything is always shit. Is that, is that true for you?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  It's the best one I have.

• 7:08Lex Fridman?

  It goes downhill from there. So for you, editing is destroying the original.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  The first time I tell it, the first time I tell it, it's perfect. It's perfect. It just, it works. And then I go, great. And then I take it and I try to fix it and make it better and jazzier. I just joke and razzle dazzle about my daughters and I drive them past a deaf child sign. And I just told it on stage, it just happened and Louis was in the audience.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  He goes, I love that joke. I said, really? He was, yeah, and I just told it and I went done. Louis CK says he likes a joke. It's fucking, it's in the special. And I tried to fucking razzle dazzle that joke into like a 15 minute bit. It got to the point where it was so, it was so bad that I, I told him, I did a podcast with him. I said, what did you like about that joke? Cause I can't get it to work anymore. He goes, it was just simple. It was simple that your daughter didn't know how they figure out where deaf kids lived. I went, that's it? He's like, yeah. I was like, nothing about gun control? And he was like, huh? I was like, oh, fuck, man. I really fucked that joke up. And then I had to, I had to go back to the beginning of it. But that first time, that's when, that's when the joke comes out purest for me. And then it's always chasing back to get that,

• 8:19Speaker 01

  get that first telling. Some jokes are different. Like the machine, obviously there's a much longer story and like, and like escape room for this one. The longer stories take a little work, but the, the simple ones, like, like the deaf child in pajamas and those first times are perfect.

• 8:34Lex Fridman?

  What do you think is, is it about the machine story that works? That was so captivating for people?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I think it's a, I think, I don't know. I really wish I, I don't know. I think it's a good story. I think it's a good story. I think everyone has something similar that happened in their life where they had a crazy night. And that no one believed and they told their friends and their and or they experienced that with a friend like that and and and I think, I think that's gotta be it. I really don't know. I think there's a part of, I think there's a part of the like our community of comedy fans that were that early death squad that was fun to watch. Someone takes something from the podcast and turn it into a bit on stage.

• 9:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot of that, but I think people identify with a wild, crazy night that got out of control that they've probably had too. I think, I don't fucking know.

• 9:35Lex Fridman?

  You think Putin knows who you are because of that story?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  I hope so. I fucking hope so. I hope so. But there's, there's a part of me that, that you gotta understand is like, I'm not.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I say stuff like that. I'm sure there's someone hears that and they go, who is this fucking narcissist? You're like, no, that's not it. I'm just telling you the truth. Like, I understand what I'm supposed to say. Well, you know, I don't know. I, you know, I, I don't know. That's hard to say. But I don't fucking give a shit about that guy. I'm not that guy. I'm telling you everything that comes out of my mouth, the second it comes out, I'm being to be 100% honest. I don't know any other way to live. I kinda hope so. That would be fucking cool. And I look, I know he's a bad, I guess he's a bad dude. I don't follow politics, Tom, but it'd be cool if like, one day someone's like, uh, he's, he's on his computer and some guy goes and he's like, yeah. And he's like, and he shows it to him and, and then he's like, fucking this guy, huh?

• 10:30Lex Fridman?

  It's not out of the realm of possibility that Putin has watched it. I mean, this, this podcast, this has kinda made me realize how like small the world is. I've gotten to meet some incredibly

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, especially the people. Like that's, I mean, that's the thing where I go. It's gotten really crazy. The internet's really insane and Netflix is really insane and the reach of like people that like this is really simple, but like I'm a big fan of the show Drink Champs. I didn't think in a million years Norrie would ever know who I was. And then he offered me to come to his podcast and then when I got there, he told me he was a fan of mine. And I went like, I remember moving to New York, listening to you and Capone like I'm sitting there going, wow, like and then and the phone calls I've gotten since the movie came out and since Razzle Dazzle came out have been really insane when you realize

• 11:26Speaker 01

  as much as I know about people and I like there's people I'm fans of that don't know who I am that like that are like they're like some pitcher in fucking Florida that I follow the kids. I like I was fun to watch him pitch. There was a softball player in Tempe that she do catching drills and I was really into softball with my daughter. And we watched her catching girls. There's a girl deglazer who me and my daughters would watch her dance videos and then I hit her up. She's like, you know who I am? And you're like, oh yeah, that's the way the world works.

• 11:54Lex Fridman?

  What world leader would you drink with if you could? So you mentioned Putin. So Putin doesn't drink much.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:01Lex Fridman?

  Zelensky drinks more, but also not much.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Boris Yeltsin would have been a good one. He would have been a fucking good one. I mean, like I go Hitler was a pussy. Like he drank wine with a with a with a spoonful of sugar in it.

• 12:15Lex Fridman?

  You know who drank?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  What?

• 12:16Lex Fridman?

  Churchill.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  That's my whole and that's my guy.

• 12:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  You know, that's my guy, right?

• 12:20Lex Fridman?

  No, I don't know. That's your guy. So he he did champagne.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Well, let me, you don't have to tell me a thing about Winston Churchill. He I found out about his daily routine.

• 12:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So his daily routine was a big breakfast, cigar, coffee, eggs over eggs sunny side up, toast, bacon, sausage, tomato, beans, fruit, orange juice, soft scotch, cigar in bed and he'd sit there for three hours and he'd hold morning breakfast and that's they'd come in and he'd run through his day and then he'd get in the bathtub for fucking an hour and drink champagne. And then he'd go to lunch and have some goose or whatever the fuck they ate back then with more champagne and then. And then, and then, I mean, and then he'd take a nap and like, I love that. So every year on the day of his death, and he's January 24th, I celebrate Winston Churchill's life by living the way he did. And so I have breakfast in bed with a soft scotch and I just party all fucking

• 13:14Speaker 01

  day. That would be the guy to drink with. That would be the guy, if you could pick anyone to drink with.

• 13:20Lex Fridman?

  He drank every day throughout the day.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  He lived like 94.

• 13:24Lex Fridman?

  And was one of the most heroic figures in human history. Never, never surrender. I mean.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  What a fucking badass saying. You know, he taught, he taught the queen, the queen was like, uh, like, uh, like a window licking idiot, right? Like she was, she had a third grade education. So like, her dad dies and she's like 10 or 12 or whatever. The first thing they do is they pull her out of school. They're like, you're done learning. You're just gonna be the queen. You gotta know, this is what you need to learn. Don't make, let people make eye contact with you. Put your hand out like this. Don't let people touch you. So she like, she had like a really, I saw the, by the way, I didn't do this research. I just watched the ground. Okay. And Winston Churchill kind of taught her about world politics and was like, they'd like come in and she'd be like, Winston, what did we do in Africa? And he's like, this is gonna be a tough one. And so, yeah, so, but Winston Churchill's the badass. But if I had

• 14:15Speaker 01

  to drink with someone living, like drink, there's like, there's a two obvious one. Like, obviously it's fucking Kim Jong Un, right? You kind of wanna.

• 14:23Lex Fridman?

  He drinks.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  No, he does.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  You think my IVs are good in the morning? You know, Kim Jong Un's IVs are next. You're like, I feel up. And he's like, it's on, I mean, he would be a badass to drink with.

• 14:36Lex Fridman?

  I think he drinks hard liquor.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it's Scotch, Johnny Walker Blue. That's what I've heard.

• 14:42Lex Fridman?

  I don't know where you heard this, but I like this.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So I say things like that, but then I'm sure I, I, I, I, I don't know if you've ever partied with someone who just parties a little different than you. And then you notice like, like sometimes celebrity, like athletes. And then like you're at a strip club and then they they they talk weird to a woman. You're like, oh, that's not me. I'm so sorry. So that would be the thing. The atrocities would be hard to get past with them.

• 15:03Lex Fridman?

  Not just the atrocity, but the way of being. I agree with you. I actually don't like drinking with rich and powerful people often. There's something weird about them.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:13Lex Fridman?

  Not, not all of them.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And I don't like, I don't like a drinking meeting. Like when someone goes like,

• 15:20Lex Fridman?

  chicken feet.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Like, like, what's that? The people go like, hey, uh, I'm taking you out tonight. We're drinking.

• 15:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And then I go, oh, that's not the way I like to do it. It gives me anxiety. Like, um, I mean, our lives are very different.

• 15:32Lex Fridman?

  You and I?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Were you in a fraternity?

• 15:35Lex Fridman?

  No. We could start there. No, I was not.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:40Lex Fridman?

  That's the, and the differences continue from there. I'm sure.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  So when you get your pledge of pen.

• 15:45Lex Fridman?

  Uh huh.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  They take you out and their whole thing is you're gonna, we're getting you fucked up.

• 15:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  That energy is not my energy. I don't like that. Like it's, I just go, why don't we just get drunk and feel really good about ourselves? Like I never like took mushrooms to see Jesus. I just wanted to enjoy a rain X on a windshield. Like, so like that, that for me, uh, is like one of my things. So if, if Kim Jong-un flew me to North Korea to drink with him, I'd be like, I'd have to start really getting blackout drunk on the plane to enjoy drinking with him that day.

• 16:15Lex Fridman?

  What's your favorite, like different occasions? What's your favorite drink? What's your favorite way of drinking?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  It's, it's, I've got, it varies.

• 16:26Lex Fridman?

  So what are the different contexts here? It's like one on one.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  One on one?

• 16:30Lex Fridman?

  Like you sit down with, I don't know. Rogan invites you like it's a godfather to sit down and finally have a talk about something.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's gonna be whiskey. It's gonna be like a nice whiskey.

• 16:40Lex Fridman?

  Neat.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  No, I like it on the rocks. I like lots of rocks. It won't be something expensive because Rogan is not, he's not a fancy boy, you know, like he's a real regular, he's a really regular dude. He's gotten less regular the more millions of dollars he has. I think there's parts of him where you're like, like where you're like, oh wow, we can do this.

• 17:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Um, but he's a, he'd be like Jack on the rocks or like Buffalo Trace or one of the, maybe a little whiskey he's buying. Rogan would be whiskey, rocks. And then like, that's a good, I haven't hung out with Joe by ourselves. I take that back. I was with him the other night. But like, it would be cool. My times with Joe's are always on podcasts.

• 17:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And his, I miss the times where it was, where you just have you and him at a, at a, at the store late night.

• 17:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I'm okay with podcasts. Okay. I used to think this is like, uh, performative or something like this, but it's not really.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:32Lex Fridman?

  It's just a chance to really sit down.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I enjoy it because of the people I could never sit down with.

• 17:37Lex Fridman?

  Ah.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Like David Cross. I would never sit down with David Cross. Cause we don't run in the same circles and, but it's nice. He has something to promote and then he comes to my house and, and then we can sit down for an hour and talk and then I, and then, or Kevin Smith. Like people I would never really hang out with. Tom, um. I enjoy being alone with Tom more.

• 17:58Lex Fridman?

  Off mic. Tom Segura.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. We have a lot of history. There's a lot of things, secrets we know about each other. And there's a lot of secrets going on in our, each other's lives. That I would never share on podcasts that I, that I can talk to him about. And I really appreciate his. And I know this isn't on brand of us beating each other up, but like, I really appreciate his insight as a, as a dad and as a dude and as a son. But, but he makes me giggle harder than anyone. So doing a podcast is fun.

• 18:27Lex Fridman?

  So there's something on a podcast that's performative for you with him and then there's a part.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Me and him, cause we're trying to make each other laugh. But I'll tell you, if we're going back to drinks, I'll tell you. Like a great, a great afternoon drink is a Campari Spritz. It's my, one of my favorite drinks in the world.

• 18:44Lex Fridman?

  Even know what that is.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:46Lex Fridman?

  Campari Spritz.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Campari is an interesting alcohol because I think it's a bitter, uh, or it's a liqueur and it's got a weird rooty, earthy taste. It's red, so it looks like Kool-Aid. That's why I got into it. I thought Campari on ice would be oh so nice. There's an old commercial. But man, it's fucking like sucking the Green Giant's dick. It is earthy.

• 19:07Lex Fridman?

  What's earthy?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  It's like, it's, it tastes like roots. It's.

• 19:09Lex Fridman?

  Oh, nice.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not, it's, oh, there's a bitterness and like a, it's just not great. And then someone introduced me to a Negroni, which is Campari and gin and a little soda water. And then Campari Spritz. Campari Spritz is Campari, Prosecco and soda water and like a wine glass and it is.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So enjoyable. It's got so many different profiles to it where you get the bitterness, but the sweetness of the prosecco and then it flattens it out with the soda water and it looks like Kool-Aid. So I love it. That's one of my favorite drinks.

• 19:44Lex Fridman?

  To share in what context?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Oh, you're in Italy and you've been walking around Venice and everyone went their own ways and the whole family comes back together and you meet at a statue and, and your wife's sweating and she's uncomfortable and your daughters are 16 and 18 and they're like, oh, what are we gonna, what are we doing with the rest of the day? And you go, hey, guys, it's Europe. Does anyone want a Campari spritz? And everyone goes, I don't know what that is. And you go, four Campari spritz. Now, it's, it's minor in alcohol, so it's not gonna light them up, but it gives them a little bit of a buzz where they're like, dad, these are nice. I didn't drink hers, so I drank hers. I, Georgia had hers, Leanne had hers, and we ordered another round.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  I ordered, and they're fucking refreshing and the buzz is perfect. It's not too much because it's just a little bit of champagne and some Campari. If the buzz is perfect and then a couple of them and then they kind of disappear and then you're just walking around again. That's a great fucking drink.

• 20:42Lex Fridman?

  Do you ever drink alone?

• 20:47Lex Fridman?

  So there's a, two kinds of alone. One is alone, like at a bar. There's other people, but they're strangers, right? They're kind of like out there.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Okay, I've done that. Keep going. Keep going. Tell, walk me through all the alone and then I'll tell you the rest.

• 21:01Lex Fridman?

  There's all kinds. There's all kinds of, there's a, alone on a train, like transporting.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I'm dragging a lone train, yeah.

• 21:08Lex Fridman?

  Train, plane. And then there's just alone in a, in an empty home.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Or a hotel room.

• 21:14Lex Fridman?

  Hotel.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And it's Sunday night.

• 21:16Lex Fridman?

  Sunday night.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And you're packing your bag and you got a flight at 6 a.m.

• 21:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  But roadhouse is on and you're like, shit. So you get out of the front desk and go, is the bar still open? And they go, yeah, can I order something to take to my room? Sure. How about six Heinekens? Six Heinekens? Yeah, my wife wanted one too. She's up there. You murdered here and you just say to yourself, I'm just getting six so that if I have four, I just know I have two extra ones and then you go through six and you're like, oh, man, I'm not done yet. Dude, I've drank in every alone scenario you can possibly think of. I've drank, uh, I've drank alone in a helicopter with a dude who didn't know I was drinking. Uh, he was like, I was like, can I drink in here? And he was like, absolutely not. And then I poured it in a flask and opened it and drank it and he's like, dude, we're in a fucking helicopter. You don't think I spell that?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  The best alone drinking you can ever do, in my opinion, now we're getting into the weeds on it, is alone behind someone's back.

• 22:13Lex Fridman?

  What do you mean?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Like when they don't know you're drinking, but you're drinking. Like, uh, like Christmas shopping. And, and your wife says, all right, let's all split up and you go, cool. And it's like, it's like 11 o'clock on a Sunday and they just opened that bar by the elevator in the Beverly Center. And you just sneak over and you go, hey, man, can I get a double Jack on the rocks, ox rots? And they're like, sure. And you just have it and you just go, let's just, and then you're off. And then you're like, yeah. And then you just little sneak one, sneak it, sneak it. And then, and then.

• 22:44Lex Fridman?

  Buzzed and nobody knows.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And then your wife's like, wait, have you been drinking? You're like, yeah, I'm drinking by myself in a fucking mall. Yeah. On Christmas. How sad do you think I am? And then you go, yeah, I am.

• 22:55Lex Fridman?

  Uh, what about mood? Do you ever drink in a dark place?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  So I broke, I had a chick breakup or a chick cheat on me. Uh, when I was, when I came back from Russia and she's something with my best friend. And I didn't know how to deal with the emotions I had and my buddy, Mike Osborne said, I can tell you this. If you drink, they go away. And I went, okay. And that was the first and kind of last time I ever did that. Because I did it, I've done it, I've done it a couple of times, but it, I try to avoid, I try to avoid if there's emotion going to alcohol, like meaning I not want it's anxiety, but like depression.

• 23:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I kind of sit in the depression because or anxiety, I lean towards alcohol, like anxiety, like about flying or, or, or just like getting worked up on over something. But with depression, I try to avoid alcohol and just sit in it. Cause I, I, because I've gone there before, but anxieties I land, I land all the time.

• 23:54Lex Fridman?

  But depression, heartbreak, all that, you just sit in the feeling.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Heartbreak's a weird one for me. So like the last time I got my heart broken, Leanne dumped me. We were dating for like four months and she broke up with me. And my instinct was to have a drink. My friends went to this, uh, this Middle Eastern restaurant. And I told him what was going on. My buddy Corz like, let's get a cocktail. And I was like, I don't want one. I gotta figure this out. Cause I want this chick. And if I start drinking, I'll be like, ah, fuck it. So I gotta figure it out. Like I wonder, I'm gonna find out my dad dies one day. Or my mom, but my dad will be the rough one. My mom will be equally as rough. My dad and I were really close. And I wonder if, I've thought about this a lot, if I'll have a drink dealing with that.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Like I think about that a lot. I keep saying, everything I get with my dad is extra. My dad, my dad had a hundred percent blockage in his widow maker twice. And both times they saved his life. And he got a stint, I think 12 or 13 years ago. And then he just got a stint. This last year. But so everything I get to do, I feel like is extra. And so, you know, he was just at the premiere of my movie and he got to see that. And he had a very emotional response. And I got, I got that from him. And I was like, that, that's a little icing on the cake. I did. You know, the arena in Tampa was the first time he ever saw me do stand up. That was like a little extra. So all these things I'm getting with him are all extra. So I have, you know, and he's 74. So.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'll be a tough one.

• 25:28Lex Fridman?

  Well, at the premiere, he was what, proud?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, he came out, he was sobbing, crying. And he goes, I've underestimated you your whole life. And I was like, what? And he was like, and he just, and he was shaking. He goes, I just underestimated you. I didn't know. I didn't know, I didn't know you were this. I didn't, whatever. It was really hard to understand him, to be honest with you. I don't know totally what he said. He might have just not liked the movie.

• 25:53Lex Fridman?

  I, I think you were hearing what you wanted to hear. What'd you learn about life from your father?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Uh, it's not gonna make sense. I wanna feel like sometimes I'm like a professional fucking wrestler. Cause all I care about is you come and see me do stand up. So I whatever I gotta do to get you there. But the number one thing, my one takeaway from that man's humility. And I applied, I've applied it in different ways throughout my career. On my 26th birthday, he gave me a really aggressive speech. He, I, I was hungover and I thought he was gonna say, go, happy birthday. So I picked up the phone and I was like, hey, and he was like, you are a tremendous piece of shit. And then he broke me off. You have no humility, you have no this, you have no never succeeded in anything. You, you're, you're lying to yourself, you're lying to everyone around you. You're not doing what you're going after your dream.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  I broke you, I failed you as a father, this and that. I was like, I thought you were gonna wish me happy birthday. And so in that speech, he told me if I wanted something, I had to go at it. And I had to go after it as, as hard as I could. And I had to do whatever it could, I, I could do to achieve that. In this case, it was working, offering to do anything at the comedy club to get on stage. He told me, I told him, that's not how it works. And he said, no, that has, that's how it works for some poor kid from Harlem. Cause that kid needs it. He goes, you've grown up with privilege your whole life, you don't need it. You think you're gonna be fine. And so I went and I ended up getting a job at the door, but I, it was, it was, it was, it's humbling. It's, it's really like, uh, it's, it's makes me feel, it made me feel uncomfortable.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  And so that humility, uh, is, it's the first time I really understood humility. And I've applied that in many respects in like, in like getting to be a, a paid regular at the comedy store. That happened late in life for me, which I think most people would give up and be like, ah, fuck that. I'm already a touring comic, I'm on TV, I don't need that. But it's something I wanted and I knew I wanted. So I, I just humbly went after it. And then I think I, I still apply it when it, when it comes to selling tickets or, or, or selling a project to, to fans.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Or even to doing podcasts, I try to be as honest as I can about whatever I'm going through, whatever I'm dealing with. But when it comes to like selling things, I don't have, I don't have a problem trying to make fun of myself or, or get in front of people so that they know that, that I have a show. Cause the thing I'm good at, the, the one thing I know I'm good at stand up. And, and I, I say that humbly, but like, I want them to come there. So like, I've heard people make fun of me like before. They're like, yeah, I'm not some, I'm not some clown in a speedo who's one, is gonna, I'm a real comic. And I go, okay. But I'm, I want it, I want them at my shows and you can be that guy and I'll be this guy.

• 28:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. The clown and the speedo.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, what are you gonna do? Funny people make fun of me for taking my shirt off. Like I guess behind my back, no one ever does it to me. Like no one would ever, comics aren't, comics aren't, comics aren't that manly.

• 29:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  But I always go like, I always go like, who, what do you care? What am I, what do you care?

• 29:09Lex Fridman?

  And you love taking shirt off?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  More than anything.

• 29:13Lex Fridman?

  You know, when something becomes meme and becomes super popular, it, um, it becomes easy to not love the thing anymore, to get tired of it. You still love it?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Well, more than anything. I like being shirtless more than having a shirt. I'm very uncomfortable in a shirt.

• 29:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Like right now, and I have tactile issues, like I have legit tactile issues. I'm most comfortable in stretchy jeans with a loose fitting belt. And then these shirts exactly, but I don't, I'm, I like more like a V neck. I feel, I can feel this on my neck right now. And I can feel it on my arms. And so I'm, I'll sit a certain way, cause it, it, it just rubs me wrong. But yeah, I'm more comfortable shirtless. I can never wear what you're wearing.

• 29:59Lex Fridman?

  Uh, yeah, well, this is my shirtless. Each of us have to find our place in this world in terms of fashion.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I would love to be able to wear what you wear.

• 30:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Cause it looks good.

• 30:11Lex Fridman?

  It feels like an escape from convention.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Well, you or me?

• 30:15Lex Fridman?

  Both of us.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:16Lex Fridman?

  Cause this, nobody wears this. Unless you work security for somebody.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it looks good on you.

• 30:23Lex Fridman?

  Does it? I don't know.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  You know, I think people think.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  I don't like they would say like, what if you lose weight? You can't take your shirt off anymore. Go, no, I can fucking take my shirt off. You fucking out of your mind? I'm gonna take my shirt off all the time.

• 30:38Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned, uh, early on heartbreak after the Russia trip with a girl who slept with your friend. Let's go back to Hemingway quotes. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. So to go all in with the trust. I love Hemingway so much.

• 30:59Lex Fridman?

  Have you been betrayed in your life?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:02Lex Fridman?

  What do you think about trust?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  It's an interesting question.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I've been betrayed in my professional life a couple of times by really close friends. And, uh,

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I'm not someone who can like, I have a mantra that, I mean, I'm, I don't know if people have heard it or not, and I hate, I hate sharing it, but it's, but it's true. The mantra is, so you think I'm weak? Like, do you think, it's like, that's my thing. So I feel like people take advantage of me and I go, so you think I'm weak? You forget everyone that like, and I'm naming the people that have betrayed me. I'm a larger man than all of them. And, and, but I, and so that's what really fucks with me is I go, so you think I'm weak? Like where I grew up, when you do stuff, there was physical consequences. I grew up in Florida, like I've, I've been beaten up a bunch. I'm not saying I can fight, but like, I'm not scared of getting beaten up. And the, the times that I've been betrayed and, and,

• 32:05Speaker 01

  and even I know even like by Ari, whichever, people see that drugging as a betrayal and I did for a period, but it was, it was only because it was Ari and he was my, one of my best friends. And me and him had to work through that because I, I couldn't not love him. Like I couldn't not have him in my life. He, he means a lot to me. He really does. He's a great friend to have. But he's also, I don't know what was going on with him at that time, but he made a bad decision and I had to forgive him for that because I knew he, he knew my mantra. I think I'm harder to trust people now. I'm, I'm not as apt to trust people at all. But there was a moment, I don't know if I've ever shared this and I don't know how this will sound. But there was a moment that information got leaked about a thing and all my managers and agents.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Both, both Tom and my, Tom and our managers and agents would like to separate, either separate us, or one of us, one of them get both of us. It's just more lucrative for them.

• 33:02Lex Fridman?

  Sure.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  So they have always kind of pitted us against each other a little bit, and they do it subtly.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  They'll do it to me and my team, and then his team will do it to me, and then my team will do it to him, and his team will do it to him. And there was a moment where information got leaked about this thing I was doing, and my team was like, just so you know, your, your boy Tommy is, is the rat. And I had to, it was the one time, and Leanne said, do you think Tom would do that? I said, I don't know how faith works. Like, I'm not a super religious person, but I will tell you that I believe in Tom, and I don't think he did it. And I will stand by that ignorantly. And, and I will, and I will ride or die with him because I cannot live in a world where I don't

• 33:51Speaker 01

  trust him. If I don't trust him, then I am so fucked. And, and it wasn't him. It wasn't him. And it was, it's a cool feeling to know that you could like, that you could blindly trust someone, blindly have faith in someone, know that they're, they have your best interests at heart. But yeah, it took me a while to get there. Rogan helped me get there because I wasn't trusting him, or Joey, or Tommy, or anyone. I wasn't trusting anyone. I'd gotten in a bad thing, and I just wasn't trusting anybody. And Rogan was like, yeah, man, we're trying to be your fucking friend. And I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't need friends. I couldn't understand what, why Rogan was interested in me. And I was, I said to like someone, I was like, is he gay? Like, what the fuck? And then he was just a nice guy. He was just a nice guy.

• 34:38Lex Fridman?

  That'd be hilarious if Joe was sexually attracted to you this whole time. This whole time's the reason he keeps inviting you back.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I would be more excited, I would be more excited if just, if he tried to kiss me on the lips once, just, and just, and like in a, in a Scotty, Scotty J way from Boogie Nights, where he's like, what, do you like my car?

• 34:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You know, nobody would believe that story.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  No one. If I was Joe, I would kiss dudes all the time. And then be like, and then, and then when they didn't kiss back, oh, you know, I'll never, no one will ever believe you.

• 35:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Well, when you trust people like that, and they fuck you over, that can really, really, really hurt.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  You end up on a treadmill, in a hotel room, fighting with them. You fight with them all the time. You fight with them all the time. You fight with them constantly. And it's and I, and I, I have this thing like where I go ruminate on an idea and I can't get it out of my head. And I hear the words they say and I, and then I, and.

• 35:32Lex Fridman?

  So all in your head, on a treadmill, in your head, just fighting.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Just fucking fighting and then, yeah. And then one day you get past it. Like one day you just go, eh, fuck them. I'm not gonna leave them real estate. And then you just forget about them. And then they reach out and they'll, they'll try to be a dick or a bully because they're bullies. They're bullies is what they are. Don't ever forget it. They're fucking bullies and they got bullied. It's not their fault. They got bullied.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And then they try to bully you and you're, and you don't have any connection anymore. And you're like, oh, you can go fuck yourself. You can actually go fuck yourself. You're not my boss. You're not my wife. You don't fuck me, you don't pay me. Get the fuck out of my life.

• 36:10Lex Fridman?

  But this kind of mantra of the, you're not weak. You still want to be able to be fragile to the world and appear weak almost.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Well, I am, I am. I mean, that's the problem is I think I am pretty fucking weak. Like, I think I'm not the strongest dude out there. I have really thin skin. My, get my feelings hurt all the time.

• 36:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And so, but like, but it sucks when you watch like your friend see something in you that you go. Or they go, eh, fuck him. He's not paying attention. Fuck him. Let's just fuck him. Let's take his money. You know what? Fuck him. Eh, he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Look at me, he's a drunk alcoholic and you go, oh no bitch, I pay attention. Like I'm, I'm, I'm wide awake. I'm here, I'm working my ass off. You're not gonna fuck him.

• 36:54Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's the tough thing about like you and Tom Segura. You're at the top of your game, on top of the world, some of the most famous comics in the world. And you could see money start to creep in, like, uh, business decisions.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. It's a tough, it's a tough place.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  It's really tough. It's really tough for, you know, especially as we're growing. And, and, uh.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what, it, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but I can tell you this. We had a business deal.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Where feelings were getting involved and money was involved in that and the money was causing the feelings. And one of us said to the other person, our feelings are more important than the money. So let's just split the money. And it was, and it was, and it was, and, and it was, it was really like a solid moment where I, where both of us were like, that is how we should run this.

• 37:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. That's the interesting things like with bands, you have like popular bands that split it even.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:03Lex Fridman?

  Even though it's clear that the contribution is not even, it's like, uh, there's a front man and all that kind of stuff. But it's ultimately the right thing to do to say fuck you to the money. For the most part and prioritize the feelings.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially because like, I couldn't do it without him. He couldn't do it without me. We do it separately. We'll have guest bears on, some will blow up, some won't. You can never figure it out, but when we're together, it does well. And so we need each other for it to work and we've, you know, like I said, we're on a handshake deal with two bears. And no one likes that, but we're like, hey, I mean, we, I don't like, I, to the point where like, he'll call me and go, yo, we have a deal to do this for X amount. Are you in? And I go, yeah, I don't check the books. I don't need to, I don't, I don't, I know him. I just know him.

• 38:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. What do you love most about Tom Segura?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  The, we saw a gay couple one time.

• 39:00Lex Fridman?

  This is a good start.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  And there was one guy was in khakis and one guy was in jean shorts with a python around his neck.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And Tom goes, if we were gay, which one would you be? I said, I'm fucking python. And he was like, yeah, I'm khaki. And I go, really? And he goes, yeah, that's why we work. And he goes, all relationships are for pythons and khakis. And I went, really? And he goes, look at you and Leanne. Who do you think you are? I go, I'm python. And he goes, she's khaki. And he goes, me and Push? I go, oh, she's python. He goes, and I'm khaki. He goes, I'll always be khaki. And sometimes I'll have a relationship around the python, but it's, I'm usually a khaki.

• 39:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, I am a little bit of a lunatic. I, I'll tell you the, one of the, a moment that explains. Me and him, the world will never see. It was just a great moment. We got stem cells with Rogan one weekend. Yep. And one day, and I'd had surgery in my arm and I didn't want to do it. I was terrified. And Tom just said, just come out and meet up with us. Tom knew he was going to make me get them. And so I got them and he, you know, Joe's there. And so we're just all talking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm, and Tom can see that I'm spinning out a little bit. And I get in the car and you know, Tom's got a Porsche. So we're like right next to each other. And I just want to feel if

• 40:14Speaker 01

  it's swollen. And it is a little swollen because I just got an injection. And then, and Tom's driving and he's got his hand on the thing. He just puts his hand on my arm and he goes, you're okay. He, he's just, he's watching. He knows me so well that he knows that I'm spinning out of control. He's like, you're okay. And then I was like, and I felt okay. I was like, you're right. I'm okay. What the fuck am I doing? My brain's that brain.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Man, that guy got so much love in him. Dude, he does. He has, uh, you know,

• 40:46Speaker 01

  he had a fantastic relationship with his dad. And, and, and I think whatever that did, that dude did to create that dude, he hit it out of the fucking park because he has so much

• 41:02Speaker 01

  uh, love that he doesn't need reciprocated like at all. Like he can just love. And then he feels good for him to give and to like, take care of someone. And like, you know, he started the whole birthday gift thing because, and he didn't need to. He just was like, hey, man, I had this bike. I thought you'd like it. And then of course I've turned it into a fucking bit. And now we're upside down. I'm 120 upside down on a fucking race car that we can't make our money back on. I love it. Uh, what do you love most about Joe Rogan? Oh, that dude. I could go on and on about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is the most selfless individual I've ever met. He doesn't care if he has you on the podcast. He wants you to be the funniest person in the room.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  He wants you to be the smartest person in the room. Let me tell you something. Joe Rogan is 10 times smarter and funnier than me. He wants you to shine. He wants you, he wants to put you over to his fans. He, that shit did not exist before he started doing his podcast. People didn't share you with their fans. No one was like, hey, man, come on on the road with me. They brought you on the road because they wanted you to suck. And they put you in bad scenarios. Joe Rogan wanted you to shine. He gave, he gave so many people beautiful career, gave them careers, gave them. Joe could have looked at his podcast as his thing. This is my thing. I bring on these guys, I'm gonna be the funniest guy in the fucking room. I know some guys that have done that. It might be me. Might be, I might talk over people and not listen really well.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Joe had, did the opposite. Now, look, I've tried to learn from Joe on my podcast and do the same. That guy, when you think about it, you name 10 of his friends, I bet eight of them are doing arenas right now. They're all doing theaters, all his friends do theaters, all his friends do theaters. He is, he is just, you know, I, I, he, and he won't accept this compliment. I tried paying it to him, uh, in, in Austin, when I was in Austin last night.

• 42:59Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's not good at accepting compliments.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I gave him a gift too, and I said, hey, I, I need, I need to show you. I can't just tell you this because it's gonna fall on deaf ears. I need to give you a minute so you have something, so you know that I think about you and I'm grateful for having you in my life a lot. For many reasons, I have more friends in my life because of you. He taught me how to trust people again. I have a career because of you, I have a major motion picture because of you. I do arenas because of you. Without you in my life, a lot of these things maybe never would have happened. I never would have told the machine on stage. I wouldn't have gotten, I would have never started a podcast. I wouldn't have three podcasts. Like, I mean, all these things are, are things, he not just, he didn't just take me to the water one time and give me a drink. He, he gave me a machete and he said, this is how I get to the water.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  You gotta put, cut your own path, but just give me a heads up. You can also use my path whenever you want. I mean, he he is the most selfless individual. He will go down in history as one of the 10 most important people in stand up comedy. Without a doubt, he changed the game. It didn't exist like this before him and and he won't accept that compliment.

• 44:06Lex Fridman?

  What was the gift you gave him?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  I can't tell you.

• 44:08Lex Fridman?

  Is it a dildo?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  It was a dildo. It was a double sided dildo. I go, hey, when you get free time, can we scissor fuck each other?

• 44:16Lex Fridman?

  You're happily married for 19 years. So I think you're a good man to ask, how do you find love? How do you find, how do you date in order to find a love of your life of a lifetime?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  This is gonna sound off.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  But don't.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Don't tie yourself down, meaning like, don't spend time.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Fucking with those little mini shrimp and peeling them every night when you know you're looking for a lobster.

• 44:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Like, and so I think what happens a lot of guys, they just, they're so busy and like, just getting pussy and going from here to here to here. I was never that guy. I always wanted, I always wanted to find someone who understood me. I always wanted that. And so, I know, granted, I haven't had sex with a lot of chicks, but that's. And it's and it's not by choice. I'm saying like, maybe there was times I would have done it, but I, but I know that I was always looking for someone to figure out. To get me and then, and then I will say this, when you know, you know, when you know, you know. When you think there's, I can't imagine a life without this person. That that that happened to me and I can only say my experiences. I had Leanne, I loved her and I and I didn't even realize it.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And the second she dumped me, I went, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I I don't get to live a great life without her. She's the thing. That's gonna give me a great life. I knew it undisputed. I I went for a run and she dumped me. I went into my shower, I cried, I went to Barnes and Noble, I bought men are from Venus, women are from Mars. I watched Fight Club in my closet. Didn't drink, I drank a lot of NyQuil to sleep. And then I went for a hike in Runyon Canyon. I was running back down outpost by Ben Affleck's house and. And the sun was setting and I just said, God, if you're listening.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Just give me this chick back. I'll never fuck it up. This is the one. I won't fuck it up. I won't cheat. I'm not gonna be a bad dude. I wanna have kids with her. I'll be there. I'll be a great fucking dude. I'll take her out on dates. Like, I'll love this chick. And I got home and she was in my room in a sundress. And I was like, oh, fuck, I didn't know he was real.

• 46:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  I was like, shit, man, give me like one more night. Give some strange tale real quick before I commit forever. But I think when you know, you know. This is so silly, but I follow that in business. Like, when you know, you know. And like, my assistants with us, and someone goes, how did you, how do you find a good assistant? I go, when you know, you know. Like, people will show you who they are. I can tell you when I fell in love with my assistant. We were doing a TV show and, and, and we worked past dinner and all the dinner places were closed. And he just said, hey, I got like four meals. I didn't know which one you'd want. So I got four different meals for you. I ordered them. They're up in your room. And just let me know whichever you want. I'll, I'll take care of the rest of them. And I was like, oh, that, that dude thinks about other people before himself. He didn't even get himself dinner.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  He just got me four dinners. And I was like, fuck. I did the same thing with my, my social media manager. The way she was operating was I was like, I feel like she's thinking about me. And we connected on so many levels, on so many levels, I could talk to her about things and ideas I had. And then I was like, okay, I want her. I want him. I want. I think you, I think it's gotta be that thing when you know, you know. And it can be so simple as like,

• 47:37Speaker 01

  like a personal trainer, or like a jujitsu class, or like, just where you go, oh, I'm connecting right now.

• 47:43Lex Fridman?

  But you have to allow yourself to notice that person.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  You, I, I think you do. I mean, I think you have to put yourself out there. And you have to be available for it. You know, that's the hardest part is just being available for it. Cause so people, so many people just wanna be busy, just dating. I just wanna have someone in my life. I don't wanna be bored. I don't wanna, what if I die alone? I don't wanna, I, I like, just be available for it.

• 48:06Lex Fridman?

  Wow. What is it you said? Peeling the baby shrimp?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:09Lex Fridman?

  When you could be having a lobster? Lobster is still a lot of work, I have to say.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, but well, yeah, but it's lobster. This is a fucking baby shrimp or like, you ever get, you ever get the ones in Brazil where you just go fuck it, I'll eat the shell. I don't care anymore. Like, I'm so fucking hungry, you just handful of lobster like it's popcorn or baby shrimp like it's popcorn.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  I've done that in Vietnam, I've done that, where I just go, it's too much work.

• 48:34Lex Fridman?

  So when you're in it, what's the secret to successful marriage? What, what do women want? Oh, fuck, that's, I'm the wrong guy to answer that.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  I think.

• 48:44Lex Fridman?

  How to make love to a woman by Bert Kreischer.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  How do you make love to a woman? I'll tell you how I do it. Uh. I go down on her first.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Make sure she has an orgasm.

• 48:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  And then I get my turn and that's over pretty quick. It's like, it's like your ears pierced, you feel a little prick and it's over. I, um. I don't know if I've done a great job.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Keeping her happy, I think I keep her interested. Like, I think I, I, I.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I keep her occupied, like, I'm like a little bit of a rodeo clown. Like, I don't know, I mean, like, I, I know we're happy right now, I know we're really happy. But I don't know if I ever did. As good a job as she did. Like, she's always been. Like, she's always been a gangster, like, done, did everything, just does everything, she does it all, she does everything. Like, fucking everything, and she loves it, she just does it. And then she shows love for you by taking care of you. And so, like, I have a lot of time just been this, like, almost like step and repeat husband where it's like I come in to take a picture, like, hey, Monday, Tuesday, all right, I'm on the road Wednesday, take care, guys. Or like Travel Channel, I'd leave for two weeks at a time, I left for the movie for three months.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  So like, I don't know that I've ever done. Bang up job, I buy it like I go, I remember one time I was just like, I don't cheat on her. I don't hit her. I don't yell at her. I'm a pretty good fighter. I'm a really good fighter. Like, like I'm good at like going like, hey, we're on the same team. Oh, you mean de-escalation? I'm really good at like, I'm very self, I'm very accountable. I'm very self-correcting. Like if, if we're in a fight and she points something out and I go, oh, you're right. I go, fuck, you're right about that. You're right. You're totally right. Oh, in the moment. In the moment, I'm really good at that. And my wife's not, she's not a good apologizer. Like she needs to sleep on an apology. And then she can do it. I can apologize in the moment if I realize I'm wrong. And I'm really quick to find my fault.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I look for my fault because I go, tell me what I did.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Adversely, as a parent, I have pulled my daughters aside and been like, yo, that wasn't you. That was mom. Yeah. I'm giving you a heads up because I don't want, because I got, I got really confused as a kid. Because my dad always made sure I knew I was wrong. And sometimes I wasn't. Yeah. And then as a kid, you're kind of fucked up. You're like, well, how do I know if I'm wrong? And I think that raises, so I was really good with my girls going like, yo. And then, and then parenting Georgia taught me a lot about self-correcting. Self-correcting was that? My oldest, I'd only, I parented like my dad parented, like just like, raise your voice, get up to here. That's it. No, that doesn't fuck this. How come the dogs don't have goddamn leashes or collars on their necks? And so with Georgia, I had to learn through therapy.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  That if the, if the, if the consequence is here, and it, and the highest it goes is here. Then why the fuck wouldn't they lie and do everything? Because they go, well, I know what it's like to hear. But if you can vary your consequence with a child and find some conversation in it. Then all of a sudden they're like, well, fuck, well, I don't want to lie. This does, this does suck. I like this. I like where we talk. And he says, write a thousand words on why driving around your kids in a car, kids in a car is bad. So threatening extreme violence every once in a while, just to. Yeah, let them know the dog can fucking bite. Yeah. The dog can bark, the dog can bite, but if you pet him on his belly, it wag its tail. Yeah.

• 52:23Lex Fridman?

  Uh, do you worry about being away too much? I mean, you're one of the most creative content pushers and creators out there. You're just constantly innovating, constantly putting stuff out there. But do you worry that pulls you away from like, uh, the mundane experience of life that can bring content and happiness?

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like sometimes it cannibalizes your real life where you start going, you start thinking in promo videos, or you start looking at a vacation as a bit. Like, we should go with ziplining. Well, I don't, why don't you do, uh, what shoes you wearing? Like, it can, it can definitely cannibalize your life. My wife's really good at going like, no, like no phones. The girls are really good. The girls, when I started Instagramming stuff, they started saying stuff like, dad hits mom. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. They're like, no, put your phone away. Dad, dad and less boys. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop.

• 53:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Uh, what's, um, what are some secrets, words of wisdom you can say for how to be successful online and all the, everything you've learned? You're kind of like the, the Mr. Beast of comedy, just innovating constantly in terms of how to promote stuff, in terms of how to present stuff across the different social media, across YouTube, podcasts, all that stuff.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  I think the number one thing is, don't be afraid to suck. No one sees the shit that sucks. Doesn't get views.

• 53:51Lex Fridman?

  It just gets forgotten.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, gets forgotten. The good stuff they remember, and then that's all they bring up. The stuff that sucks just goes away. And they're like, oh yeah, did you do that? I, I don't even think I saw that. Fuck it. Who cares?

• 54:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, it's like, I, I watched, I, I, one of my favorite stories about this is, uh, a guy named, uh, Sean Patton. I was explaining Instagram stories to him and Ari and Mark Norman. And I was explaining that you can set now sell tickets on Instagram stories. It was back when they swiped up instead of tap the button, swipe up. And they didn't understand it. And I said, let me show you. And I put up tickets for sale. And I said, you know, hey, guys, swipe up. And then I just showed them in 10 minutes. Look, there's not many people swiped up. It's 145 people. It's a lot of people to buy tickets for a fucking comedy club. And they were like, whoa. And they're like, what do you do stories about? I go, fucking anything. Who gives a shit? Just anything. And some things work, some things don't. And I watched Sean Patton, shout out to Sean Patton, try for about fifteen minutes to do

• 54:46Speaker 01

  an Instagram story about his cup of tea. He was making a cup of tea and he was making and he kept going, hey, okay, hold on, fuck, hold on, let me. Yeah. I was filming him from the couch. Yeah. I was filming all these. The whole thing, yeah. I filmed every single one of them, like fifteen different stories of him trying to do that. I had a hundred and forty-five thousand views on each story. He never posted it. He never posted it. And I was like, I was like, man, if he had just posted that one, he never posted anything in his stories. Yeah. That one, a hundred and forty-five, five thousand people would have gone to his story to see that cup of tea being made and see which one he finally went with. And so sometimes I think the biggest mistake you can make is just not doing it. Just do it, just post it. Turn the camera on, the idea will show up. And that's the number one thing. Just turn the camera on and it'll come up. You'll figure it out.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Do you do multiple takes or no? Maybe I do three, like, and I'm talking even like in the dance video I did, where I did the hip hop dance, I did two takes on that. With when I had the marching band come to my house, I did two takes on that. Once you start doing more takes, you lose the fun of it, I think. And, uh, and then the fun ones, I mean, my favorite one I've ever done, without a doubt, my favorite promo I've ever done is, uh, I needed, they added a second show in some city and, uh, and, and they had a second show like Friday and Saturday and our third show. And I said, all right, they just told me, I was like, fuck, I'm leaving like tomorrow. I need to sell tickets. So I said, real quick, girls, meet me outside.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And Leanne's like, girls are doing homework, I gotta go take five seconds. I put on a speedo, I got the American flag. I gave Isla the hose, I gave Leanne the leaf blower, and I gave Georgia the drone. And I just had Georgia drone it back to reveal the leaf blower and the mist you were seeing was coming from Isla and Leanne. Yeah. I'm in a speedo with the American flag. I have Bob Segura playing, Ramblin' Gramblin' Man. Yeah. And, and that night Larry, the cable guy texted me and he goes, this is fucking genius. And I was like, it was just, and it was just like, yo, just, let's just shoot something. Who gives a fuck? Like, just shoot something, just, just, just say something and, and, and put a little, just do a little movement into it and, and those are my, back in that was, I used to

• 57:00Speaker 01

  be, I watched a bunch of my promo clips back from back in the day. I used to be really good. Now it's like.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  I'm promoting so fucking many things. I'm just like, I'm almost like, I'm exhausted by my promotions.

• 57:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, because you know, the the well can dry up in terms of ideas.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like, how many times am I going to show a picture of my ass? My ass sells really good. Whatever my ass is on Instagram, fucking million views guaranteed, a million views.

• 57:24Lex Fridman?

  Your ass.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  And and and and it's and it's an active post. Like, people are like, I did the best one I did the other day was where I superimposed my ass on my front. And it just looked beautiful.

• 57:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  No views.

• 57:37Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so you.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  It got reported.

• 57:39Lex Fridman?

  Oh, I see.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  It looked like a front vagina.

• 57:41Lex Fridman?

  Oh, is that what it was?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. But like, but yeah, my ass. Like, I'm I'm in a place right now where I am promoting.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  I'll be promoting this movie. I'll be promoting this movie until it goes to a streamer. I'll be promoting it. Shamelessly. I am proud of it. I had a great time shooting it. It's in theaters. It'll be on video on demand. It'll be on a streamer, I'm sure. I don't know, but I'm sure. I'm promoting Fully Loaded, my summer festival with nineteen different comics. I'm promoting the Tops Off World Tour. That starts again this fall. I'm promoting my cruise, the Fully Loaded Cruise. I'm promoting Red Rocks. I'm promoting so many things. That today was the very first time in my career. Where I said, in January, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break and go like, hey, man, let's let's get your resting heart rate down.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Let's let's get some sleep. Let's let's maybe take off like three months from drinking. Like, let's just really, like, slow it down and and and also not think, when you're thinking in promo all the time. It it can be a little exhausting. I mean, you think you think it's exhausting to look at my feed. It's exhausting to be my feed. I'm my feed.

• 58:53Lex Fridman?

  That's not as less as more. One of the things that.

• 58:58Lex Fridman?

  One of the things that inspires me about Rogan, for example, is.

• 59:05Lex Fridman?

  He almost never does this kind of stuff.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And how seldomly does his podcast? Cause you're right, less is more. What does he do? Like, once a month? No, he does it three times a fucking week.

• 59:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Less, more, more is, more is perfect.

• 59:17Lex Fridman?

  But for example, when he does like a story or something like this, he does one take. It's kind of shitty.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  It's the same, it's the same, it's elk with a bunch of jalapenos, a knife that he had sent to him by a fucking knife maker. And him going, look at this, look at this Traeger smoker. I reverse seared this. This is what's great. Look at this. I'm about to put it in the butter. And like, this is grass fed butter. This elk really raises my testosterone. Rogan is, it's, you're right. With guys like Rogan, when he does do a story, they're a little precious.

• 59:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And as, I don't think he's, he's ever done a second take. I think of those stories.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:57Lex Fridman?

  And you have to really admire that. Like, if the shot is framed poorly, if the audio sucks, doesn't matter.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Do you remember when he, this is like, like, I can get in the weeds on Rogan, but, and especially when it's Instagram. Do you remember when he got his polar plunge and he couldn't sit it in a minute? And then the next day, and then he must have gotten it on the internet bad.

• 1:00:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  He must have gotten it bad.

• 1:00:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  The next day, he sat it for 20 minutes and he lowered his core temperature by like two degrees. And it took him like a month to get that back.

• 1:00:26Lex Fridman?

  Yep.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  That is that fucking man. What an interesting, you know, I told you at the beginning, we were just talking. I like, I really enjoy, I draw inspiration from men I'm not like.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  You, David Goggins, Cam Haynes.

• 1:00:43Lex Fridman?

  Andrew Huberman.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Huberman, I love, uh, uh, uh, fucking, I mean, there's so many guys like that Rogan, you know? You can do Tim Kennedy. Like, there are a lot of guys that are like, just very different men than me. And I love Jaco Willink. Like, I love, I love reading their stuff or listening to their audio books or listen to their podcasts. Because I'm so not like that. But that to, for me, when I add a little bit of that in my life, like, I remember you went, I don't know what you were doing, but you were walking us through your day. And it was so. Fascinating. It was like, it was like, I ran eight miles today. I listened to an audio book while I was running

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  eight miles and then I came and I worked for about three hours straight on AI stuff. And I'm like, and I was like, wait, you sat at a desk? Like you like sat at a desk and like, and I, I actually, I wouldn't even know what to do. I would start doing crafts, like I wouldn't, like that you went, I was like, is your computer like?

• 1:01:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Have you sat for like four hours focused on a single task?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Me?

• 1:01:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  No. No, I have a hard time sleeping for four hours.

• 1:01:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Like I, I don't have that. I, I don't have a brain that like, I, I really admired it when I listened to you do it. Cause then you were like, you were talking, you were fasting at the time, you're doing your fast. And then you talk about what you ate and I was jealous. I wanted to be able to be like that. And I think at that time we started, I think you were doing maybe bone broth or something. And we started doing bone broth pretty religiously and, and adding that into a fast. Cause I was like, it does, for someone like me, it does feel cool to add a little bit of control into life.

• 1:02:29Lex Fridman?

  To you. So integrating a little bit of a way of being from another person that you're not like.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, like, uh, like, so, so David Goggins is consistently pushing himself. I love, I did it, I did it over the pandemic more, but I loved going, today I'm running a marathon. I'm going to get on the treadmill and it's not, it's not going to be all at once, but I'm going to get through a marathon today. So let's get up, get us six months of coffee and let's see if we can do like five miles and then know that we started there. And that was really fun to, to, to like, um, Cam Haynes does that too, where he goes like, he almost just sets the limit and then, and then achieves that. His son, Truitt is really fascinating because his son Truitt's right now is trying to get the, and like, I bet people would never think that this is who I watch, but I get real inspiration from those people.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Because I showed Jaco, I showed a clip to Jaco to Isla, because Isla's like me, like, like a, a person of her fluids. Impulse. I wa, I walked in on her one time. She was in the pantry in a bathrobe in the dark, drinking a root beer. And I opened the door and she went, I said, what? She goes, I thought you were mom. Shut the door. And I shut the door to let her finish the root beer. Yeah. She has a hard time waking up. She go, Ila, come in here. I want you to see this clip from Jaco. She goes, who's Jaco? I say, he's a Navy SEAL. She goes, he works at the zoo? I went, no.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  He's a Navy fucking SEAL. I go, it's a badass job. She goes, it's a silly name. And I went, no, it's not. It isn't a silly name. These guys are the toughest dudes in the world. She goes. She's kind of right though about the silly name. I never even realized that. Well, yeah, you talk to a child. Yeah. And so I go, watch this, what he says about waking up. So it hits thing and Jaco goes, first thing you do when you hear that alarm clock, you could roll over, you could go back to bed, you could snooze, but you get out of bed and that's your first victory. And Ila hits pause and she goes, how great is that nap right after you hit snooze though? It is pretty funny. I go, hang on, you're missing the point. You need to see this whole speech. He's with Casey Neistat when he's telling this speech. He's with Casey Neistat. And so I hit it and then he goes, and then you've got a victory under your belt.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Then you go to the gym and you work out. And I go, are you listening to this, Ila? And she goes, yeah. And he goes, and then when you go to the work, now you've got two victories. You've worked out and you've woken up on time. You didn't hit that snooze button. So when you go into that break room and you see donuts and she hits pause, she goes, if he's about to say no to donuts, I'm done listening. I go, he's definitely going to say no to donuts. Do you think he's gonna have a donut? And she goes, you like this guy? I go, I fucking love him. And she goes, do you think he'd like you? And I go, what do you mean? She goes, dad, you hit snooze, you skip working out and you love donuts. And I'm like, yeah, you're making a good fucking point. I go, I, but I, but I do love that. Like I love to watch that brain work and go like, like I don't, I don't hit snooze. Like I don't hit snooze now. I go, fuck it. Cause I'm up.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  But I, and then, and then I go to the gym every single morning. I go to the gym every single morning. And today's national donut day. I didn't have a donut. And so like, I, I like, I try, I like try to apply these a little bit. Cause I, I mean, the other side of me is like, tonight, after we do this, I'll do another podcast and then I'm gonna call Leanne and go, yo, we're in Beverly Hills. Meet me out here. Let's go have drinks. Let's go have fucking couple, Campari sprits.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  I was over at a friend's house on overnight. Let's get some edibles and let's fucking have a night about it. Get some sushi, go have sex in the hot tub and I gotta work out at fucking 10 in the morning.

• 1:06:01Lex Fridman?

  I gotta tell you, that nap, when you press snooze.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Is the sweetest.

• 1:06:06Lex Fridman?

  That's my, that's my victory, first victory, is pressing snooze and getting the nap onto the belt.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Have you ever had, I had, so this, this morning, I didn't wake, I didn't work out. I'd press at like five in the morning until about six.

• 1:06:19Lex Fridman?

  You're going hard right now.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I had a podcast.

• 1:06:23Lex Fridman?

  Flew to Austin. I was like, what?

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Lex Fridman?

  What? Just run around theaters and now you're back.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, run around theaters to do, to promote the movie and then, look, you only get one shot at these movies. So you might as well do, and look, it's really hard to get people to go into a movie theater right now. And so I woke up at like six, did five or six to seven, did press.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  And then I went and I said, and I'm really into a podcast, a history podcast right now. And I was listening to this one about the conquistadors and I was, and I was like, before, when I woke up, I was like, I wouldn't mind going back to that. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna take a little nap and go. Now, I slept good last night. I slept like seven hours last night.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Boy, that thirty minute nap, it felt like five hours. And I woke up going, I gotta readjust my sleep score. That has to be in the ninety seven. That's the best fucking nap. Those little snooze naps are monsters.

• 1:07:22Lex Fridman?

  You know, there's, I don't care. That's probably for me, one of the peak experiences of life is those naps. I don't know what that is.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Have you ever slept in a tour bus?

• 1:07:35Lex Fridman?

  A tour bus versus a regular bus?

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Like a tour bus, like meaning like in a bunk.

• 1:07:41Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 1:07:43Lex Fridman?

  I've taken a lot of buses in my life, though.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  What you mean, like just like a, like a Greyhound?

• 1:07:46Lex Fridman?

  Greyhound.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Those are very different.

• 1:07:48Lex Fridman?

  And, uh, public transit. Listen, they.

• 1:07:54Lex Fridman?

  That's just part of, part of life in a Greyhound.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  I was on a Greyhound one time, I was on a Greyhound one time, right, when notorious B I G's album came out in college. And I was going from Tallahassee down to Tampa and the dude got on the tour bus, got on the bus next to me, black dude. And he sat down, he said. Where you headed? And I said Tampa. He said, you grew up in Tampa? I said, yeah. I said, you? And he goes, yeah. I said, you go to school fam? And because of fam, you and Florida State, the two schools, one's black, one's white. And he goes, no, I just got out of prison. I said, you got out of prison? And he goes, yeah. Yeah, man, I got out of prison. I stabbed a dude and, and, and I've been in prison. I just got out today. He goes, what are you listening to? I said notorious B I G. And he goes, oh shit. That's out? And I went, yeah. And he goes, I want to hear it. Can I hear it? And I was like, yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  And he used my headset the whole bus ride to Tampa. I didn't have the, I was like, he stabbed a man. They're yours now. And then I just sat next to him and I was like, is he, are you enjoying it? He's like, this is good. No tour bus naps.

• 1:08:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  When you're in a bunk, it's ice cold. Bus isn't moving. Five o'clock. You like, we work out from like up until like five o'clock, five thirty. Show starts at seven, but that five o'clock to six, six thirty nap.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  It's pitch black. It's like a coffin. And it is ice cold and you got all your pillows and blankets in there and you put a little history podcast on in the corner and you just listen to like Kurt Mombashi or, or like, oh my God.

• 1:09:25Lex Fridman?

  So you're talking about like five, six P M. For a seven P M. Show?

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Oh, it's the best nap you'll ever have. You wake up so refreshed.

• 1:09:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Like I've woken up from naps, like where I'm like, fuck, yeah. Like there are those, those tour bus naps are the best naps.

• 1:09:40Lex Fridman?

  I think having a full productive day.

• 1:09:45Lex Fridman?

  And then like five, six P M. You do a nap and then you do something really stressful after that, like really hyper, like, like a show. But if I do, like, I really like doing podcasts like late at night. After a nap.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  I think I fucked up my podcast rhythm because we're doing them in the day.

• 1:10:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  And so sometimes I'm just like, I like, if I work out in the morning, I'm good on a podcast, but if I don't work out, I suck on a podcast. I'm just like, uh huh. Yeah.

• 1:10:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  That's cool. No, I, I, I'm. My favorite is, I used to do this a lot. I haven't done it in a while is a full busy day nap at home, box of wine on the treadmill and do that until like midnight. Watching TV, box of wine.

• 1:10:31Lex Fridman?

  Box of wine on a treadmill.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  It's the best.

• 1:10:34Lex Fridman?

  How are you, wait, how are you sipping it, Jake?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  You have a glass, but you have a box. The box fits on the corner on the treadmill. So you got a little spigot.

• 1:10:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  And you sit there and just put on like guys grocery games or like just something. It's like a

• 1:10:46Lex Fridman?

  You walking or are you running?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  I walk. I walk like a three, five. So what will happen is if you start at three, start at three casual walk. 20 minutes you're gonna mile in and then you and you're gonna feel loose. Get up to a three, five. You can do seven miles on these things and just, and just, and you're just enjoying your night. Especially like my wife, back in the day when we lived in our old house, my wife would come into the man cave and she'd sit on the couch and we'd watch TV together.

• 1:11:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  And like watch Game of Thrones and you just like for an hour and you just get on the treadmill and do it. Oh, man, I, I loved. Haven't done that as much lately. That was the fucking.

• 1:11:18Lex Fridman?

  So you can lose yourself. You can forget yourself.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  You forget you're on a treadmill and you just start like walking and you're sweating and you're, and you're having wine. And then at a certain points, you're like, like, uh, you, like, you, you start jogging, especially like we were watching, uh, not all quiet on the rest in front. What's the one where they've got a, they've got to get the message to the frontline? I would run like I was in World War Two.

• 1:11:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  I would run when they would run and it was fucking awesome. And I would be like, because they were doing drinks. I'd be like, take a drink. You gotta run up there. And I'd be like, okay. Yeah. I'm really into, I'm really into history podcast right now. Like I've been in them for a while.

• 1:11:55Lex Fridman?

  20th century or everything?

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Everything, everything. I listened to, um,

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  was it Marcus Aurelius and Cleopatra today?

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  In the middle of the podcast, they're like, you know, just so you know, Cleopatra wasn't as hot as everyone says. I was like, why are you saying that? Yeah. Tell me she's a six. She looked like Snooki.

• 1:12:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Like, why, let me, let me dream that she looked like Kim Kardashian.

• 1:12:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  And then I listened to that one today.

• 1:12:23Lex Fridman?

  I listen to World War Two a lot.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:12:24Lex Fridman?

  A lot of books on World War Two, a lot of podcasts about it.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  What's your favorite theater? The Pacific or, or European?

• 1:12:33Lex Fridman?

  Uh, no, European, I Pacific, well, because my family's so much of it has died in that theater. So.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Dude, so much of it.

• 1:12:40Lex Fridman?

  I hate to sound cliche like a Martin Luther Schwarzenegger in an eighties movie, but it's personal.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know what I find funny about that?

• 1:12:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Is Lenin, it was Lenin, right?

• 1:12:51Lex Fridman?

  Uh, John Lennon?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Was it Lenin was World War Two, right? Or was it Stalin?

• 1:12:56Lex Fridman?

  Stalin.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Stalin, Stalin, Stalin thought him and Hitler would be friends. I think that's so cute that he was like, we're gonna be buddies.

• 1:13:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Like, we're boys.

• 1:13:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  And then Hitler's like, oh, fuck you. I'm Hitler, bro. This is what I do.

• 1:13:10Lex Fridman?

  Well, at first he was like, fuck, yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be friends.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then call me, call me. Better yet, I'll show up in winter. How's that sound?

• 1:13:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  That, uh, that, uh, I find, I find all of that so fascinating. When I was a kid, I had a hard time understanding how, because we were always at war with Russia when I was a kid. And I had a hard time understanding how we could be on the same team as Russia in World War Two. And I was like, wait, how did that turn south? And then you listen to podcasts. Yeah, I'm, I'm that. All of that, all of that, like, all of the World War Two, I, I got really into the, the Pacific shit for a while. But I'm really deep in the, in, in the whole, we, we, we went to Normandy from the, the cliffs of Dover. And to think, so that's the fucking beach.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  That's the fucking beach. Oh, shit, this is cold as fuck. These dudes jumped in ice cold water.

• 1:14:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  And this isn't like a cool beach. Like this is, and it's just so insane to, and then to see like the, the, it, it's pretty intense. I, I don't know why I got into history late in life. I wasn't, I was kind of into it. But I'm really into it now. And I love just learning a little something about, you know, today was, I listened to like the, Noiser has a great history stuff. It's like history for dummies, I think. Like, I get, I can't listen to the really smart stuff. Starts losing me. Too many names and I'm gone.

• 1:14:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Well, Dan Carlin is always the best.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Your podcast with Dan Carlin.

• 1:14:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Was so fucking good. He is.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  He is, I mean, I only know about Martin Luther because of Dan Carlin. I only know, like, I would have, I made a joke about some Lutheran the other day. And everyone laughed and I was like, did you guys listen to the same podcast I did? Because I just am quoting Dan Carlin. I, that, his podcast, I mean, we all quoted the same shit about Genghis Khan. About how he could shoot a dove off a horseback. But we knew that all four hoofs had to be off the ground at the same time they shot. They would sometimes take their meat and stick it under their saddles. And that, I mean, Dan Carlin is, he is the motherfucker.

• 1:15:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  God, those were, man, discovering podcasts was the coolest time of my life.

• 1:15:38Lex Fridman?

  And the interesting thing about him is, is audio. And so it's the voice. So for me, I mean, everybody has a story with a prostitute in a motel. Dan Carlin was my prostitute in the motel. I invited him to a motel. I don't even remember, in the middle of nowhere, he shows up with that voice. And the rest, the rest is history.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:15:58Lex Fridman?

  Things that we'll never know what happened.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Cause he liked you.

• 1:16:01Lex Fridman?

  Oh boy, did he like, no, I'm just kidding. I'm, I'm, I'm really running with this.

• 1:16:06Lex Fridman?

  But yes, we did, we got along really, I mean, he's an incredibly kind and thoughtful person. Constantly self-critical, thinking he's not good enough. He just works on those episodes forever.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 1:16:17Lex Fridman?

  And he just thinks that there's these, just like with Goggins, there's these other historians that I think like weigh on him, like they're going to judge him or something like this in his mind.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  I, I talked about, I talked to him with him, but Daniel Patelian, and I guess. His thing is, he, I guess, I guess his, his hang up is, Carlin's is, he's not, he's not like this, like, he doesn't feel like he's a real historian. But he is.

• 1:16:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  I mean, it's the way he shares the story. Look, we had a history teacher in seventh grade who was a con artist. And he came and taught our seventh grade and it was a total con artist. All he taught us about was barnstorming. Barnstorming and the JFK assassination. I walked away having such an appreciation for barnstorming, a very small blip on Americana. But I know a lot about barnstorming because of this guy and he, because he was passionate about barnstorming. It was the funnest seventh grade history class I'll ever take in my entire life.

• 1:17:16Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned tour bus. What's the best road trip you've been on? Have you, have you driven across the country, just you?

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  No. We had one road trip in college where a bar had burned down. And we found out that the alcohol was still in the bar.

• 1:17:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  So we took my Jetta.

• 1:17:36Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Over to the bar and we emptied out the bar of all the burnt up liquor. We didn't know what anything was. We threw it into the trunk with no clothes, like no, no clothes. And we said, let's just start driving.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  And we drove from Tallahassee and ended up in West Virginia and just, just drove, just drove. It was like five dudes. We drank, one person drove. I, I, I wasn't a big drinker, and this sounds crazy. I wasn't a big drinker in college until I went to Russia. And so I drove the majority of the way and then we, we'd get somewhere and, and we'd get a hotel room. And it was one of the most epic fucking weekends of just debauchery and chaos. And I think we took mushrooms and we, we, we, we, uh, went down a river in tubes.

• 1:18:25Lex Fridman?

  So it's mostly about the bond between the five people.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Five dudes.

• 1:18:28Lex Fridman?

  Versus like throwing yourself into meeting like strangers and this kind of stuff.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was when, it was when I was like, I was, I was trying to be a poet at that time. And so like we were.

• 1:18:37Lex Fridman?

  Actual poetry?

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a really bad part of my life. I was just.

• 1:18:40Lex Fridman?

  Well, you were like, is like music is there too somewhere?

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tried to be in a band too. That didn't work out the way I wanted it to. I just was never, I always was, I was never the, I'm not a good, serious person. Like I'm a good funny person. I'm good to be the fool, but I'm not good. When I try to be serious, it, it looks foolish. And so even like, you know, someone said, showed me throwing out the first pitch the other day as something and all I could see is my gut flying everywhere. And I was like, that's why it went viral. I was like, fuck, I thought it was my throwing style. That was a pretty epic one. The best road trips I ever took was during the pandemic. During the pandemic, when we were, when we would, we're doing that drive in movie theater tour. I created a drive in movie theater

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  tour when no one was working. And the very first one, we all, no one had left our houses. We all went to my house. We got my tour bus. We had just wrapped the day the tour bus showed up, we just wrapped the cabin, just wrapped doing the cabin on Netflix. And we got COVID tested. We got in the tour bus and we said, let's create our bubble and stay safe. And that night, we drove, I think just outside, uh, Gallup. And we stayed in a, no one had been outside. And we stayed at a, at a, at a KOA camp on arrival. And we watched thunderstorms come in

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  on a lake. And we were all smoking cigars and drinking IPAs. And, and it was fucking mad. And that whole road trip, we road tripped across the country to start the tours. And then we just, and we were outside for the first time and we were, and it was that period of my life. I'm so grateful. I didn't make a ton of money because we had a big crew and I've made sure, I was trying to make sure everyone, because no one had paid bills in a while. But that fucking tour was the funnest. We took up pickleball. We took up disc golf. Everything was wide open in the middle of the country. You could do things, but we were still in our bubble. And we lived in that tour bus. And at the, at night, we'd just get back in the

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  tour bus by ourselves and get fucking wasted. And, and I mean, that fucking run, it'll, nothing will ever be like that.

• 1:20:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, because you like rediscovered the humanity, the camaraderie, because the pandemic kind of killed that. They suffocated us from like their basic connection.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, and, and there was this.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  You always had an anxiety attack halfway through that you got COVID. This one, you know, COVID was killing people and you were like, I know I've got COVID. And then, and then we'd come in to Sedona. And this is also why I didn't make a ton of money. We'd come into Sedona and we'd get a house in Sedona for five days, an Airbnb. And we'd all isolate there before we went home to our families.

• 1:21:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  I remember, I remember, I remember the first time we did it, we didn't isolate. We just pulled back into LA and all our families were freaked out. So I had to stay, live on the tour bus in, at a different house. And it was 4th of July and I came in and they were doing an egg toss. And they're like, well, you can do an egg toss. Then this is how bad my anxiety gets. You can do an egg toss with your daughter Isla. So I and I did an egg toss and we fucking got it to like legit, like 40 fucking feet where I was throwing overhand, lobbing them to her. And the egg cracked in her hands and it broke over her face. And I got in bed that night, high on weed, fucking drunk. And I went, what if I gave my daughter COVID from an egg toss? I go, that would be the most horrific way to kill a child.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  And she got it from an egg toss, it broke in her face, her dad did COVID. Yeah.

• 1:22:11Lex Fridman?

  I mean, that's the scariest thing about COVID, I think, is not you dying, but because of you, somebody else dies.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I got it.

• 1:22:21Lex Fridman?

  That feel, that's, that's the fear, I think, that really like took hold on people. That's why they're, they were way more cautious than perhaps they needed to be. It's just like, I don't want to be the guy that's responsible for killing somebody I love or somebody that somebody else loves.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Leanne gave everyone in our family COVID. She came up to me and she gave me a hug.

• 1:22:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  After Christmas. And gives me a hug. I said, what's the matter? She goes, I think I have COVID. I go, bitch, six feet.

• 1:22:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Fuck you doing?

• 1:22:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Back it up, Fauci. Like fucking, and then she, we went, when we went, oh, and then, and then she had it and it went away and we're all fine. And we're like, okay, we're like, we can still go to Park City. So we all go to Park City, then Georgia gets COVID. And then Georgia starts crying and she goes, I think I gave you COVID. And I was like, I'm fine. She goes, you're at high risk. And I'm like, what? She's like, you're a fat alcoholic. I'm like, whoa, easy. Where the fuck, what about feelings?

• 1:23:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  And then Georgia got COVID. Me and Ila were still in Park City. Leanne had it. My tour bus came up, picked Georgia up. Georgia and Leanne took her back to LA and I was, Ila and I were there. And I tested and then we got on the plane and I, I cough and Ila's got her mask on and Ila just looks at me. You know, the best, the one thing we miss are the eyes over masks.

• 1:23:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  The, ah, the.

• 1:23:36Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  And then we get home and I had COVID and Ila's like, if you gave me fucking COVID. And then she never got COVID. She never got COVID.

• 1:23:45Lex Fridman?

  Uh, you mentioned IPAs. What's the lay of the land of great beers? In, um, in this expansive world of ours.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  I like Pilsners. I'm a Pilsner guy. I'm an ice cold beer guy.

• 1:23:56Lex Fridman?

  Ice cold Pilsner.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  I like an ice cold beer. I like an ice cold. One of the best beer buzzes I ever had is, uh, we had bought a new house, but we weren't building it and I, and over COVID, I didn't drink for like three months, four months until we decided to go back out on tour and we figured that out. And I was in the backyard and Leanne came back with like two tall boy German Pilsners. And cracked them. She goes, let's have a beer. And I was like, fuck yeah. And man, that second, that beer buzz is different than anything. Cause the second it, it touches you, you feel the sparkle and you're just like, yeah, baby, I'm back. And then she's like, you want another one? I'm like, fuck yeah. And then we have another one. And then,

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  and that beer buzz is especially afternoon beer buzz is just so pretty. It's different than a night beer buzz. Night beer buzz is like, oh, I guess we'll have a beer and then I'm a couple. I gotta go to work tomorrow. All right. But that afternoon irresponsible beer buzz.

• 1:24:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  Pilsner, Pilsner, there's, I, I don't mind an IPA, but I, it's gotta be added, it's gotta, I gotta be at somewhere. I gotta be at somewhere. I, they gotta have an IP, like, I like a local IPA. There's gotta be food involved. And then I'm enjoying an IPA. Uh, I, I threw up an IPA i- in a bathtub in, uh, Salt Lake City one time.

• 1:25:18Lex Fridman?

  What do you mean? Oh, you threw up in the bathtub? Okay.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I was drinking in the bathtub.

• 1:25:22Lex Fridman?

  Like bathtub with some water in it?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:25:25Lex Fridman?

  You're sitting in the bathtub?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  No, I'm, I'm getting ready to take a shower and I had a growler of IPA. It's about six in the morning. I have to fly that day to Vegas to jump off the stratosphere. All I need is a little bit of a buzz to get myself on this fucking plane. I have anxiety going through my fucking head, cause I'm jumping, I'm gonna be the first person to jump off stratosphere. And so I'm drinking an IPA out of a growler in a bathtub at six in the morning. And it just didn't sit right. And I threw it up and I was off IPAs for like 10 fucking years. I didn't have another IPA until I was like 46. Cause I was like, all I could think about was throwing up that IPA in a bathtub in a shower and being like, ah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw up thinking about it.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  But yeah, I don't, I didn't fuck with IPAs for a while. And then during the pandemic, I got it, I got back into IPAs.

• 1:26:13Lex Fridman?

  I was that way with Jack and Coke, Jack Daniels and Coke.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:26:17Lex Fridman?

  Got so drunk many, many years ago that just couldn't look at it.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  I can't touch, I can't touch, uh, uh, what's Janice Choplin's drink? Southern Comfort. I can't touch Southern Comfort.

• 1:26:30Lex Fridman?

  She just drank it straight? But Southern Comfort is that 40%, that's hard.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's almost like a liqueur. Honestly, it's really sweet. Jack, uh, Jack, Double Jack on the rocks, lots of rocks. I may, I had a quote that, I got a, a video that went viral about, I'll never quit drinking. And, uh, I have not gotten on a plane since that without having a flight attendant not even ask what I want. Walk up with a Double Jack on the rocks, lots of rocks. I mean, it happens so on times I don't wanna drink. I flew to Austin the other day. I was like, I'm not drinking on the plane. Well, cause I felt sick. And man, he walked up, he goes, Double Jack on the rocks, lots of rocks. I was like, fuck, you know it. But yeah, that's, that's my drink. Uh, uh, wait, what's your drink? I thought you'd be a vodka guy.

• 1:27:17Lex Fridman?

  Well, vodka, I associate with a lot of moments in my life of happiness. Because vodka is associated with shots and camaraderie. And there's Eastern Europe in general. A bunch of guys get together and you celebrate life intensely.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Lex Fridman?

  People fight, people just feel, people experience life in a deep way. Just get too drunk for, like, for a reason. But I don't see that as like drinking, drinking. That's like a journey towards a destination. It's like, to me, drinking is like whiskey neat. Or beer, like you said, ice cold beer.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Lex Fridman?

  There's that afternoon beer. Like, for a person like me, who's extremely regimented and disciplined. Sometimes you get to a situation. I just remember, I mean, just, I remember, there's a bar at MIT where I just remember in the afternoon, there was like a business meeting. I sat down, we just started with a beer and they're like really crisply cold, some kind of lager. And then just one beer and two beers. And all of a sudden, you say, fuck it. Let's just, the rest of the day, this is what this is. And you said, bright, like, you just, life and nature is beautiful out there. And you just said, fuck it to all the meetings, fuck it to everything else.

• 1:28:39Lex Fridman?

  Just the camaraderie, the, just talking about life, being silly, being, you know, all of that.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  See, that, see, you're describing something I'll never get. Cause I'm not regimented. I would love, I would love, I would love, only for the moment that you get to have. You get the most precious little angel's breath that anyone's gonna get. Because you live this life that's dialed in and it's scheduled. And so when you say fuck it, it's like, that's like me doing coke. Like, it's like, oh, fuck it. Like, and you can just do that with beer. That is fucking amazing. I would love to live a regimented life just to get the chance to go, hey, guys, I'm not performing surgery today. Fuck it. Hey guys.

• 1:29:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  This this bus full of kids, kids gotta, it's gotta drive itself home. Fuck it. I couldn't even, I couldn't even tell you, you know, so interesting about me and you is like, you know, I'm a fan of yours. I couldn't even, I don't really know what AI is. Like, other than like dildos or AI, right? Like.

• 1:29:47Lex Fridman?

  Like if it has some electronics in it.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Electronics is.

• 1:29:50Lex Fridman?

  No, I don't think a dildo classifies as a robot.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Cause I thought that's how they were gonna take over fucking mankind.

• 1:29:56Lex Fridman?

  Just.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Well, they start with these, the fucking womanizer that knows how to eat a pussy and then they're like, we don't need men anymore. But like, it's so interesting that I couldn't even, like, I can barely tell you what my dad does for a living. He's a lawyer. I could kind of, like, he's called me and said, hey, man, you gotta stop talking about what I do, cause you're not doing it right. I go, what do you mean? He's like, that's not, whatever you're saying I do, I don't do. And so, but like, I couldn't even begin to explain your job to my daughter.

• 1:30:23Lex Fridman?

  Well, I think there's the way you do the job, which is the way you experience life, the regimented, just, e- even just a nine to five job, right?

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  You have, do you work nine to five?

• 1:30:33Lex Fridman?

  No, but I work much more than that.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Lex Fridman?

  But there's no, every kind of lifestyle has its complexities. I think nine to five means you have to wake up at a certain time every day.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Do people tell you to to pull it back and then like, hey, you're working too hard?

• 1:30:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, a lot of people. What I want in my life, what I love in my life, especially people close to me are the ones that say work harder. Cause everybody.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  How do you get them?

• 1:30:57Lex Fridman?

  How do you get them?

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  I don't have anyone in my life that does that.

• 1:31:00Lex Fridman?

  Everybody's always worried about me.

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  Everyone's worried about me. Everyone's always worried about me. The only thing, no one ever says, if I showed you my DMs right now, my, my texts, all it is is like, hey, man, I'm worried about you.

• 1:31:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Like Joe, I, I love Joe to death. Not once has he, he always, I don't know if you've seen the caring Joe eyes where like, I'm worried about you. Where it's like.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  And you're like, man, don't do that. And he's like, I'm worried about you. And you're like, don't fucking worry about me. I'm working. It's I'm just working. I love working. I love what I do. I love what I do. I can only imagine that you love what you do as much as I love what I do. Because that's all I ever want to think about. It's all I ever want to talk about. It's all I ever want to be like, I, I, I, I, when, when my wife wants me to take August and whatever the August, whatever the fucking other month is.

• 1:31:52Lex Fridman?

  That's goes after August.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  No, but like July and August off after we do fully loaded. And I was like, no. I was like, what do you mean? Like, so like, well, just am I like sitting in a chair and stuff? She's like, no, you can do, like, take up a hobby. I go, writing jokes? Can I get on stage? Can I do sets in the city? Because I'm not going to fucking, you, do you want me to like, like, I don't understand, I don't understand people who don't, I don't understand people who don't have the drive to work all the time. I don't understand that. I envy it. I envy it because I go, I would love to just be like, I'm gonna play video games. I can't play a video game. If I did, I'd be on Twitch trying to make money. Like, I love, how do you find someone who goes, you need to work harder?

• 1:32:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, especially when they see, like, I, I don't know what you look like, but I, I look tormented when I'm working very hard. Like, it means, like, it's easy to worry for my well-being. It's not like I'm happy-go-lucky, but I'm happy underneath it.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  My working too hard is like on a plane every other day or every day, getting up at six, working out, and then going until like two in the morning or one in the morning, and then going to sleep and then getting up at six, working out, getting on a plane, going to another place. Like, that's what my working is, just a lot of travel in mind. If I didn't drink on planes, I don't think anyone would probably worry about me at all. They'd be like, no, you're doing great.

• 1:33:13Lex Fridman?

  But the working out is there. So I, I gotta ask you, because you and I seem to have a similar relationship with running. I like this idea of slow treadmill. I like running slow.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:24Lex Fridman?

  You know, like a 10-minute mile or something like this. So I'll just run forever, just listen to an audiobook, listen to brown noise, think. I love it.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  What's brown noise?

• 1:33:35Lex Fridman?

  It's actually brownian noise, but short brown noise. It's kind of like white noise, but deeper. So it's just noise like shhh. That.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:33:44Lex Fridman?

  It's kind of sounds like a waterfall. And I'll just listen to it and something happens to me. I think there's, you can ask Huberman about this. I don't, but apparently there's some science. It kind of focuses the mind and so on.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  It's funny because I think sometimes what people don't get about running is they go, they get on and they put it on like a six right away on like a treadmill. And they go, I can't do this for fucking 30 minutes. But you can, if you build yourself up to your six. And you play games, I play games with myself a lot. Like I'll play games where I go. Um, and I, I can do this, I can do this. I, I can do this almost not all day long, but I can do this a lot longer. Like I did it for two hours the other day before my workout or no hour and a half before my workout. Where I started at 3.5 walking.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  And then I, and then I get my jog up to like a five and then I'm like 5.5. Then I go six and then I go, and once I'm at a six, my body's really loose. And so then I'll go, all right, bring it down to a 3.5. And then I go punch it to a 7.5 for a quarter of a mile. And then let's walk at a four, let's jog at a five, right? I can do that. I love, they're called fartlets, I think. And I love those, like where it's like, it's regimented running and sprinting at certain levels. I love that. And I love also when I work out to listen to music, but put on foreign language cooking shows on Netflix.

• 1:35:06Lex Fridman?

  Can you explain that?

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  They just put it on mute. You don't need to hear it. For some reason they're sexier, the way they're shot, they're sexier.

• 1:35:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  And it's like, street food Asia. And they're just watching them make street food in Asia. There's one called Broth. It's called Broth, the nation of broth. And they're just making broths and you're like, fuck, I want some broth.

• 1:35:24Lex Fridman?

  So this is South America, this is Asia.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  South America, Asia.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  They do one on pizzas. I've watched this one on pizzas that I've watched it. There's like four episodes. I've watched every episode so many times that my trainer goes, God, that's that fucking, I would, I could watch that again.

• 1:35:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  I love watching foreign language cooking shows on mute when I work out.

• 1:35:46Lex Fridman?

  While blasting music.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  While blasting hip.

• 1:35:48Lex Fridman?

  She's there.

• 1:35:51Lex Fridman?

  All right. Well, I usually run outside, but I do.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't. I don't mind hiking. And I like I do like, you know what my fun thing? The fun thing I would do, and this is a, this is ripped off totally from Cam Haynes, is I like to go, uh, there's a great hike called Fridman Canyon out in the valley where I live. And I'd be like, all right, I'm gonna run to Fridman Canyon. I'm gonna jog to Fridman Canyon. I'm gonna hike Fridman Canyon, and then I'm gonna jog back.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  And I wonder how long that is. I go, don't think about it. Just know that that's your thing. Just know that that's your thing. And then all of a sudden, you're like, shit, that was eight miles? You're like, that's a fucking beast. The hike doesn't even feel like anything. The hike, once you do the jog's the hard part there. The jog home is a fucking cag walk. I had the best jog when I was in Serbia. I had the best jog. I think it was in Hyde Park. I think the name of the park's Hyde Park. It was, get this, it was eighty percent downhill.

• 1:36:47Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  So this jog, you started the park and it was like, and I'll do it like this for you. You went like downhill like this, downhill like this, downhill like this. And then it was like a little steep incline to get to the beginning of it. So it was like a little like, nice like, lower back pain. You're like, okay, okay. And then the jog was perfect. I used it four times. It was four miles. I loved it. My very first day I did it, a butterfly got in front of me. It's like six in the morning, yeah, six in the morning. A butterfly got in front of me. And it ran the whole first mile in front of me. And I just, it was like so surreal. It would disappear and then it would show back up in front of me.

• 1:37:26Lex Fridman?

  You sure it was real?

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Definitely real. And then the next day, and so I go, I'm on the right path. I'm on the right path. The next day I go for a jog, six in the morning, and it rained. And as I'm doing this steep uphill incline, a tree collapsed in front of me. Just went, and I went, whoa, a tree fell in the woods and I was here to see it. Shut the fuck up. I was like, that's crazy. And it didn't hit me. I go, I'm on the right path. And then I started getting overthinking it. Like the next day I saw a condom and I was like, this is a complete I was like, people fucked here last night. But, but yeah, that was one of the best jogs I've ever had. I could do that. I could run that park every single day. And no one jogged that park in Serbia.

• 1:38:01Lex Fridman?

  I actually recently had condom on my doorstep. And I wanted to ask whoever is up there above what that means, what the.

• 1:38:14Lex Fridman?

  You know, what the story behind that is.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:17Lex Fridman?

  Said, you know.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Just a pissed off UPS guy.

• 1:38:20Lex Fridman?

  I.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  Was it compromised?

• 1:38:22Lex Fridman?

  What do you mean compromised?

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Like, was there stuff inside it?

• 1:38:25Lex Fridman?

  Oh, I didn't look.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  I mean, very few people put on the condom and go, it's not for me. I'm gonna take it off.

• 1:38:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  It's a little tight.

• 1:38:30Lex Fridman?

  Well, it could be to send a message, like a horse's head kind of thing.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:34Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. I don't know what the message is exactly.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  Do you use condoms? If you had one next time, would you use a condom?

• 1:38:39Lex Fridman?

  I don't know what a condom is. I never heard of it. I'm learning.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Good call.

• 1:38:44Lex Fridman?

  I'm learning. I've learned about sex from you today.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  If my wife dies, there's no condoms in my future. I'll get it. I don't care. Have babies. I don't give a shit.

• 1:38:53Lex Fridman?

  You're a man of principle. I like it. Mark Maron wrote something about your book many, many, many ages ago, Life of the Party. I think there's an interesting question in there. So first of all, wrote eloquently about you. Bert Kreischer is one of the great American wild men. A gonzo warrior driven not by cynicism or a desire to reveal dark truths, but instead by a deep, almost essential need to have a good time, no matter what. His stories track the trials and tribulations of a big hearted dude trying to fit in, help out and party and find himself. After all is said and done, we arrive with him at the true humility of joy. So when was this desire for pure joy born in you?

• 1:39:38Lex Fridman?

  It seems like you are driven towards this joy.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  I think.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  I think I arrived at it in college. I wasn't always the guy I am. I was really a pretty serious dude, like when I got to college.

• 1:39:58Lex Fridman?

  Like dark, brooding, serious?

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to be like, I wanted to be like Eddie Vedder, to be like a poet and a fucking lead singer. And I wanted to be taken seriously and I wanted to be attractive and I wanted to be, you know, like. I wanted to be wanted by chicks and and respected by dudes and you know, and slowly but surely, I think the bird I really am chipped away at that and was like, hey man, like I I would say funny, I would say funny things that would surprise me, they were so funny. Meaning like in my fraternity, I'd say things that were the funniest thing that I I go, how did I think of that? And then slowly I was like, and I remember as I as I chipped away at that and as I got older,

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  I would, I would, I would lean towards that. We would go on a bus trip to like Clemson. And I would get on the the the walkie talkie on the bus and I would do stand up for like an hour. I just make jokes for an hour and I and I loved the impulse of like, you know, you get on the bus and everyone's like, we're gonna drink and you get that one group of girls that wasn't gonna drink. And then to break them and they're like, oh, fuck it. Fine. Let's drink. And then that to to watch that happen. And I think then once I and then when I went to Russia, this is so cliche for me to say, but interacting with those young banditti.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  They were, they were pretty serious dudes. They didn't have like, they were pretty stoic dudes. And when you could make them laugh, it was like a real, it was a real joy. The silliest things. I remember, you know, we were told there was a club, it's called, it was called Cafe Europa or maybe Cafe Americana. Those were everyone really hung out, like all the the real dudes, the real dudes.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  In St. Petersburg. And they had told us that like, they told us in our class that Russian women didn't have tampons. So they were like, bring tampons to give to the babushka, the the davuchka that ran the floor.

• 1:42:04Lex Fridman?

  After all this time, the fact that you're Russian sucks is awesome.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Lex Fridman?

  Cause you keep mispronouncing words horribly.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  I horribly, I'm so fucking bad. I am so bad. You know, that's how, you know, that's how I got the name of the machine, right?

• 1:42:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  I was trying to say I'm a man.

• 1:42:18Lex Fridman?

  Sheena, yeah.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  And I said, I'm a car.

• 1:42:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  And they just were like, huh? And so I came into the room one night with a top pocket full of tampons. And they were like, what are those for? I said, girls, how we gonna pick up girls? And the look on their face was so. It was so pure joy. I remember the first night I pulled out lemons and this is, it sounds, it sounds make believe now to say it because it's been in the movie and I brought out lemons, we were in lemon drops, vodka and lemons and sugar and a pocket knife and a fanny pack. And I pulled out lemons and, and this guy Igor goes, oh, the machine runs on lemons? Like it was just so foreign that you would need lemon for them. And so I, I think, and I made friends with those guys, like, I'm like friends, whatever you can, but like,

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  definitely me and that guy Igor were legit friends, legit friends, like.

• 1:43:09Lex Fridman?

  But from a place of joy, like.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it was like, it was like real.

• 1:43:13Lex Fridman?

  Seeing them light up.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  And then I remember backpacking through Europe after that and realizing I could bring a spark of fun to like a campfire. And I had little tricks, like I learned all the currencies around the world. And so I, I challenged people to a currency game. I go, let's go head to head. You say, you, you name a country in the currency and I'll name a country in the currency. And I would, I would slow roll them. I'd just do all the dollars, right? The Chinese dollar, the American dollar, the Australian dollar. I'd run through all the dollars and they'd be like, you only know the dollars. And then, and then I'd get, start getting really deep. I could make an event out of a night in, in Europe. I could make an event. I remember we were in Strausberg

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  and the bar was supposed to close, but I had friends coming to the bar. They had, the train hadn't gotten in, in yet. And I said, I said, don't close the bar. I'll stand on the bar and I'll entertain everyone in this room. I'll dance. I'll do whatever. If you could just keep the bar open. And the guy goes, if you can keep me laughing, I'll keep the bar open. And I danced and, and made this guy laugh on a bar for legit. I'm not even like, I'll legit 30 minutes until my friends walked in and they're like, what the fuck's going on? I had this ability to.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  Without humility, I didn't mind looking like a fool and like doing, and there were really stupid jokes at the time, just very like base, American frat boy jokes. But I had a spark and when I came back, I feel, I feel like I, I learned how to like, to do that and do funny things that were like fun. Like I would, we'd go to a football game. And I'd, I'd, I brought a camera around with me a lot. I like to take pictures. And I remember one of the jokes I'd go is I go, hey, everybody, I told my parents I have a lot of friends. Can you guys gather around and we'll take a picture? And so, you know, like 50 people would lean around like, hey, and like just the dumbest, silliest things and, and, and, and I don't, and I wasn't a big self promoter. So these would happen and I would ju, I was just doing them for me and my friends.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  I'd bring a guitar out and I'd just make up songs and, and,

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  and, and so I think in, in watching this, this serious Burt get chipped away at until my like sixth and a half year of college where it was just, this silly guy and then Rolling Stones written about me. And I'm like, and then I'm like, well, and I remember a couple of serious dads going, yo, you got a chance to turn this into something. You need to go to, you need to follow your dream. And I tried to stand up the first night and I was like, I maybe not wasn't the funniest guy, but man, they laughed and we had a good time for 30 minutes and it worked and it was stream of consciousness. And I was like, yeah. And then of course, you know, that same little path you take gets convoluted in, in, in New York because you want to be a serious comic and you want to be, taken seriously and you want to be edgy and you want to say the, and then slowly but surely that you, the real Burt chips away at it. And he's like, yo, man,

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  just fucking take your shirt off, kill a beer. Yeah. Like fucking tell the machine stories. Tell a story about your stupid kids. Like just, you don't need to be the fucking edgiest dude in the room. Leave that to the good ones. Let, let, let Bill and fucking Joe and Tom, they're the, those are the legit fucking gangster comics. They're, I mean, those are the fucking, um, you're never going to out fucking Chappelle. Those, those guys are fucking gangsters. Do what you do. Have fun. Make life fun and seize the day and fucking try to bring a spark to people and let them forget about their fucking day.

• 1:46:38Lex Fridman?

  And the the interesting thing about alcohol, I've I don't really like drinking in terms of the actual physical, like how it makes me feel, but there's the the camaraderie that happens. What I I wish there was another way to get there, but I don't think there is. That that joy you get of just everybody getting together and taking shots or drinking, not the polite kind of drinking, but just everybody just the the fuck it kind of drinking.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when someone goes, all right, I'm in like that.

• 1:47:06Lex Fridman?

  All right. Yeah.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  That's the funnest. And then especially when you have a big group.

• 1:47:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  And there's like a big group and like we were at the premiere the other night and and and I was working, I was legit working. I do, I'm trying to sell the movie to outlets, media outlets and busting with the boss, busting with the boys. My wife flew them in to surprise me and they're over on the red carpet and they're like, yo, let's let's skull a beer, let's kill a beer. And I was like, oh, and then I'm like, oh, fuck it. I don't give a, this is what life's about. And that moment where they're like, yeah, that's the funnest fucking, especially when I can get Leanne to do it, when I get Leanne to get a drink and she'll, and she's like, like I wasn't supposed to drink last night. And she was like, you want to just, we used to go have a glass of wine in the front yard. And you're like, oh, my heart skips a beat. I go glass wine in the front yard. Are we

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  going to talk wild? Are we going to say crazy shit to each other? Like, fuck, yeah.

• 1:47:56Lex Fridman?

  In the front yard?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Front yard, yeah.

• 1:47:57Lex Fridman?

  What are you doing in the front yard?

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Let the dogs play, the big trees in the front yard.

• 1:48:01Lex Fridman?

  Why are you sitting on the, where were you sitting?

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Sitting in the in the Adirondacks on the front porch, letting the dogs play, letting the dogs rest in the front yard, maybe go over, pick some cherries, look at the fucking trees, hear the wind going through the front yard. And then you go to the backyard, that's where the cigar comes out, a little more privacy. But yeah.

• 1:48:17Lex Fridman?

  Red wine?

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Red wine, Malback. Keep our sulfites low.

• 1:48:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, wine is a whole nother one, too. I feel sophisticated.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:48:28Lex Fridman?

  I've I've went, I traveled before Ukraine, I went to Paris for the first time. I drank wine there and I felt like I was a sophisticated man, you know?

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 1:48:42Lex Fridman?

  I didn't speak much French, but.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  You don't need to.

• 1:48:45Lex Fridman?

  You don't need to.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Just start smoking too. Just have a fucking cigarette.

• 1:48:49Lex Fridman?

  I was gonna start writing poetry.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 1:48:51Lex Fridman?

  Hemingway.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  There's like a glass of wine in Italy and like, uh, like I just, like we went, we went, ah, the most beautiful fucking day of my life. Just outside Florence. They have all the vineyards and stuff and we took a Vespa tour.

• 1:49:12Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  And, uh, and it was fucking, and Isla's too young to ride, so she's on the back. And now everyone can drink there, you know? You're not supposed to drink and drive Vespas, but they don't, they go, a glass of wine is nothing. And you're like, okay, I guess I'll have a couple then. If you think one's nothing, then I think two's nothing also.

• 1:49:31Lex Fridman?

  So this is drunk Burt on a Vespa?

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Drunk, not even drunk, but just lightly, lightly feathered.

• 1:49:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Where, and it's beautiful. My wife hasn't been drinking. Georgia has, Georgia's too young. Isla is too young, but I had, at dinner, we had a couple. And we're going through these hills and it starts raining. And it starts raining and I go, Isla, what are we missing? And she goes, music, big boy. And I go, what do you want to hear? And then she just starts going, ooga shaka, ooga, ooga, ooga shaka, ooga, ooga. I can't stop this feeling. She's screaming it behind. And then I hear Georgia screaming it and then Leanne singing it and then Sandy and her two daughters are singing it. We're all in these Vespas and we're all singing it.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  And, and I, and I swear to God, if I hadn't been lightly feathered, I don't know if I would have been like, Isla, what are we missing? Cause you know, alcohol will give you that thing like what's next? What's bigger? How do we take this to the next level? And then I got this little girl who's still my little girl at that moment when she's singing, sing it. All the good times. He been up so hard.

• 1:50:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  Feel it up, girl. And then we stop at the, and we stop at the light and all of us are looking and it's pouring rain. Ah, ooh, ooh. Don't do the feeling, don't. It is, I mean, I remember, uh, sobbing, crying, sobbing, crying, sobbing, crying. And then I was like, let's get these fucking Vespas up and get to a vineyard. And then we went to a vineyard and all the girls tried a little wine. No one got buzzed or anything. But you're just sitting there with your family going like, fuck dude. It, and I'm not certain you get that without a little bit of.

• 1:51:13Lex Fridman?

  A little bit, but then a lot is also interesting. I had, uh, a lot of whiskey with Rogan once.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  I think I saw that.

• 1:51:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  I think I saw that with Whitney too.

• 1:51:22Lex Fridman?

  He was.

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  And the push up concert contest.

• 1:51:24Lex Fridman?

  With, uh, David Goggins. The only time I met David Goggins in person, one of the great embarrassments of my life is, uh, trashed out of my mind. I'm trying to say how much of a fan I am and I could tell by the look in his eye that what is actually coming out of my mouth is not good. It's not good. And his wife is embarrassed standing right there also. Just everybody's embarrassed for me. Man, I'm trying my best. And then somehow I find myself a minute later doing pushups with him as a challenge. I just, it wasn't counting. All I knew, I'm not stopping.

• 1:51:59Lex Fridman?

  And he was polite enough to stop. I think probably like 50. I don't know.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  There's a gift someone gives you when they get drunk and they allow you, they get drunk and they lower their guard and they allow you to see them that way. It's a gift. It's a real gift. It's just as cool as like pulling someone aside and going, yo, I'm into anime. Like, are you cool with that? And then they're going, yeah, I'm, oh, yeah. Can I show you some cool anime? And then you're like, that's not my thing, but it's like a cool thing. It's like sharing cool music with someone or like telling them something about your childhood. When you, when you get drunk, like real drunk around someone, you're giving them a gift.

• 1:52:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  And that gift is, I want you to see me for everything I am.

• 1:52:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  You're not going to get any lies. You're not going to get any bullshit. This is me at my absolute worst. I have a rule. I will never, never get mad at someone for getting too fucked up. Because they're giving you a gift. They're saying like, yo, I did this on accident, but I trust you enough to let you know that this is who I am. And this is what you're getting. I love it. I love it, especially when it comes from someone you don't expect like you. Shut the fuck up. David Goggins should have hugged you and said, thanks for showing me this.

• 1:53:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I guess that really haven't. You're right. I haven't thought of it that way. There's an intimacy to that. That is a gift of like fragility, like this is me. I mean, I'm, I'm a very loving drunk, but I'm, boy, am I a dumb drunk.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  I bet you, I bet you haven't seen dumb drunk.

• 1:53:23Lex Fridman?

  Well, dumb in terms of the eloquence of the words that are coming out of my mouth. So like, you're just not stitching words together correctly to make sentences.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:53:34Lex Fridman?

  I turn into Hemingway lost in translation. Like I'll start saying random words, but like translated to Japanese and back to English. It's not making any sense, but there's love. Like I think what you feel is this kind of desire to connect. And I think I always feel towards other people, but when I'm drunk, I'm just saying, fuck it. I don't need to be polite. I'll just be loving fully.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's cool when people let you see that in them. Cause some people are really like measured. Like no one drink and then I'm done. I don't want it. No, no, no, no. And you're like, oh, show me a little more. And then like, it's cool. And I never like, and I love my favorite moments in the next morning when they're like, did I make an ass out of myself? And you get to say, not at all.

• 1:54:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Not at all. That's the coolest thing. Cause some people, bad people will leverage that over you. You can, you can see it's a bully tactic. They'll leverage that. The bad interactions I've had with, in this business that we were talking about earlier. There were people that, that when you got fucked up, they used it against you.

• 1:54:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  They held it over your head and they said, listen, man. I don't know what the fuck, but if you want, and you're like, hold on. And then and then they made you they gaslight you into thinking you were the only one that was fucked up. And you're like, OK, I guess I know who you are now. And I was like, didn't you get fucked up a little bit too? Like, I know we smoked weed and I thought we ate Xanax, but like, what about the? I know I had a couple beers, but like, I wasn't that fucked up.

• 1:55:03Lex Fridman?

  Well, Whitney is really good at that because she's the person I woke up next morning and she she said, yeah, you're wonderful. You are eloquent. You are great. I I'm sure she was making that up completely.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  It was funny. I got blackout drunk at Whitney's roast of me, like blackout drunk. Don't remember any of it. And don't remember any of it. Don't remember speaking on the microphone. I don't remember talking in the microphone. And and I I did this that apparently.

• 1:55:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  And I said to Whitney, like in a real moment of vulnerability, Whitney is like a sister to me, like a legit sister. My daughters call her Aunt Whitney. Leanne, she's like a sister to Leanne. If she comes over to do a podcast, Whitney will show up an hour early and sit with Leanne out in Leanne's rose garden and just talk. And Whitney, I I said the next day I called Whitney and I was getting on a plane. And I was knew I was hungover. I said, how bad was I last night? She goes, you were fucking fantastic. And just didn't let me sit with it. And then I watched the video and I was like, oh, I was fucking out of control. I was way out of control. Thank you for lying to me.

• 1:56:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So while being a wild out there comic, she's also this like caring and loving human being. So interesting.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  She is. She has the most nurturing sensibility. She is you. She sends my daughters gifts out of nowhere, just out of nowhere. Just send Georgia gifts up at college. It's just a gift box. Like she is just, she takes care of people.

• 1:56:25Lex Fridman?

  That's her love language. And she's also the person that taught me what what the hell love language even means. Apparently, there's a book and there's like five of them.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  You and Whitney, I would love to sit in a fucking room and watch you two talk.

• 1:56:37Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, she has a robot that looks like her. And that's the future, that robot.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  I told her she should have that robot do porn. Let someone fuck that robot. And then and she she could deep fake the face if she wants, but I go promote it. It's promote a special that way.

• 1:56:58Lex Fridman?

  Like a full on, not like Showtime softcore porn, like full on porn porn.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Full on like the dude like, he's like, hi, welcome inside. You look tired. Do you need a drink?

• 1:57:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Oops, I'm stuck in the dryer, you know?

• 1:57:13Lex Fridman?

  What's the promotion you're most proud of that you've done?

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Without a doubt, it's gotta be when I took dance lessons.

• 1:57:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that was epic.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Because I tried to get Joe and Tom and Ari to do it for Sober October.

• 1:57:25Lex Fridman?

  I was rooting for you.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  And they said, no, Joe's like, absolutely not.

• 1:57:28Lex Fridman?

  You knew Joe was gonna say no.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  But Joe's a legit dancer. Like, he can legit dance. He took like dance lessons for a movie and is apparently an amazing dancer. And so.

• 1:57:38Lex Fridman?

  You're right. He could have said yes. He could have said yes. Cause I remember listening to that podcast where you really made the pitch.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I said, we all take hip hop dance lessons. It's your cardio's through the roof. And in those, you do an hour dance lesson, then we all do a hip hop dance, and then we all put our hip top dances against each other and we see who has the best hip hop dance. It's different than the typical stuff we do. It's fun. And we can also work out, we can do everything, but like, let's do hip hop dance. And Joe adamantly was like, that's a horrible idea. I will not do that. And then, and then Tom and Ari just, you know, just whatever. They were like, yeah, I side with Joe. We'll do something else. And then I was like, I knew I liked hip hop dance. And so I was like, I'm gonna take hip hop dance lessons anyway. I'm gonna just do it over Sober October. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna fucking do it. And then maybe, maybe I'll do a hip hop dance video and then show it to them and let them rate me.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  And then we did it. And I, and it was $1,200 and I, for hip hop dance lessons for like a month or whatever, for like a couple of weeks. And then when we did it, I thought, you know what? I bet we could put tour dates next to this. Cause it's, it was, it turned out being like, kinda good, but kinda funny. I go, but we could put tour dates next to this. And it was the beginning of me figuring out the whole, like, my promos were short and quick. And they were always like something silly. What's up, guys? It's your boy, Bert Kreischer. And then that one blew up and immediately, I was announcing the tour and immediately every tour date sold out. And then every, we added shows that day, we added shows and every one of those sold out.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  And I was like, whoa. And then Tom was like, the fuck was that? And I was like. I think I just sold out my whole fucking tour. And and then Tom, and then when Tom did his one like that and put his tour dates on it. Went over the top. He sold out of his tours and and he was like, whoa. He's like, dude, I sold out every fucking show. We've added shows. I'm doing like an arena here. And this is before we were doing arenas. I was like, shut the fuck up. And that changed my game where I was like, all right, so everything's gotta be. And then and then I was like, I don't mind spending a little money. And then the next one I did was the marching band. And I was just like, but it was, you know, it was real crazy. I just said, can you guys get me a marching band? And they were like, yeah, it's like, it's like 2,400 bucks. I go, cool.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  And they're like, what do you want them to do? And I go, I don't know. We'll figure it out. And they came over and they had outfits and they were like, so what do you want us to play? I go, what song do you guys know? And then they didn't even know each other. They were all hired people. And they were like, Rubber Band Man? And I was like, oh, sure. Yeah. And then we just scripted it out. I was like, all right, I'll pretend it's a regular thing. We'll wait till I walk out and then I'll blow a whistle. And then you come out with the dum dum dum dum dum dum. And then, and then we got like two videos out of that and that sold out dates. And then I was like, fuck.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  And then, and then, and then, and then, and then the real baller one, the fucking real one, the real one was, I tore all the muscles in my arm going into and shooting the movie. And I ripped all the tricep muscles off and they were retracted. So I had to go in for surgery. And the anesthesiologist said to me, the night before, he's like, what music do you want going in Going Under? And I was like, what? And he goes, you can pick your music Going Under. I said, wait, hold on. What is it like? I go, is it like casual? And he was like, yeah. I said, I'm doing a promo read Going Under. He goes, what do you mean? I said, I'll explain it to you tomorrow. But I'm gonna, I'm not gonna count backwards. I'm just gonna do a promo read until I pass out.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  And my phone's gonna fall on the ground. All I need you to do is hit. Stop record. And so they rolled me into surgery. I had Red Rocks. I'd only sold like seventy five percent of Red Rocks, which is the biggest, ten thousand, the biggest venue I'd ever played in. And I rolled in with my thing with CCR playing in the background. And I just was like, as I lay here on this mat or on this steel, I was terrified as I go into surgery. I want you to know one thing. I'm playing Red Rocks September tenth. And then I started doing my promo read and he was like, yeah, I go Jimmy Buffett's there the night before and the night after. He's like, for real? I go, yeah, you want to come? He's like, hell, yeah. He's like, all right. He's like, you're going under. And he hits it. I go, oh, sure. And I dropped the phone.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  I woke up at a surgery and the first thing I said is, where's my phone? And he goes, you got it. And Leanne's like, I've already watched it. It's good. And I went, for real? And so like, that was a, that was a, that was, that was a big one. That was a big one, too.

• 2:02:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that was genius. But that was sort of opportunity, kind of jumping in an idea. Have you ever met Mr. Beast, Jimmy?

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:13Lex Fridman?

  So he, he's, I got to hang out with him for a day, listen to brainstorm with the team ideas. He kind of sounds like you, but on steroids in terms of like, first of all, willing to spend any amount of money on an idea. Like, anything, anything is allowed. Anything is allowed.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  I love that energy.

• 2:02:32Lex Fridman?

  The only thing is no like rated R stuff. So he's really trying to go like for the broader audience, for kids and so on. So that's the limitation. So you can't do, like, most of the ideas that pop into my head when anything is allowed is kind of dark.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:48Lex Fridman?

  But the point is to really aggressively brainstorm every single day at the whiteboard, like what? And he does that for YouTube Shorts, too, for one minute videos.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:02:59Lex Fridman?

  And just like, really, like, what is the coolest thing we could possibly do?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  I love that. I love that energy.

• 2:03:05Lex Fridman?

  And that energy, most people don't do that and they should. Basically, YouTubers do that because they're obsessed about this particular YouTube algorithm and so on. And Jimmy is the best at that. But like, that can benefit you if you're a scientist, if you're a comedian, if you're whatever. Just go all out.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  It's, there's something really authentically fun about just coming up with a really stupid idea and just going, let's see what happens. Who gives a fuck? We've had those, like, I thought I could catch an arrow one time. And my, and my wife's like, absolutely fucking not. And I go, I really think I can. I go, let's just get really close, shoot it, and then I'll see if I can catch it. And she's like, no, that's not what you're doing. And then my cousin's like, hey, we could cheat it to make you look like you caught an arrow. And I went, what? He was, yeah, just, okay, let's do it like this. And so we did it. They got sold a ton of tickets. It looked like I really caught it. Everyone knows I didn't catch an arrow. I mean, for the movie, we did a promo legendary was like, you do all the promos.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  And we did a promo and I thought I could slide out of my car like Tom Cruise did in a, in a helicopter.

• 2:04:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  And with roller skates and get behind the car and then skate behind the car. And we just ran over my foot and it was real and it was scary. But we just caught it all. And in doing it, my cousin's like, give me the read. And I'm like, duh, my movie comes out Memorial Day weekend. Uh, I think we have to go to the hospital. And then we went to the hospital and I'm in the Speedo with a helmet on.

• 2:04:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  One broken roller skate. And then, and then that did really well. And so like, I said, the whole thing is just turn the camera on. You never know what's gonna fucking happen.

• 2:04:42Lex Fridman?

  And don't be afraid to look stupid and all that kind of stuff. Just go all out.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  Fucking ego is the death of comedy. Like when you, when you really give, like, if it's hard to be the coolest guy in the room and still want to be a comedian. It's just let yourself be whoever you are and you'll see the great ones. They're like that. They don't, they, you know, they'll, they're, they're just regular fucking dudes. And you get some real slick ones like Dave, Dave Spal might be the coolest guy in the fucking room. He right might really might be.

• 2:05:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  But I think that's just who the fuck he is.

• 2:05:11Lex Fridman?

  Who, who are the, outside your close friend group, who are the greats to you? Top five?

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Outside of my friend group?

• 2:05:19Lex Fridman?

  So, uh, like for me, probably Norm MacDonald, Mitch Heidberg, George Carlin.

• 2:05:26Lex Fridman?

  Tom Segura, number one.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:05:28Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 2:05:31Lex Fridman?

  Wanted to say that.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  It's an interesting pairing. No, Mitch Hedberg, David Tell.

• 2:05:37Lex Fridman?

  David Tell.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  David Tell.

• 2:05:38Lex Fridman?

  Every, everybody deeply respects David Tell. More than even his comedy, I love the show where he was, um.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  Insomniac.

• 2:05:44Lex Fridman?

  Insomniac. He's so good at just the, the natural comedy of human interaction.

• 2:05:50Speaker 01

  He's a brilliant comic. He's just a brilliant fucking mind. Norm MacDonald's a fucking genius, an absolute genius. I mean, look, you know, Chappelle and Bill Burr are, are the two best in our generation, in my opinion. And I, and that's, you know, and that's understanding that like, I'm still friends with some of the best in our generation, but like, just the way their brains work is really on a next level. Like, you know, those are guys, Stan Hope is the same way, just fucking genius. You know, Rogan, Segura, those are my friend group. That's my really close friend group. But like, those other guys I'm, I'm friends with, but they're not like, that's like.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:28Lex Fridman?

  Louis CK.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Louis CK, fuck, he's amazing. It's hard to do because you start like forgetting the, like people, and then it's almost like, people go, oh, so you didn't like that person? You're like, no, I fucking love that person.

• 2:06:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Lex Fridman?

  I mean, there's, uh, for, for me, like Robin Williams was a whole nother thing.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Sarah Silverman, uh, fucking, uh, I love Janine. I'm, I'm a fucking big Janine fan. I love her brain. Maren's fucking hilarious, you know? Patton's brilliant. David Cross. I mean, there's like, it's, you know, it's, it's really, to ignore those guys, and those guys were like the whole forefront of the alternative comedy front. They're fucking amazing.

• 2:07:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and the people that have like Maren or Joe that have podcasts, it's interesting. It's an interesting pairing because you get to know like everything about them, but then they're also comedians. And I've gotten, uh, I've gone to Joe's club a lot. I, I listen to Joe and just, that whole group of comics do comedy and go to the same set over and over and over to see how it changes. It's, it's really cool.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  It's the coolest thing. When I first started to watch, someone like Etelle was really brilliant at it because you'd watch him tinker with a set.

• 2:07:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  And he, he'd have a, an idea like hitting someone over the head with a hammer from behind. And then he'd work it nine different ways, you know, and you'd be like, whoa. So you, the hitting hammer in the head is the thing that he's working on.

• 2:07:48Lex Fridman?

  I hope Eddie Murphy comes back. He's one of the greats.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  Chris Rock, Chris Rock's fucking Bring the Pain is like the reason I got into comedy.

• 2:07:56Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:59Lex Fridman?

  Do you have advice for young folks? You seem like a stellar example of a successful human being. Or more seriously, a very kind of nonlinear life. Do you have advice for young people in high school and college? How to have a good life they can be proud of?

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Don't worry too much about what you do when you get older. But when you do start worrying, find the thing you love and it'll never feel like work. The to fucking, I can't imagine what it must feel like to be a lawyer and have to read papers or whatever they do all day and know that that's my day. I mean, it must feel like what I was school felt like for me. If you find that thing you love to do, you will work endlessly, effortlessly, and hard as fucking shit every day and you'll love every day of your life.

• 2:08:55Lex Fridman?

  Find what you love and let it kill you. Bukowski said that.

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  For then that's the fucking thing, because that's what I'm doing. I'm letting it fucking take, I'm, I'm fucking, I'm, I'm on that fucking bullet train to fucking nowhere on this fucking comedy journey. I love it. I love it.

• 2:09:12Lex Fridman?

  So it's like the Hunter S. Thompson thing. What is it? However, you put it, basically, you're not supposed to be, uh, end up in a well-preserved box. You slide in sideways, smoke, just beat up.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:25Lex Fridman?

  Just, just a giant mess.

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  I love, I love those guys that can really live that life that are like, yeah, man, I'm breaking it. I'm breaking it down like a guy like Tony Hawk or Matt Hoffman. Who like, yeah, if I, if I don't fucking break the fuck out of this thing before I, then I'm not doing it right.

• 2:09:40Lex Fridman?

  Then again, there's also Churchill who tried to break the thing and he couldn't. Lived into his nineties, a bad motherfucker.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  Just a bad motherfucker.

• 2:09:48Lex Fridman?

  So I guess the only hope we can have for Bert Kreischer is that you're going to be the Winston Churchill of comedy.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  My life is lived perfectly. If I'm 95 years old and all my friends are dead.

• 2:10:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  They're like, they're like, can you believe that wolf got Rogan?

• 2:10:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Can you believe Segura 600 pounds and they had to carry him out in a crane out of that house? Can you believe that it's just Bert Kreischer and Joey Diaz left?

• 2:10:22Lex Fridman?

  Just standing there in October, so October, just the two of you left, just laughing.

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  October is just, I'm 95 at the Mark Twain Awards and they're like, Burt Kreischer still fucking here. Who saw that coming?

• 2:10:37Lex Fridman?

  I hope so. Burt, I'm a huge fan of yours. It meant so much to me when you said that you knew who I was, like we were talking about. It just, it's so cool. It's so cool. Thank you for putting so much joy and love out there in the world. I'm a huge fan and thank you for the love you give me.

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  Thank you, man. I am a huge fan of yours. You keep doing you. I'll keep doing me and then let's see if we can meet in the middle sometime and have a cold beer in the afternoon.

• 2:11:00Lex Fridman?

  Love you, brother.

• 2:11:01Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 2:11:02Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Burt Kreischer. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Hunter S. Thompson. Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skin in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride.

• 2:11:32Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.