#1158 - Chuck Palahniuk

Aug 22, 2018

Chuck Palahniuk is a novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as "transgressional" fiction. He is the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby, and many others.

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ladies and gentlemen and everybody in between all the round the Spectrum yo this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the sweet baby have you experienced the cash app do you know what the fuck I'm talking about well if you don't what the cash app is first boss number one app in finance and it's a free customizable know this whole thing again

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call because I got some, days coming up to ladies in motherfucking gentleman how's everybody doing and everybody else to people who are not ladies and not gentleman whatever you want to call yourself I got a lot of shit going on folks the first of all the show on September 29th in Toronto is being moved we're moving it to another venue right now it's currently supposed to be at the Ricoh Coliseum and it is being moved to it's called the air we find out right now I'll pull it up real quick but what happened was Toronto is having a strike there is there's a union it's having strike there and because of this Union that's having a strike

we have to move venues the new venue is still a union venue but it is a different Union in this unit is not on strike so we're going to move it to the Air Canada Centre it's now called Scotiabank Arena I think that I said Scotiabank Scotia Bank Arena Scotiabank Arena Thunder different Union contract and it all

it was so weird scabs but you know we don't have to we don't have to worry about the show being potentially shut down which apparently is happening there so there's that the good news is the air the other show the Ricoh Coliseum show when I was at the Ricoh Coliseum it's totally sold out but because we're moving it to the Scotiabank Arena that is added an additional 1000 seats so those will actually make it 1200 so those will be up for sale soon any day now other than that I got a lot of shit happening I am going to Ohio

Schottenstein the set right yeah that is at that's a big one that's a giant ass place but it's almost sold out as well that is on September 14th and I think that's basically everything that's for sale everything else is either sold out or

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20 bucks off plus free bacon in your first box but going to butcherbox.com using discount code Rogan at checkout lazy gentleman my guess today is a fantastic writer who wrote Fight Club guts many many other amazing stories please give it up for Chuck Palahniuk

The Joe Rogan Experience

how are you I am great look at this place thanks for being here man appreciate it thank you I've read you books up I've watched movies based on your book so it's very cool to meet you in real life it's always a disappointment it is always so heartbreaking because people expect somebody somebody so not me and I am constantly breaking the heart when they meet me well I expect you so you're not breaking my heart at all I'm very pleased to meet you so I didn't have any weirdo expectations her delusions of who you are and don't kill yourself okay

I mean Anthony Bourdain any chill some self well I think there's a lot of other factors involved there I see this I want to meet them when they're gone yeah I'm not going to do that okay so don't worry everything's fine listen I want to talk to you about a bunch of things first of all process because one of them when things are red ones is I believe you were writing down it was on the cape is in Massachusetts we ever riding down there with you we have a writing somewhere where you made a deal with yourself where you wouldn't turn the heat on unless you were writing that's like an extra white people New England anything like that about you I'm sorry never been on you never been to Cape Cod never had

person that's wonderful maybe something for many many years that someone said that they were a forcing themselves to be discipline writing and so they wouldn't write unless I have the heat on and so they they lived in this place over the winter. Michael Cunningham is that who was because he I think that's his story about living in Provincetown might have been fuck this all up but terrible way to get going. I wanted to talk to you though. I don't want any at all I just sleep I'm fortunate in that regard all right you don't take that shit to you course I do you're fucking with me

we got to work I start off poorly why is the day once a day do you really take the Shoemaker thing is I don't want to do my taxes so I take Ambien and then I wake up and my taxes are done and do you have plausible deniability to if you can get videotape you take an Ambien people have committed murder on Ambien and gotten off yeah they had no memory that is true yeah it's a hypnotic we we actually did a pretty in-depth discussion about that after the Roseanne Barr thing came out who is taking it she stopped taking it but one of the reasons why I stopped taking it cuz she woke up in the middle of the night and Shadow white bathroom mat and she painted it with lipstick and makeup should no recollection of it whatsoever but you paint it like a two year old would they got a hold their mom's lipstick and she just woke up and what the fuck

I doing like what is this selection of it by young woman in London climb to the top of a construction crane fell asleep on the huge counterweight so far over London wakes up in the morning birds around her she has no idea where she's at she is terrified Jesus Christ

you ready buddy I'm being right now I am so if it seems like you're writing like one of your one of the ways you collect data is almost like you're reporting on these people like you're you're collecting real life interactions between people in real life characteristics and then you incorporate them into fiction exactly so I need to introduce a topic and see if it resonates and then get everybody's take on these common experiences and then pick the very best one so it away basically what I'm doing is kind of an ongoing field study and that becomes whatever my next book is

when you wrote Fight Club you tapped into something that it was really fascinating for me if someone has been involved in martial arts my whole life and I'm kind of understood the cathartic release of violence but I never saw it articulated the way you did and you made it enticing for thinking person you made it like

you what you do at you you sort of opened up these these doors of understanding for someone who maybe maybe had frustration or had some pent-up Rage or had some some tanks that just was not going to get out any other way and then you wrote about it and then when you wrote you were reading what you wrote it make me to go yeah okay all right now it's like you you added an element to it that really didn't exist before in pop culture it was really fascinating for me as someone who's walk watching that whole thing on Furrow and watching people get really really resonating with people watching people really getting excited about your work so I call he had some nerve that really hit before

and it's not a girl that gets hit very much you know there's so many different aspects to it and one is just

my classic thing is that there are so few social model novels for stories for men for women there are every season there's a new Joy Luck Club in New how to make an American Quilt the new traveling Sisterhood of the yoga pants whatever in which women can come together and talk about their lives and if your man you've got either fight club or you have the Dead Poets Society

and that is really it so we don't have a lot of narratives that that depict to men Aurora kind of script and wish to come together and talk about their there another thing is

Jordan Peterson back to Jordan Peterson he talks about that need for really rough play

and he talks about it a lot and a lot of my friends did they they brag about how badly their kids hurt them oh my gosh my daughter came at me the other day I had no idea how strong she was she pulled my arm out of the socket and they're proud that proud of their kid to play that rough and is growing up that strong but you know we kind of falling away from this idea of consensual rough play and I think Fight Club resonated with that a lot and also the idea of Joseph Campbell's idea

that there needs to be a secondary father in men's lives that you're born if you're lucky with a biological father that you do not choose and that is the nurturing loving father that you have actually kind of have to reject but in doing so you have to choose a new father and that that father by choice typically is at a minister or a teacher or a drill sergeant coach one of those fathers and you kind of put yourself in a printer ship to the secondary father and you have to sort of consign your life to the secondary father and agree to learn but they're going to teach you just like in Karate Kid and that is getting harder and harder and harder to find so if I quit was also depicting a new form of the secondary father with all these these kids that were showing up on the doorstep of this ramshackle old house

so they were just so many aspects of men's lives that were not being addressed would fight club came out and it sort of reinvented so many of those things that have fallen by the wayside that's a huge part of martial arts a huge part of martial arts is your relationship with the master with the coach with finding someone who can Guide You Through The Most Dangerous Waters of competition that it's it's absolutely imperative that bad relationships of coaches are absolutely disasters and it it's it's imperative that someone find the right coach find someone who they were they really can trust and appreciate and you do develop it's such a common theme they talk about this person being like a son or this person being like a father you know I mean it's it's I never thought about it that way I guess I forgot about that part of Joseph Campbell but yeah that is a huge huge issue with with young men and young men getting in the martial arts of something that I talked about so many times

I don't discuss what is the need for rough play I say that she would reward systems that are just not being did not being met and that systems that have been in place for a thousands and thousands of years that are designed to reward us for fighting off the enemy running away from danger developing physical skills and having a body that's capable of not just physical activity but violence and Beyond just that you know it's always the whole idea of apprenticeship in a whether you are a friend of seeing yourself to a fighting coach what you want metallurgist or to a welder or to a bricklayer or to a Mason you are princess in yourself to somebody that you're going to do all this grunt work for but it and exchange you're going to you can learn it kind of really Master skill at something and so

it's a way of mastering yourself as you master this other thing so just always a physical you know fighting thing it doesn't have to be in that form just difficult something it's a struggle something it's hard to to learn right yeah and that relationship you have with that secondary father to that it's almost in some ways more intense the the pride of someone teaching you something and then you eventually developing those skills and then this person who is teaching you this being proud of your work is extremely satisfactory Officer and a Gentleman you know Richard Gere really has not their dad and then he has his drill sergeant who's constantly trying to wash them out and then finally he reaches it at the existential crisis of saying you can't throw me out of the service because I have nothing else I have nowhere else to go in the world

full amount to nothing unless I can Master this thing and he's a relatively young man but it is at existentialist moment where you you realize that you have to sacrifice your youth or something you're not going to live forever it's a very Martin Heidegger moment when you realize you have to become a being living towards death you're not going to live forever and you've got to give your life to something know when you approach a novel like that when you have a story like that says brewing your head how do you decide what to pull the trigger on like you just go on Instinct did you just have a concept in your head and it just seems more and more attractive and you just say okay this is it

you no one really good chest is if you can take it to a party and you can tell a very small part of it as much of it as you know what that point and people will buy for a chance to relate some aspect of their life that is very much like that but didn't even more extreme example of that so in a way there there flushing out your thing with parts of their own lives and so you find yourself drawing from the experience of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people and at the same time your beta testing it you're kind of taking it on the road and you're seeing that it's an idea that rezac resonates with a huge number of people that everyone can relate to it that's interesting to do purposely let go to parties with like a couple like bullets in the chamber

sometimes or sometimes I just go to the party and I listen to hear somebody tell that that personal anecdote that does invoke all those other anecdotes because a great anecdote doesn't leave people speechless it leads some competing to tell a better version of the same thing and that's when a real writer just starts realizing okay there's a pattern and that can be turned into something really big that's really interesting there's a parallel there with comedy for sure that's if you in good material often times not always but often times to see the I was gone all my God you do that that's fast mini you brought up when you send the notes to Matt was censorship and that and end in N self-censorship which is going on apparently and writer groups

and groups of people that are deciding that certain words should be eliminated from the vocabulary and from vernacular and then you shouldn't discuss certain things anymore. These things are it's harming fiction harming literature you can explore the darker ideas you know

you want to see me crucify myself right now yeah okay this is going to be a career-ending moment

for several years I was in a Writers Workshop and the core group of us have been meeting since 1990 so this is a workshop that was almost 30 years old

and gradually people

were asking each other not to use certain words first you know nobody really use the n-word but it was definitely a word you could not bring the workshop and then in a story I used to work and a very good friend of mine said you're not bringing that word into Workshop you're not writing anything with the f word and and it just became more and more tightly structured that way and So eventually I realized we were kind of writing to him make each other happy instead of two kind of confront each other

and one of the writers in our Workshop is a writer named Cheryl Strayed who who would win the book called wild which was a huge really successful book it was chosen as an Oprah book and it will be on bookstore shelves for the rest of History Cheryl's book Wild but while she was writing it she had written the segment about how is a child she would be sat on the sofa with her grandfather and her grandfather taught her how to masturbate him and so is a child she would masturbate her grandfather until he achieve orgasm

and then later she would find these Federalists Federalist birds that are falling out of a nest and she picked one up and she knew it would die so she crushed it between her bare hands this is a very small child and she wrote hell as that bird I'd crushed between her hands it it's death Rose is spasms of death felt exactly like her grandfather's penis ejaculating in her little hand that was the best thing she ever wrote

and her editor Rick not said that is not going in this book

because we want this book to be a big book

and if we see you jerking off your grandfather and then killing baby birds Dad is not going to make Oprah Winfrey happy

so it was a magnificent piece of writing and a magnificent kind of parallel and awareness for a child 1/2 and is juxtaposition of sexual abuse and death is magnificent oh my God it work on every level

but the publisher said this is not going to be in the book did she send it to you or did you show it to you she brought it to work shop and she read it there was even a newspaper reporter present there and we all realized it was fantastically powerful

but then she said they won't take this this can't go in

WoW did she do anything with it she publish it online or no it and there was so many parts of that book there was so much better than what they actually did publish really thin so it's that kind of censorship where

you're trying to reach a reader standing in line at Starbucks and this is got to go in that at point of purchase stand and it's got to be a face out and I had to stand for a long time if you wanted a face out yet Barnes & Noble especially on the Discover new writers base out stack you cannot have the word fuck on the first page because they did not want people picking up that book and opening it and seeing the f word that that just did not fit their corporate culture and so you know so much of the censorship is is because people really want to reach the largest audience without offending people

but this giant problems with that right I mean one of the more fascinating things about books is that the story plays out in your mind exactly the nature of consumption makes it about the only medium which in which you can go to those places yeah literally you you couldn't there's no way you'd be able to find

get me to put that in a book her story about a grandfather in the bird maybe you could put the bird in

the grandfather part business know why

yeah and I feel like I'm telling stories out of school but it's such a perfect example of that kind of self-censorship and it's also something so magnificent that I feel it should come out you should sort of be stated I don't want to steal her Thunder I wanted to honor the story but it's like so many stories of people tell me I'm kind of seen as a safe person you know what kind of integrated monster maybe but as a degraded monster with no self-esteem whatsoever they feel safe telling me these things because in a way that you probably feel a little morally Superior to me why do you think he would consider you integrated monster because I can read a story like guts that is so

completely humiliating because as I read it it's in the first person so people more or less assume that it's my story even though it's stories garnered from many different people but the fact that I'm presenting it means I'm the person that is that is losing space and afterwards people feel like they can risk losing face by telling me their story that's very much like they got story so when someone is writing something it's deeply disturbing like that when you when you when you hit those parts of your mind and you come to this pathway do you consider do you say well no one's ever going to allow this to being a book no one's ever ever consider those thoughts or do you just go through with it first and then review it what you done not do that all you know my formative years were the punk years the 70s and the 80s and we always used to have the same people would say don't hit the break until you

glass breaker don't stop until you hear glass break and so I always think the point of writing is it coach yourself to that point that you would never have gone voluntarily and also to coach a reader to the point where the reader would never have gone voluntarily in a story like God's you know it's very funny on the front end and if you told people on the front end where it was going to go they never read that story but it's very funny and charming and will paste on the front and then once people realize where it's going to go there already trapped in a way it's a way to enjoy that though you like the way you said they already trapped you seem to take some satisfaction in that but in writing it I'm also

assorted springing the trap on myself starting down a path that I have no idea is going to be so humiliating or so emotionally upsetting or so dark because if I did I would never go down that path

when you write a story like that how much of a d plan out in advance

I might plan out up to the end of the second act you know at the moment of greatest crisis this will happen you know in Fight Club the moment of greatest crisis is going to be when everyone in the support groups figures out that this guy is lying to them and they're all given the choice of either

accepting him for his transgressions or rejecting him

same thing and choke does going to be that moment when people realize that he is fake choking and that he's made them into a fake hero and they're going to either kill him or accept him and so typically know that the second act is going to end with the transgression being revealed but beyond that I don't want to know because I want the story to complete itself with its own momentum at that point and it doesn't surprise me be on the second act then it's not going to surprise the reader

do you write do you have like a storyboard lay down and do you do you like index cards or anything to figure out where things are going or do you just kind of know yeah I know you know that's part of the glory is it whenever I get stuck I go to the gym and I say okay this time working on this scene where this happens in this happens this happens and my friends will say till always be somebody there with a really fresh take and life experience who can say why have you thought about this happening

and it will take the story in a direction that is so unexpected because it's not for my experience and that that's the glory and they feel like they've contributed their they're so happy and I'm happy to spend time among people and I'm happy to have the story complete in a way that I never ever could have anticipated that's fascinating so you do it at the gym the gym is really great because you're around people and you have these recoveries between set so you have a little time to talk and at the same time you have during the exercise itself you have time to think and sort Paces the talking versus the thinking and it's also kind of Highly oxygenated and it's physically active and your mind is kind of heavy on my mind is not engaged with something else your mind is kind of disengaged like it is while you're taking a shower

yeah a lot of people like to walk they like to read write read a little bit of it and then walk and bring a recorder or their phone to record on think probably along the same lines Charles Dickens walk somewhere between 12 and 20 miles a day as he wrote well and the at the Lakeland poets walked constantly I mean walking is a big part of writing anything physical rightly anything we forcing Your Body Move forcing the blood to flow and also mindless so it allows your mind to wander yeah

so I love the fact that you're so open with these ideas to that your you bring them to people and get their take on it and then incorporate their take is this something you've always done because of the woodwork shopping is it we could just sit this willingness to be open with your ideas and expresso

yeah really in a workshop was The crucial think having that social expectation that you were going to bring work every week and it was also kind of a party a reward for having brought to work and it was also a way of testing the work so that you knew whether it was working you know you weren't constantly sort of questioning yourself Workshop just provide so many really important ways of keeping right keeping you writing

and you've done this always seems like you've done this most of your career I have and this is not the first Workshop I've been bumped out of the first Workshop I was in was a very very nice ladies and I was probably 28 and I had written the scene in which a man a young man has done up an inflatable sex doll so it looks exactly like the woman he's obsessed with and during the the seduction of the sex doll he accidentally snags the back of it with the zipper of its dress and he realizes during the fornication that is gradually losing air so he's got to calculate faster and faster to try to achieve orgasm before this thing completely goes flat and at the end of the scene

he's standing there with this completely deflated sex doll hanging off his erection like this the surrender flag and of course his mother walks into the room

and after I wrote that seen the leader of the workshop I was in my first Workshop she took me aside afterwards and she said the other writers in the workshop no longer feel safe around you she really did she she said you were in something that really frightens them and they would like you to politely leave the workshop and not come back why and so that's when I started with Tom spanbauer it's Workshop in which almost anything went and so this is kind of periodic implosion of the workshop is kind of part of the process but in the past is catastrophic twice catastrophic yeah but a few other flat tires on the way I periodically we've kind of had to pretend that we were disbanding in order to get rid of them

who would say I just more trouble than they were worth how many people are in this world chops but we like 16 17 and now when I teach I typically have about 25 people

what does it feel I mean to be in a workshop for that long and then have such a disagreement and to disband like that or to have you forced out what I feel like it's going to suck know you know what I think it away we all need it kind of a respite from each other we all had kind of knew what to expect from one another and I think we were all less less of a resource for one another there's always a chance will come back together so so it's not a big tragedy so there's a chance that they might so did they kick you out or did they just disband I left the workshop and I understood that it disbanded back after that the seams I just don't understand how someone who is a creative writer

can't understand the the not just the necessity like the need to delve into the darker possibilities of human reality and that this is the story she wrote about her grandfather in the bird is perfect example that mean although very few people experience that in their life we all can appreciate that these are possible scenarios and it really comes down to what people what purpose reading and writing service in people's lives and most people they want reading to be at comforting activity they want to be able to read a book in the fall asleep knowing that detective will apprehend the Killer by the end of the book that things will end very well in a way they want to be bored or low by the book not so many people really want to be kind of confronted by books

but some people do right I mean isn't it it's kind of like a pretty much all forms of art whether it's music or movies me there superhero movies and then there's movies like No Country for Old Men or the bad guy gets away at the end and you will you leave the movie theater like what the fuck you know but those those are all satisfying in different ways to different people and is not sort of the point of creative expression is that you're getting surprised you're getting taken down the road is here's the world through this person's eyes and they create this world if you put limitations on that you're going to meet yeah you're going to eliminate some disturbing aspects that might bother some people but you're also going to eliminate some magical moments I might just care in the might literally when I change the way you view people

you know what part of it has to do with the nature of you know movies movies are going to always kind of attract a more Dynamic audience movies carry their own authority through motion and books are going to be a slow or medium this harder to consume and so maybe books are always going to at this point be seeing if it is kind of sedative as a kind of thing that loves you and comfort you and put you to sleep but by who buy some people right I mean I mean maybe there's a market for those kind of books but there's also a market for your books or is it there's this clearly a market for people that they want to tap into those more disturbing aspects of Consciousness and reality and that market is moving to video games and that market is moving to add your films there's just other forms of Storytelling that are serving that market better better than books

why is that is that because of censorship or is because artists aren't exploring those ideas as much anymore you know and part of it is because books books take an enormous amount of commitment of time and effort to read a book where everything else is 30 minutes to 2 hours to write a book as well me listen to solitary discipline to sit alone with your computer no it is not I hate that model you know I'm going to be in the Mermaid Tavern talking about my ideas with my compatriots and getting their take on them and finding out how it resonates with everything else do people fly what's the Mermaid Tavern

not Coleridge all the famous writers of Shakespeare's time basically hung out at the was like the White Horse Tavern in New York that the Mermaid Tavern was in London during that time and Boswell all the writers hung out there and exchange ideas and entertained one another and so want to be my social outlet

do you have to write it by yourself right I mean when you're when you're sitting alone actually putting your fingers on the keyboards and no you do you do that part in airplanes really I'm right notebooks in notebooks in notebooks in public and then when I'm trapped in some unbearable place like an airplane where airport then I do that horrible part of keyboarding

yeah that's the only time you actually write write the keyboarding is not writing remember the Truman Capote quote about on the road Jack Kerouac he said that's not right that's typing and sealed it depart on the airplane or in the airport where you have the laptop open that's not writing that's typing this is writing writing it to use physical pen to paper sloppy everything yeah why is it different

because it's written down at the moment that you hear it and that is not set in New Times Roman 12 point so that looks so finished it looks like a finished book is much harder than monkey with it once you see it on that screen and inward looks like a book it's much harder to edit it but when it's scroll down the page in front of you you can draw arrows you can scribble it out you can you can do whatever you want to it is it's much less precious

is this something that you voted this the approach of those taken to learn this proach or is it something that just made sense to you

this is how old I am a used to be

I grew up in the age of typewriters when do you and typewriters what kind of precious because you would have to buy ribbons for them and those ribbons are really expensive and so something had to be written out completely long hand had to be perfect long hand before you could risk wasting a typewriter ribbon to type it out

wow so you just developed it this way and just stuck with it even the age of computers and also because writing something I do in the moment somebody said something insightful something really bright something phrased just wrong so it it's suddenly really fresh and I want to be able to write it down in that moment so that when I do have to go to the boring part with a keyboard I have got so much wonderful fresh stuff and it makes a keyboarding part fun because it allows me to to sort of archive in the curate preserve these fantastically bright things were said by so many different people

and you don't do you ever record give her record yourself like record ideas then listen to them transcribe them I don't got no no no that was a big Hunter S Thompson thing record a lot of his ideas and then transcribe them and ride them out

you know

kind of right word for word sentence for sentence and so the transcription is just too much of an effort for me usually when I do interviews for magazines I will record my interview subjects and even then transcribing the interviews is so it's such a misery because people sell them talk in complete sentences and there's so many false starts in so many sentences that just don't go anywhere right so no talking into a recorder is just that a mess and so this notebook the oven front of you this this is a notebook for life or just a notebook for particular project like how do you how do you organize it this is a notebook where three pages are devoted to topics that I will talk to you about if we're desperate

and their little notes in here about contacting my agent for different issues also it's all Universal it's like for all sorts of things tasks that you need to do and then as well as that parts of books writing and there's all these little notes that Jamie just gave me about microphones yeah you're writing something about someone who's into recording equipment yeah that's just a small part of it but that's what she knows and I know this I want to go back to this Workshop thing like

what was it just words just did the use of the word faget or the n-word it was just words that characters were utilizing in your story that was so disturbing to them

it was words but it was also some situations that I thought were you know I got the people were very upset by people would leave the room where people would it would leave the room or would weep would weep in just complete upset just part of you go yeah I got this and you see someone weeping some shit you wrote to go to the bathroom and weep and I will find out about it much later so did you get post satisfaction that way

it's a thin line especially when I read a story like God's am I entertaining people or am I bullying them am I beating them up and hustle bullying why not way why do you describe that one kind of charming them into a story that eventually will make them faint or eventually we will make them rich but will upset them very deeply and I I feel a real reluctance about that

doesn't that sort of half the bridge have to be crossed though if you're if you're really going to explore every single possibility in a creative narrative if you're if you're really going to write a book and just let your mind go wild that has to be on the table doesn't it

it does but I don't think it hurts to be aware

so that you don't lapse into being a bully for the sake of being a bully and I think anybody who's really hard trainer kind of comes up against that m i a really good trainer or is part of me a sadist and you have to make sure that you don't become that sadist so you're not a monster so there you go that's why you're not but it's

being able to explore those possibilities and being able to just delve into the the Deep recesses of your mind in the interest of creativity that seems to be anybody's going to appreciate that it's going to be creative writers but it's not my mind I'm delving into the deep recesses if I'm lucky if I'm doing it right your mind something that is like comedians will say oh my gosh that happen to you too and a lot of times there things that people have never ever talked about I tell a classic anecdotes after I read the the gut story at an event a woman came up

and she was a middle-aged woman she was about my age and she said I really love that you read that story about how you

got your anus prolapsed while masturbating in swimming pool

which is not my story but I'm the one that read it so that's the one I'm the one that they're picturing in this horrendous situation and she said since you can tell that story I'm going to tell you a story and she said how when when she was 7 years old

she was in second grade and she was in a little organization called the brownies which is a precursor to the Girl Scouts you wear a brown dress little brown hat you get these little merit badges and she said

one day I had a stomach ache and my mom kept me home from school and we had this heating pad it must have been in the 1960s and this heating pad had this vibrating function and she put me face down on this heating pad on my stomach and I fell asleep and while I was asleep this vibrating warm heating pad must have slid down between my legs she says because I woke up with the most amazing feeling I feeling like I never felt before all my God it felt so good

and so

next time it was my turn to host the brownies I said brownies you've got to try this heating pad and she's just all the brownies to turn the heating pad on the vibrating heating pad and they wrote it like a pony all afternoon and she said it was like sex in the city for 7 year old girls they could not get enough of his heating pad and they were all riding this heating pad and I had a great time and she said and for the first time in my life I was the most popular girl in my class and I was the girl that all the girls wanted to play with and for every Brownie troop meeting it was at my house and I was the leader until the day that my mother came home from work early and she taught us with a heating pad

and she sent the other brownies home and she whipped the cord out of the wall she just ripped it out of the socket and she started to beat me with it and she beat me with that court and she beat me and she said you fucking piece of shit you dirty whore what kind of a fucking whore am I raising you whore and she beat me and she beat me and she says this woman who's my age now

she says I have not had an orgasm since I was 7 years old

and then she goes but if you can tell that swimming pool story about how you got hurt

jacking off underwater

she says I can tell my heating pad story and I can tell that story until I can make it funny and then maybe someday I can go back to my mom and I could say do you remember that heating pad we used to have

and it'll be complete

oh shit I'm so cccc that's what I'm trying to do I'm trying to create the opening for people to tell these stories that they

they never thought that they could tell because that's the way in which they're going to resolve these stories and they're going to master these stories

we have these bidet toilet things that have a little button on the wall you press it and shoot top water up your ass

and my kids come over and did love these toilets have two daughters and my youngest when she was seven she would sit on the toilet and she was laughing and giggling and we didn't tell if there's anything wrong with it so she was telling us how much she loves it how much she loves the hot water going to shoot underwear but she's like it feels so good and it was no shame in it and there was this weird moment where I'm I am I supposed to react to this my supposed to say yeah I know I like it too

am I supposed to say hey don't do that too much am I supposed to say don't tell anybody you like that you can like it but don't tell anybody you like it like what am I supposed to do

and

I didn't do anything I just let her smile and she walked out of the bathroom laughing like it was great and it was no there's no issue but it was this moment where I was like wow if I was a religious person or a suppressive person or some person with some sexual issues this could be a real problem for this little girl

instead I was like okay it's going to the bathroom now I guess you're done already and she has no idea that this was even like a moment of you know crisis in my mind or I was like okay how do I handle this I'm in the bathroom with my seven-year-old daughter she can't water shot up her ass and she's enjoying it how you deal with I enjoy to Sharon Joy to we all do we talk about these toilets they're amazing it's warm water shoots near it's great feels awesome but it's not supposed to feel awesome for like a little girl for some reason right

is it you tell that story and people will have so many versions of that story for me I was in Germany I went in the bathroom in the airport I didn't know what this button was so I pressed it I looked down just in time to see this little plastic arms swing out I didn't know what that thing was going to do so I jumped off the head and it stinks shot up with such force it knocked the ceiling panel out of the ceiling and all this hot toilet water came sprinkling down on me and that's the only time I've ever been around one of those

with what we have one here going to try it out was two of them one that bathroom one that one one of that bathroom you can block private process you tell me stories and you kind of gather the stories of people tell related to these stories and you choose the ones that escalate the fastest the escalate the best and that gives you a gradual sort of you can stablish the president and then something worse escalating worse escalating worse escalating to the most atrocious or extreme version and that's what brings the story The Crisis

I have a hard time believing that someone to be angry that woman for her story

you know and it's not it's hard it's about her and her story relationship to that story

is that when you're going to get away with you get away with that one

the jerking off the grandfather one is in a different place like she's a victim of sexual abuse she's a victim of

strange that violence for some reason it's more acceptable than sexual abuse in a lot of ways sexual abuse seems to be transformative like there's something about sexual abuse that it ruins you introduce an experience a memory into a person's life

that ruins them

this is a rough Segway but if I'm with so many beginning writers is that they have absolutely no capacity to be with tension or suspense so they might start to create suspense but than the resolving instantly it so the story never really gets off the ground because something has happened to them whether it's violent or whether it's sexual abuse that that makes them cling to a kind of calm Serenity and that's all they want and that's all they ever want and then writing it away seems to be a way of coaching them back to a greater and greater tolerance with the unresolved with it with it the tents with suspense

is some of the best moments in books that I've read our moments where you reading me like a fuck like where is it's going like you know you're going to get introduced in some really disturbing scene

you have to be with that you have to be with that until it's resolved and that's good writing you know bad writing is where it comes up is resolved when you're in this workshop and they're discussing with you this possibility of censorship of you self-censoring or of them not accepting your ideas like how do you

how do you debate that with them how do you how do you talk about that

boy there's really no debate you know

and then there was another aspect aspect of the workshop is it we'd all known each other for so many years that they're really wish we didn't have the freedom to kind of teach each other anything new yeah so there was a stale nuts there to kind of hardened into the people we were going to be

I just don't understand their argument I just don't understand if you're going to really paint a monster you have to have monsters actions you have to have to be a real monster we know of real monsters mean it was just some some guys got arrested some sex slaves in his basement and you know what you hear about those people and you go yeah yeah they're out there is probably a hundred of them scattered across the country right now or they have a locked basement we don't know about it those are real people but you wrote about one of those people using real scenes that were depicted in the news real eyewitness testimony real interviews with these monsters

some people would have ejected that if you going to write about a monster you have to write them in a monsterous way

I totally agree

yeah

what are they trying to cheat like I just don't understand what

they might not enjoy what you're doing it might not might not be something that they want to take in recreationally that they want to read your work in that in that way

but the fact that they don't appreciate what you doing or the fact they don't want you to do what you're doing if they want you to bring it to the workshop

is this a new thing this is there a new trend

you know it's in a way it's a it's an ongoing thing for me because you know I've been kicked out of workshops before 4 just going a little bit too far

and so in a way it's kind of a

it's making my goal maybe my goal is do you know always piss off my betta audience as a way of kind of proving that I've gone too far that's not too far though it's too far when you piss off the alphas not the betas right it's a bit since you go really far when you piss off psychos Jesus man fuck you doing my brain you know

my God that's another thing. To talk about stunt College my books are banned so many places and sometimes I think that maybe that's a good thing because they are reaching the psychos my books are banned in prison systems because they are in Norma sleep popular these prison Librarians tell me but the books are considered way too stimulating so why don't people in prison cannot read my books holy shit

all prisons don't know if it's all about you it's Texas and a number of other really big state so I don't know

that's kind of a badge of honor

yeah but it doesn't equate to talk to the immortality of being banned like a howl or Tropic of Cancer or Salman Rushdie

God that fucking struggle man the struggle of wanting to express yourself as as freely as possible but being limited even buy your own peers

that is that's an expected to some was in the outside of literature someone just reads it

cuz it's not in the comedy where it what is an economy world but not amongst good comedians watching people aren't censoring it because it offends them they're censoring it because they're afraid it will offend someone they know they're doing it they're kind of white knighting on behalf of someone else David Sedaris told me this story about telling a joke or something very funny about a girl in a wheelchair and how he look out in the audience and no one was laughing they were all looking at a girl in a wheelchair and the moment she started to laugh the entire audience started to Laugh & Learn Workshop

but they're thinking how that word might hurt people they know yeah that's a fact yeah that's it that's a giant issue in common if you if someone's telling a joke of someone's on stage talking about to lose fat and there's a fat person in the front row that joke will bomb it just yeah but that's cuz people are good people overall you know they were they recognize that they don't want to cause pain

another really odd comic David Sedaris story is it he always told me when you're on the road don't read from your current block always read from the Nextbook pieces to wave Road testing the stories and finding out which ones work and should go into the next book

and in doing so he was telling the story about being in this at this forensic laboratory is an is an autopsy was taking place

and this autopsy table was adjacent to the this huge indoor window that separated the autopsy Suite from this lunch room and in the lunchroom where the rest of the the forensic staff and they're all eating their lunches you all had tuna sandwiches and and cans of coke and barbecue potato chips

and they were watching through the window as is absolutely perfect 12 year old boy was being autopsied and just hours before this kid like 2 hours before this kid have been riding his bicycle he falling over he hit his head on the curb and now 2 hours later he was dead and dead without almost a scratch on him just this perfect naked dead 12 year old boy on the autopsy table

and I see that the technicians eating their lunch watching it through a window that did they watch as the as the pathologist in sizes around the top of the kids face at the top of the forehead the hairline and then peels of face down like peeling an orange peels the entire face off of the skull of this little boy that leaves a face around the neck like a mask like a rubber mask and this exposes this liver colored dark red musculature of the child's underlying face

and this one guy watching it with a mouth full of tuna sandwich he points this out and he said see that that there that's the color of red that I want to paint our rec room

holy shit and when Sedaris told that story in front of 600 people

it was dead silent and you can hear people weeping

people were crying and you were heating David Sedaris in that moment and so I had to laugh I laughed really loud like a dog. It was amazing how the hatred in that Auditorium Swan from hitting David who they did not want to hate to hating this Jackass over here who was actually laughing and so I threw myself on the sword for David and that story never went in any blog

how did the story not go in any book just because the reaction by the audience so just uncomfortable moment he just decided he was no I didn't not afterwards it was just such an awkward painful thing I would never kind of threw it back in his face and to my knowledge that was the only time that story was told to have those like scattered about are there are there scenes where you wrote and you just sat and looked at it and let you know I just got up with that one somewhere else jokes that I told where I got hissed my 800 people and you know

is your can live through those moments you realize you can live through a lot you can be hated by 1100 people at a Barnes & Noble on Union Square to be hated by your mother it's okay I know when those people come to see you how many those people are fans of literature and how many of those people are specifically fans of your work like they're still would be a difference I fit that people are fans of your work would at least expect some uncomfortable moments and for the most part they tend to be more or less just fans of my work and still still s oh yeah but it's again they're kissing on behalf of someone then I hissing up for themselves you know I made this horrible cheap shot and they always know a cheap shot people always know cheap shot

I was commenting about how in Breakfast at Tiffany's Truman Capote had made this observation that Americans don't like true beauty true classical natural beauty they want to see a very plain person who has been so groomed so exercise so made up so style stylized that she can kind of pass as this

this amazing strange Beauty that's what Americans want because natural classic beauty is not a Gala Therrien you're either born with it or you're not they want to see a plain person who is been transformed

and to make my point at the end of the story I made a cheap shot I said and that's why we have Sarah Jessica Parker

and I said this in New York

in New York Sarah Jessica Parker is worshipped like a god

and that whole crowd hissed and booed I did everything but throw excrement at me but then later in line half of them came up and whispered that was really funny yeah that's cool that's one of the things about dark comedy clubs you want them dark know you don't want everyone illuminated like the one in the crowd is like the one that's one of the real issues with doing a comedy special is that especially the old way they used to do them they still like the light up the audience which completely changes the dynamic of the room changes what you laughing when you won't laugh at you know it seem like the Sarah Sarah Jessica Parker jokes perfect sample if you don't want to be caught dead being the one person that throws her head back and how is it that

no cheap shots are just to stay away from them but that's another I asked you a question you know with so many colleges becoming these kind of strident safe places to demand their own aesthetic what is it like doing comedy

well it hasn't changed that much people got a little got a little bit more sensitive because they're aware that other people are more sensitive the audiences that come to nightclubs which is primarily where I perform

if I do a theater those people there to see me so that's why they're usually pretty loose pretty fun but if you're in a nightclub there there to see especially the common storm only good things about the comic stores there's literally two dozen people in the lineup not necessarily just here to see you there to see Anthony Jeselnik and Chris D'Elia and all these other comedians that are also there as well so you get a much broader comedy audience there nightclub audiences they have a few drinks in them maybe they smoke a little pot before they got there those people there to have a good time colleges are nightmare now it's a nightmare because it's recreational outrage it's it's kids who have been under the control of their parents for most of their life and they haven't had their own sovereignty and identity and now they're free and they are very quick to be outraged they would they want to point out their morals

superiority doing a virtue signaling every opportunity they want to shut down anything to think is air quotes problematic they don't want things to go in a bad when you think for some reason a comedy should be uplifting and it should only punch up because I had this conversation once with a professor who wrote a book on Comedy and he said all great comedy punches up and I said that's bullshit I said one of the greatest hits of all time Sam kinison's bit about starving children in Africa how about watching those commercials we're starving kids in Africa and then you know they couldn't you please help and he goes in you know it kind of seems like you just want to grab it out of hey what are you helping your right fucking there for since I don't like me you will send some like me going to take these people going to hey we just drove here 5000 miles with your food you wouldn't be hungry if you people would live in the fucking phone ass because care see that that's and we got sand in America to we just don't live in her asshole

he's he goes in one of the greatest bits of all time is literally about starving babies in Africa it's one of the greatest bits of all time

I need an amazing to say he didn't know where to go with it don't say comedy is only about punching up that's crazy talk let's see what you're doing is your there's there's this thing they're trying to cheat that it literally is completely independent of humor it's not what's funny so they want to they want it to be a multi-purpose tool they wanted to be funny as well as morally uplifting and great for people who are discriminated against and amazing for folks were marginalize and uplifting for those who are disenfranchised well that's not what comedy is comedy is as funny those things are wonderful winter in if you want to do a spoken-word show or poetry or writing or you know of one person play Just does a great but that's not funny

comedies funny so it's either funny or it's not funny and some things are funny that are fucked up you can sit at a bit about homosexual necrophiliacs or paying money to spend a few hours undisturbed the freshest male corpses and he said he would lie down on his stomach and he goes you match these people they're on the slabs or well went through life and had a good time everything and now I guess I'm going to go be with Jesus and hey what the hell is that these rocking back and forth

give me life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead but never end that never end you close on it cuz it was he couldn't follow it it was such a powerful bit it's about a dead guy getting fucked in the ass there is no further down you could punch other than starving babies in Africa I'm not sure but if this is punching down but you remember the routine that kind of put Whoopi Goldberg on the map a million years ago about being a black surfer chick no cable when I was like 19 years old but she talks in Valley speak Nobody seen this movie person before she's brand new nobody's ever seen her on television she's got this funny name and she's doing this foul speak about being the only black Surfer check on the beach and she loves surfing and she looked as one white surfer guy and she finally hooks up with them and then she realizes she's pregnant and it's

very funny the whole front end you're just roaring with laughter and then she's pregnant and she doesn't know what to do so she gets Rusty wire coat hanger and she goes into a public bathroom on the beach and she gives herself a coat hanger abortion and it spills out there on the concrete floor

and everything's okay and now I'm back on the beach and I'm just doing fine and why don't you come on down and see me here on the beach it's great down here it's great

holy shit fantastic piece and she did that on television on TV and it started so light like an R11 and it went to such a dark horrible place and then it came up which is this kind of chokin everything is okay ending every I'm going to be alright so don't worry this is just something that happened to that is just leaves you kind of Comedy goes to that dark when it's sentimental place and it breaks your heart

and then it kind of comes out a little bit but Ira Levin to that so well Nora Ephron and her blocks she was so good at doing that hard heartburn is fantastically funny but by the end you're just sweeping the book is so sad but these are moments that if you're going to

if you going to censor people are going to self-censor if you going to decide the people can use certain words if you decide to certain scenarios are just too upsetting for the reader these words are going to these moments going to be harder and harder to achieve and these the moment said we're going to talk about like if you and I we were in here if we were in a bar somewhere we're having a few drinks talking about great stories a great moments these are the moments we bring up piece of the impactful thing that thing that Sarah Jessica Parker joke in front of those thousand people there boo-hooing and hissing and you were literally on fire under your skin like in yourself and it killed

I'd still kind of beat myself up a little like who is awful people laughing and it's unfortunate girl do you think that the reason why people love the transformation thing is because it almost like everyone feels like to have a chance instead of like that's exactly what it is that you can be you don't have to be born with it you have a chance of attaining it

yeah yeah the unfairness

that that is just the reality of life you know one of things that Jordan talks about all the time is the equality of outcome that they did that this idea of equality of outcome is it's absurd it's never going to happen snot snot would life his life is not about equality of outcome it doesn't happen that way because not everyone is willing to put the same effort in and not everyone is given the same tools at Birth

and you know you got to be a little careful to our you fall into that Jay Gatsby trap will you get exactly what you wanted when you were for 14 years old and I realized that this is not an adult's dream this is a dream of a child that is one of the things that is interesting about your current situation and one things that I've read about your take on it I don't know how much you want to go into this but you got ripped off

I got embezzled which is a word I cannot spell

was it someone you trusted it was it was the accountant for the agency that represented my work and this is a man I work with for almost 20 21 years and one of my favorite people in my professional life

and

what I thought was interesting was your Take On Me the whole thing's horrific and everyone's worst nightmare

but you know who trust people their money but was interesting as you you decided that there's some Merit to this there's some benefit this that this is going to make you hungry and this is like you have to work now and also that

did I have been really poor in my life and it was never my goal to be really rich was never my goal to have money was my goal to be a writer was my goal to be able to write books for a living and I can still do that you know I've been poor poor is not something I'm afraid of as long as I can write books I'll be a happy person you had to be rich and to not be creative like as if you know they have to talk about is their servants it's like I hate my maid I hate my The Gardener we had this new person to do this and they're doing a lousy job and all they have to talk about their lives is their house will help I hate those parties objects or objects you know there's a guy that used to live down the street from me to call Bling Bling cuz every conversation that I would have with them you would eventually be like yeah look at this new car got

watch true and I'll wait what what kind of car you driving like with no it's what you do with the house you got a new sink you know it's got a new TV which witch is which size did you get it was always objects it was always things you know he was just as the strange guy that was just working for things

the same things that everybody else is working for it just a different combination of things but it's a game you know trying to accumulate points in the game you know and because these things are difficult to achieve then they become attractive and then they become the main focus because it's hard to get a Bentley you got to save a lot of money to get a Bentley you know how much those cost which model is that is that the one with the whole look at you got the perforated leather seats that's extra expensive and then this becomes the main goal yeah but so many people fall into that bizarre trial so such a strange, well you know it but it's the only trap that we kind of have you are not really trained to again go to that that place of

of wanting to let you know learn something to wanting to create something to Apprentice yourself to somebody who creates the thing that you dream of creating it's much easier to kind of fall into the ready-made trap of these things are for sale and the people who sell them will treat you really nice you going to their showroom and they will treat you so nice and you are always welcome there and you can have a way of kind of you know signaling that you've accomplished something in a very public way it's much much harder to Apprentice yourself and to sit down and do those ten thousand million words or two you know paint those pictures or whatever build those brick walls and really developed a pride of a skill

yeah I mean the the progress killing the knowledge that your your discipline in your focus allows you to achieve these works at these things when they're done I mean what is that feeling of satisfaction like when you touch the back cover of a book for the first time and it's over no that's nothing that's nothing compared to when you hear it echoed in the culture and you care people pick up the word Snowflake and you hear all these people say the first rule of blank is when you realize that you can kind of dictated the semantics of the culture for. That feels like power that is so that's glorious

when you found out this guy ripped you off

we shocked did you have suspicions before this I had known almost a year before

so you had an idea for a year and then it was confirmed it was finally what would happen in a year ago I was supposed to start receiving some significant payments from this year's book and they never came through and they still never came through and every time I requested them the publisher said that they've been paid but the accountant said that there were technical difficulties with wiring me the money or he had personal problems in his life caring for his mother and so there was always some reason why the money never came through and finally I kind of I told my agent I didn't want to do any more deals until we had this money thing resolved

and at that point the accountant made a video taped confession and it's sense pled guilty and I believe his sentencing is it going to be in November but according to the district attorney they can't seem to find any of the money so the money seems to be gone

how much days till you know it's kind of up in the air it's initially they said it was 3.5 million and now they're saying it could be as much as 25 million and this is from not just me this is from Mario puzo's estate the man that wrote The Godfather this is from a lot of different states the agency handle the estate of Lillian Hellman and Jacqueline susann and a lot of very big big Riders Edward Gorey he wrote those creepy wonderful cartoon books a lot of different writers a lot of different Estates locked money it was this guy doing this from the jump or somewhere along the line he lost his mind nobody really knows yeah wow

Jamie can you hit that pause button while I go out take a leak just go and take a leak

I know it's rough he used to it though what are we anywhere close to 3:30 and now it's it's 2:30 but we can anytime you like okay I'll be right back okay

Neil deGrasse Tyson's here ladies and gentlemen he's waiting he got here way early that right student apps right can't believe I fucked up that original story to see if anyone else man I really thought it was a tribute to him

but that's me my fucked-up brain he's intense though

kind of creeps me out with the Tennessee little bit what do you think about some of these written like guts you know what was the one where you turn to a werewolf on an airplane

I think that was from his collection of horror stories

do you want the alien on the cover

does the process though it's like survivor he's

so perfectly designed for being a writer you know like it is one of the more fascinating things about this podcast is getting to pick the brain of someone like him and however when would you ever have two plus hours to sit down with a guy like that and just find out how he thinks about shit like who is it you know how are you he's never going to let you in like that but this one of the weirdest things about podcast is that for 3 hours whatever the time is the phones go away you're you're wearing headsets which I try to encourage people to wear now because for a while so I can't do whatever you want but there's something about the headset that locks you in your voice is exactly the same level of sound does my voice is cuz it's all coming through the headsets so it's all combined

so you're much more aware of talking over each other and shit like that but you're also much more where there's nothing else going on that the sound of your voices it's it's by isolating the pie putting the headset on and limiting the outside noise to the game

just the debts why I was going to the depths the depth of everything back on the journalism is probably where that's coming from but he's appreciation for Darkness to like his appreciation for that story of the little girl jerking the grandpa off dude

it sucks back guess I'll talk to you about

feel better

Sam Roberts podcast makes people pee

that's it to I've developed a super human bladder occasionally though I have to get up

Caitlin so back to this dude ripping you off

this guy who's your friend so they don't know where the fuck the money is and he's not talking you know I guess he hasn't really talked about where the money is gone at first I thought there was some dummy corporations and they could recover the money so we are all looking for a big payday but now the da says they cannot find the money

and he doesn't want to talk or he saying the money is spent I'm not sure don't want to torture him know I don't don't you want someone to torture him know but it's so sweet it is so sweet because I've had readers readers offer to torture him to kill him and they say they'll do it free of charge so apparently these are people who can't do it for a living so damn

I need to make a list okay like me to get some free killings it's going to have to be some people I really don't like but you want the money first you don't we just kill somebody when we should get that money first otherwise it's sitting in coffee cans bird in the Nevada desert you know between you and me it would have given me a little more wiggle room I wouldn't be riding so frantically on Nextbook I could maybe take a little time off and relax

you know this is what I do and so what the hell yeah you have your health you have a million IDs great ideas the great profession that you love your involved in it right now currently in the process of projects and so you know I haven't really lost any of the things that I really love you know my dad is dead my mother is dead and I think after your parents are dead there's not a lot that can hurt you that much except me and of course the death of a child and so you know you're kind of the

bulletproof after those things the real issue that happens with successful people if they lose their hunger right they lose that it's a death sentence for comedians want two things happens with comedians is the early specials tend to be really good and in the later special tend to be really bad and it's because these people are now super wealthy and coddled and there's no danger in your life and there's no no real risk or challenges and is no growing or learning everything is just like performing to people that adore you another aspect not talk about this more and more of a writer's I know is it when you're starting out you got a lot of downtime a lot of daydreaming daydreaming time a lot of slack unstructured time but the more successful you become the more your time is really scheduled and you just don't have those I'm really bored times when you tend to come up with fantastic ideas

and so in a way being somewhat poor again gives me those those really slack times when the ideas occur

that makes a lot of sense yeah again to bring back to comedians comedians they'll Dig It movie careers that's another death sets for the comedy it start doing movies now on sets all day they're constantly working and then you don't have enough time to concentrate on your stand up and you have zero fuck around time cuz you just doing things all day

you lose that this is weird named Robbie Brad Pitt advice Brad Pitt told me said that success is failure is actually one of the best things that can happen because only failure gives you that kind of alone isolation down time when you can really reinvent yourself in a significant way and create something remarkable again that ongoing success becomes kind of a mediocrity if you really need to fail the fall out of the Limelight long enough to produce something really strong again

totally makes sense one of the best things that can happen to a comedians bombing

when you bomb that feeling is so bad I was described it as like sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother

but the problem is the difference is that there's probably someone out there who would enjoy sucking a thousand dicks in front of their mother but nobody enjoys bombing so it's probably worse than that but that feeling whatever it is reignites your appreciation for people's attention span your appreciation for tightening up your delivery your Concepts thinking out a better way to get them through you never want to experience that again and some of the greatest moments in my own personal journey of stand-up have come from eating shit that's where they come from you got each other and it's great to do well wonderful feels great but does eating shit ones those the ones that get you to the notebook again those the ones that reinvigorate you have you spending hours and hours in your hotel room going over sheets of paper check me out I did make it to these Concepts connect together and some sort of a meaningful way and figure out what tighten things cut out the fat

when you're in the situation right now and you were frantically writing now and in the end you know and sort of forced into this element of creativity this like that you're you're forced to be hungry again I mean I wouldn't wish it on you but in a way do you feel like it's kind of a gift and it's always about what they called cognitive reframing cognitive reframing whatever happens you reframe it in such a way that you recognize the value of it and so regardless of what happens you know before my father got murdered he had been asking me for an introduction to Winona Ryder in 1998 and I kept on thinking I am not going to introduce my father to Winona Ryder because I know he's going to hit on her

and I was just going to be mortified to have my dad hitting on Winona Ryder and you always talk about how pretty she was any chance I can meet her and I'm in to tell the truth but I got the word that my father been murdered by white supremacists in the mountains of Idaho

one of my first thoughts was I'm off the hook with that went on a rider thing

and that's cognitive reframing to do it all the time that's glass-half-full right there

I love my father but you know nobody none of our relationships are completely perfect all the time no way around it well that's again the great thing about

Unchained writing is that you can express those ideas and that would that would be my my main concern about any sort of a a workshop or support group or any any any any sort of group of like-minded peers they wouldn't understand that and that would want you to limit your language

I just don't

it just doesn't compute yeah and electronic world yeah everybody should kind of get it but unless you're ruffling feathers even within Workshop you're not going far enough you know I love writing that line in Fight Club where Tyler and Marla have sex for the first time and the most romantic thing that did Marla can say is I want to have your baby so what is the inverse so of course Marla turns to him and she says I hope I got pregnant because I really want to have your abortion and that's the line that the movie studio went around and around and even Brad Pitt said you know my mom's going to see this movie I don't want her to see this line

and they shot that scene with so many different substitute lions and then finally Fincher wrote the line and Helena Bonham Carter says I haven't been fucked like that since grade school

and at that point 20 Century Fox said can we switch it back to the abortion line

unless you're always kind of portal to kind of do you know until you get some pushback you don't feel like you're pushing hard enough and so push back it's not a bad thing it's just kind of a it's proof that you're doing your job visit Trend it's happening now though this this this pushed back is Coming Far quicker than it ever has before is that there's a trend now to to limit language and limit creativitea in Lynden just limit the subject matter trigger warnings and stop people from you know it stop people from experiencing things that might be disturbing

and I can see both sides of that because on one hand we've got a generation that has been exposed to so much sensationalistic stuff in order to attain their attention they really been overloaded with the most extreme versions of everything in order to get their ticket money or whatever they've really been pounded by so much stimuli I can see them kind of really pulling back and wanting to be monastic for the rest of their lives and nothing on the other hand I see them as being

I just wanted to sort of counter dominate in order to just create room enough in the world for their statement you know they're moving into a world that's already so occupied by attention getters that if they can shut some down that there might be room for their own expression so I kind of see benefit on both sides and in a way to their they're dominating their teachers which is good because it's his way of exploring your own power and then figure out what you can do in the world and that you can have a fact you can have agency

so I don't think it's a totally bad thing that's interesting the the the idea that damn dominating their teachers is in some way good

having the well it certainly gives you confidence and lets you understand that you can affect change even if it's meeting was changed did you pay attention to what happened at Evergreen State in Washington did you see when there's 4 people don't know the story it's sad the Bret Weinstein story where did students decided that there was going to be a day of absence traditionally been where people of color stayed home just so that people could recognize the important part they play in the culture and Society but then they wrapped it up and decided white people going to have to stay home now and he was like that's racist and I will thing like crazy and went haywire in the the schools basically falling apart but there was a scene that was filmed where the president of the University was in prison the college was in this Auditorium and he was addressing his children and

they told him to stop moving his hands because it was threatening and said he put his hands down he put them behind back and they all start laughing

and I was like wow this dumb fuck like this this this guy is running this University and he let them tell him not to move his hands gesturing is he speaking he's like one of those non-threatening beta people on the planet and this guy is just giving just wants to keep his job and try to silence this mob is angry horde of you know fucking kids their kids but when he listens and puts his hands down I probably watched it 10 times they all start laughing and just desperately they want a stronger leader they don't want they don't respect their don't want to learn from somebody who is a college professor and it's never really change anything in the world they just don't want to become another Cog in that same kind of piano wheel didn't want to learn from somebody respect and who's Brian they respect

achievement say respect that's probably part of the issue University's right is at these professors are so terrified of the reactions of the students which is not the place you're supposed to be with a mentor student relationship it's not supposed to be that way it's not supposed to be the mentor desperately needs the student and I see that sometimes and private schools with rich kids that they treat their teachers like shit the teachers have to bite their tongue nose ain't they have to and all this is not it's not not it's not the normal Dynamic that exist with the older wise person in the young person is trying to learn this person I deeply respect snot that Dynamic at all it's this old person whose week and wants to keep their job and is willing to Taylor their own thoughts and ideas to this irrational mob of social justice Warriors that's where Siena campus is now you know professors calling for

censorship and stop freedom of expression person he was the John Houseman of the journalism school is this old gray Eminence and nothing made him happy you could never please this this this John Houseman paper chase guy nothing was good and I nothing would make him smile and I worked my ass off to make him happy and I finally got an A in one of his courses but he is about the only professor of I remember out of my entire for years it was this man that just didn't take shit from anybody

yeah this the dynamic of the kid being in control it's not good for the kids either so I can for anyone they could get out of school they're going to be baffled they're going to look for that power in other places that powder that they they enjoyed in the universities and you seen that spill off you seen that spill out into you no social media and different forms of activism with people trying to retrieve that power that they had in to sort of forcing people to their will and in a way it's kind of a farm count because a few of those people will achieve that power and they will be able to kind of Leverage that power to something more legitimate something larger and those will be the next generation of leaders that emerge so this is an oil laboratory where I work leaders are taking form and the rest of them will just kind of filter down into whatever jobs whatever careers but they will always have their kind of Glory Days when they say to remember that time we we shut down the

OTC building and that will seem like a big glorious pass to them but that will be enough

what's causing all this League's interview thought about that like white why is this ramping up cuz it seems like it is

you know I found one level it is a disillusionment with the the goals of the Baby Boomers that so many people have seen their their parents achieve what they thought was going to make them happy with a houses in the hat that the trips in the the careers in the possessions in the wives in the second wives and step-siblings and they're seeing their parents get everything that they want and still not be happy and so you see a generation this kind of floundering thinking you know they don't know what's going to make them happy I don't know what's going to make me happy and some people are really distrustful of advertisements that tell them what's going to make them happy and so

and I think it's just a big struggle a big everyone in blind in the dark right now

so just

just a reaction to what they see this ineffective what's a this sheet is going wrong so that they're choosing to embrace it a different group of values not even sure if even that new group of values kind of dictated to them with a lot of pre-existing language and so I don't I think ultimately that's not going to be very fulfilling either it's got to be something that emerges from my kind of lymph noid laboratory like burning man these kind of Fringe things that are all as Victor Turner would say they're all kind of a experiments in how to be that's what fight was it just is a kind of experiment in Hell interaction to be structured in a different way and he sings take place in these kind of playful environments like burning man like cacophony Society used to it to do

and they're fun and the ones that had the most fun will be the ones that are perpetuated burning man is fun and that is why burning man has existed for 30 years and occupy was not fun and that's why we had one occupy and I know people going to be pissed off about that but no ever you're burning man is bigger and it's funnier and more people go there and every year we don't have another occupy comparison cuz occupy was infiltrated by cops in the FBI and they pretended to be protesters sat amongst them and the whole thing was kind of misguided in the first place where is wood burning man is a complete removal of these people from society and they decided to meet one of the most hostile climates in the world and there's something about that the recognition that you're out there in the desert with a fucking mask over your face and your dancing with dirty underwear on and then all these people are doing it together and then half of them

fuck out of their mind on drugs and you're not against something you're not celebrating the protest also it occupy a lot of them were misinformed and they didn't really understand the process they're protesting against is a very funny famous video with Peter Schiff who's been on this podcast for 4 oz of financial wizard who was set up shop there with $5,000 suit on and they basically said I am the 1% know ask me questions and I interview these kids so they would tell him what's wrong with the world than the did you know the imbalance of finances and and Financial in equity and they just didn't understand what they were upset about and you explain to them how capitalism actually works and how he employing all these people and the reason why he makes so much money because he employs how many people and if he wasn't

going to see people would be out of work understand when I'm creating something and you can create something to you can create a business and you can if you work hard and you know he's going over the police and you could see that what they're fighting against is almost like a concept they're fighting against this site idea of this evil tyranny that's controlling their fate

were they really don't understand it though but that's that's what I keep I was in my opinion it's like they they knew something was wrong it was almost to me like white blood cells surrounding an infection like there's something fucked up here let's just surround this thing figure out and then the swelling and pus and that's really what it was it's like there's a real recognition it is a gigantic problem with the financial institutions the gigantic problem with the whole reason why the economy collapsed in the bailouts and these fucking creeps are getting all these bonuses even though their company failed and the tax dollars had a rescue them it was a recognition that there was something wrong but not a deep understanding of what the system was that they were actually protesting too much of that

Burning Man is there any of that Burning Man is obviously societies fucked there's no arguments that it's not even if it's better than it's ever been before which probably is you know if you want to listen to Pink a lot of other people that little argue that it's better and is progressing into this better and better path and is probably right ultimately still fucked and burning man offers this alternative like this unique Society of free expression and free love and all these people having a good time together exploring Altered States Of Consciousness Victor Turner who talked about the slim noidevents it would say things like burning man they also provide an outlet for people to self select to leave the culture they aren't that killed people who just don't fit in the dye or the express himself so much that they can go back to the ordinary postal carrier life that they had before because

so many cultures have something like a Samba Festival where you go crazy for a week and then you go back to your normal life waiting tables so they are in an event that kind of keeps the status quo in place

but they do create these kind of if not aesthetic movements they are the there are laboratory for sort of coming up with some new form of being together some new social structures new symbols new narrative

yeah it's it's a fascinating thing for me because I feel it's trickled off into regular life in a lot of ways now I know way more people that are microdosing silicide been on a daily basis people or more except especially now that marijuana is legal people are way more accepting of people getting high of people just choosing to sort of look at the world in a different way and actively seek these different states of Consciousness it's way more, that's way more discussed and that's the way it's supposed to be is it these things start

in experiments in the ones that are most successful become institutions and in the new ones start but we need the Laboratories Portland kind of used to be that way Portland was such a laboratory incubators City but the cost of living is his killing that very quickly become really trendy it's like it's a it's a it's a hit place to live it's a hip it's identified with hip you know any way you can get your hip card just by living there you don't have to do anything anymore it's like New York City used to be like you're tough hey I'm from New York you know I can handle it no yeah I'm hip I'm from Portland

nope

is that where you live I live outside of Portland I live up in the Columbia Gorge it's gorgeous up there man yeah the fucking green you guys have a neon glowing it rains all the time Green in Oregon that just we don't experience here for more than a month a year at forest fires right now so where you are so close but the air is still much worse than it is here so fucking forest fires are everywhere right now I've been evacuated a couple of times it's pretty terrifying stuff I can whisper like no one's listening

yeah don't tell me why I have a secret friendship with Jim go to who's one of the few people who makes me really laugh even though you know most of secret anymore most of the world because you're right she's very transgressive in your face pieces but when he writes about his brother he kills me is some of the most touching stuff I've ever read my life about his brother's death so you know the whole world I think it's so full and that they think that Jim go to the bad person and they think that maybe I'm a good person when it's just exactly the opposite. How are you a bad person

let's not even go down that road I already told on Cheryl Strayed killing that bird come on do I got to do more that's not being a bad person that's a person is appreciative of a dark moment that doesn't make you a bad person

no I'm a bad person are you really

give me example

you know and this is awkward but this is another one of those cognitive

reframing honesty things is I took care of my mother while she was dying of lung cancer and even when I was taking care of her and she was lapsing in and out of Consciousness in her home it was a little part of me that felt this Glee the thought

I will never have to worry about Mom again

I will never have to worry about with her mom is offended by my work I will never have to worry about Mom falling down the stairs and breaking her leg that this enormous concern in my life will be resolved

and it's going to be at the cost of losing someone I love you know so much

but the benefit is that this huge burden of responsibility is going to be left in and so there was his kind of secret clay thinking you know I'm going to I'm going to have some free time here that I never imagined

yeah norepinephrine touches on that in her work when she talks about her mother's death and I think it's just I said it's an honest thing but it's not a thing that makes you look very good I don't think that makes you a bad person I think so that makes you a person who's honest about thoughts that are very uncomfortable

that that is just something that people think I think all the time if they're dealing with someone is completely incapacitated and they have to care for them 24/7

but they don't express it

it's just

it's just a reality of the burden of someone who's really sick or really dying is it there's there's no getting around it I don't think it's a bad that's not a good example I need to I need a example why you are a bad person maybe just really self-critical

aware of things that other people could take out of context of those the totality of your life and just use it as an example put it in quotes and using his example of you being a bad person you know another thing is I really really conflicted about the nature of my creativity this idea that in journalism school that they call the fairy seducing betray that when you go into an interview situation your goal is to gain the trust of that person and to get them to reveal something very intimate that you were going to betray by revealing to the public so

you just wait you're basically going in there to to charm them and then to hurt them and

and so much of my creative process is that way because the story in which the guy puts a carrot up his butt that was my best friend at the time in late 20s and he got fantastically drunk and he told me that carrot story and I honestly believe she never told anybody the carrot story and I'm doing my mind for you know 10:15 almost probably 20 years until I found a way to put it with three similar stories and make a larger piece out of it

and the first time I read that story I hadn't seen him in maybe a couple years this friend and I look across this big Auditorium and there he is and I'm telling his carrot story in front of hundreds and hundreds of people and the look on his face he's just tricking

and he hasn't talked to me since

and this is what he even even use his name know what's wrong with him you need to hang out with more comedians music, could be laughing because he's kind of made them involuntary public figures and they have to deal with the Fallout from these stories about them and really only his brother and his sister Amy have kind of been able to spend this in a good way but Haley needs a lot of people know for sure will especially if you use your actual name or people know the origin of actual story yeah yeah

but that's your not a bad person sorry sorry to break it to you think you're bad person was only examples

you're not convinced no I know I'm just not revealing the worst stuff that do you think that you have to have some sort of embracing of these dark thoughts to create the way you create a me you're creating these characters that go down some horrible roads

both mentally and in reality in in your work and it's amazing stuff but to cultivate. Don't you think you have to be kind of in touch with those thoughts of your own kind of in touch with this

you know this thing where you're watching your mom dying you you are going to be relieved of a burden and you don't want to tell anybody that you're kind of looking forward that a little bit even though you love your mom dearly this at that time natural thing that people don't want to discuss but absolutely exist it's the elephant in the room and that's kind of like how Comedy Works or anything we just stating the sun stated thing York reading this enormous relief

my classic example when I teach I asked my students I say so so what do you call a black man that flies a plane

a pilot you fucking racist

you creating this tension I don't want you to say what they said they're going to say they don't want to hate you they like you and then you turn it around and put it on them and so

in a way and I always think that's the the soul of Comedy is to create the attention that you relieve as quickly as possible and the relief occurs as laughter

I was having dinner with a good friend of mine his wife and a buddy of mine and my friends friend and his wife and Funtime the whole night everybody's laughing and joking and we're having dinner and having a couple of drinks and joking around talking about things and

I forget what led to him saying this but we were talking about

just unfortunate scenarios and you know people that just their life is not going the way they'd like it to go and things going back and I don't know where the guy goes well

that's like this

my daughter has she had a baby with a black man

and we're we're both like looking at me like where's this going and then he goes and you know I just think it's incredibly selfish to bring that kid in the world and this kid doesn't have an idea. Black in the not white and they don't live there not going to have an identity than not going to have a group to belong to and my friends Jaws dropped my know you spent that night in my drop and I looked at my other friend who's with me who didn't know any of these other people and everyone's like what the fuck and then a couple of us get up and go to the bathroom and I turned in my friend Andrew and so let's get the fuck out of here we just left and I texted my friend I go too much racism had to go and we just left and put it was so weird it's like this guy was holding into this seems like you know I can trust these people to race a shit I can trust them and it didn't work and he knew it didn't work he knew it went over

the world like a lead balloon he knew it he could feel it cuz everybody was like what like wait a minute your daughter is in love with a man whose black they have a child together and you think it's incredibly selfish to bring that kid in the world like what the fuck I wish I could remember what the fuck we were talking about before then but we were talking about before then was like drug addicts or people fuck up or you know people are addicted to gambling or something and people whose lives were in chaos and then he brings up his daughter having a baby with a guy was the wrong amount of melanin in skin whose ancestors came from the wrong part of the world for him

it was weird man it was weird it was weird also to see him recognized

I did funny Jenna you throughout a story I threw out a story I had a hybrid car from Philadelphia to New York once on contour and as we're going past Liberty Hall in Philadelphia this is great guy with the Philly accent driving the car you points at Liberty colonies it's that building has stood for years I bet you can't tell me why

and I just looked and I said because the bricks are laid in Flemish Bond I think that's probably in where the brakes are offset in such a way that they they bond in the center call Flemish Bond

So Silent nobody's ever answered the question and his father was a bricklayer and he was so proud because you're right nobody's ever said Flemish Bond that's why it's still stands that we were best friends and just talking like crazy all the way into Manhattan weekend in a Manhattan there's two guys walking down the street the guy goes Christ I hate coming to New York the facts

and I said well you know I'm married to a man and faggot is pretty much my middle name

Sands of everything that the guy who knew Flemish blond was also one of them and it was one of those wonderful kind of

icky but necessary moments and I know the horrible but you know things are better afterwards you must have loved that moment though you know was a horrible moment because I felt like I was throwing away any kind of Chatty conversational relationship I had with this guy seem like just salt-of-the-earth great funny guy and it was just kind of going out on a limb and saying okay he's going to hate my guts after this

when I was little kid we live in San Francisco from ages 7 to 11 and then move to Florida which is the polar opposite of San Francisco and

I really I don't know if I've ever heard someone use the word faget before but I never seen that an adult upset about gay people before and then my friend candy candido was his name his dad was Cuban they were Cuban and his dad slams newspaper on the on the tables 11 and he's like I can't believe they're letting these bags getting married who was just so angry and I remember stopping thinking like a man he's a grown man when he's a grown up but yet he's

he's got this infant idea

of what a person should be like they did not fall into this category that kind of hurt he's got it locked in his head he's a fucking baby but he's a man and he's my friend's dad this guy said this guy made it to 35 years old what whatever the fuck he was and this is this is operating system is using to navigate its way through life remembered it being an important moment for me because I realize like just because someone's older doesn't mean they learned anything you know in it that people are capable of success in life you know you could become married you can have children to get a house you can good job you drive a car the whole thing you got it all if you've got a checkbook you got a fucking you your your your operating it's moving your successful it's happening and yet you still have these stupid ideas but I think there's a benefit to the expression of the stupid idea not that they can there be challenged but that at least we were aware that it's

yeah and that you know we know that this thing is not just kind of festering and that there's a way of kind of not fixing this person but at least we know where they're coming from yeah and another shooting myself in the career foot thing I don't think you've done it once the whole show okay here it goes

I read the daily Stormer

Andrew Anglin cracks me up who is that he is the completely transgressive guy

who really loves Fight Club rights for the daily Stormer I think he is the daily Stormer and he writes the most atrocious insensitive brutal things but

they are theirs so shocking and so transgressive that

that sometimes I laugh just out of the shock you no deal classic joke how do you get a nun pregnant you fuck her you know there's a shock value there that they just sort of jars me and makes me laugh sometimes to work better if you hadn't told the black pilot joke for people to come if you know you know I was coming but

but sometimes you know I I want to go into a world where people are not watching their language so closely and and I see people kind of sent the worst of themselves Bryant I'm not kind of endorsing it but I feel a little less reactive to abuse Scientologist has have this exercise called bull baiting where they take you into a room and people surround you and they call you every horrible thing and then they they nitpick every aspect of your appearance or your your character who you are and they attack you on every level and they do this for long long periods of time they do this day after day until you are completely not reactionary to that kind of verbal abuse you can you can put it over there you can accept the fact that it's somebody else's statement somebody else's opinion observation that it's not true

and you can be with that it's going to wait when I go into these sites that are so patently offencive and in deliberately you know aggressively offencive I feel like in a way there thickening my skin that I'm not quite such a delicate little reactive thing afterwards about someone looking through your search results are worse things than that

you see that in fighting there's certain people that react really poorly to trash talk and then certain people get excited by it and doesn't bother them at all in the embrace it and generally it's people who grew up in an abusive household and horrible environments them in the trash talk starts coming to go oh yeah is that what's going to happen to fuck you bitch and then and then you see them get excited by it and then you see them like saying oh okay now you give me more motivation to fuck you up where is some people Jenny dwarf by this you think they get they get the pressure of not just being in conflict with some person but that person insulting them verbal conflict and and demeaning them and mocking them it constant it haunts them and it ruins them and they can't perform they go out and they fight they fight terrible it happens to a lot of Fighters guys were tough tough

something with the verbal conflict in the abuse there's an emotional struggle but then I prepared for they prepared 100% for this physical struggle but there's a certain aspect of someone literally hating them as a human like not thinking of them as a worthy competitor who they respect for the ready to go to battle with and we'll shake hands first and afterwards we'll go have a beer together after the beat the shit out of each other now it's like you're at your little pussy your a bitch you shouldn't you shouldn't even be here your week you're going to fall apart man you know you going to fall but you're waiting to fall apart just give me a neck just give me a call to choke you out make it nice and easy and you see guys reacting to that these Demons Inside of them that these These are thoughts that do dance around the back of their brain and every day that's throwing water on it every time they come back in the fucking Ambridge is still smoldering shit and this guy is just pouring gasoline on that shit and it just takes over the Consciousness you see him they can't sleep good you seem to look exhausted you see the day of the fight they looked nervous

still look they look really worried you look really worried this person's right that person is planted the seeds of doubt that are these invasive species plants are choking out all the trees it's wild to see it's wild to see how the same words can have a completely different effect on different people

so that you are it's a different kind of resistance training yeah I know there's definitely something to that is definitely something to be around abusive people to being around it mean you get accustomed to stuff you get to people are very very very malleable now you can you can get a custom to really shity Behavior I mean

this is not like what's going to happen when you're in war you get accustom to it you get accustomed to violence you get accustomed to all that and one more difficult things for people post war is coming back into a a kind gentle boring world

sounds like they they let me nuts Hurt Locker right date the appreciate the danger I appreciate that the thrill of it all is almost more appealing than the absolute lack of Thrill The Thrill of potential violence and death and all the horrors that you come into contact with it's almost preferable

did you read the Sebastian Junger tribe that's the new one right yeah it's great book but it's about that it's about why you know being in these intense like really dangerous but crackling with energy environments produce some of the happiest moments for these people's lives and that post post-war like to have an incredibly difficult job to Serta reintegrating to normal

Flat Earth Society

what time is it 3:15 I gotta listen man I really appreciate you being here I really appreciate picking your brain and I thank you very much man and that man thank you for all your all your writing all your work and stay fucked up will you alright hey thanks for the plane ticket my pleasure when can we expect this book when are you when are you going to be at this is it this poor cat is 14 sister is pages and it don't look right now at this is not for the next year is Fight Club 3 next year will probably be a big fat writing book from me and this book with won't be until 20 22 years thank you thank you appreciate it

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