Rainn Wilson

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, 2020 edition.

[1] Monica Padman, welcome.

[2] Welcome.

[3] Welcome to this new decade.

[4] New decade.

[5] Oh, people love talking about this decade.

[6] People want to start their lives brand new.

[7] They want to erase everything.

[8] It's all clean slate, page one rewrite starting.

[9] We have a very fun person today who we found deeply, deeply spiritual and kind and lovely.

[10] Rayne Wilson.

[11] You, of course, know him from the office.

[12] He was Dwight.

[13] He was nominated three times for Emmys because of that.

[14] He's a writer.

[15] He's a director.

[16] He's a comedian.

[17] He has an awesome medium production company called Soul Pancake.

[18] Kristen's obsessed with it.

[19] Everything they do is, it focuses on celebrating humanity and creativity.

[20] It's very sweet.

[21] He also has a new podcast, Metaphysical Milkshake podcast on Luminary Podcasts.

[22] What a great name.

[23] Great name.

[24] Metaphysical milkshake.

[25] So check that out.

[26] And please enjoy.

[27] Rayne Wilson, and welcome to this new decade.

[28] New life.

[29] It's a brand new life, okay, everybody.

[30] We love you.

[31] Enjoy Rain Wilson.

[32] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[33] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[34] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[35] He's an wheelchair expert Rain, welcome to armchair expert Hey, good to be here, you guys, in the attic.

[36] In the attic.

[37] This is fantastic.

[38] Now, you're the host of a podcast yourself.

[39] Are you a host of more than one podcast?

[40] I kind of am, yeah.

[41] You are.

[42] Yeah, so the big one that we've been pushing recently is metaphysical milkshake.

[43] And that's with Reza Aslan, who's a scholar and personality and all about kind of political gadfly kind of dude.

[44] Okay.

[45] Brilliant, brilliant author.

[46] So is that one political in nature?

[47] No, it's literally metaphysical in nature.

[48] Oh, okay.

[49] Philosophical ideas.

[50] Yeah.

[51] Psychological concepts.

[52] We like these.

[53] Spiritual ideas, yeah.

[54] Yeah.

[55] Big fan of those.

[56] I think there's a big overlap in what interests you and what interests Monica and I. Yeah.

[57] Wabi Wobb not so much.

[58] He's not just in the metaphysical.

[59] He's over there.

[60] Only the literal.

[61] He's Grammin over there.

[62] Mr. Graham and.

[63] That one's on Luminary Media, which is its own kind of like ecosystem kind of podcast world.

[64] It's like Netflix where you subscribe to it.

[65] Okay.

[66] So we definitely would have a hell a lot more listeners if we were not behind a paywall.

[67] And there is, there is an anger out there about like, hey, we're on Luminary.

[68] And on Twitter, it's kind of like, what the fuck are you talking about it?

[69] $4 a month to listen to, you know.

[70] Well, we're stuck in these, right, these mental paradigm.

[71] which is we grew up in an era where you watch TV.

[72] It was free.

[73] It was paid for by advertisements.

[74] Three channels.

[75] Yeah.

[76] And so you expect to get that.

[77] I, on some level, expect to get entertainment for free, which is a kind of a bizarre notion.

[78] Right.

[79] If you really break it down.

[80] Like, I'm paying for every other thing I'd enjoy.

[81] I don't expect a free meal to show up at my house.

[82] Yeah.

[83] No, that's true.

[84] That's very true.

[85] But then the price we pay is we went with an ad -based internet service.

[86] Mm -hmm.

[87] And now there's a lot of.

[88] of pot holes with that model, right?

[89] There's, it can be easily hijacked by places like Cambridge.

[90] Analytica, right?

[91] Yeah.

[92] And that's just, that's the price you're going to pay if you're not paying to, to subscribe.

[93] Yeah.

[94] That also has to do with Facebook being just, just corrosively evil.

[95] Just not having any kind of moral compass whatsoever as a, as a company.

[96] It wasn't it a little bit have to do with that?

[97] Well, so I would help, I would love it for you to illuminate.

[98] it for me because all I don't I think I have a really cursory understanding of Facebook having never used it I understand that a billion people are on it that that's clear to me I understand that they probably generate a quadrillion dollars in ad revenue I think three or four billion people are on it oh wow okay yeah I think it's like half the world yeah no I don't know I don't know too much about all of that I mean I've done stuff in social media and I have this company sold pancake that I found it about 10 years ago that's a digital media company and whatnot but all on I know is that they took people's personal data and information, sold it, made money off of that without telling anyone that they were doing that.

[99] And that information was used in the most grotesque ways possible to try and kind of like rig elections.

[100] See them disinformation.

[101] Disinformation, fake news and mess with people's minds.

[102] And it all worked.

[103] Well, by the way, there's this common thought that like on the left, which I'm a general early in that camp is that that happened to right wing people.

[104] But I don't know that everyone realizes that it would happen to left wing people as well.

[105] What do you mean?

[106] Well, Russia's goal was not to corrupt the right and make them think that there was a pedophile ring running out of a pizza parlor.

[107] Sure, they did that.

[108] Yeah.

[109] But they also created fake protests on the left that people went and attended.

[110] Sure.

[111] Sure.

[112] The ultimate goal was by furication.

[113] It was just splitting us.

[114] Remember, I really don't want to get into politics too much.

[115] It's really not my domain.

[116] And we don't do it here.

[117] And we'll say that there, believe it or not, there was a very large percentage of Trump voters that were Obama voters.

[118] Oh, God, yeah.

[119] So the whole Cambridge Analytica thing, too, really affected that lot.

[120] Yeah, that's right.

[121] But I'll go further.

[122] So they mobilized the left in ways that were so extreme that your moderate centrist who maybe have voted for Obama.

[123] they now start thinking the left is fucking insane because some of the things that they're instigating appear to be insane.

[124] So that in itself can drive people.

[125] So it's not even just that they held a carrot so tasty out on the right that it drove those people over there as much as they also held some stink bombs on the left, which drove people away.

[126] We all suffered from that whole thing.

[127] No, and this has happened with the kind of segmentation of social media and the divisions and the siloization of information that is driving people further and further apart and into their little segments.

[128] I mean, even on the political left right now, you've got like centrist Midwesterners like in a battle with with leftists in the cities about, you know, health care and you're selling out.

[129] And yeah, and it's pretty astonishing.

[130] And this is why we wanted to do this.

[131] I'm really not trying to sell this podcast.

[132] No, sell this podcast.

[133] No, I'm here to be in the addict um with an addict so uh but we felt like resa and i and soul pancake as a company you know life's big human questions are what unites us all yeah and what happens after we die uh the choices that we make in life what is the nature of love do we have free will all of these kind of questions have been debated since they were shamans in caves, you know, since the dawn of time.

[134] And they can unite us having these discussions.

[135] And I think you probably find that on this podcast, too, because I imagine you have people from all over the political spectrum that listen because they just want to hear great stories and great ideas and they want to dig into that stuff.

[136] I agree that when you strip away more the surface -level identity markers, those to me are really like a foot down into the ground as you're shoveling.

[137] And then at the real core of that is like, I'm a dad.

[138] Now, I have more in common with any dad than I have in common with any liberal.

[139] Yeah.

[140] Yeah.

[141] And I probably have more in common why certainly I'm more in common with any addict than I have in common with a fellow anthropologist.

[142] You know, it's just interesting as you peel back the layers of identity, which ones are kind of unifying to your point, what happens, what's the point what is love what is what is all this stuff those to me start becoming bridges to other people that's very well said because you know for me in hollywood like i don't know what to say to other actors like i don't really hang out with actors i don't like go have lunch with actors and talk about what shows you're auditioning for and you know who's getting cast here and what shows are you watching and i just i don't have much in common with that whole world so i'm the reason i'm saying this, though, is I really like what you're saying because as a father, as a husband, as someone exploring big ideas, as someone...

[143] As a member of your faith.

[144] As a member of my faith, as someone exploring spiritual ideas in the world and that experience, like, I have way more in common with people that want to talk about that stuff.

[145] Right.

[146] Okay.

[147] Okay.

[148] Now, quickly back to showbiz for one side.

[149] Okay, here we go.

[150] With you, I'll talk about showbiz.

[151] Well, I just wonder what ingredients are in that decision.

[152] So one, is it just getting older?

[153] Was there a period of your life where you did want to sit there and talk about what was a great comedy who was good who was bad yes okay so there there was i was obsessed with my career oh yeah for 20 or 30 years in a really toxic unhealthy unhappy way thank you yeah tell us about i think you and i will really bond over this okay good we have a similar you and i have a similar parallel trajectory in ways and i hope in the ways i point out won't be offensive no not at all but we're both one hit wonders what Well, no, no, we both had a shot.

[154] Not everyone gets a shot, right?

[155] We both had shots where they said, okay, you're the lead of this movie.

[156] I'm going to put your name above the title.

[157] Let's see if you're Adam Sandler or not.

[158] And in my case, I wasn't.

[159] And I was not as well.

[160] Audiences did not.

[161] They wanted to see me play Dwight and have a weird haircut and eat beats.

[162] And they did not want to see me in other roles in feature films and pay $12 .50 to see me. But yes, for some reason, I agree.

[163] People, the barrier to entry of getting in your car and driving to a movie theater to see me was too much.

[164] Yeah.

[165] Turn on the TV.

[166] People seem to like that.

[167] I've only had success on TV, which is, A, I'm super grateful for.

[168] They like us for free.

[169] Yes, which is totally fine.

[170] Which is why people are listening to your podcast and not listening to my podcast because I'm behind a paywall.

[171] Now it's all becoming clear.

[172] I think we just crack this whole thing.

[173] So that in itself is a, you're looking at, I don't know what's that get us down to.

[174] Maybe.

[175] a couple hundred people have had your and I's experience where you got successful enough to have a shot.

[176] Yeah.

[177] And then you had a shot and it didn't go the way we hoped.

[178] Yeah.

[179] That just puts us in a very tiny category.

[180] And of course, I had to navigate my way out of that because like you, I was obsessed.

[181] I don't think you can enter this career and not have an obsession.

[182] You have to have a certain level of narcissism and drive and competition.

[183] And envy goes along with that.

[184] It's a good fuel source at times.

[185] Yeah.

[186] It's, and it's a, it can be really, really toxic.

[187] It was for me, yeah.

[188] Yeah, me too.

[189] I wanted number one at the box office.

[190] I wanted number one at the box office so then I could do three more things that would be number one at the box office.

[191] And I, and I was going to make $20 million a movie.

[192] And I had a whole, you had it all worked out.

[193] I had it all worked out.

[194] Yeah.

[195] I was going to be Adam Sandler.

[196] I was going to own property in Brentwood.

[197] It's interesting.

[198] It's interesting when I did the movie, the rocker.

[199] That absolutely devastated me. First of all, everyone in the office was doing big films.

[200] Obviously, Steve kind of had done Anchorman and 40 -year -old Virgin right in the first season of the office.

[201] So he was kind of already a movie star at that point.

[202] But I had this opportunity to star in this movie The Rocker.

[203] And the script was good.

[204] It wasn't great.

[205] We thought, well, if we bring on a great director and have a great ensemble, we can elevate it and make it a really great fun comedy.

[206] and some people are like, you shouldn't do it.

[207] The scripts a little.

[208] Yeah.

[209] And I was like, this is my show.

[210] What are you talking about?

[211] I have a hiatus and I have a chance to have Rain Wilson above the title.

[212] I'm going to go for that thing.

[213] That's right.

[214] And I tell you, you know, I worked so hard on the movie and I worked so hard promoting it.

[215] I just worked my ass off and it's one of the biggest box office bombs in American history.

[216] Well, I can't imagine that's true.

[217] Really?

[218] Look at the numbers.

[219] Look at the numbers.

[220] First of all, that movie caused, what, 10 million bucks?

[221] Well, it was $14 million.

[222] Okay, so right out of the gates.

[223] But I'm not talking about losing money.

[224] I'm not talking about Waterworld losing $150 million.

[225] I'm talking about per screen average number of people that actually went to the fucking movie.

[226] Can I say that?

[227] Yes.

[228] Oh, yeah.

[229] So the, um, it opened on like 2 ,000 screens and literally, like, if you look at the numbers, it's like 21 people went to every showing on the opening weekend.

[230] I'll never forget, like, I had this incredible experience.

[231] I went on, you know Kevin and Bean, right?

[232] Yep, so DJs on LA's biggest rock radio station, huge, you know, and promoted the movie on there, and then I was driving into the office.

[233] It was like 5, 12 in the morning.

[234] I'm on the 101 driving to go to shoot the office.

[235] The weekend after the film had just bombed over Labor Day weekend.

[236] And I'm devastated.

[237] I turn on Kevin and Bean on the radio, and they're like, okay, Kevin and Bean.

[238] and they're so chirpy, you know, really early in the morning.

[239] They're like, let's look at what happened on the movies this weekend.

[240] Hey, okay, so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, was number one, and Step Brothers was number two and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[241] And they're, like, reading down the thing.

[242] Like, wait, wait a minute, didn't Rain's movie open this weekend?

[243] Oh, no. I think it did.

[244] I think it did open.

[245] Where is it?

[246] It's not even on the, it's not on the list.

[247] Oh, oh, it opened at number 12.

[248] It made two and a half million dollars.

[249] Oh, my God.

[250] On 2 ,000 screens.

[251] Okay, rain.

[252] So I'm, and I'm literally, tears are pouring down my face.

[253] I'm ugly crying on the 101.

[254] I have 5 .12 in the morning, going, I had worked so hard on this thing.

[255] And it was so, now there's a lot of factors going on here.

[256] The way it was promoted, the fact that the release, the opening date got moved four times.

[257] It just got pushed further and further back into the summer.

[258] And anyways, on and on.

[259] but it was devastating.

[260] And then I go into the set of the office and everyone is on eggshells and pins and needles because they know like Rain's movie just shit the bed.

[261] If it was me now and this happened, I would come in and be like, hey, everybody, gather around.

[262] Hey, my movie bombed.

[263] It sucks.

[264] That's life.

[265] I love you all.

[266] Let's make, you don't have to worry about it.

[267] Yeah, because just the going like, oh, thanks, yeah.

[268] No, I know.

[269] Yeah, well, they'll have another.

[270] I don't know, just the whole where someone, but, Dax, this is, this is, this is, the thing, this is where I was, and I really, I view like, I've definitely had addiction issues in my past that have been pretty severe.

[271] And one of them that people don't really talk about is workaholism.

[272] Oh, uh -huh.

[273] And anything that we can do to escape kind of the pain of being alive in some way, shape, or form, or soothe ourselves.

[274] And I got all of my self -esteem from work.

[275] And I didn't get it from some internal source.

[276] I got it from like, do people like me?

[277] Do they want to cast me. Are they laughing at me?

[278] Yeah.

[279] And then how much do they value me?

[280] What are they going to pay me?

[281] Where did that rank?

[282] Did you go there as well?

[283] I did.

[284] Oh, absolutely.

[285] Because then, but then I remember talking to a friend on the phone after The Rocker, it was like a few weeks later.

[286] Maybe there was some other movie or two that I did that also bombed.

[287] And I was like, yeah, this thing would film and blah, blah, blah.

[288] And he's like, well, maybe you'll just be a TV star and you'll just never be a film star.

[289] And it was like someone stabbed me with a harpoon.

[290] I felt like a harpoon in my ribcage, which now I look back on it.

[291] I'm like, well, what, get over yourself?

[292] Like, it would be such a weird, needy baby, you know?

[293] Also, you got to imagine going back to 12 -year -old rain in Washington and going, hey, guess what, bud, when you grew up, you're going to be, well, what ended up happening?

[294] You're going to be on the biggest show of a decade.

[295] And people are going to love you, and you're going to get paid to do that.

[296] You would have been like, oh, my God, that's not possible.

[297] Beyond my wildest dream.

[298] Yeah, yeah.

[299] Isn't that the bar keeps, it just keeps going up and up and up.

[300] It's hard to avoid that.

[301] Yeah.

[302] Yeah, you're like, oh, I'm on a good show.

[303] So I know this trajectory.

[304] You're then now I do this.

[305] And you're also like part of it is ego.

[306] The other thing is like, you're trying to be a responsible business person as well.

[307] You're like, okay, so I have this opportunity.

[308] Now how do I capitalize on this and turn it into something else?

[309] Like you're just naturally trying to build your business.

[310] So part of you just feels like there's some responsibility to do it.

[311] Yeah.

[312] So there are healthy aspects to.

[313] wanting to build your business, provide for your family, and to get increasingly better jobs and to be valued for the work you're doing and be able to have more choices.

[314] And that's all good and healthy and respectable.

[315] And that was definitely a part of my experience.

[316] But there was just this really unhealthy part as well, which you really view as an addiction.

[317] And it's an addiction to status.

[318] And you know how it is in show business.

[319] Like, what's your next thing?

[320] What are you doing?

[321] And how uncomfortable it is if you have no next thing.

[322] It's just kind of like, I got nothing.

[323] And isn't it fun?

[324] that from the exterior, it's like, oh, here's Rayne Wilson, who's Emmy nominated on the office.

[325] It's a huge show, and he's had this big acting career, and oh, he just started this movie.

[326] And oh, the movie didn't do well, but oh, my God.

[327] And yet, you know, from the outside, it's like, oh, this guy is, he's got it made.

[328] Of course.

[329] And I was so, so miserable.

[330] I mean, I would say the life's big question around this, and I know you're an atheist, but for me, I would view it in terms of a spiritual journey.

[331] And it is a journey of Sadartha.

[332] Siddhartha who, the Buddha, who had everything, who was the prince and whose parents said they didn't want him to see or experience any suffering.

[333] And anytime he went out into the world, Siddhartha Buddha, the actual historical figure, they would hide everyone who was sick or infirm.

[334] And one day he went out and accidentally an old man got out there.

[335] And he saw this old man. He said, why does that man look like that?

[336] The fuck's going on this person.

[337] Is he an alien?

[338] What's happening?

[339] And they're like, well, he's old.

[340] And what's old?

[341] Oh, that's when you die.

[342] What is death?

[343] And all of a sudden he was off to the spiritual races.

[344] And that's when he abandoned being a prince and went off and did all of his fasting.

[345] And what people don't know about the Buddha, too, is the reason he's fat is he went through years of starvation and like self -flagellation and mutilation.

[346] And when he achieved nirvana and understood, oh, I don't need to physically deprive myself.

[347] He ate a big meal.

[348] And that's the fat Buddha.

[349] And he's like, you don't have to starve yourself in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

[350] Right.

[351] So, but in a way, that's my spiritual journey and yours was like, and then you can go too far with that.

[352] We gluttonized ourselves and addicted ourselves with fame and status and just a unceasing craving for more.

[353] Because that's the Buddhist idea, right?

[354] Like all suffering is connected to craving and to wanting of things.

[355] And I so wanted kind of.

[356] status and to be to be wanted and it was driving me mad so is that the turning point after the rocker when did you make the decision to let all that go because you don't seem to have it now i haven't effectively let it all go i mean i would like to work and i would like to have opportunities and stuff like that but it's been a gradual process it's been a lot of therapy and it's been a lot of meditation and prayer and other kind of spiritual activities to just to let go to realize, you know, it's like the serenity prayer.

[357] It's like what's in my control and what's not in my control.

[358] Yeah, and help me figure out which is which.

[359] And what's not in my control is like a lot of people didn't want to pay to see me in a movie theater and studio heads don't want to cast me in their movies and big directors don't want to cast me in their movies.

[360] And that's fine.

[361] That's completely out of my control.

[362] Well, I have to take some responsibility.

[363] for this happening to you.

[364] You didn't go to The Rocker, did you?

[365] No, I went, actually, many times because...

[366] Oh, my goodness, many times.

[367] Well, I worked for an small advertising agency in Atlanta.

[368] I interned there in college, and it was a movie advertising agency, so we had all these movies, and one was the Rocker, and I was one of the people who was sent out to promote the movie.

[369] Were you 14 at the time, because you looked so young, and then...

[370] She's old as fuck.

[371] I'm so old.

[372] Oh.

[373] I'm 32.

[374] I was probably 19 or 20.

[375] Can I interject for once again?

[376] We didn't do a good job.

[377] I would be anxiety ridden.

[378] The ride here, we were talking about this.

[379] And she said Rain's the nicest guy.

[380] I met you back then.

[381] Yeah, yeah.

[382] So I just, because when anyone's telling a story about me from 14 years ago, I can't even hear what they're saying.

[383] Like, are they going to get to the point where I was a dick or I was nice?

[384] So I just want to cut to.

[385] Dude.

[386] You, that is the first.

[387] That is the first fucking thing.

[388] He's like, uh -oh.

[389] PR firm, Atlanta.

[390] Yeah, 2008.

[391] Maybe leg nine of your press tour.

[392] What horribly inappropriate thing did I do or say, 10th city I visited in nine days?

[393] I mean, I'm actually, I'm really impressed that you were so nice, knowing that you were going through this at the time.

[394] Right, because you knew probably tracking at that point while you're working with them.

[395] You probably knew, but you were incredibly nice.

[396] I met you one day.

[397] You were doing some press thing, and I was there.

[398] But, you know, part of the problem is you have these people in other cities like me, a 19 year old girl who has like a stack of passes and we're just like going places like random places like do you want these and if they say no then we just went to the mall you know like these are people in charge of movie publicity it's not great well you get what you pay for you're an intern i know so you kind of get what you pay for i guess but she really said you were really nice you were the only the second person famous person she had met who was the first Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, but I didn't meet them.

[399] You saw them in their real life.

[400] For the breakup premiere, I was outside the premiere.

[401] So I only saw them, but you were the first person that I spoke to that.

[402] We shook hands?

[403] Yes.

[404] Long, long hug, she told me. No, no, you were not inappropriate.

[405] You were not inappropriate.

[406] Did my hand grazed tenderly across your butt up?

[407] Oh, I would have been so excited that had happened at that time.

[408] But I loved the office so much, so it was a big deal and you delivered.

[409] Well, one analogy I just want to throw at you that has been helpful to me over the years is you're not Michael Jordan.

[410] But you're fucking in the NBA.

[411] That is the exact analogy.

[412] My therapist used.

[413] Oh, wow.

[414] I mean, Dex lifted it from here.

[415] It's he, and I swear to you, the exact analogy he used like two years ago.

[416] He's like, you're in the NBA.

[417] I think he's old, so he's like, you're like Robert Orie.

[418] I love Robert Orie.

[419] Yeah.

[420] That motherfucker won a lot of games behind that three -point line.

[421] That's right.

[422] That's right.

[423] That's right.

[424] That's a great analogy.

[425] Yeah.

[426] Well, you know, I just want to...

[427] You're in the big leagues.

[428] I want to fluff off your pillows for one second, which is...

[429] By the way, you need a new couch.

[430] Speaking of pillows.

[431] Too many people have sat here.

[432] And there have been some heavy ones because it's really, it's sagging.

[433] I really was in love with the British office in a way that I don't know that I've been in love with too many TV shows.

[434] Maybe the Sopranos, the first, you know.

[435] I just, I love that.

[436] I love that.

[437] show in a way that made it very difficult for me to just to watch the American one because I loved how emotional it was.

[438] I love how dramatic it got.

[439] And when I watched it, you're also playing this weird game where I've fallen in love with these other characters.

[440] And now they're basically being played by different people.

[441] And I just want to say, yours was the one that I was like, oh, well, this is for me a whole new thing and I enjoy it.

[442] And I think it tops.

[443] what I saw and I just was I really of the whole chaos I was like now now we've got something that can keep me on the show just as someone who came in with a lot of baggage not taking away from anyone else on the show but you just you really took that archetype and made it something that it really never was in my opinion on the British version and just was incredible that's very kind thank you I thought you played the the documentariness of it as perfectly as it could be played as well.

[444] That's nice.

[445] Yeah.

[446] Because it's a really fine line to walk.

[447] It's a fine line between believability documentary and at the same time, you've got to get your laughs.

[448] You want to make people laugh.

[449] You got to forget it's there enough.

[450] Yep.

[451] To make it plausible you'd be acting this way in front of a camera.

[452] I appreciate you saying that.

[453] I think that McKenzie Crook, who played Gareth in the English office, I am so grateful for him because I basically just stole his best bits and then I added a bunch more.

[454] So his whole thing of like saying the most redonculus things with a total deadpan, straight -faced and taking them with earnest, deathly seriousness, was I had never really seen actors do that.

[455] And I was like, oh, I know how to do that.

[456] That's delicious.

[457] And there were so many delicious things he brought to the mix.

[458] And I was like, ooh, I'm going to steal them.

[459] And I think I can even.

[460] even improve on them when given a chance.

[461] He only got to make, what, six, eight, ten episodes.

[462] He wasn't utilizing the way you were.

[463] Yeah, no discredit to him.

[464] He's phenomenal.

[465] But I am curious, when I was learning about you today, you know, you grew up in Washington for the majority of the time, and you were in band.

[466] You played the bassoon.

[467] Yes.

[468] It was a very sexy instrument.

[469] Sexy.

[470] And I am curious.

[471] Phalic.

[472] Because I want to get to how you ended up in comedy to begin with, because it seems, at least from your education, you were aiming straight at more kind of classical theater.

[473] Yeah.

[474] Yeah, I never thought of myself as a comedian.

[475] When people introduced me as like comedian, comic actor, improv guy, like, that's actually pretty alien to me. Right.

[476] You know, just going back a little bit, I'll say that, you know, I grew up in suburban Seattle.

[477] We were pretty poor.

[478] My family was.

[479] Like, I was telling the story the other day.

[480] I'm not trying to, like, give my poor cred, but someone was talking about washers and dryers.

[481] And I was just remembering, like, we couldn't afford a washer dryer.

[482] And every week we went to the laundromat.

[483] I sat in the corner in those kind of like molded plastic nylon, whatever that, what is that material chairs reading science fiction books.

[484] And that's kind of how I remember my childhood.

[485] But when I read about your dad, it almost sounded like the description of a con man. Knowing nothing about him, and I never heard you talk about him, but he was an artist, a science fiction writer.

[486] He was a business consultant.

[487] There's two.

[488] many things there.

[489] There's too many things.

[490] Yeah.

[491] It just says like, is he a CIA operative or is he maybe a confidence man?

[492] A lot of different pokers in the fire.

[493] He would love to hear that.

[494] My dad has these two kind of strains where he is really a brilliant artist.

[495] You can see his artwork at R .R. Wilson Art on Instagram.

[496] He posts his paintings.

[497] He's fantastic.

[498] Yeah.

[499] And he would write these strange science fiction novels that would be like 800 pages long, really imaginative about mutants invading the earth and time travel to ancient er and all this stuff and at the same time he really felt this like compunction to be like a really like solid businessman like he you know he watches like fox and friends and he's like a you know moderate conservative but really like he always wanted to like be in business and to be a good business person and systems and it's like he's equal parts like salvador dali yeah and mr you know steve balmer businessman or something like that Great Seattle reference, by the way.

[500] Yeah, that was all brought it around.

[501] Yeah, it's all on brand.

[502] What town did you grow up in?

[503] Lake Forest Park, it's just a little suburb north of Seattle.

[504] It's near the north part of Lake Washington.

[505] Oh, right, right, right, which is gorgeous.

[506] Is that Bill Gates lives on Lake, no?

[507] Yeah, he lives in the fancy part of, on the east side of Lake Washington where all the rich people have their homes.

[508] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[509] We've all been there.

[510] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[511] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[512] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[513] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[514] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[515] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[516] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[517] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[518] What's up, guys?

[519] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[520] into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest.

[521] Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[522] And I don't mean just friends.

[523] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[524] The list goes on.

[525] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[526] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[527] I first need to know why you would pick the bassoon because I picked a very bad instrument for my instrument.

[528] What was yours?

[529] Mine was trombone and I picked it simply because they came in fifth grade and did a demonstration.

[530] And the one guy went, and I want to, and I want to, to do that once in my life and I should have just done that at a music store instead I got stuck with the trombone so I started on clarinet I have no idea why I started on clarinet but I just did and I wanted to play the saxophone I also played the sax and I was like can I please to the band my junior high band teacher can I join the saxophone section they are so cool they got to wear sunglasses they could wear like Hawaiian shirts and like do the thing the Clarence Clements kind of while they're the Bill Clinton thing while they're and they're cheeky yeah so And the band teacher, he conned me. He literally was like, you know, we've got too many sax players, but you know what?

[531] It was really cool.

[532] You know what the coolest instrument is?

[533] No one is playing right now.

[534] And no one is playing.

[535] And it's amazing.

[536] It's the bassoon.

[537] And he, like, assembled one and showed it to me. And it's big and it's kind of impressive.

[538] And I was like, okay, all right.

[539] You know, I had these visions of being like the cool guy in the beret with the cigarette holder in the back playing the bassoon.

[540] And am I wrong in that the bassoon has an.

[541] non -ordinately long kind of piece that connects it to the main.

[542] So it's almost like smoking a cigarette with a holder.

[543] It's called a vocal, B -O -C -A -L.

[544] A B -O -C -A -L.

[545] And that's the thing about the bassoon.

[546] It looks awesome.

[547] And yet the sound is like, oh.

[548] Yeah, it's not the strong.

[549] It's not the strongest sound.

[550] No, you don't get the trombone or the saxophone thing going at all.

[551] So, yes, I went all in on bassoon.

[552] And are you still, can you play the bassoon?

[553] I can play it.

[554] I would fucking love it.

[555] I would fucking love it.

[556] love to hear that.

[557] I would, I've been thinking about, like, I need to just jump off and just buy one.

[558] I just need to, but they're so damn expensive.

[559] Even me, like, I'm pretty well off.

[560] Yeah, you're doing okay.

[561] But an entry level bassoon's $3 ,000.

[562] Oh, my God, an entry level.

[563] Yeah.

[564] And so what could you spend a, oh, you could spend, you can spend 20 ,000 on a bassoon.

[565] Oh, my goodness.

[566] I know, you should buy the world's nicest bassoon, the Ferrari of bassoons.

[567] It's stratavarius.

[568] And then I can go like, oh, on a 50, this.

[569] $1 ,000 instrument.

[570] Someone have a rag in an alto sacks?

[571] Does someone need help pulling a rag out of their alto sacks?

[572] I'm going to get a bassoon, though.

[573] And in fact, you know what?

[574] You've inspired me. I'm going to go.

[575] I'm going to leave here.

[576] I'm going to get a fucking bassoon.

[577] Oh, good.

[578] I don't know where one would go.

[579] They don't have them at guitar center or anything, do they?

[580] You know, immediately I thought, like, well, I'm a celebrity.

[581] Maybe I can write one of those bassoon companies.

[582] Oh, absolutely.

[583] Like, Fox is a maker of bassoons and be like, can I be the spokesperson for Fox bassoons?

[584] I bet you have to be released this.

[585] yes you'll get some calls direct message right yes like we were talking about that come and go gas station chain in the midwest yeah ever seen one sure you know it's spelled k um which is rough yeah that is rough it's like a mix between you know it's it's god bless them so we were calling like suck and spit what if it's called like suck and stay or spray and stay like and they sent us a bunch shit my it's one of my favorite t -shirts now i have i have a pink come and go you get a come and go Yeah, so you just don't know.

[586] I really, so what are a couple of the manufacturers?

[587] Let's just get it out there.

[588] Smith, did you say?

[589] Fox is one, and I think Renard, R -E -N -A -R -D.

[590] That sounds like a really nice person.

[591] We're going to start a campaign, an arm cherry campaign.

[592] Everyone just at these companies and say, Rain Wilson, is penniless and destitute, must blow his soon.

[593] Okay, so you go to U -Dub, and you, and your mother, your mother was a yoga teacher and an actor as well?

[594] Here's a crazy thing.

[595] My mom left me and my dad when I was two years old.

[596] I basically didn't see her again until I was about 15.

[597] Okay.

[598] When I was in high school, I started getting interested in acting and my dad was freaked about it.

[599] For some reason, he was very supportive of me being some kind of artist.

[600] But when I started acting, he just was very weird and put off by it and not completely supportive.

[601] And I thought that was kind of strange.

[602] Anyway, so I get, I go all in.

[603] I'm going, We move high schools and I end up in Chicago and has a really good acting program and I'm acting there and I go to undergrad and I'm doing plays at University of Washington and I get into the graduate acting program at NYU which is a really intense acting training program and by this point I've gotten reacquainted with my birth mother and gotten to know her and stuff like that and I say to her at one point why did you leave us and her face got pale and she stopped and she's like you mean you don't know and I was like no I said, when I would ask my dad, he would always say, oh, we disagreed about some things and we went our separate ways, and he kept it very vague.

[604] Yeah.

[605] Well, first of all, nice of him.

[606] Very nice of him.

[607] That's a strong parent who doesn't shit mouth.

[608] Yeah.

[609] Yeah, I like that.

[610] That's a Baha 'i teaching to not gossip or backbite about other people as a spiritual teaching.

[611] Yeah.

[612] Which is interesting.

[613] I don't think that's in any other kind of spiritual tradition.

[614] And I struggle with it, believe me, all the time.

[615] But anyways, she said, so you don't know.

[616] And she said, when I had you, in those days in Seattle, in the late 60s, I was an actress.

[617] And I had an affair with the theater director.

[618] And I left your dad to go have an affair with this, like, outrageous theater director.

[619] Do you remember in Annie Hall when that guy's like, put your foot on my heart?

[620] You know, like, when I die, I want to be torn apart by wild animals.

[621] I picture like some guy like that she left.

[622] 20 years her senior, maybe.

[623] Yeah.

[624] And she left us for this guy.

[625] She was kind of a crazy bohemian hippie woman.

[626] And all of a sudden, it kind of explained everything.

[627] First of all, I always had this predilection to try and be an actor.

[628] I didn't know really where that came from.

[629] I didn't know any actors or anything like that.

[630] But when I would turn on the TV as a kid and I would see the characters on MASH or on Taxi or Bob Newhart or whatever the show was, I was just like, I want to do that.

[631] Right.

[632] I want to do that.

[633] You saw it as a profession.

[634] You recognized that these were people who were doing this.

[635] Which is, again, talking about like being in the NBA.

[636] I didn't know any, my dad never made any money from his art. I didn't know anyone who got paychecks to make art. Right.

[637] To, like, write a poem and say, here's $300 or paint a painting and here's $3 ,000.

[638] Or you get to act and you get a salary.

[639] So I didn't know anyone, but I wanted that kind of more than anything.

[640] Sure.

[641] But there seems to be a genetic component because my mom was an actress and I had no idea.

[642] She was an actress.

[643] And that world was so toxified by this affair that she had had that my dad was.

[644] was kind of like, kind of put off by it.

[645] It's interesting because when I think of whatever pain that a mother leaving you would cause, in my mind, it's much stronger than the pain of a dad.

[646] In that, my dad split two when I was three.

[647] But guess what?

[648] All of my buddy's dad split when they were at that age.

[649] And that's what dads did.

[650] And so it would be hard to take it super personal just because fucking dad suck.

[651] And that's what they do.

[652] But for some reason, a mother leaving, I feel like would be.

[653] much more wounding, and I guess I find myself being more judgmental of her, just hearing the story than I would be if I found out your dad left.

[654] And that's just probably a layer of like misogyny, which is just interesting.

[655] I think maybe there's some misogyny there.

[656] I think there's also a biological component.

[657] I mean, the dependency that a child has on the mother, especially in the first two, three years is for life.

[658] Is way stronger.

[659] Yeah.

[660] The need, I remember when I, we have one son, he's 15 now, but it was very powerful for me. when he reached that time when he was two and, like, seeing this little guy and how much he needed to his mom and, like, where is she?

[661] And just, like, he'd play on his own.

[662] And then every, like, three minutes and 40 seconds, he'd be like, a mama, where's mama?

[663] Like that.

[664] The lifeline.

[665] Yeah, the lifeline.

[666] And the amount of fear of being away from that.

[667] And then imagine two -year -old little rain.

[668] Doesn't it help you comprehend?

[669] Because I think we all have this thing where it's like, just keep moving forward.

[670] Yeah, I'm intellectually aware that this stuff happened to me. But I'm not going to wallow in it and whatever, life's fine.

[671] But then when you're a parent, because similarly, when my daughter turned three, I'm like, no, shit.

[672] So my dad looked at this face.

[673] Yeah.

[674] It was like, I'm out of here.

[675] I'm going to live with my buddy Greg.

[676] We're going to move in together and be roommates.

[677] It helped me get in touch with like, oh, no, that's heartbreaking.

[678] As much as I'm just like, oh, whatever, well, I don't even remember it.

[679] And who cares?

[680] And I didn't miss him because I didn't remember it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[681] Yeah.

[682] But then you flash forward.

[683] forward to rain driving at 512 in the morning and listening to Kevin and being sobbing.

[684] And some of it makes a little more sense.

[685] Like, oh, I need this love.

[686] I want to be loved.

[687] I want to be appreciated.

[688] I want to be looked up to.

[689] I want to be desired.

[690] Yes.

[691] In a way that no one would leave me. Yeah.

[692] I want millions to adore me because them and had my mom stayed and maybe they got some therapy and worked on their marriage and stayed together or something like that, maybe I wouldn't be an actor.

[693] I'd be a perfectly content high school history.

[694] teacher, you know, with a really happy, well -balanced life.

[695] But I'm going to go even deeper, which, and this is a little corny, but to true, it is a true parallel because at that moment the rocker comes out, you basically have the office.

[696] So you have the America telling you they love you.

[697] And you could choose to just focus on that.

[698] But we find ways to test because we don't really trust it.

[699] Yeah.

[700] So it's like, no, they're going to leave.

[701] And then you manifest some situation that confirms your belief that they will leave.

[702] Wow.

[703] You know what I'm saying?

[704] So I set myself up for a kind of intense rejection.

[705] I was rejected by America.

[706] Yes.

[707] I was rejected by my mom when I was two and I set myself up.

[708] I mean, that feels too easy, but I do think there's some element that we do do that.

[709] It's like, because by the way, I did the same fucking thing.

[710] I got this script.

[711] Let's go to prison.

[712] I'm the lead of it.

[713] Sure, they're only spending $3 million on that.

[714] Sure, I know movies that cost $3 million can't actually come out and make money.

[715] But just keep going because I'm the lead of it and I get to act tough.

[716] and I get to be a prisoner and all this stuff.

[717] And I just ignore all these red flags.

[718] I don't listen to anyone who's telling me it might not be a good move when you have this opportunity.

[719] And then I have the outcome that you would expect because on some weird level, I know it's too good to be true and now I'm going to test it.

[720] I don't know.

[721] There's something in there about how we find our way into confirming our fear.

[722] Oh, wow.

[723] Yeah, that's interesting.

[724] But there's also a layer above that in that who cares that people didn't like, let's go to prison?

[725] You had a good time doing that movie and you met people that are your friends now on that movie.

[726] And ultimately, that was a good move for your life.

[727] You're absolutely right.

[728] And when I evaluate it for the process, it was not regrettable.

[729] When I evaluated it for the results, it was regrettable.

[730] Yeah, but we should be aiming to not be evaluated based on results.

[731] How much does he pay you?

[732] How much does he pay you?

[733] You'd be shocked.

[734] 16 or 17 an hour, I would say.

[735] I'll double it.

[736] Oh.

[737] Yeah.

[738] I want to do it.

[739] A new podcast, I'm going to do Rocking Chair Conversations.

[740] Okay, listen.

[741] Rock hands, $32 an hour.

[742] Oh, that's going to be hard to turn down.

[743] Well, she is trying to buy the house across the street.

[744] I am.

[745] I am currently.

[746] You want to live in this little?

[747] I sure do.

[748] I'm auctioning for it tomorrow.

[749] Tomorrow.

[750] We have to auction for it.

[751] It's turned into a crazy thing.

[752] They auction for houses?

[753] Because it's in probate because a family owned, like they just inherited it.

[754] I'm going to get in.

[755] it.

[756] I'm going to buy it.

[757] It's at 11 a .m. show up to the courthouse at 11 a .m. I'm there.

[758] You're fooling.

[759] It was a trick.

[760] Okay.

[761] Now, I'm going to make some generalizations about you.

[762] I could have read your book.

[763] You've written a book that is a comedic autobiography.

[764] Yeah.

[765] The bassoon king.

[766] The bassoon king.

[767] The bassoon.

[768] Yeah.

[769] And so forgive me for not reading it.

[770] But I go to my architecture from being from Michigan.

[771] And if you were heavily vested in band you know that was a strata that was a group that was a tribe yep and i have to assume it was somewhat similar in washington sure it's not like you're not in band and then also at keg parties no okay so we can exactly so i just want to know when you go to new york it's so foreign from washington a little less foreign from chicago suburbs but when you get there do you have this sense of like, oh, I'm now writing the story of my life and look at all these people that are here and anything's possible.

[772] Like there was there's this sense of like, oh my goodness, I can be anything.

[773] Wow, that's a great way of putting it.

[774] And that's an interesting question.

[775] No one's ever asked me anything like that before.

[776] But I'm trying to recall being 20 and moving to New York City in 1986.

[777] It was grimy.

[778] There was still spray paint on the subways, subway tokens.

[779] Like it It was time square was real dicey.

[780] Oh, yeah, yeah, you didn't, you didn't really want to, you couldn't go in Central Park after dark.

[781] But I didn't have the wherewithal.

[782] I was so buffeted by the world at that age.

[783] I was just like a ball and a Pachinko machine.

[784] I was like, click, clink, clink, clink, clink.

[785] I mean, I had at that point segued from band geeked the dumb into drama club geekedum.

[786] Yeah.

[787] So that was my tribe.

[788] Right.

[789] I will say, I really wanted to live a bohemian life in New York.

[790] York City.

[791] I don't know where I got that idea of it.

[792] I don't know if it was like, Ernest Hemingway or Tom Waits or, yeah, Jack Kerouac or something like that, but I just, I wanted to dive into that completely.

[793] And that's when I left, I grew up Baha 'i and I left the Baha 'i Faith and I went into New York City and I was just, you know, I just kind of - You were on Rumspringer.

[794] I was.

[795] I was like, that's essentially what happened.

[796] It was like an 11 or 12 -year Rumspring.

[797] Hiatus.

[798] Okay.

[799] And I like, I like, I like.

[800] I like.

[801] I like, I like.

[802] I like.

[803] I, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, Like picturing the Amish kids, like driving the tractor at 40 miles an hour instead of, like, wow.

[804] Well, there's a great documentary.

[805] I don't know if you saw it.

[806] I used to tassel corn in Indiana and southern Michigan.

[807] So I was around Amish kids all the time.

[808] Yeah.

[809] So to see them go through.

[810] Now they're dying of all these strange genetic diseases.

[811] I just read this article about this doctor in Wisconsin works on Mennonites and Amish people.

[812] Because they've been inbred for centuries.

[813] Yeah.

[814] So they have weird genetic things where you touch them and they start to bleed from their pores and stuff like that.

[815] Yeah, like strange, strange diseases.

[816] Oh, yeah.

[817] Can you tell us really quick what the essence of Baha 'i is?

[818] Yeah, so recently, people can Google it if they want.

[819] There's an animated Baha 'i introductory video that I created that just came out a couple of weeks ago.

[820] It's like 14 minutes long if they want to check it out.

[821] But I'm not here to try and convert anyone to the Baha 'i faith.

[822] But I will say that in a nutshell, and it's a very large and complicated religion with thousands of books and tablets and prayers and holy writing.

[823] so it's hard to distill down.

[824] Sure.

[825] But some of the key points are, Baha 'is believe that there is only one God.

[826] Okay.

[827] That this is not some kind of old white man on a beard, helping you look for a parking spot on a cloud and judging you kind of God, but some kind of force that is in alignment with science behind the material world and that this God educates humanity by sending down spiritual teachers every like, let's say, 500 or 1 ,000 years or so.

[828] Okay.

[829] So these spiritual teachers like, Krishna, Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad.

[830] Okay, so it incorporates all these different.

[831] Yeah, this is God updating humanity's kind of spiritual operating system through the years because humanity needs to grow spiritually just like it needs to grow materially and technologically.

[832] Yeah.

[833] And so Baha 'is are also followers of a man who went by the title Baha 'u'llah.

[834] That name means the glory of God.

[835] And he lived in Iran in the mid -1800s.

[836] And his central teaching was that we're all one humanity.

[837] too.

[838] We're sharing the planet.

[839] We need to be in unity.

[840] We need to be in harmony.

[841] Diversity is a great thing like a beautiful garden.

[842] And every Baha 'i teaching seeks to incorporate unity and harmony.

[843] And to be of service to other members of this one tribe.

[844] Of the one tribe, the seven billion tribe on planet Earth.

[845] Yeah.

[846] So one God, one religion, because all those spiritual teachers, yes, they had different social teachings applicable to the geographical area and time, but ultimately the essence of what they taught was the same.

[847] And then one humanity.

[848] So that's it in a nutshell.

[849] Uh -huh.

[850] That is interesting.

[851] And then you, you, oh, one thing I think I read that I really liked is that there is no clergy, right?

[852] There's no hierarchy within the church.

[853] I like that.

[854] Yeah.

[855] I'm a big fan of that.

[856] But you've left Baha 'i at that point in New York.

[857] Yeah.

[858] I just, I left Baha 'i, but what I realized dax is that like i so believed in the theater like art and the theater was like a religion to me sure you wanted that to provide transcendence yeah transcendence and escape and also service and that oh if we tell the right stories to the right people we'll do the the right production of the tempest in the right like hole in the wall theater for with an audience of 17 people like we'll blow their minds and and we can transform the world through storytelling.

[859] And that was actually a really fun milieu.

[860] I mean, we were preposterously arrogant and, you know, so we were really pretentious lot at the time.

[861] Thank God.

[862] That's exactly how you should be.

[863] Yeah, when you're 20, you know, but you're trying to change the world and you're pretentious and you're like doing a deep dive into theater.

[864] So that was my whole milieu.

[865] So, you know, obviously I was more gifted at comedy or was the most so I kind of like sidled into comedy and I did theater in New York for like 10 years really you know I did Shakespeare I did Chekhov and I did Eugene O 'Neill and I did comedy stuff too you must have a real aptitude for language because I that everything you just said scares the shit out of me really oh yeah oh you'd be I can't even read Shakespeare when I read it I mean something really has to explain it to me I'm lost okay repeat after me okay to be to be or not to be or not to be that is the question is the question oh good i would pay to watch that wow yeah well no you'd watch it at home on tv so how then do you end up well you got a galaxy quest i imagine is that the first comedic thing you do professionally yeah it was this crazy thing where i was like pounding my head against the walls in new york i was doing a lot of theater but i couldn't break into any tv or film i couldn't even get be one of those guys on law and order like every New York actors on Law and Order.

[866] Yes.

[867] Everyone is just like, have you seen this man?

[868] Like, gacong, like, and you're like, you're taking fish out of a truck or something like that.

[869] Like, oh, he used to hang out here, but I haven't seen him in a long time.

[870] Like, I couldn't even get one of those jobs.

[871] Sure.

[872] And I came out to L .A., and I just, I got really lucky right out of the bat.

[873] I have one tiny question before we go to L .A. I never know, because this happens to me. I throw one thing out in an interview and then that becomes part of the story about me. So I don't know if it's actually, if you did it once or you did it often.

[874] But were you a mover?

[875] In New York City?

[876] Moving.

[877] I was a mover.

[878] Yes.

[879] So I had my own moving company.

[880] Okay, great.

[881] So here's my question.

[882] As soon as I read that, I went straight to, did you look through people's shit?

[883] I never looked through people's shit.

[884] I never did that.

[885] You didn't?

[886] Nope.

[887] I'm so nosy.

[888] I was strangely moral about that.

[889] I was like, I will not violate someone's privacy in that way.

[890] That's good for you.

[891] That's hard to do, I think.

[892] But we took our, we got married, me and my wife got married in 95, I took $1 ,200 out of like the $3 ,000 we got for our wedding and bought a van.

[893] And so I was a man with a van.

[894] Yeah.

[895] And even then I was dealing with life's biggest questions.

[896] It was called the Transcendant Moving Company.

[897] Oh, wow.

[898] Yeah.

[899] And I had a little, I drew a little cartoon.

[900] It said, a man, a van, a sense of higher purpose.

[901] Oh, my goodness.

[902] And, but here's how morality works.

[903] I would never look in people's body.

[904] But I never paid taxes on any of the fucking money I made as a mover.

[905] Because I got cash off the books.

[906] Yes, of course.

[907] And it was such sweet gig.

[908] I would set up my own hours.

[909] I charged 50.

[910] Oh my God.

[911] That's so embarrassing.

[912] Well, you know what it is?

[913] Sax's phone just went off.

[914] Something's getting delivered.

[915] There's the only reason it's on to begin with.

[916] This would not happen on rocking chair.

[917] I'm rocking chair conversations with Rain and Monica.

[918] You know what?

[919] With Monica and Rain.

[920] Oh, look at that.

[921] Yeah, all right, all right, it's getting taste here.

[922] Let's talk turkey.

[923] How about Rainica?

[924] Oh, all right.

[925] I don't hate that.

[926] God bless the rain.

[927] Rain on me. We do lots of songs, lots of plays on songs.

[928] Okay, well, my other question was, so I'm just moving.

[929] Yeah.

[930] So one was, did you look at people's shit?

[931] Second, did people ever hover over you and micromanage all the time?

[932] And at any point did you not want to go like, hey, you're so involved.

[933] Why aren't you just moving?

[934] No, it didn't really.

[935] Listen, we were not a white glove moving company, okay?

[936] This was the transcendent moving company.

[937] I put flyers up on telephone poles literally with the little tear off phone numbers.

[938] Like you lost your dog.

[939] Yeah, exactly.

[940] And so the people, the clientele had futons and lamps and boxes from IKEA and whatnot.

[941] So, yeah.

[942] But you moved to L .A. and you took, well, you bought that van.

[943] Did the van make it to L .A.?

[944] No way, a 12 -100.

[945] It didn't make it to LA, but it made it to, my wife went to graduate school in Iowa for creative writing and we drove it to Iowa and she had an Iowa for two years.

[946] And then we drove it back to New York City and it literally collapsed and almost exploded as it arrived in lower Manhattan from being halfway across the country.

[947] And now I think back on it, I can't even believe it made it that far.

[948] But it literally like the engine caught fire on Lafayette pulling back into New York.

[949] York City.

[950] And we knew it was time to let the van go.

[951] Was it a Chevy?

[952] It was a Chevy, yeah.

[953] Yeah, I could feel it.

[954] Okay.

[955] Now, how do you get into comedy?

[956] So in theater, I did drama, comedy, stylized stuff, contemporary stuff.

[957] But for TV and film, I saw, oh, I can play these comic characters.

[958] And I think I can, most of the guys who are like stand -ups who have just done improv, I can actually create kind of like more of like a character, like a fleshed -out character.

[959] Yeah.

[960] And I kind of saw in my head like, oh, that's kind of my leg up.

[961] I'm going to do comic characters that.

[962] And I was always weird looking.

[963] And when I, I'm actually less weird looking now than I was younger because I was really skinny and weird looking.

[964] And so it was just a character guy.

[965] And I thought that was my niche.

[966] Well, one thing that I've always liked about your comedic acting is you're never in on the joke, which is my number one thing that takes me out.

[967] I hate that.

[968] It's like, you're never aware.

[969] that you're funny.

[970] And I think that's certainly my favorite type of comedic acting.

[971] Monica, what do you think?

[972] I agree.

[973] Okay.

[974] She's a huge office fan.

[975] What watches it at night to go to sleep and stuff?

[976] So this must be like the greatest moment of your life right now.

[977] I'll say it.

[978] You are my favorite guest has ever been in the saddick.

[979] We are so doing this.

[980] We are so working together.

[981] Rainichella.

[982] I'm poaching.

[983] I can do it all.

[984] I can do it all.

[985] Dude, I stole her from my wife.

[986] So if you steal her from me, it is I'll only be getting what I have coming to me. Yeah, so that was my niche as a kind of comic character actor.

[987] And I think the theater background helped because my whole thing was like, I want to make these characters living and breathing and real.

[988] And I wanted Dwight Shrut to be funny and kind of extreme and weird.

[989] But I also wanted him to feel like this could be a real guy.

[990] And I bet if we followed him home and his Trans Am and went to his farm, we'd see him cooking an omelet and doing whatever it is that Dwight does.

[991] Now, being on a show like the office where you've got like some of the best in the world, all occupying a space.

[992] Was it a mind fuck for you or was it pretty easy or both?

[993] Yeah, I would say that I kind of realized a few years in that there was stuff I did really well and there was stuff I didn't do as well.

[994] And like Steve Correll is one of those like once in a millennium kind of talents.

[995] Yeah.

[996] Especially as Michael Scott.

[997] I mean, he's a great dramatic actor as well, but you can throw literally anything at him in the middle of a scene, the middle of a three -page scripted scene, we've gone over it a bunch of times, and in the middle of the scene, I could say to him, I have to fart.

[998] And he would have just take that completely in stride and respond as the character, respond as the character would, go on a tangent about it and bring it right back to the scene and the scene would be even better than it would be.

[999] You could not throw him off in any way, shape, or form, ever.

[1000] And his...

[1001] Just total aptitude for all aspects.

[1002] His improvisational nature was like a Stradivarius.

[1003] It was just like watching Yo -Yo Ma play the cello.

[1004] And I realized swiftly, like, I'm not that.

[1005] Uh -huh.

[1006] I improvised pretty well.

[1007] Yeah.

[1008] And I can come off with some great off -the -cuff stuff.

[1009] And I'm really happy that a lot of the Dwight stuff that has lasted over the years of stuff that I improvised or threw in there.

[1010] But I don't know.

[1011] do what Steve does.

[1012] And so really, I was able to just relax and say, let him do his genius thing.

[1013] Right.

[1014] And I'll toss him the ball.

[1015] I'm standing by his side.

[1016] And that's another thing about Steve.

[1017] And I think this is from all good improv actors is they try to make everyone around them look better.

[1018] Right.

[1019] He always made everyone else funnier.

[1020] He never, like, sucked the energy and just made you look at him and didn't let other people be funny.

[1021] Yeah, he wanted the scene to be funny.

[1022] He wanted the scene to be funny.

[1023] He wanted everyone to be funny around him.

[1024] Yeah.

[1025] Very, very generous.

[1026] And you directed a few of the offices, yeah?

[1027] I did, yeah.

[1028] Did you enjoy that?

[1029] I did very much.

[1030] I want to do more directing.

[1031] Yeah, I really like it.

[1032] In fact, I would say that act, and I'm interested in this for you, too, like, does acting hold the same allure than I did for you five or ten years ago?

[1033] Because that's how I'm feeling like, I like acting.

[1034] I'm doing this new show for Amazon.

[1035] It'll come out next year, and I did a little, some movies last year, and I'll do some acting here and there.

[1036] but that overwhelming desire and drive to like both further my career, but also like I lived for acting any kind of role.

[1037] Like what can you get me and what is this part?

[1038] And can I transform and play it?

[1039] Like I had such a hunger for that that now it's like I enjoy it.

[1040] It's a cool craft.

[1041] I'm so lucky to get to do it.

[1042] I mean, I'm doing this recurring role with Alice and Janney on mom.

[1043] It's just a pleasure working with her.

[1044] She's like Corel.

[1045] She's on this whole other level of acting ability that I'm really in awe of.

[1046] But I don't have that same hunger, really.

[1047] I'm with you.

[1048] It's not what it is for me is I can act and it's fun.

[1049] I enjoy it to your point.

[1050] But I just don't have any aspirations.

[1051] I don't have like, oh, I hope I get this and then it'll become that.

[1052] And I want to get in this kind of move.

[1053] That to me is just like, oh, I don't have a career anymore.

[1054] I have a job.

[1055] And basically I just want my family to have money and be comfortable.

[1056] I don't know if that's good or bad.

[1057] It feels healthier to me. Yeah.

[1058] No, that's good.

[1059] I can go and I enjoy it.

[1060] But is it for us?

[1061] Is it because our movie starship has sailed and we're just not going to be movie stars?

[1062] Well, there is a certain reality.

[1063] It's like, it's an age thing.

[1064] Yeah.

[1065] It's like, okay, you kind of do the Ray Kroc thing for McDonald's.

[1066] Or it's like, okay, I can't remember the star that got huge at 45.

[1067] Yeah.

[1068] Maybe there's one or two.

[1069] Yeah.

[1070] But it gets less and less that pool.

[1071] Brian Cranston.

[1072] Brian Cranston.

[1073] The only one I can think of that Breaking Bad 2.

[1074] two movie star transition in late 40s or early 50s even.

[1075] Yeah.

[1076] And so there's a couple versions, but also I have two little kids.

[1077] I don't desire at all to be away on a movie set at all.

[1078] But also probably because you guys had such a tight grip on it for so long.

[1079] You can't sustain that kind of energy over your whole life.

[1080] Like that's going to have to dissipate or you'll die.

[1081] Yeah.

[1082] Well, in fact, that's a great way to look at it because I almost look at it like alcohol and drugs, which is I can't moderate.

[1083] that thing.

[1084] So I'm either all in or I'm ambivalent.

[1085] And I happen to have been ambivalent for a couple years and it's going better than it was when I was crazy about it.

[1086] And I don't ever want to get crazy about it again.

[1087] I would like to tell stories.

[1088] I'd like to be a part of telling stories somehow.

[1089] But I don't, I don't need to be in front of the camera.

[1090] I could be behind the camera or even write the stories or help other people tell the stories.

[1091] I do want to be a part of telling really cool, crazy, kick -ass stories.

[1092] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1093] So you have a foundation, Lee Day, Haiti.

[1094] That's right.

[1095] And as I understand it, you are trying to educate and teach young girls to read.

[1096] You know, one of the incredible things that happens when you're a celebrity, as you know, and from your wife's work as well is, like, all of these nonprofits start approaching you because you can help them raise money and you can be on the board and you can help them get the word out and publicize and, et cetera.

[1097] And so I started getting involved in some non -profits, one called the Mona Foundation.

[1098] That's all about education.

[1099] And we went down to Haiti in 2009 to visit all these schools that Mona Foundation was supporting.

[1100] Really fell in love with the country.

[1101] It's a tragic country, but it's also very beautiful.

[1102] The people are amazing, just funny, smart, imaginative, great artists.

[1103] And two months later was the earthquake.

[1104] Oh, you were there just before.

[1105] In 300 ,000 people died in the matter in like 10 or 20 minutes.

[1106] I mean, it was...

[1107] 300 ,000 people died?

[1108] Yeah, it's a city of 12 million people and the fault ran right through the city.

[1109] And all the architecture, there is like really cheaply made concrete bricks on built on top of each other and on hillsides with loose soil.

[1110] So the earthquake hit and everything slid down.

[1111] Just imagine living at the bottom of some gully.

[1112] And just all of these concrete cinder block, like, poorly made houses just tumbling down.

[1113] The hotel that we stayed at fell down the hill and everyone inside of it was killed.

[1114] Wow.

[1115] And we had just been there two months before.

[1116] So we knew we had to, like, do something.

[1117] We felt this kind of like, wow, we love this country.

[1118] We were just there.

[1119] We visited these schools.

[1120] This incredible amount of devastation, like, that, you know, the world had almost never seen before.

[1121] It's one of the greatest disasters of all time.

[1122] I hate to politicize this, but I do use that sometimes as an example, Haiti.

[1123] For everyone that's like, get rid of government oversight and like when you want to get rid of regulation, that's what you're getting rid of.

[1124] Oh, yeah.

[1125] We have an example of no oversight.

[1126] Yeah.

[1127] And there's a lot of countries out there like that, like Somalia and whatnot.

[1128] And there are a lot of people in this country that want us to be that way.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] Listen, the rich and Haiti get richer and richer and richer all the time very, very, very.

[1131] easily because they can bribe their way out of stuff.

[1132] There's no government regulation.

[1133] Taxes are essentially lower.

[1134] There's ways to hide funnel money away from taxes.

[1135] So there's like six or nine families in Haiti that control 99 % of the wealth.

[1136] And if you want to be wealthy in Haiti, it's a good game.

[1137] Right.

[1138] It's a good game.

[1139] So, yeah.

[1140] But it's true.

[1141] So we had an opportunity.

[1142] There was a program that was sponsored by the UN that went and taught the arts to adolescent and girls that were living in a tent camp.

[1143] This was the tent camp that Sean Penn was overseeing.

[1144] Okay.

[1145] 40 ,000 people were living on a nine -hole golf course in Haiti, the only golf course in Haiti.

[1146] 40 ,000 people.

[1147] 40 ,000 people.

[1148] 40 ,000 people.

[1149] So we went and did a 10 -day workshop.

[1150] I taught drama.

[1151] My wife taught creative writing.

[1152] We had a photographer and the woman who helped run it.

[1153] We saw how effective these workshops were with these girls and how transformative they were.

[1154] And she was willing to move, to relocate from Malibu, California to Haiti to do this kind of work.

[1155] And we're like, we got to do this.

[1156] We got to give back.

[1157] We need to help these people.

[1158] The women and girls in Haiti are really one of the most subjugated populations on the planet.

[1159] They're the last to be educated and they do the most work.

[1160] You have eight, nine -year -old girls in Haiti getting up at four or five in the morning to boil the water, to clean the shack that they live in to go harvest from the farms to do the child care to sell in the markets, et cetera.

[1161] And they're schooled last.

[1162] And, you know, there's like 40 some percent sexual abuse and girls in Haiti.

[1163] And they're really subjugated.

[1164] And no one pays attention to them as a population.

[1165] And so we did arts and then we added swiftly literacies.

[1166] We teach them to read.

[1167] And now we have a mobile computer lab.

[1168] We do.

[1169] You've like 13 camps with...

[1170] 13 camps with 800 girls right now.

[1171] And we do scholarships for school and books, programs.

[1172] We have a mobile library that goes around.

[1173] And now we're starting an apprenticeship program.

[1174] So they're learning job skills called transitions, transitioning out of our programs into learning actual job skills and stuff like that.

[1175] And these are just one of the most poorest and abused populations on the planet.

[1176] So it's been great.

[1177] I don't know if you know much about what's going on in Haiti right now, but it's essentially in a place of total revolution.

[1178] It's chaos on the ground.

[1179] It's almost shut down as a country.

[1180] There's a rebellion against the massive corruption of the current government.

[1181] Of course, every government there is corrupt.

[1182] And it's got a really screwed up constitution where the president is this figurehead.

[1183] And in some ways, he's got a lot of power, but in other ways he has no power.

[1184] This completely gridlocked Congress, like it just all gridlocks and stops.

[1185] But it is a democracy and has been for about, I don't know, 15, 18 years or something like that.

[1186] Okay.

[1187] So, yeah, wow.

[1188] God bless you because situations like that in particular can easily feel very overwhelming.

[1189] Yeah.

[1190] Like to feel like chipping away at such a huge problem, it's impressive.

[1191] Because like my wife and I went to a country, I won't name it, but we're just looking around at Canada.

[1192] Looking around at the sanitation, the way the water's working, the way the roads are working, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1193] And you know, we have this term in show business, which is a page one rewrite, which is you've been asked to write a script and then you turn it into the studio and they basically say page one, which means throw that in the trash and start over.

[1194] Yeah.

[1195] And we were looking around over the course of a week or so.

[1196] And I said, I mean, the place needs a page one rewrite.

[1197] Like it needs from the fucking ground up.

[1198] And it's just so overwhelming.

[1199] Yeah, you really put your finger on it.

[1200] And it's hard.

[1201] Like I'm not trying to.

[1202] to be like arrogant American, like, oh, I know how things should work better or whatever, but these systems are so colossally broken, like there's garbage on the streets.

[1203] You're like, okay, well, you need to collect the garbage and take it to a garbage dump.

[1204] It's like, well, there aren't really garbage dumps because how would you do that?

[1205] I mean, there are places up in the mountains, like a gully where they just kind of throw the garbage.

[1206] Okay, so, well, let's go with that.

[1207] Okay, so they need garbage trucks.

[1208] Well, how do you get garbage trucks into Haiti?

[1209] There's two ways.

[1210] They can be shipped in on a ship.

[1211] but the ports are really corrupt and it costs a ton of money to get something off of the port even like medicine will sit there for over a year because the guy at the port's waiting for his payoff so you can't get the trucks into the country and then when they do get into the country like who pays for maintaining them like who's going to pay for this garbage services we pay waste disposal of California or whatever and they take our it pays for everything but Haitians aren't going to be able to pay for garbage so the government's going to pay for it with what tax base they don't have the money and then and the roads aren't good enough to get the garbage trucks around and so people are burning their trash on the side of the road when you drive at home at night in Haiti in the middle of the night like it's lit not by street lamps but by garbage fires so it's the most haunting thing one of my first trip there one of the most haunting things I ever saw which really solidify the need to do something or try and do something was a street side bond on fire and a little girl with her homework holding it up to try and get enough light on her page to finish her homework from a garbage fire with like this plastic smoke billowing over her head at like 10 at night and she's trying to get our homework done like so yes so all these systems are really broken and it does it needs a page one rewrite it really does but but at the same time we also have to look at like what role did the United States play in breaking all these systems because you know they were a slave republic and they rebelled against the French and you know created their own country and so we blockaded them because we didn't want slaves rebelling and no country would do any trade with them we would lend them money but we wouldn't do any trade with them aren't they one side of an island the other side is yes dominican yeah Dominican Republic is one side and Hispaniola is the name of the island.

[1212] Dominican Republic is like two -thirds of it and Haiti is like one -third of it.

[1213] Which is insane, right?

[1214] The staggering difference between life in the Dominican.

[1215] Yeah.

[1216] Dominican is still poor but is incredibly successful like exporting fruits and vegetables.

[1217] They've got resorts.

[1218] Great tourism.

[1219] Been a pretty successful Spanish -speaking and baseball playing country in the Haitian's French and Creole speaking and soccer playing country.

[1220] Uh -huh.

[1221] Very, very different cultures.

[1222] All in the same island.

[1223] Oh, man. Wow.

[1224] Anyway, so, yeah, we're only working with 800 teenage girls there that we should be working with 8 ,000 or actually we should be working with 80 ,000.

[1225] And we always think about, like, how do we make an impact?

[1226] I mean, 800 is so much better than saying like, eh, it's too much.

[1227] And then rocking away.

[1228] If one of those 800 kids was my two daughters?

[1229] Yeah, exactly.

[1230] It's everything.

[1231] Yeah.

[1232] Does Baha 'i help with that?

[1233] It must.

[1234] If you're a member of a world community.

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] Well, so our programs are not Baha 'i at all.

[1237] No one involved in the programs would even know that we're Baha 'is.

[1238] But I will say that one of the principal tenets of the Baha 'i faith is that the highest form of being is to be of service to others.

[1239] It's very much in line with the 12 steps.

[1240] Right.

[1241] That being of service to others is the highest form of both prayer and the highest form of humanity.

[1242] Yeah, yeah.

[1243] And so I'm not saying I'm some great servant to humanity at all.

[1244] I'm just a fucked up suburban dad trying to get along.

[1245] But I do feel a motivation to try and do what I can with what I have.

[1246] And I was, you know, we don't try and run this organization lead.

[1247] I don't know from education, you know, but with this woman who has a PhD in education on the ground with an amazing Haitian staff, they're making these choices.

[1248] Basically, all I do is whore out Dwight.

[1249] Like right now, like we're selling all this Dwight paraphernalia online, and I take that money, and I push it over to the poorest kids in Haiti.

[1250] So that's one thing I can do.

[1251] You know, I know I can do that.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] I like that.

[1254] Great.

[1255] But I bet a lot of people feel a little overwhelmed by the scale of much of the devastation around the world.

[1256] And on this podcast, a metaphysical milkshake that I do with Reza, that you remember we talked about an hour and a half ago?

[1257] Yes, I do.

[1258] One of the first episodes is with this guy, Varun.

[1259] Sunni, who is the Dean of Religious Life at USC, and he's essentially the chaplain at USC's Hindu, Buddhist, and he's one of our first guests.

[1260] And that episode is actually free.

[1261] You don't have to go behind the paywall.

[1262] And we talk about loneliness.

[1263] And he talks about this young generation, the epidemic of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

[1264] And his theory is that it's based in loneliness, that these devices and this social media have alienated and disenfranchised us all from human connection and that young people are feeling more and more alienated and ostracized.

[1265] And when I speak, I speak a lot at like college campuses and stuff like that and I see the pain that a lot of young people are really in.

[1266] And this is part of the pain.

[1267] It's like there's so much suffering in the world.

[1268] Plus, you throw climate change in the equation and the ramifications of it for our children and their children is just, is horrific.

[1269] and you've got this young generation inheriting this mess and that's a big contributor to the anxiety.

[1270] So, you know, what's the answer?

[1271] I don't know, but I do know that it's not doing nothing.

[1272] That's not the answer.

[1273] So everyone can find their way.

[1274] You don't have to wait till you're a TV celebrity to kind of find your way.

[1275] And that's one of the big regrets I have in my life is why did I wait until I was a fucking TV celebrity to try and like give back?

[1276] Couldn't I have done that when I was.

[1277] was a struggling actor, and I did volunteer here and there, a few little things here and there, but it used to be that when I was a kid in the 70s and the 80s, people were like, hey, listen, do your best, as long as you're not hurting anybody else, you're fine.

[1278] Have a nice life, enjoy your family, live in your cul -de -sac.

[1279] If you're not hurting anybody else, it's fine.

[1280] And I think for a while for humanity, that kind of worked, I would say maybe from the 50s through the 80s, that kind of worked.

[1281] But now with, like, climate change and social injustice happening and a lot of the issues on the planet, we have to do more than just not hurt anyone else.

[1282] We have to actually do something positive and proactive for others as a species if we're going to survive, thrive, flourish, yeah.

[1283] Well, it's interesting you said that I had this thought the other day, which I don't know why I had never put these elements together.

[1284] But as an atheist, if I die tomorrow morning in my worldview, I won't experience that.

[1285] I will be gone.

[1286] There will be no suffering on Dax's end when I die tomorrow, right?

[1287] The suffering will be had by the people in my life who love me, who are going to miss me. And so I kind of reversed engineered in my mind.

[1288] I was like, well, the only value a person can have is the value that other people give to you or carry for you.

[1289] And so I think we are a way, of that on some level.

[1290] Like in a subconscious level, are we immersed in a community that will mourn us when we pass?

[1291] Or are we going to die and no one will notice in which our life really had no value?

[1292] Because it had no measurable suffering attached to it and no measurable flourishing by others.

[1293] So I think that's part of the despair of not having community.

[1294] That's really interesting.

[1295] That's super thought -provoking.

[1296] Because I'm, again, I'm going to die.

[1297] Don't mourn me. I won't be experiencing death.

[1298] You know, it'll just go.

[1299] But that's not what people will be mourning.

[1300] They'll be mourning the loss of Dax.

[1301] Sure.

[1302] Or the loss of what Dax adds to their life.

[1303] Right.

[1304] That that no longer will exist.

[1305] And that that's painful.

[1306] And if that's important to you, then if there's other atheists listening, then isn't the alleviation of suffering of others?

[1307] Shouldn't that be kind of high up on the list?

[1308] Yeah.

[1309] Not to go to heaven and get some kind of God brownie point.

[1310] and angel wings or something like that, but simply to have a legacy of alleviating other people's suffering.

[1311] However that is, it can be through science.

[1312] It could be through all kinds of ways to serve your community, large and small.

[1313] In the Baha 'i writings, Baha 'u'llah says, I have made death a messenger of joy to thee.

[1314] Wherefore dost thou grieve?

[1315] That we're all souls inhabiting bodies for a period of time, Just like when we were babies, we rode around in a womb for a while developing our toenails and our eyebrows and our elbows and arms and feet and eyeballs and stuff like that that we'll need for this world.

[1316] In this physical reality, we're developing our spiritual eyes and ears and elbows and eyeballs that we'll need for whatever the next plane of existence is that we're all going to, by the way.

[1317] It's not like the chosen ones go to heaven and hell.

[1318] There isn't a heaven and hell in the Baha 'i writings.

[1319] And so for me, I would want people to joyously accept, not mourn at all, but say, oh, he's on to the next phase.

[1320] Right.

[1321] And you know what?

[1322] In a blink of an eye, we're going to join him there and we'll all be together doing podcasts in whatever the version of podcast is in the next dimension.

[1323] Well, I've never, ever wanted to be wrong about something more than that.

[1324] So I will be delighted to me. I am going to see you on the other side.

[1325] I can't wait.

[1326] We're going to high five.

[1327] We're going to do another podcast.

[1328] Great.

[1329] We're going to wait for a little bit.

[1330] Then Monica will join us.

[1331] Oh, great.

[1332] We'll sit in the attic up in whatever this next phase is beyond the material meat suit world.

[1333] I love that.

[1334] And trust me, we're going to be there.

[1335] I'm going to see you.

[1336] And if you're right, then whatever.

[1337] We gave it a shot.

[1338] Don't worry.

[1339] My version doesn't suck either because you just don't know.

[1340] Yeah.

[1341] It's wrong.

[1342] Whatever causes you to read, to live a rich, varied, service -oriented, fun, imaginative, love, connection -filled life, right?

[1343] Yes.

[1344] I agree with all those virtues and principles.

[1345] Rain, thank you so much.

[1346] Wait, before you go, I have one criticism for you.

[1347] Okay.

[1348] Okay.

[1349] Stop referring to yourself as a TV celebrity.

[1350] You're a celebrity.

[1351] You don't need to keep putting TV in front of it.

[1352] That's what I like to do, too.

[1353] Don't do that.

[1354] Is that a holdover from our.

[1355] Feature film failures.

[1356] Yes, it is.

[1357] You're holding on to that.

[1358] You don't have to qualify your celebrity.

[1359] You are one, and you are one.

[1360] Well, thank you, Monica.

[1361] I'm just saying.

[1362] Okay.

[1363] Don't do it.

[1364] Unbelievable that a car washer from Detroit and a moving van driver or any kind of.

[1365] And a cheerleader from Atlanta.

[1366] Well, that seems more predictable, but that person would become successful.

[1367] You were a cheerleader?

[1368] Really?

[1369] I was.

[1370] Stay champion.

[1371] Two times.

[1372] Were you the tiny cheerleader that was at the top of the pyramid and that would get flipped like 40 times in the air?

[1373] The flyer.

[1374] She even got, people caught her by her vagina.

[1375] This was one question I finally had to ask her.

[1376] Because we were watching when I was like, it's not as clean as you would think.

[1377] Like, it's not as clean.

[1378] We just think in her head like they're professionals.

[1379] Did you just look at hands?

[1380] Hands are going up asses and stuff.

[1381] Like, oh, my goodness.

[1382] Do what you got to do to make it look good.

[1383] And I said, did you ever get like a finger almost in you?

[1384] And she's like, oh, 100%.

[1385] And it's not even, it doesn't feel like that.

[1386] It's just like, oh, I got bumped into.

[1387] Yeah.

[1388] God bless.

[1389] There's nothing sex.

[1390] Just imagine being a dad watching this whole thing.

[1391] Oh, I think they caught her by her vagina.

[1392] Okay.

[1393] Well, she seems fine with it.

[1394] Okay.

[1395] Let's keep going.

[1396] And they won.

[1397] Yay.

[1398] Wow.

[1399] Rain, thanks a million.

[1400] And I want people to listen to your podcast, which you have two of.

[1401] One of them is called metaphysical milkshake.

[1402] Yes.

[1403] That's on Luminary.

[1404] Metaphysical milkshake.

[1405] I have another one that's a Baha 'i one, Baha 'i blog, podcast that's, I talked to Baha 'is about Baha 'i stuff and has like 17 people that listen to it.

[1406] I listened to, well, I'm 18 because I listened this morning to you had a gentleman on who teaches Black Studies somewhere.

[1407] Yeah, Derek Smith.

[1408] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1409] Yeah, it's something like two nice human beings.

[1410] You listen to the wrong podcast in preparation for this interview, but that's okay.

[1411] Very on, very on brand for me. All right, thank you.

[1412] It was such a pleasure to be on your show.

[1413] I'm a big, big fan of the show, and congrats on all your success.

[1414] Thank you.

[1415] All right.

[1416] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1417] Oh, my goodness, am I excited to be looking at you?

[1418] I know.

[1419] It's been two weeks.

[1420] 14 days.

[1421] It's a lot of days.

[1422] 13 too many.

[1423] Yeah, I agree.

[1424] You returned to your origin.

[1425] Yes.

[1426] And you had a good time.

[1427] I did have a good time.

[1428] I saw some friends.

[1429] I saw a lot of family.

[1430] I read a book.

[1431] Uh -huh.

[1432] I did a lot of crosswords.

[1433] What book did you read?

[1434] It's called Nothing to See Here.

[1435] Nothing to See Here.

[1436] What was that about?

[1437] It was fiction.

[1438] It was fantastic.

[1439] Oh, really?

[1440] It was so good.

[1441] You know, I have a hard time with it now.

[1442] I know you do.

[1443] I'm so sad about that, yeah.

[1444] Yeah, I took a break from fiction and I'm back on it, and I'm happy.

[1445] Oh, good.

[1446] Well, you're the ultimate.

[1447] I mean, the whole Potter series is such an indelible market left on your being.

[1448] It's true.

[1449] And it's very fictitious.

[1450] Although we don't know, it could be real, we're just muggles.

[1451] I think there's a 20 % chance that's true.

[1452] 20 %?

[1453] Yeah.

[1454] That's pretty good.

[1455] Yeah.

[1456] Well, I missed you terribly.

[1457] I know.

[1458] I missed you.

[1459] I'm so glad you're back.

[1460] Me too.

[1461] And what's so interesting, I think this is kind of normal because you and I were commiserating, I guess you'd call it, is the weird thing about these holiday breaks is like, you look forward to him so much.

[1462] Yeah.

[1463] I was for sure.

[1464] Me too.

[1465] I'm like, oh, it's going to be euphoria.

[1466] And then, you know, it's normal life.

[1467] And you're like, oh, I was really looking.

[1468] I set my expectations a little high.

[1469] Yeah, sure.

[1470] And then I also realized, like, I think I like my routine more than I think I do.

[1471] Oh, yeah.

[1472] Makes you feel very grateful.

[1473] Yeah, it's all very interesting.

[1474] And I have to imagine it's pretty commonly experienced by people.

[1475] And I asked Wobbywob, how his break was and he was fine.

[1476] About the same.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] He was really looking forward to it and it was fine.

[1479] Well, being home is tough.

[1480] Yep, yep, yep.

[1481] You've talked about it before.

[1482] Yeah, being home for a long period.

[1483] of time is tough because you fall into your old family dynamics you do and I was really thinking about it when I was there I'm just not used to people asking me questions all the time right virtually no one I ask you a lot of questions though because I was thinking that I was like why does this feel so smothering I think it's just because I don't really have anyone in my life who is asking me all kinds of questions well there's no one in your life that's not not all caught up on your shit.

[1484] Like, I know every single thing about you pretty much.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] So I'm not like, I don't need to catch up on the last year that I haven't seen you.

[1487] Maybe that's what it is.

[1488] I think that's a lot.

[1489] Because I, too, was like, there's an expectation as there should be, that I should explain what my year's been like or whatever.

[1490] Sure.

[1491] And then for some reason, that feels a little daunting.

[1492] Yeah.

[1493] Cumberson.

[1494] I don't know.

[1495] I think it's just, it's just these dynamics.

[1496] Everyone just falls in and, like, where are you going?

[1497] What time are you going to be there?

[1498] Who is there?

[1499] I mean, it's, and if anyone else asked me that, I would be happy to answer, but it just felt like, but you felt like they were meddling?

[1500] Yeah, or it's just like, why do you have to know everything?

[1501] Oh, sure.

[1502] You don't need to know everything.

[1503] Yeah, I'm an adult.

[1504] I'm 32 years old.

[1505] Yeah, that's what I really kept thinking was like, I'm too old for this kind of, I just felt like I was living with my parents again.

[1506] Sure, sure.

[1507] As you were.

[1508] It is really interesting, too, because you have this role in your family, but then you go out and you create your own life.

[1509] And you may pick a different role.

[1510] In my case, I picked a different role.

[1511] And then when I go back, I'm kind of, oh, right, this is my role in this dynamic.

[1512] Yeah.

[1513] And it's just, yeah, it's interesting.

[1514] It's also just so funny what environment can do because I started to realize towards the end of the trip that I was feeling really anxious and fearful.

[1515] We were walking into a restaurant.

[1516] It was all kind of, it was raining.

[1517] And I was like, Dad, don't walk here.

[1518] Like I was just very on edge that something was bad was going to happen or I don't know.

[1519] And I think I grew up feeling pretty fearful and anxious.

[1520] And so like that environment's re -triggered that.

[1521] Yeah.

[1522] It was so strange.

[1523] Well, you do the, every year you do the New Year's Eve at grandmas, right?

[1524] Yep.

[1525] And then you list stuff that's scary or something.

[1526] There is some part, no. I know what it is.

[1527] It's just that you have to be there.

[1528] It would be very bad.

[1529] Oh, there's a superstition.

[1530] If you start the year with them, you end the year with them.

[1531] That's right.

[1532] That's what it is.

[1533] Okay, so the fun stuff I consume.

[1534] Yeah.

[1535] Because I also want to say I love seeing my family and I love being with my mom and all that.

[1536] Let me be clear about that.

[1537] Yeah, of course.

[1538] I see my brother and my sister -in -law and nieces.

[1539] On the ride up, we consume two podcasts that I really want to recommend.

[1540] One is Root of Evil.

[1541] Yep.

[1542] About the Black Dolly of Murders.

[1543] Yeah.

[1544] Holy smokes.

[1545] I have one left, I think.

[1546] Oh, you got into it.

[1547] Yeah.

[1548] Do you love it?

[1549] Yeah.

[1550] It's one of the darkest things I've ever heard.

[1551] It's very hard.

[1552] And not the murder part, the sexual stuff is on.

[1553] Well, all of it's rough, but yeah.

[1554] Yeah, I guess for me, I was just like, oh, that sexual stuff is fucking crazy.

[1555] Oof, I know.

[1556] Really good podcast though.

[1557] And then we listened to the Jeffrey Epstein one, which, you know, I have, I had a very cursory knowledge of what's happened to that guy.

[1558] I knew he fucked underage people or something.

[1559] He's a sexual predator.

[1560] But really, I don't know why he's rich.

[1561] I didn't know anything.

[1562] So that was really good.

[1563] The Mysterious Mr. Epstein.

[1564] Okay.

[1565] Really good.

[1566] Fascinating.

[1567] Again, dude, there's so much sexual deviance and fucking pathologies going on.

[1568] I know.

[1569] And I kind of launched a theory because it's really interesting.

[1570] As we were listening to the Black Dahlia one, you know, kind of goes into their, what was happening with this guy.

[1571] He was a doctor in L .A. He was the first, like, head of the VD program.

[1572] Yep.

[1573] He had kind of some leverage over people, it seems.

[1574] Some clout in the city, for sure.

[1575] And he was wealthy.

[1576] like selling treatments that people didn't need and shit he was a con artist and uh and he hung out with all this these surrealist artists and he would have these orgies yep and he they all had this very progressive view on sexuality and stuff and so well until it gets to the part where they he has sex with his daughter which is well they have progressive views but they're also very misogynistic they're very misogynistic yeah but i'm only to i was only at the part where you just kind of learn that they had orgies right right and so i was talking to christen i was like you know it's weird there's a part of me that is over -sex And I go like, yeah, that's kind of cool.

[1577] Orgy's being sexual all day long every day.

[1578] Like I'm admitting that that part of it appeals to me. Now, I don't know if that's residual damage or something.

[1579] Who knows?

[1580] But at the beginning, I was kind of making this case.

[1581] It's like, I can kind of relate to just going like, yeah, dude, orgies.

[1582] But as the story progressed, I was like, you know the problem with it is it's an addiction like any other.

[1583] And it has to top itself.

[1584] So it's like, first you just want to have sex a lot.

[1585] And then if you get to have sex with a lot of people, that's cool.

[1586] And then like, oh, maybe multiple people and you're watching other people have sex, that seems heightened too.

[1587] But, you know, once you're there, what's next?

[1588] You need a what's next.

[1589] And I'm like, oh, that's kind of why there's a pressure valve.

[1590] Like, I see why there are some norms that tamp that down because you just got to top it.

[1591] So having sex with one person's not enough so it's got to be multiple.

[1592] And then it's got to be all at the same time.

[1593] And then this fucking disgusting guy has sex with his daughter and gets it.

[1594] And then you realize, oh, well, eventually all roads lead to murder.

[1595] If you're just topping, these crazy, I'm breaking societal norms, that's the high I'm getting is breaking these norms, eventually it's going to lead to murder.

[1596] Yeah.

[1597] And I was like, oh, okay, so I kind of should examine.

[1598] Well, we've had this conversation before, similar conversations about how progressive to be with your children about sex.

[1599] And I sort of believe that children aren't mentally capable of.

[1600] of handling sex.

[1601] I think sex is way more than just the physical euphoria.

[1602] Right.

[1603] There's so much emotional stuff tied to it that is hard for, I think, even grownups to fully comprehend.

[1604] And I think it's really hard for kids.

[1605] But yeah, I think growing up, like these kids in this story.

[1606] Oh my God.

[1607] They're just like you could walk into a room and there was an orgy.

[1608] Exactly.

[1609] And that was normal to that.

[1610] Yeah, but now that part, never in my even weirdest argument was I thinking, I should be hosting orgies at my home with my children.

[1611] I know.

[1612] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1613] But I'm very pro -sex in general.

[1614] I think that's the debates we've had.

[1615] But I'm pro -sex, too.

[1616] I just think there's more weight to it than I give it credit.

[1617] Than sometimes you give it credit for.

[1618] And maybe that's residual.

[1619] I don't know.

[1620] That could be.

[1621] And then also I think there's a male -female perspective that's a little different.

[1622] There might be.

[1623] I mean, I think people should have sex whenever they want to.

[1624] But I think it's naive to say, or maybe not naive, I think it's a little bit erring on irresponsible and to an extreme sociopathic to just make it about just the physical activity because it's not just the physical activity.

[1625] It's not, you're right.

[1626] And it's infinitely better when it's respected and, yeah.

[1627] Reciprocated.

[1628] Yeah, and if there's an emotional exchange happening as well as a physical one.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] I mean, again, people, but also I think people can have sex.

[1631] just for the physical connection, if they both know it's that, want it to be that, they're both entering in the right state of mind.

[1632] And if I can just be dead honest about it, when I think of that orgy, I don't think of me orgasming a bunch of times.

[1633] That's not my, that's not the appeal.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] The appeal is like getting approval from many people, like giving many people pleasure, them thinking I'm good.

[1636] I know.

[1637] But that's unhealthy.

[1638] Yeah, of course.

[1639] And that's my whole point, does even someone who loves it and who is pro, there's something unhealthy connected to a lot of that.

[1640] Sure.

[1641] Yeah.

[1642] I don't know.

[1643] It's tricky.

[1644] It is.

[1645] Because it's also a fucking blast.

[1646] It's fun.

[1647] Yeah.

[1648] Sure.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] But anyway, so you, yeah, so you listen to those podcasts.

[1651] So that was great.

[1652] So what happened is we drove up with the whole family.

[1653] Yeah.

[1654] And God bless him.

[1655] They spent two days in a car with me. Yeah.

[1656] Your favorite thing.

[1657] I did not end up taking the Pacifica.

[1658] I just want to be honest.

[1659] Oh, you did not.

[1660] I ended up taking, called a Drangelo.

[1661] S -R -T, 485 horsepower, towing a trailer.

[1662] You never knew that trailer was behind us.

[1663] It was awesome.

[1664] I got so much pleasure out of just driving the fucking thing for two days.

[1665] Anyways, I recognize, like, these three people probably don't desire to be in the car another two days.

[1666] So I said, why don't you guys fly home?

[1667] They flew home.

[1668] So then I get to really put some road behind me. Sure.

[1669] I drove the whole stretch in 13 hours.

[1670] Oh, my goodness.

[1671] Yeah, I dropped the girls off at the airport at 10 a .m. And I was at home at 11 p .m. Wow.

[1672] With one pole over.

[1673] As you know, I told you, I got pulled over.

[1674] Anywho, then I listened to live and die in L .A., which I had read, got like best podcasts from an AP or something.

[1675] And it was really fascinating.

[1676] Well, what is that about?

[1677] It's about a woman who goes missing here about 10 blocks away.

[1678] I think she was Romanian.

[1679] She was Albanian culturally and ethnically, but they lived in Romania, I think.

[1680] And she was here living in L .A. for like 18 months, aspiring actress, goes missing.

[1681] And then you find out she's got this boyfriend.

[1682] She knows from acting class, but that guy's engaged.

[1683] Oh.

[1684] And then all this stuff, it's an incredibly riveting thing.

[1685] The one takeaway I want to say is they end up this journalist.

[1686] He gets the password of this guy, the alleged killer, Google account.

[1687] And you can type in, I forget what it was, but you can type something into Google, and they will send you everything they've ever gathered on you.

[1688] They have to know.

[1689] Really?

[1690] Everything you've ever fucking done.

[1691] for the last five years or six years, is documented to the second.

[1692] So they got to go on the day of the disappearance.

[1693] They followed his Google history, which is checking in every, like forget cell phone tower pings.

[1694] Those are useless.

[1695] The Google thing that knows your exact location, to the point where like if he pulled over down a dirt road, they knew he was around the car walking around the car for 45 minutes.

[1696] Oh my God.

[1697] They knew he went to a hardware store.

[1698] They figured out he bought shovels.

[1699] They know everything you've done.

[1700] Is it ethical?

[1701] I don't know if it is.

[1702] I mean, of course I like that it's helping murderers get discovered, but.

[1703] Now, every single pit stop you've made anywhere exists.

[1704] You could just get it right now.

[1705] You could type in this, and they give it on the podcast.

[1706] They give the web address you go to, and you type in your thing, and they send you everything they've gathered on you.

[1707] But you have to prove that you're the person, right?

[1708] Well, I think you have to give your password to Google.

[1709] Oh, wow.

[1710] Yeah.

[1711] I mean, they stopped at this gas station.

[1712] for six minutes they stopped here he went out of range for 49 minutes where they found the body i mean oh my god yeah yeah yeah well okay i guess don't commit murders in 2020 you can't yeah yeah yeah you gotta leave that phone at home is what you gotta do i don't know if i should give tips to people on how to avoid getting caught but did you watch um don't fuck with Cats.

[1713] Oh, no, I saw that on Netflix.

[1714] It popped up.

[1715] What is it?

[1716] Is it?

[1717] What is it?

[1718] It's great.

[1719] It's a three -part doc about this group on Facebook that comes together because a guy posted a horrible video of him killing a cat.

[1720] Oh, I think I know about it.

[1721] And they all like go on basically this witch hunt to find him.

[1722] And it escalates.

[1723] Oh, I got to watch it.

[1724] It's really good.

[1725] I watched it.

[1726] twice.

[1727] I watched by myself and then I watched it with my parents.

[1728] Really?

[1729] You're so good about that.

[1730] You'll watch something again.

[1731] Other thing I consumed on the break, which is great, is uncut gems.

[1732] I went to the movie theater and saw it on Christmas Day.

[1733] I really want to watch that.

[1734] Fuck, it's good.

[1735] It's so good.

[1736] He's so good.

[1737] He is.

[1738] So good.

[1739] So that was some lighthouse keeping.

[1740] Lighthousekeeping.

[1741] Do you have any resolutions?

[1742] Also, it's your birthday.

[1743] Oh, it is.

[1744] 45 years old.

[1745] to my friends.

[1746] Thank you.

[1747] Very old now, 45.

[1748] Nope.

[1749] That's part of my New Year's Resolution.

[1750] Very young.

[1751] My story is I'm young.

[1752] You are young.

[1753] I'm old.

[1754] Yeah, I'm young.

[1755] You look like you're 20.

[1756] Oh, thank you so much.

[1757] You sure do.

[1758] Oh, my New Year's Resolution is I'm going to start telling people I'm a great sleeper.

[1759] I love that.

[1760] Yeah.

[1761] I'm going to try it.

[1762] I think it's such a. This is ridiculous.

[1763] What's not right?

[1764] I think that's so evolved.

[1765] I'm also, and this is so evolved.

[1766] I'm also, and this is.

[1767] So I hated this about my dad because my dad was into course of miracles and he was sober and he was into all these spiritual things and I was a young cynical bastard.

[1768] Yeah.

[1769] And he had daily affirmations on his mirror.

[1770] Yeah.

[1771] That's beautiful.

[1772] Yes.

[1773] But guess what?

[1774] I'm going to do them.

[1775] I'm going to put you a great sleeper on my mirror.

[1776] I like that.

[1777] Yeah.

[1778] That's going to be my new story.

[1779] I'm a great sleeper.

[1780] Man, I hit the fucking bed.

[1781] Boom.

[1782] Out.

[1783] Solid sleep.

[1784] You know, it's connected to your resolution from last year.

[1785] To not, yeah, not complain.

[1786] I didn't do a great job last year.

[1787] I mean, I got better.

[1788] We kind of forgot about them.

[1789] Yeah, it's just like, it's such muscle memory.

[1790] You just start fucking complaining.

[1791] I know.

[1792] Yeah, my other resolution is to love where I'm at.

[1793] That's good.

[1794] I feel like you do a good job at that.

[1795] I don't always do it when I'm filming because I'm like, I'm gone.

[1796] It's so many hours a week and I get grumpy about it.

[1797] It occurred to me like, what a waste.

[1798] I got a love for wherever.

[1799] I'm at.

[1800] So that's, that's the other one.

[1801] I like that too.

[1802] What are yours?

[1803] I didn't make any.

[1804] Okay.

[1805] But I have a lot of things I want to do.

[1806] So there's sort of resolutions, but they're just habits I want to do this year.

[1807] I have a new eating regimen.

[1808] Oh, what is it?

[1809] Is it regimen or regimen?

[1810] I think it's, what is, what did, you said regimen?

[1811] What did you say?

[1812] Regiment.

[1813] With a T?

[1814] Yeah.

[1815] I think it's regimen.

[1816] Yeah, Monica's right.

[1817] Oh, isn't that regime?

[1818] You're just pronouncing the I am short balance.

[1819] The regime doesn't have an N. Oh, okay, okay.

[1820] Anywho, so I'm going two days vegan.

[1821] Okay.

[1822] One day vegetarian.

[1823] Okay.

[1824] Ooh, this, I'm nervous.

[1825] It's a big swing, but okay.

[1826] No, it's not.

[1827] Two days vegan, one day vegetarian, two days meat only for one meal.

[1828] Okay.

[1829] That I got from Jonathan.

[1830] Yeah, saffron.

[1831] Saffron, thank you, Jonathan.

[1832] And then two days I can do whatever I want.

[1833] Yeah, let's hang on those two days.

[1834] Well, no, it's good because then...

[1835] Can you make those days on my days off?

[1836] Yeah, exactly.

[1837] That really is what I'm thinking is like, okay, I'm going to dinner on Wednesday night that day.

[1838] We're going to Houston's tonight for my birthday.

[1839] I'm not really starting this until Monday.

[1840] Oh, okay.

[1841] I mean Sunday.

[1842] But the vegan thing is, I think, going to be hard, but I'm going to commit to it and I'm going to do it.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] You'll find the things you like.

[1845] As you remember, I did it for a year.

[1846] I know.

[1847] Yeah, Jess has done it.

[1848] Yeah, it can be done.

[1849] It can be, I've seen, I know humans have done it.

[1850] I can do it two days.

[1851] Those are good, those are good resolutions.

[1852] That's my diet.

[1853] I'm also going to start meditating every day.

[1854] I used to do it and it was good and then I stopped.

[1855] And so I'm going to try to do that.

[1856] What technique did you use when you did it?

[1857] I use apps.

[1858] Oh, okay, great.

[1859] And I got this journal for Christmas from a friend that's actually the happiness project journal.

[1860] Okay.

[1861] So you're supposed to write down something.

[1862] from your day, but I am going to do every day something I'm grateful for.

[1863] Oh, good.

[1864] Yeah.

[1865] So that's my regime.

[1866] That's a lot.

[1867] You're going to start journaling.

[1868] You're going to be vegan two days a week.

[1869] But they're all manageable because the journaling The journaling is one sentence a day.

[1870] Oh, that's doable.

[1871] Yeah.

[1872] It's one sentence.

[1873] The diet has lots of ways for me to, it's not so strict.

[1874] Okay.

[1875] And the meditation will be the trickiest part of making that a habit.

[1876] Yeah, yeah, because you got to wake up a little earlier.

[1877] Or do it before bed.

[1878] Yeah.

[1879] Is that one that you can do it?

[1880] Yeah.

[1881] There's like sleep ones.

[1882] The TM thing is you do it right when you wake up before you've had any coffee or anything.

[1883] Sure.

[1884] And then you do it at five before, or roughly five, before you eat dinner so your belly's empty.

[1885] You're not like digesting food.

[1886] That's kind of the, it's like midday.

[1887] You reset again.

[1888] Yeah.

[1889] I'm going to do it.

[1890] Okay, I think you will.

[1891] I worked out a lot when I was home.

[1892] Were you running?

[1893] Yeah.

[1894] Yeah.

[1895] And then doing an apple.

[1896] butt exercise.

[1897] Oh, it's called Applebutt?

[1898] Uh -huh.

[1899] I did a butt exercise yesterday.

[1900] You did.

[1901] Two days ago.

[1902] Yeah.

[1903] On the tonal.

[1904] Yeah.

[1905] And it gave me a burn.

[1906] I've been like, I worked out a lot too up in Oregon and I was squatting a lot and sometimes really focusing on that.

[1907] My butt too.

[1908] Apple butt.

[1909] Yeah.

[1910] And that's our resolution to get an apple butt by the end of the year.

[1911] God, I wish.

[1912] I wish.

[1913] And I thought, oh, I'll do this tonal because I lifted heavy yesterday and this will be easy.

[1914] Yeah.

[1915] It was not.

[1916] Am I?

[1917] Am I?

[1918] Quads have been sore.

[1919] That's great.

[1920] It is good.

[1921] It is good.

[1922] Well, yeah, I got a burn.

[1923] Oh, apple bun burn.

[1924] Applebutt.

[1925] Okay, so Rain.

[1926] What a sweetheart.

[1927] Oh, my goodness.

[1928] I enjoyed him so much.

[1929] You know, there's been a few people that have come in that when they leave, I just have been thinking about them a lot since.

[1930] Yeah, Tony Hale.

[1931] And Rain.

[1932] Mm -hmm.

[1933] Rain said this lovely thing about us meeting all again.

[1934] and doing a podcast on the next spiritual plane.

[1935] Uh -huh.

[1936] And I just love that idea so much.

[1937] I mean, I'm not saying I believe that's going to happen or I don't believe that's going to happen, but I think I'm going to choose to believe that it is.

[1938] And again, in this year 2020 where I've decided to take the reins on the story I'm telling myself and just pick the best story I can where I'm a great sleeper and I'm going to meet you on a spiritual plane.

[1939] Why not?

[1940] I know.

[1941] Why not?

[1942] Yeah.

[1943] I'm going to do that too.

[1944] That's kind of like the undercurrent of the New Year's resolution is just pick my story now, be conscious of the story I'm telling, and pick one I like.

[1945] Yeah, I like that.

[1946] And then I'll have to confirm that my theory is correct because that's what we do.

[1947] That's good.

[1948] Okay, so you said a billion people are on Facebook and they generate a quadrillion dollars in ad revenue.

[1949] Yeah, that's right, a Googleplex of money.

[1950] And Rain said he thinks it's three or four billion, half the world.

[1951] 1 .62 billion people on average log on to Facebook daily.

[1952] Oh, my God.

[1953] And I forgot to look up ad revenue.

[1954] Oh, that's okay.

[1955] I think it's a Googleplex.

[1956] Okay.

[1957] So he said The Rocker was one of the biggest box office bombs in American history.

[1958] So not true.

[1959] I know.

[1960] Well, he said per screen average number of people that went to the movie, but nobody is calculating.

[1961] Well, also the movie didn't cost a bunch.

[1962] That's the thing.

[1963] He has his own metric in his head for that, which is not what anybody else is evaluating box office bombs on because I looked that up.

[1964] And I'm not going to read what they are because I don't want to do that.

[1965] There's no reason.

[1966] But he's not on the top 100.

[1967] There you go.

[1968] Yeah.

[1969] There you go.

[1970] I always say chips bombed.

[1971] Chips is not on the top hundred either.

[1972] Also, like it costs $25 million and it made $26 million.

[1973] Yeah.

[1974] And then there's not, that can't even be considered a bomb.

[1975] It's just a push.

[1976] It's a straight push But yeah My head is a big epic failure But not this year Chips was a rousing success Well it was a rousing success I had the time of my fucking life Exactly It was It was a life win And led you to a lot of amazing things Yep Gonna fucking host Top Gear For crying out loud For crying Oh The British Office was 12 episodes There was some confusion About how many episodes Right because there was like a Christmas special Yeah Yeah, something like that.

[1977] I never watched it, as you know.

[1978] Yeah, got it.

[1979] I'd re -watch that again.

[1980] Okay.

[1981] I'll watch it.

[1982] Split second.

[1983] But you'll probably suffer from the same, yeah, you'll suffer from the same thing I had.

[1984] I know, but opposite.

[1985] Yeah.

[1986] Oh, he said, he's talking about Baha 'i and how there's a teaching in Baha 'i about not to gossip.

[1987] Mm -hmm.

[1988] And he said he didn't know if it was in any other spiritual teaching.

[1989] But there are some, like the Bible, it's, I saw a proverb.

[1990] that says, a perverse man stirs up dissension and a gossip separates close friends.

[1991] And then there's something on the Quran.

[1992] There's like a few things that allude to gossip being bad in some of these other religions as well.

[1993] But maybe they're just not as explicit.

[1994] Yeah.

[1995] Or it's not a tenant that they're really putting a lot of stock in.

[1996] Exactly.

[1997] Also, you know, they use like hard to understand language in those books.

[1998] Oh, I can't make sense.

[1999] It's like Shakespeare.

[2000] It is.

[2001] I can't do it.

[2002] Okay, so he said that the Amish are dying of these crazy genetic diseases.

[2003] Recessive disorders?

[2004] And there is this guy, James Deline, not guy, doctor.

[2005] Okay.

[2006] This doctor, James Deline.

[2007] And he serves the Amish in Wisconsin.

[2008] So he has come across all these really rare diseases that are in that community and pretty much that community alone.

[2009] I don't know if I need to go through all of them, but there's seven he's really concerned about it.

[2010] Yeah.

[2011] Okay.

[2012] What's the top one?

[2013] The first one is called Galloway Moat syndrome.

[2014] First identified in 1968.

[2015] A little more than 70 cases of this genetic disorder have been described in the medical literature ever.

[2016] This disorder can cause a range of symptoms including early onset kidney disease, significantly smaller head circumference.

[2017] Oh boy.

[2018] Yep.

[2019] malformations of the brain, seizures, reduce muscle tone throughout the body.

[2020] I know.

[2021] I want to be ripped and smart.

[2022] That's the opposite of that.

[2023] Yeah.

[2024] One of them has like this horrible one where the children are born rigid.

[2025] Oh, like not flexible.

[2026] Like stuck and then they do pass.

[2027] Oh, my God.

[2028] I know, I know.

[2029] Yeah, we don't need.

[2030] Okay.

[2031] Yeah, yeah.

[2032] But anyway, I mean.

[2033] This is why diversity is good.

[2034] Exactly, yeah.

[2035] There was this a fascinating episode of 60 Minutes a few weeks ago and it had this Harvard geneticist on.

[2036] He was saying that they're working on this app where you would upload your genome to it and then it would screen everyone else on the dating app and exclude anyone that would also have the same recessive gene you would have and that they're saying within a generation of using this app they'd get rid of almost all these recessive diseases.

[2037] Oh, my God.

[2038] Diseases that come up.

[2039] Isn't that fascinating?

[2040] Whoa, that is so interesting.

[2041] Huh.

[2042] Man, that was a great episode.

[2043] I got a lot of reversing aging.

[2044] Creating a DNA chain that no virus can live in.

[2045] They could add to your DNA and a virus simply can't do it.

[2046] Oh, my God.

[2047] Anoculation from every single virus ever, simulation's real.

[2048] My dad's simulation?

[2049] The Shok's fucking simulation, man. He bought the platinum package.

[2050] Wow.

[2051] He really paid, which is ironic.

[2052] We talked for two hours about your dad's simulation at the Hansen's.

[2053] You did?

[2054] Yeah, yesterday on New Year's.

[2055] What did you say?

[2056] Well, I was just making a case for me being an avatar in your dad's simulation, which they were very confused by that.

[2057] My theory would be I'm computer generated.

[2058] But I'm like, of course for the generated, you'd have to believe you're real.

[2059] The avatars couldn't not think they're real.

[2060] So, of course.

[2061] I'm fake.

[2062] And then we were just, he was like, but your stories, you know, and I go, but Ashok's is better.

[2063] Like, well, I left Michigan and came to Hollywood.

[2064] Ashok left India.

[2065] So this is like the Iliad or The Odyssey.

[2066] This is a saga.

[2067] But wait, okay, okay.

[2068] Now I've got to get the details a little bit.

[2069] Okay.

[2070] I'm getting the weeds.

[2071] Is he, so my dad is paying per avatar?

[2072] I don't think that's the case.

[2073] Listen, your dad is hooked up to a machine somewhere.

[2074] Correct.

[2075] And he bought a package.

[2076] He bought a story.

[2077] Yeah.

[2078] And in the story, he's going to go on this journey and all these things are going to happen.

[2079] So he knows going in?

[2080] Well, no, because they have to surprise him.

[2081] Exactly.

[2082] And your dad is unaware that he has bought this package.

[2083] That's also part of it, yeah.

[2084] So my dad is in his own simulation.

[2085] Yeah, he's hooked up to a machine somewhere and his brain is online living out this fantasy.

[2086] Right.

[2087] And I'm a character in it, as we've discussed.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] And, yeah, in this package, he had two kids and he moved here and he became an engineer and all this stuff happened.

[2090] it's all all preordained but he doesn't know about it yeah but i don't think he knows what he bought like i think he just bought like a good pat like a platinum package yeah i just i'm picking platinum i want it to be good all the way through yeah with some struggles but then some big victories exactly yeah but we also came to the conclusion that it's quite likely not unlike these people who play fortnight apparently i learned this from my brother and my nieces that that people weren't winning Fortnite or they weren't placing high enough.

[2091] And so a little bit of dissatisfaction with the game was that it was two harks, there was all these other people that were really good at.

[2092] And that there's now bots in it.

[2093] Now, I don't know if any of this is true, but there's now bots that were created that are just kind of average players or not very good players so that the real players can feel better.

[2094] I don't know of any of that's true.

[2095] This is what I was told.

[2096] So then it's conceivable.

[2097] So if that's true in Fortnite is a mix of like there's 100 players and only 30 of them are real and the other 70 are bots, it's likely that in this simulation there's many real people that have bought into the same thing so it's possible you and I are real and Wabi Wob's real and then other people are bots like in Fortnite again allegedly I prefer that I prefer to think you're not a computer generated friend I want you to be a real person that really likes me it wasn't designed to like me but we won't know so who cares well that's a very nihilist view of it all I don't want my kids to be computer generated.

[2098] I want them to be real.

[2099] But to you, they're real regardless.

[2100] I know, okay.

[2101] Well, anyways, I do like the idea that there's like, there are some real people here.

[2102] Oh.

[2103] But the reason that doesn't work is the real people might screw up the simulation.

[2104] So I don't think we can have real people in there because they might just go willy -nilly and then screw up and then they're going to have his money back because he bought platinum package.

[2105] Well, Eric made a great, he launched a great theory, which was we know which ones are the avatars and which are the real people because the avatars would not be talking about the simulation like it'd be in their code to never make a case for this being a simulation not good enough no they've definitely thought of that that's like step six that's 101 oh yeah yeah okay so look i you know we we talked about this a lot when i saw the 60 minutes thing i'm like if they turn off aging yeah they turn off aging yeah what are the odds that in a planet that's five billion years old i lived in the 45 years of that five billion where they turned off aging Impossible.

[2106] It's a simulation.

[2107] That one is a five billion years span.

[2108] I was born in the 45 years where they turned off aging.

[2109] You're lucky.

[2110] You got in the best simulation.

[2111] My dad's is the best one.

[2112] And I'd argue even you missed some stuff I got to do that was an 80s thing, you know.

[2113] Like it was more Wild Wild West when I grew up, which is kind of cool.

[2114] Well, I don't know about talking on the phone a lot.

[2115] I talked on the phone a ton.

[2116] Yeah, yeah.

[2117] Oh, I do agree that I'm so grateful for the time I grew up.

[2118] Yeah, I guess everyone probably is.

[2119] I know.

[2120] But the one thing I thought of is like young aspiring daters, young men who want a girlfriend.

[2121] The reason I had girlfriends is I had a fucking solid phone game.

[2122] I could talk to a girl on the phone in seventh grade for three hours.

[2123] Thank God.

[2124] Think of there was a phone where I could win them over on the phone.

[2125] Well, text now.

[2126] It's texting.

[2127] Can you win a girl over?

[2128] Would say you can?

[2129] I mean, I think you can.

[2130] I think it's It's not great because people can be good at texting and not be good in life.

[2131] But there were these hunks in my junior high.

[2132] They had no phone game.

[2133] And I left them in the dust.

[2134] Thank God.

[2135] Now it's probably a hunk's rule again.

[2136] That's a good time to be a hunk.

[2137] Age of the hunk, 2020.

[2138] Okay, so he said 300 ,000 people died in the Haiti earthquake.

[2139] The number I found was 230 ,000.

[2140] It's a lot of people.

[2141] It's a lot, too many people.

[2142] And then he said 40 -some percent sexual abuse in Haiti.

[2143] I couldn't find that percentage number, but there is a lot, I mean, there's like a hundred articles about the insane sexual abuse there.

[2144] It's a real problem.

[2145] Back to that sex thing.

[2146] Now, in your, you're optimistic about, I wish I were more optimistic about this.

[2147] You believe that if we socialize boys correctly, that that isn't their default setting, right?

[2148] And I kind of think guys' default setting is they would like to have sex with every person.

[2149] I think it's both.

[2150] I think there's a lot of societal.

[2151] I think it's mainly societal.

[2152] And then I think there is some biological component.

[2153] Can we check in with Wobby.

[2154] Wobby Wobbe, if you could have sex daily with.

[2155] strangers and there was zero zero complications from it or hurt or anything just happened in a vacuum you hit pause on life and you could do that would you do would you desire to do that yeah yeah yeah that's fine i know i know guys that i don't think i just proved anything i'm just curious if yeah i i know guys that would not say yes to that right and so i don't think you can say it's every guy i think it's just like anything it's a spectrum of sexuality everyone is on that scale in a different way.

[2156] And Wabi Wob and I are 10s.

[2157] I guess.

[2158] Apparently now we know.

[2159] Yeah.

[2160] I guess so.

[2161] That's all.

[2162] That was all?

[2163] Yeah.

[2164] Oh, well, God darn it.

[2165] I wanted that break, but you know what?

[2166] I wanted way more is to be back doing this.

[2167] Me too.

[2168] Chatting.

[2169] So grateful.

[2170] Me too.

[2171] This is, I'm the happiest here.

[2172] Me too.

[2173] Yeah.

[2174] I love you.

[2175] I love you, Wabiwab.

[2176] Happy New Year to everyone.

[2177] Happy New Year.

[2178] And let's really commit to partying hard this year.

[2179] Yeah, two days a week vegan.

[2180] All right.

[2181] Love you guys.

[2182] I love you.

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