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Bill Burr
Hey, what's going on, everybody? It's Bill Burr and it's time for the Thursday afternoon, just before Friday Monday morning podcast. I'm just checking in on you. Obviously it's video. Whenever we have video, that means I have a guest and I never have a guest on unless it's somebody that I love. I admire a special guest. And I can't believe that we got this guy. On the podcast today. We have one of the greatest motorcycle champion racers ever, Fast Freddie Spencer, coming here on the Thursday afternoon, just before Friday Monday morning podcast, three time world champion. I mean, I go through the whole list here. It's like an IMDb page of like Morgan Freeman, all this stuff that you won. Youngest MotoGP champion up until a few years ago. And then the most impressive thing that they say will never be broken, in 1985, he won the 250cc and 500cc, the same year, literally Bo Jackson level stuff. And Freddie, welcome to the podcast.
Freddie Spencer
Thank you, Bill.
Bill Burr
Yeah, I can't believe that, you know, I'm so new to the sport. I've only watched since, like I came in right when Valentino Rossi was, was, you know, towards the end of his career.
Freddie Spencer
Toward the end of his career, yeah.
Bill Burr
And Mark Marquez was doing his thing and his big battles a lot of the time were with Andres Davizioso. Those great Honda Ducatis, they pass each other like, you know, seven times on the final. I found the sport because I grew frustrated with F1, where Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton were just so dominant and the cars were so wide, like there was no passing. And I just found that, you know, if, if Lewis made it to the. It was a race to the first turn and then it was just like, you know, 50 parade laps. Not parade, but you know what I mean?
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, I do, I do. We call it kind of a procession. The one thing that we have on motorcycles. And I know this, I know that you can appreciate this because I know you ride. I know you go out to the airport and you ride out at the airport. Right.
Bill Burr
I actually now ride in the canyons. I finally got.
Freddie Spencer
Oh, do you? You got civilization a little bit. I was going to talk to you about that in a minute.
Bill Burr
Oh, good. I need all the help I can get.
Freddie Spencer
Well, you will. Hey, listen, that's. That's something I love doing. I love doing is teaching. But one of the things that our sport has that the other sports, motorsports level, and it's one of the reasons why we're very popular with the Formula one guys. They love watching the sport they love coming and watching us is our ability to pass, and that the rider can make such a big difference and makes a bigger difference in the performance of what happens that day, because you can move on the bike and you can change trajectory and you can change lines much easier. You can race next to each other, you know, in the smaller classes like Moto3. You gave the example of me winning the 250 and the 500 championship in the same year. Excuse me. That would be like winning the Moto2 and MotoGP in today's.
Bill Burr
It's insane.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, it's insane. And. But the rider can make such a big difference. And, you know, that's. That's what I think separates us from some of the other, certainly the other elite motorsports.
Bill Burr
And.
Freddie Spencer
And basically, that's what MotoGP is. MotoGP is to motorcycles what Formula One is to car racing.
Bill Burr
Yeah. And I gotta tell you, the second I found the sport, because I'd always been. You know, I wanted to ride a motorcycle my whole life, but, you know, my parents had a dentist and my mom's a nurse, so it was just like, ah, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Because I remember that there was a motorcycle came out the. The Honda Rebel, and It was like 1200 bucks. I still remember the song on the commercial. And I was. I wanted to get it. And they were just like, nope, nope. So about, I don't know, a little over 10 years ago, I just took. I just wanted to get my motorcycle license, and I took the. The motorcycle safety course out here, and then I got a little Triumph Bonneville or whatever, but I was just sort of riding scared, so I got rid of it, and I was just like, all right, I'm not doing the motorcycle thing. And what got me back into it was I went to the MotoGP race at COTA a couple years ago, right, with my buddy Dean Del Rey. And he knew some people at Ducati, and they have called something like the Hero's Lap or something. It's a bunch of dads on a Saturday. After that little sprint race, you get to go around the track once. So I'm, like, all nervous out there. And my idea was I was gonna hang at the back, right? And the guy in the front goes, no, dude, he goes, ride in the front. Don't go in the back. The guys that hang in the back want to wait till everybody goes and then race around the track. So I was able to negotiate that. And then it just, like. It just. It's in my blood, man. I just. It's weird cause I haven't ridden a lot, but I've wanted to and I love machines and stuff.
Freddie Spencer
One of the things that I've heard you say that the reason you like riding your motorcycle is when you get on it, you can't think of anything else. Yeah, right. And that is so true. And one of the great things that I've. I've said this many times and kind of getting in this part of it a little bit is the best meditation I read as a kid was, is I rode five hours a day in my yard. And that's where I learned to ride a motorcycle and through the trees in my yard. And I would have to focus so intensely. And I write and I talk about this in my book Feel that came out in the UK a couple years ago. And in fact we're going to be putting it out here in the US market next year, along with the second book that I'm doing. But one of the things I talk about in the book is when the leaves in the fall would fall from the trees that I would focus so intently that I could tell by the color of the leaves whether it was wet under it or not. And that would determine how much lean angle I would use going over the. The line in the trajectory.
Bill Burr
Isn't that something? So that, that's like. It's almost like Wayne Gretzky had like a. His own hockey rink out of his backyard and he ended.
Freddie Spencer
Exactly.
Bill Burr
Yeah, exactly.
Freddie Spencer
And I learned, and I learned to just ride through where I could judge the slippage of the tires over the leaves, depending on the color of the leaves, if it was wet or not or slippery in the lean angle trajectory. And that's what I used to learn. And it taught me my senses became so aware of what I feel through the bars and sitting on the bike and what you see. And those are all things. Those are all things that, like I said, if we went out and rode together that I could help you to understand how to ride so much more relaxed. There's no greater feeling, Bill, when you ride. And I know you have felt this a little bit, I can already believe this is that there's no better feeling than that feeling of comfort and contentment that you get. Right.
Bill Burr
You know, I can like really get into the turn. I mean, obviously not at your guys level, but like now that I can, if it's a tight turn, I used to because it's a big bike. So I would like. I would be so like, you know, that whole thing, like, you look at the thing you don't want to hit and then you hit it. Like, I don't want to go over there. And then that's where you go. Like, I've really learned how to look my way through the turn, through, like, riding through canyons and stuff.
Freddie Spencer
Right.
Bill Burr
Say something that I. That I've learned with my experience with machines. And, you know, I have a pilot's license and I'm rated with certain helicopters. And what I learned really early on is just because I'm rated in what I fly, if you fly the exact same model that I fly, it's going to behave a little different. And each one has, like, you know, its own characteristics. Yeah, you have to surrender yourself to the machine and ask questions to see where it wants to be. And I think that there's. There's a humbleness and a. Devoid of ego. If you really want to excel at becoming one with a machine or anything, you have to, like, sort of surrender yourself to it. And, like, I'm not going to, like, you know, force this thing to do what I think I know it wants to do.
Freddie Spencer
Right. It's the whole key is being able to let the bike do its job and you help guide it. And those are the things, like I said, I learned in my yard as a kid, is the ability to be able to. To judge what happens here and how it. How it affects what happens out here, which is, you know, which is, you know, life lessons.
Bill Burr
Do you feel that riding over wet leaves or just being on a wet track? I would think the leaves, because at least the asphalt is like, stuck to the ground where a leaf can move. Your ability to not only judge those leaves, but to under. To get one with the bike, to go over different kinds of leads. I imagine if you want a wet track, it was like, oh, this is like T ball compared to wet.
Paul Verze
Easy.
Freddie Spencer
It was easy. I won so many grand prix in the wet. When I got to the grand prix level, I raced in the World Championships for 12 years. I mean, I could slide a bike around and anticipate it within inches of the edge of the track, you know, at 110, 120 miles an hour from 50ft, easy.
Bill Burr
You must have been the only guy praying for rain.
I didn't like.
Freddie Spencer
Well, I didn't like racing in the wet so much, but I was. I was good at doing it. It was one of those things. I much prefer a drive track, but.
Bill Burr
Well, I have to tell you, watching your highlights, getting ready for this interview, and I noticed it's like F1 anything like prior to the year 2000, any sort of racing stock car, anything, you just watch the sound of it. It's just different. And I like my stomach was in knots. It's like somebody's going to die. Like this is like. And just watching you guys, like you just had like these, these riding leathers and bales of hay.
Freddie Spencer
Yes.
Bill Burr
You know, like you're out in front of Arnold's on Happy Days, you know, you're going to do some little jump. It's like these guys are going like almost 200 miles an hour. Whatever the bikes did back then, and there was such a sound to the engines, like, like it really sounded death defying. Where now I. It sounds. I still love it. But, but like Today's motorcycle and F1, as loud as it is and everything, it's still. It's more music, it feels more in harmony where it just, it really sounded like you guys were at the limit back in the day.
Freddie Spencer
Right. There was a rawness to it and certainly in whether it's cars or motorcycles in that era also, you have to understand, Bill, that we were running different engine types, our bikes for two strokes, which had more of a high pitch sound to them.
Bill Burr
What's firing every time the piston goes up. Right.
Freddie Spencer
Exactly, exactly. And so they. A lot more abrupt. I mean, and it was visually more abrupt where now especially with the modern bikes and the electronics that they have, you know, on the bikes, they're, they're, they're more what we call linear in their performance. And so, you know, they're smoother and they don't seem like they're, they're certainly not moving around the same. I mean, the best way to think about it for your audience would be is. Is with electronics. It's like having an AI on the bike to where it actually can work with the rider and help smooth out the rider's inefficiencies. Where in my day everything was done with your throttle hand. And so and you're in your hand control and you basically and your telemetry was your brain.
Bill Burr
It's like you, you were doing it.
Freddie Spencer
You were doing it yourself. You, you anticipated everything was anticipation and anticipating that. And that's why I say that what I had learned in my yard as a kid, it benefited me to, to where when I got on bikes that were that powerful and that fast. And in 1985, our top speeds were 200 miles an hour, you know, so, yeah, they were, they were definitely fast.
Bill Burr
You know, one of my favorite things to do when I fly with my Instructor helicopter. He shuts the governor off. So now you got to keep the RPMs in the green. And at first, it's really a lot of work. And after a while, you're not necessarily looking at the gauge as much as you start listening to the engine, right? And I feel like that's one of my favorite.
You know, sort of emergency perceived what if you lose your governor? It's one of my favorite things to do because it, you know, there's that thing where the governor's on, and it's like I'm shutting off that part of my brain, and there's a disconnect, right, to what I'm doing. And, you know, I'm up there. I need to be listening to the engine. Obviously, if I hear something weird, I, you know, definitely start looking to put it in a spot if I have to. But, like, there's. There's something about those. In my instructor, when he first started out, the helicopter that he flew had no governor. So the whole time. And I feel like he's the best pilot I ever flew with as far as a helicopter. And I think because of that background of no governor and having to be that aware of the engine and understanding what it. You can actually keep it from yawing by increasing or decreasing. And I just feel like that goes back to you in the backyard riding on the wet leaves. Is governor off compared to, like, oh, my God, now I'm on asphalt, and this is wet. I know exactly what my one thing, though. Like.
That.
Paul Verze
That.
Bill Burr
That year in 1985, I'm assuming to go from a 250 to a 500 is it's literally twice as much power. So it's almost like for, like, drumming, it would be like you're playing a little jazz bebop kit, and then all of a sudden, it's like, all right, now go out here with, like, you know, like, Slayer and get behind this double bass kit. And it's a completely different style of music. Like, how were you? Was there any sort of mental thing that you went in that it's like, okay, like, all right. It's like speaking two different languages. Like, now I got to switch my brain over to this. And did it take you a couple of laps to be like, oh, yes, I would.
Freddie Spencer
The thing is, you're exactly right. Two different motorcycles, two different speeds, two different lines, you know, through the corners, and then the same thing as far as. As. As the power and the rear tire and the spinning of the bike. And so the speed difference in the closure rate is. Is What I would have to adjust to between the two different bikes and, and I would give myself one lap, basically one lap to make the adjustment which was the siding lap and then you had the warm up lap. And so you know that really was what my job was. I had such a great crew. I was sponsored by Honda. I rode for Mr. Honda, won his first 500 championship in 1990.
Bill Burr
You put them on the map right.
Freddie Spencer
Before you came on hrc, before it was Repsol Honda, before Mark Marquez and Valentino and you know, Danny Petrossa and you know the whole group that rode for hrc. I kind of, I kind of started all that with Honda and Mr. Honda was at the very end of his involvement in the racing program and was an incredible man to me.
Bill Burr
What did they like, what was Honda saying to you when they had this 20 year old kid? It was both you guys were like kids in the sport, you know and you came up and you get on them and like I'm like, you know, thinking about.
You know, the street bikes that Honda had. They were a lot of like fun. But then they started making like, they started making like the first super bikes. Late 60s, early 70s, right? Yeah. So then they kind of like I have like a sort of a bucket list thing I want to do is there's some crazy motor like vintage Honda motorcycle or Suzuki and Kawasaki thing in Tokyo in December every year and it's a bucket list. You know my lovely wife wants to go to Tokyo anyway but I just want to go down there and, and just look at those bikes because those were the first bikes I wanted when I was. Harley scared me because you know, back in the day, Harley, David that was a whole outlaw like those guys look like that was a little boy. So they look like mean people. I didn't want to be near them. But like when I saw like the Hondas and all of those I fell in love. Those were the bikes I fell in love with. And so anyways getting back to that. So like around 79, 80 you started riding with them like winning races.
Did Mr. Honda ever take you aside and just be like, you know, or just in any way express like I can't believe we came together like that. I absolutely have this prodigy.
Freddie Spencer
Well one of the things that he saw me with another gentleman, Mr. Magiri, who he created the Civic and all the, the cars, the Accord and, and the cars that, that, that you see he was also. He started out as an engineer in the racing team and then he created this company called Honda Racing Corporation which actually build The Formula One engines that you see in, in the, the Red Bull cars today. So HRC is not only a motorcycle division in Honda, but it also is involved in the car racing. But they, when they started and they started this company, that's when the influence of racing really had started having the knockdown effect on the motorcycles that you see and the, the bikes that you ride, you know, that you rode in the 80s or, or the 90s or.
Bill Burr
No, I never rode back then. I just, I wanted to.
Freddie Spencer
You wanted to. But anybody who rode during that period that there was a lot of, you know, influence of, of the, of the racing that, that came down into the sport bikes and you know, that's why racing is such a integral part of, of what, what is involved with motorcycling. It and it's had such a pop. Big influence in, in my existence is one of the reasons why I've stayed involved so long.
You know, one of the things, Bill, I wanted to say before we got, before we got too far into this was listening to your podcast, your Monday morning podcast. I've listened to it in your Thursday at your Thursday show many times. Many times. And coming in a hotel room after a long day at the Grand Prix circuit because I was chairman of the stewards panel. So you've talked about incidents that I have called before, like the incident last year between Alex Marquez and Peko Bagnaya. And you were wondering, you know, about the incident and it looked like that they came together and there was no call. I called it a race incident. The reason why is because we look at trajectory and we have high speed cameras. We have high speed cameras. And so I look at it from three or four different angles. And so for you, next time you're watching a MotoGP race and the team of stewards that are in the Grand Prix now, I hired all those guys. All those guys are what I brought on to the team. I stopped doing it at the end of 24, but I would be listening to the podcast and I'd be going and you'd be asking about, well, I wonder why, you know, this, this, this. And I would be saying I could explain it to you, you know.
Bill Burr
Well, you know what? I just realized that I'm looking at it in a very two dimensional way. I have like a view I' at the race angle that they're taking, right? I just realized I need to shut up about all of those things, you guys, because it was cool.
Freddie Spencer
It was cool because it was great that you were watching it. And as a, as in your ears, such an enthusiast, I will tell you.
Bill Burr
Can I tell you the craziest thing I've seen in the nine years I've been watching, right. And MotoGP was. I don't know what track they were at, but it was this long straightaway where they get up to like 210, 213 miles an hour. And then there was a hard right turn and there was this whole like open field on the side. So I guess they never anticipated people on the straightaway colliding somehow. These two guys as the leaders were just about ready to go into that right turn. Two people collided, they fell off their motorcycles and these motorcycles started cartwheeling down towards the turn.
Freddie Spencer
I was out there and I had to call that incident. I'm the one that pen lost. Franco Morbidelli. Yeah, that was, that was Maverick Granalis and Valentino Rossi who was coming through.
Bill Burr
The corner and this bike like with the engine hanging off. Yeah, it was coming around. It went right in between them.
Paul Verze
Right.
Freddie Spencer
The chances, Bill, of the two bikes going through in between Maverick finales and Valentino and not hitting them is it was one in a million. Divine intervention is the only way I can say it. We were watching it and I couldn't believe what we were watching. And it was Johann Zarco and Franco Morvardelli who got together. And so I had to give starting from pin lane to Johan Zarco for the incident because he basically what it it was, it was pretty much a racing incident, but because of the speed and the kink of the corner there, not considering the fact of being the right hander right at the end. It's why we changed the track design after this incident for the next year for the Spielberg. It was in Spielberg Austria in August is where you saw that.
Bill Burr
Thank God nobody had to die because I even I knew I was going like, there's no way. They're looking at all the tracks now to see if that could possibly. That's the closest I thought, thank God nothing happened. But I always wondered like, for like Valentino Rossi, who else was the other guy that had just missed Maverick finale? Like what it was like, you know, your heart.
Freddie Spencer
Maverick. Maverick was in front and so he didn't get to see the bikes come through in between them. Yeah, it was Valentino who, yeah, he was like all the bikes, his light. You saw the bike like cross right in front of his bike. Oh my God, yes, that's something you.
Bill Burr
Like the balls to be like, okay, start racing again and be like, yeah.
Yeah, but I can't that was a.
Freddie Spencer
Tough, that was a tough incident because you got. The thing is, it's such an emotional. Everybody at that level, they're so driven and you know, the team, you know, as, as the steward and I was chairman of the stewards and so basically I would deal with each one of those incidents. Like that situation where I brought Johan Zarco and Franco Morvardelli in and they were both, you know, one of them had one opinion. They always different opinions.
Bill Burr
Just like out in the street is the little fender bender. He came out of nowhere.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, exactly. And you know, so he's going, what was I supposed to do? And of course there was no issue with, with Valentino or, or Maverick. But so it was just between those two and, and who caused the crash and, and basically how it could be avoided. And there's so much, you know, where you're looking at it, where it's, it's just, it's perception of the, the incident where you're looking at it objectively and you obviously it's, it's not about personalities and you know, that's why being a steward or even a referee, you see referee, you know, games, it's, it's extremely difficult because what you can see, you make half the people happy. Most time no one's, you know, happy with.
Bill Burr
Do you feel that being a. For that former racers are make better stewards because they, they.
Freddie Spencer
Absolutely, absolutely. It's one of the things that you see in Formula one. They have the same thing. They have stewards. They don't have permanent stewards. In fact, Liberty Media, who owns Formula One now, one of the things, they just bought the controlling interest in MotoGP and that deal just went through.
Bill Burr
A lot of people were upset by that. What do they think is going to happen?
Freddie Spencer
Well, I think there were. They were concerned about it, trying to make it too much like Formula One. You know, our sport is very passion driven, it's very fan driven, it's very passionate, it's affordable. And you know, that's very important that they keep that in mind.
Bill Burr
I'll tell you this. As long as the passing continues, you're watching racing for that. That's what you're watching. And if it gets to a point where, I don't know, everything's too equal and the people can't overtake anybody. It's just like I'm just watching like a 200 mile an hour parade lap.
Freddie Spencer
Right. It's one of the reasons why the technical rules for 2027 is changing and you know, not to get too Technical.
Bill Burr
But, you know, I'm not, I don't know what that, I don't know what that is. What's, what is that rule?
Freddie Spencer
Well, the, the, the, the, the technical rules are changing for 20, 27 in MotoGP, where they're lowering the displacement, they're taking away some of the aerodynamics, taking away some of the electronics to give even more control back to the riders to where it'll make the racing even better. So everybody out there who likes MotoGP, it's going to get even better. And everybody who hadn't seen it, they, they should because it is exciting to watch as, as you know.
Bill Burr
I got a question. Have you watched that, that bagger racing that they have?
Freddie Spencer
Yes, I'm involved.
I'm involved with the BTR program called Build Trade Race and with Rota, with Royal Enfield. And so we go to some of the moto America races, and that's here in the United States. And the baggers, they run there. When you came to MotoGP, were they running the baggers as.
Bill Burr
No, they did. It was only. Well, let's see. I mean, I went to the sprint race on Saturday, and then we all the dads went out there and did a lap. And then the next day we saw. Oh, boy. We saw the actual race the next day. Dude, you're just like me. You know what I mean? I'm good at comedy. I'm terrible at technology.
I hope someday I can be as good a comedian as you are a motorcycle rider.
Freddie Spencer
Well, I think that you definitely are.
Bill Burr
I appreciate that. Here's something that I think fans would like. I know this really interests me that that year in 85, when you were basically starting in two sports at the same time, dominating both, winning the championship, there was a price to pay that you had wrist issues and all of that.
I mean, I can't imagine. I know the toll, like when, sometimes when they talk about today's racing, the amount of weight they lose, the calories, the G forces and stuff, the fact that you were. You would race the 250 and then the 500 the same day. I mean, like, what sort of fluids did you have to take in the middle? And then can you just talk about the body breaking down and, and what your thoughts were? Was it worth it?
Freddie Spencer
Well, that's. I've been asked that question many times because it'd be like playing two football games back to back. And you can imagine everybody out there can imagine the toll that it would take on the body, just putting under that stress back to Back games, back to back races were the same thing. And it certainly exacerbated the risk problems that I was starting to develop. The carpal tunnel, it was called. This was before carpal tunnel was really even well known that much.
And I had some tendon issues and so I had some surgeries and then I had some neck issues from an accident that I had and it all kind of came together. And I think doing the two championships made it worse and certainly made it to where it wore out my wrist. And that's what happens. Just things get worn out, you know, with knee problems or wrist problems. And that's what I developed. I do not regret doing the two championships because for me, you know, Bill, I believe that everything happens for a reason. And certainly, you know, certainly doing both championships allowed me to do something that other people had tried but they weren't, couldn't be successful at.
Bill Burr
Yeah, and that's another thing too is like, that's. There's a few things that I feel like will never be broken. And that, that is, that is one of them. Like nobody's going to like put. I don't even think no one's going to put their body through that. No one's going to attempt it. And certainly I don't think there's anybody out there that could ride two full seasons at the same time, two different bikes and win the championship. I mean, I actually think, you know, I'm going to start bringing that up in sports arguments. When people talk about like Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak or the Bulls win in 72 games, I'm be like fucking Freddie Spencer 1985. Basically was playing two football games on the same day, two different classes, but he was doing it on a motorcycle at 200 miles an hour. It's really like, I appreciate that for you to be like as like a genius or rider you are and still to be so like, because I had no idea how you were gonna be, to be like this down to earth and still have this amount of passion and, and say like, you'd like to teach me how to ride. If I was, you know, I would. Oh my God, you take me for.
Freddie Spencer
A ride in your helicopter and I'll help you.
Bill Burr
Done.
Freddie Spencer
I'm serious.
Bill Burr
Done. I am. Next time, next time you're in LA, you let me know 100%. And then I got, you know where my airport is. You know, it's a little bit of a ride into the canyons. Then once you get in the canyons or we can just do Something at the airport, you know?
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, yeah. We don't need much room, but I could just help you to just navigate how to use the brakes better, how to use. Use your body better, you know, hand position. Just real basic things that will totally change your riding experience. It's one of the things that I'm most proud of, Bill, is after I retired from racing in 1995, I went and started my own riding school. And I did that for 11 years. And I had over 6,000 people that came to my school and saved a.
Bill Burr
Lot of lives, too.
Freddie Spencer
Well, that was one of the things, you know, it's. I wasn't teaching about speed. I was teaching about how to work with the motorcycle, how to ride and become a better and safer rider. And in turn, you're going to enjoy it. And to be able to do that, that was my goal. That's what I wanted to do, was to help people to understand how to. How to become better writers for themselves and to be safer riders.
Bill Burr
That was the only thing that I read in the 15 page thing they gave me that disappointed me. Was that your school? Because I saw the schools like, I'm going to that. I am definitely going to that, so.
Freddie Spencer
Well, that's a. Keanu Reeves and I became good friends after he did the Matrix. He came to my school and he spent two weeks there and rode in three schools. I taught him how to drag his knee. And Lyle Lovett's been to my school many times. He's a native.
Paul Verze
Oh, my God, that's amazing.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Freddie Spencer
So like I said, I can. I look forward to it. I definitely look forward to us getting together.
Bill Burr
Yeah, I don't think. I know a lot of people think Keanu Reeves is cool. I don't think they even understand how cool that guy is. He's.
Freddie Spencer
Oh, yeah, yeah, Super.
Paul Verze
He's great.
Freddie Spencer
He has a race team in Moto America, racing as we speak. And so I see him, I see him all the time. And it's one of the things. He has a company called Arch, his own bike. But when he came to my school, that's what kind of really got him hooked on motorcycling. And so he credits that to one thing that inspired him one day to start his own motorcycle company, which is called Arch.
Bill Burr
And yeah, a long time ago, I went down to his place and I saw all of those bikes. They're gorgeous, gorgeous bikes.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, they are.
Bill Burr
The thing about me is I'm not a speed guy. I like watching guys like you do it. You know, I got the, you know, the road glide. I'm like, I like a nice Cadillac ride. I'm out there to smell the smells, go around some turns. I even. You know what's funny is I, when I go and I ride the canyons, I do it during the week because on the weekend is all those fast and furious Tokyo drift kids. And I'm just like, you guys do well that I don't have any.
Paul Verze
I don't have.
Bill Burr
The other day I was riding through this canyon and you know, it was funny. Was this guy just like passed me like I was standing still and he looked like he was an ubereats guy. And I think I have like a twin. I think it was a single piston. He was just so much better at riding and it's like he was riding like a Moto3 and dude, he went like by me. It was embarrassing. But what I like about being an older rider is I was able to laugh at myself. And I didn't get into, oh, I gotta, I gotta show him I got a more powerful bike. I'm like, dude, that's all you. And he just, it was like a cartoon. He just went like. And he just was gone. So anyway.
Let'S, let's. I wish your book was coming out now. If it isn't, when it comes out again, if, if you want, if you want to come back on and promote your book, I mean, I'm going to read it cover to cover. And you know, there's a lot of, you know, sports fans that listen to this podcast and I got to tell you, man, that 1985 season, you know, I'm putting that up there. 27 Yankees.
Freddie Spencer
Well, that's pretty kind of you, Bill.
Bill Burr
Yeah, 96 Bulls and Freddie Spencer, 1985. It should be there, dude. And because for all of those guys doing what they did in sports that, you know, you couldn't die doing it. You know, I do have to ask you, I do have to ask you, without telling a morbid story, I don't want to know about anybody dying. What is the craziest thing that you saw? Like you were like a racing incident. Like when I'm talking about like that bike, I was saying just went flying down the track and barely missed two guys in your bale of hay riding leathers years. What's the craziest thing you saw?
Freddie Spencer
Well, there, the cr. The incident that you mentioned that happened while I was a steward that I had to make the call on at Spielberg is probably the most hair raising incident that I've ever seen because of the speed and the actual incident itself and the margin of error of. And no one getting hurt. And so that, that was, that was.
Bill Burr
That would have been gruesome to somebody get me an engine in a bike frame at 200 miles an hour. That would have been.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, for me, you know, I've, I've had a couple of accidents, you know, to where you know, I was going, you know, crashing at high speed and basically going toward a hay bale or guardrail. And you don't know exactly what's going to happen.
Bill Burr
What do you do? You just relax. What do you try to do?
Freddie Spencer
And that's the thing, the best thing about it, that, that is, that is so your mind is, is so strong in its ability and in the training aspect of it. And it's one of the things that I think separate all athletes and all athletes at great levels and you certainly see in motorsports is the mind's ability to be so far ahead of what's happening and it's survival mode and it just, you know, you have to relax and that's, that's what allows you to get through the incident. All right, one more. I've had, I've had a couple, you know, close calls. You can imagine 29 years of racing and racing at the very elite level and, and all the years of, of coming through. I, I never got injured until I got to grand prix racing. I raced for 14 years, 40 weekends a year. My dad and I would travel around the United States and, and was fortunate never to have an injury, never break a bone racing.
Bill Burr
Did you have a.
Like. I obviously, you know, you rather have it slide out from underneath you then high side it. When did you have any sort of way technique when you, when you high side. I just feel like it's like he gets shot off a catapult.
Freddie Spencer
Oh absolutely.
Bill Burr
And there's like nothing you can. Is there anything to put that that is, is better to protect or you're just praying?
Freddie Spencer
Well, I call it, I call it that, that moment of airtime and silence before impact, you know, and, and it's something you want to avoid. But a high side, high sighting going over the top side, as you said, a low side which you see more of today. And that's where the electronics, the safety of the bikes have gotten, you know, in that respect so much better because the, the bike stops spinning the electronics and so it can react faster than, than you can when in the old days where we would have to get back to throttle at the right moment as the rear tires breaking traction and you know, to prevent it from being too violent of a high side when.
Bill Burr
You'Re in the air and that silence, right? Are you. Do you have time to think anything? Are you like, oh, shit.
Freddie Spencer
Well, everything slows down.
Golly. That's the thing about it is everything slows down and you. You remember everything. I still can close my eyes and remember every incident. And basically, you know, from whether it's 40 years ago or 50 years ago, you know, it's like. It's like listening. It's like listening to any. Any older athlete like Jack Nicholas talk about hitting a too higher and a Marion in 1967. I think that that is one of the great things about sports in particular, but especially motorcycling. And that's why when I heard you say on the podcast one, one time not too long ago, about when you get on, you can just. It's the one thing you can do that clears your mind, and it's certainly the case.
Paul Verze
Let me.
Bill Burr
I got so many. I want to ask you if what is a championship motorcycle racer goes to bed at night and your dreams, did you ever. You dream about writing? Did you have a reoccurring nightmare? Did you have a dream? Do you. Dreaming about what I want to do the next day. Like, what. What do you guys. Someone like you, when you go to bed at night, was there ever an incident that happened where, you know, you said had a couple close calls. Did you have nightmares about it? Were you able to, like, let it go?
Freddie Spencer
I think, I think one of the.
Bill Burr
Things.
Freddie Spencer
For me when I would dream about racing, I would. I could feel, literally feel the movements of the motorcycle in my dreams and, and, you know, sense what was happening if I had a crash. Certainly I've thought about it before, years later, you know, think about it. I talk about one story in my book or crash that I had at Mazano in 1980, 87, on August 30, 1987. And I can still remember the. The impact and then the crash. And then afterwards, you know, I had an experience.
And it was the most peaceful moment that I had. And I could hear my name being called in the distance. And it was a doctor waking me up when I was in the medical center because it had knocked me out and.
Bill Burr
Oh, wow. So you were sort of unconscious, but conscious, right? Or coming out of it?
Paul Verze
Oh, my.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, coming out of. Yeah.
Bill Burr
So did you have any, like, you know, people have dreams, you know, there's a monster coming and they can't run. Did you have any dreams of, like, you're going into A turn. You just can't turn it. Or did you have more just visceral dreams of, like.
Freddie Spencer
No, I probably. I probably.
You could probably think, this is great. I actually would dream that I was late putting my leathers on and getting to the starting line, you know.
Paul Verze
Dude.
Bill Burr
I used to have dreams of bombing on talk shows or going out and forgetting my act. I'll tell you the funniest one I had. I had one time I was on Letterman and I was bombing, and I looked over and my dad was sitting behind the desk just shaking his head at me, and I'm like, well, this is Psych 101. David Letterman's the father figure I want to impress. I want to have a good set. Amazing. Freddie, we gotta hang. I'm gonna take you for a flight, and you gotta teach me how to become a more confident.
Freddie Spencer
Absolutely. I look forward to it.
Paul Verze
All right.
Bill Burr
Well, this was, like. I was so nervous about this podcast because I have such a respect for what you guys do, and it's such an art form. It's the most gorgeous racing sport. The colors, the movement, the way everybody goes in. And I just. I can't say enough about this sport. I absolutely love it. So when we're definitely going to hang, but also when your book comes out, dude, you got to come back on this. And we're going to. We're going to promote the hell out of it.
Freddie Spencer
Well, one thing I can tell you that we're already working on with the field book. We're already working on a screenplay for a film. So.
That with Mike Talon and mj, which I know you.
Bill Burr
All right, Can I play the guy in the pit yelling at the screen like, Freddy, you gotta slow down.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah. Or go faster. You could be holding the pitboard.
Bill Burr
The bike can't do what you're asking it to do.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, exactly. Pick up the pace here. But, you know, then, of course, you.
Bill Burr
Do what I didn't think the bike could do, and then I'm like, well, I'll be a son of a bitch. And there's your movie right there.
Greg Olson
I just. We got a beat sheet.
Bill Burr
Let's go sell it. All right, that's it, everybody. That's a Thursday afternoon, just before Friday Monday morning podcast. I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Spencer. That's the respect I got for you. You are an absolute legend, and I look forward to reading your book, and I look forward to us hopefully hanging out one time. That's it, everybody. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. And I'LL see you on Monday.
Paul Verze
Are you filming you? Just. Just taking a picture. What are we doing? What are you doing? Oh, picture. Okay. I always get paranoid. All right, we're going. All right. Hey, what's going on? It's Bill Burr and it's time for the Monday morning podcast for Monday, December 11, 2017. What's going on?
Bill Burr
How are ya?
Paul Verze
It's the Christmas season, everybody. Merry Christmas to everybody. I know you're not supposed to say that anymore. I don't know why. If somebody said happy Hanukkah to me, I wouldn't be like, you know, go fuck yourself. I'm Christian. I'm not even Christian. I don't even go to church. I just like saying Merry Christmas. It puts a little song in my heart. But in this gift giving time of the year, the gift that we have today is a very special guest came in all the way from New York, the wonderfully talented, with a brand new special called Naive Innocence that you can get on itunes, Google Play, Amazon, YouPorn.
Harris Stanton
Right, YouPorn. No, no.
Paul Verze
Okay. Please welcome Harris Stanton, everybody, to the program.
Harris Stanton
Hey, what's up?
Paul Verze
Yeah, there should have been applause there, but we don't have the sound effects.
Harris Stanton
I have porn in my album.
Paul Verze
Do you know? I'm trying to go. I'm trying to go the month of December. No porn, no booze. Why? No nothing. Because I think it fucks you up.
Harris Stanton
It does. It does. If I didn't have to. If I didn't get up so late and had to be here at 1, I would have jerked off before. Before I came here. But I realized I didn't have enough time to get into it the way I wanted to.
Paul Verze
Jesus, what do you fucking become a character or something?
Harris Stanton
I watched that Flair documentary he was talking about, and the guy asked him, how many times did they do he jerk off? He goes, twice. I was like, that's about what I do.
Paul Verze
Ric Flair said that?
Harris Stanton
Yeah. You saw the documentary you told.
Paul Verze
I don't remember that part.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, he went to a sports psychologist and the guy was like, so how many times a day you jerk off? He goes, twice. How much do you drink? He goes, I have 10 beers and five vodkas.
Paul Verze
That part I remember.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, he said that before. He said jerking off stuff before that. And he goes, every day. Every day. He said, how long you been doing that? Oh, it's 1982. I started in 72, about 20 years, digging. He said, that's impossible. He said he spent a week with me.
Paul Verze
Yeah, I like when they said they Were like, your first wife, how long you faithful? And he was like, ah, about a day. And they go, really?
Bill Burr
Because I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.
Paul Verze
I came home and he goes, I was bored. I just wanted, like, to see a guy. It was great to actually just say how fucking bored he is being married. Because, you know, anytime you have a thought of just any sort of, like, resentment of your situation that you fucking created.
Harris Stanton
Right, exactly.
Paul Verze
You didn't have to say, I do. You didn't have to do all that, but you created it. You have that feeling of like, fucking, I want to do this. You have, like, that guilt. I loved his complete lack of guilt.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
Or honesty, I should say.
Harris Stanton
Honesty.
Paul Verze
Yeah, honesty.
Harris Stanton
Why do you tell the girls? Why do you say, scream out your hotel? I don't know. Why don't you wear your ring?
Paul Verze
I don't know.
Harris Stanton
No one ever comes to the hotel. They all come to the hotel.
Bill Burr
I like that one.
Paul Verze
When he was in the middle of nowhere and there was no party, when he went back to the hotel, he created one. They just created one. Bought like 100 kamikazes and he's dancing on the bar. It's just like, whoa. Yeah, dude, you just blew out my fucking ears. Jesus. Let me turn this down here.
Bill Burr
I'm speaking of impression.
Paul Verze
Yeah, man, you got to go. There you go. Speaking of honesty, tell me about your. Your special. And I also like how you're doing it. Like you're. You basically went where all the specials end up anyways, and so you just bypassed all the networks. It's just like, someone's gonna steal this and rip it anyways or whatever the kids say.
What, you just shot it yourself?
Harris Stanton
No, it's. Bill, for the fifth time is an album.
Paul Verze
What is it? Oh, it's an album. Oh, it's a cd.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, well, it's not a cd. It's just digital, I guess. And I have drop cars that I sell after my shows and stuff.
Paul Verze
Oh, all right. Yeah, sorry, man. I don't do a lot of interviews and I'm not a good listener, so.
Bill Burr
Here we go.
Paul Verze
Bill, for the last time, I'm here about a benefit.
When's your special come out? I just assume it's a comedian, it's got to be a special.
Harris Stanton
No, I filmed it at Gotham Comedy Club Memorial Day weekend.
Paul Verze
Well, how do you film an album?
Harris Stanton
Well, you're right. I recorded it at Gotham Comedy Club Memorial Day weekend, and it's on all the little media platforms. All right, 45 minute album.
Paul Verze
I have to Ask you the white guy question here. You're wearing a Phillies hat. All right, now, I've learned this with black people. That doesn't mean you're a fan. Do you have on maroon sneakers or do you really like the Phillies?
Harris Stanton
I just like the hat.
Paul Verze
Oh, you just like the hat.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, but I'm a Toronto Blue Jays fan. You might see me wearing a few different Toronto Blue Jays hats.
Paul Verze
And you have a baseball background, correct?
Harris Stanton
Yes, I'm drafted by the Chicago Cubs.
Paul Verze
That's right. You were a right fielder, I believe.
Harris Stanton
In the 56 round, which they don't have that round anymore.
Paul Verze
You were drafted in the 56 round and the scouting report on you is you could go deep, but you couldn't hit a curveball.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
So what did you do to try to work on. Other than just guessing? What did you do when you stepped up to play to try to get. Because there's no way I could ever hit a curveball.
Harris Stanton
I was always hunting the fastball, which is probably not a great. Well, that's what a lot of hitters do. You're supposed to adjust. But I just. I think it was mental after a while. I wish. I wish I knew about sports psychology. When I was playing, I would have went to one because it was totally mental.
Paul Verze
You had a mental. Like Charles Barkley's golf swing where he has to stop and then. Then.
Harris Stanton
Oh, like John Lester, who can't throw the first base, but he can throw a pinpoint fastball on the inside corner to a hitter, but he can't throw it to first base to throw somebody out.
Bill Burr
Yeah.
Harris Stanton
He will not throw out.
Paul Verze
No pitchers can throw, Yevis. They all just. They fucking throw like. Like I don't know what, like a goddamn gorilla on the mound. And the second. They gotta throw it. They throw like a little girl. Like.
Harris Stanton
Right, Ari? I don't know if you remember Chuck Knobloch. He played for the. He was a Gold Glove second baseman. All of a sudden he couldn't catch anything.
Paul Verze
No, he couldn't throw.
Harris Stanton
He couldn't throw. What's the.
Paul Verze
Yeah, he threw it. Yeah, he threw. Was like hitting people in, like, the fifth row. Yeah. Steve Sachs was the first guy. Was that the guy? Yeah, the yips.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, it's all mental because you was doing it your whole life until now.
Paul Verze
So did you ever hit the curveball?
Harris Stanton
Yeah, I've hit a few curveballs. Bad ones. The ones that don't break that much.
Paul Verze
Okay.
Harris Stanton
But a good one. Not too many people hit a good one anyway. You're not going to hit if, if Clayton Kershaw puts a good one on the. You're not touching it.
Paul Verze
What's the. Who's anybody you ever go up against made it in the big leagues?
Harris Stanton
Yeah, Mando Hudson, he's the. He's the only.
Paul Verze
How'd you go against him?
Harris Stanton
Well, he didn't. He didn't. No. He didn't pitch. He was a player.
Paul Verze
Okay.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, he was a player. No. Jacob Shoemake, he got drafted first round by the Toronto by Atlanta Braves and he didn't make it. He got a 500, 000 signing bonus.
Paul Verze
And so you did all that Bull Durham riding around in buses and all that?
Harris Stanton
No, I didn't make it that far. I was released spring training.
Paul Verze
Wait, so when you get drafted by the Cubs, they saw you at high school? Like what is it?
Harris Stanton
They saw me in high school. And then they, they actually can. Scouts can actually help you get into schools. They call other schools and go, we like this guy. Matter of fact, I got recruited by NC State from a scout. You know they call schools and they hey, get this guy. We're gonna look at him. And then you go to the school and then after your first season they either pick you up or they. Cause I was a draft and follow up.
Paul Verze
So this just non stop pressure. Yes, it's every time. So then it's already bad enough if you're in your head, if you're in a slump.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
Now it's just like, fuck, I'm not gonna get picked up next year. My dream is gonna die. So all these other kids are walking around going to keg parties.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Going mom, send more money. And you're. And you're literally going, my dream's fucking dying.
Harris Stanton
Right, Right. Exactly. Most people don't. Most people who don't know baseball, it's just extremely competitive and hard to play. That's why there's a minor leagues. There's no minor leagues for. But there's a little bit for football now. But there's no my lease. For basketball and football you just go right to the pros. But baseball, you need constant work from rookie ball all the way to aaa. Rookie ball is not even a ball yet.
Paul Verze
Is that because it's. The game's that hard?
Harris Stanton
It's really that hard. Yeah. You mean you ever try, you ever seen a 97 mile fastball coming at you?
Paul Verze
I like those people that go down to the batting cages and they just.
Bill Burr
Set it on 90 and they know.
Paul Verze
What the pitch is and they keep going, dude, I was hitting it. I Was catching up with it.
Bill Burr
It's like, okay, yeah, all right, now.
Paul Verze
Let'S actually put a brain behind that fucking machine that has two other pitches. Exactly. There's a million people watching, right?
Harris Stanton
Fastball is actually easy to hit. It's the other stuff. Slider, curveball. You don't know what's coming. Sometimes if the pitch.
Paul Verze
Can you please. What is what. What exactly is a slider? It's a ball do.
Harris Stanton
It's a ball that slides to the left or slides to the right.
Paul Verze
That's it. And yeah, that's not a curveball. Curveball drops off.
Harris Stanton
The curveball drops off the table.
Paul Verze
Yeah, that's a slider.
Harris Stanton
They call it 12 to 6, where it really drops from 12 to 6. That's a bat. Kershaw has a 12 to 6. Some people just have a little loop. But a slider is a. And a cutter is a fastball that at the last minute darts to the left, which goes into your. The handle part, and you break your bat. Like, Mariano had the greatest cutter.
Paul Verze
And it would just like, why can't they just guess? And just going, I know he's coming with the cutter. And just guess.
Bill Burr
Because even if he swing a little.
Paul Verze
Left.
Harris Stanton
It was that easy. I don't know, man.
Paul Verze
I met a guy one time who.
Harris Stanton
You got split second to.
Paul Verze
He used to play for the Giants, and he owned fucking Tim Wakefield, who was a knuckleball pitcher. And he goes. This is a visual here. But basically, he go like, well, basically, his pitch did this. And he would make all these crazy movements with his hand and then go.
Bill Burr
It either went here or da, da.
Freddie Spencer
Da, da, da, da.
Paul Verze
There.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, knuckleball is crazy.
Paul Verze
He would just guess. He would go, all right, I'm going to just swing here on this one, or I'm going to swing there.
Bill Burr
And.
Paul Verze
And I'm ignoring all of this bullshit.
Bill Burr
Between me and him.
Paul Verze
And he actually was successful doing that. I remember the Yankees one year were just looking at tape against Wakefield, and they realized that most of his knuckle balls were balls. So they go, well, just don't fucking swing at it. And then he started getting behind in the count. I think that's when he had to, like, every once in a while throw, like, his idea of, like, a fastball. But I always felt if I was going to get to the big leagues, like, that's the way to, you know, if you could somehow develop a knuckleball. Cause then you're not going to blow out your arm. You can throw, like 26 pitches. Like you know, crazy like Johnson, you.
Harris Stanton
Could pitch the six.
Paul Verze
Early 1900s.
Harris Stanton
Ye.
Bill Burr
What do you think? I know we're not.
Paul Verze
I love sports. Who gives a fuck? We know you're funny. Let's just.
Harris Stanton
Let's try.
Paul Verze
Let's talk sports here.
Bill Burr
What if.
Paul Verze
What do you.
Bill Burr
How do you look at those early.
Paul Verze
1900S, you know, specials. Not specials. The fucking records that people.
Harris Stanton
In baseball.
Bill Burr
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Like when somebody, you know, he pitched 93 innings in two days. That'll never be broken.
Harris Stanton
Right.
Paul Verze
The Home Depot League is what I call it.
Harris Stanton
Well, I. Today's. Today's baseball is different because it's the training, it's the preparation. Like, those guys, they just. They just. They just played. Like, now they coddle the. The players, the pitchers. Like, they only go six innings now. Really?
Paul Verze
Yeah. They're like veal.
Harris Stanton
Yeah. Like, back in the day, they planned to go nine, and now they go. You go six and some five. I don't. And that means your bullpen has to be very good. You know, if you don't have a great bullpen, even. I've even heard talk of which. Which was. Which is blasphemy. I hope they never do it. That just tried to. Okay, you go three innings, you go three innings. No, you let Clayton Kershaw go as long as he can go, and then you bring in the bullpen. You don't let him go three and then let your other guy go three. I guess so.
Paul Verze
Do you coach any baseball when you're not doing stand up? No.
Harris Stanton
No. I'm gonna put my son in the league probably next summer.
Paul Verze
That's good. You're gonna keep him out of football. At least he didn't pick soccer. I know. Soccer is gradually taking over.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Soccer.
Paul Verze
No, you can't do. Because you know what she's basically saying.
Harris Stanton
I'm gonna Joe Jackson him in baseball.
Paul Verze
You're saying. You're saying I want my son to be a flopper. Yeah, that's basically. I want. I think you have to. You got to take, like, a drama class before you play soccer or whatever the. They call it overseas football. My favorite one ever is, you know, people say, you know, why do you call it football? Talking about American football.
Harris Stanton
Right.
Paul Verze
Somebody. I forget what comedian said this. It was like, well, why do you call it football? Why don't you call it feet Ball.
Harris Stanton
Right.
Paul Verze
Using both feet. Right. You want to be a clever cunt. There's your clever joke right back at you.
Harris Stanton
Right, right.
Paul Verze
I actually would rather watch women's soccer than men's soccer. Just Cause they just play. They don't do all that fucking flopping around. And it's embarrassing. I would literally, if that was my son, I would walk out of the stadium. I would stand up all dramatic like Glenn Close in the Natural.
Harris Stanton
Right, right.
Paul Verze
I'd have myself backlit. So he saw me up in the stands and. And he'd be all excited that he drew a fucking yellow card. And I would turn my back on him. That'd be it. That'd be the modern day version. You know that story where the guy bricked up the room that the kid was in? Oh, yeah, you heard that story?
Harris Stanton
No, no, but I watched the ID channel, so. I mean, he locked his son. He bricked up his son.
Paul Verze
His son was supposed to go to battle and he fucking chickened out. So the guys came there and they're like, yeah, you know, your son, or you said it was like the king or some shit. They go, your son, who you said was brave.
You know, he chickened out. And he's like, bullshit. No son of mine would do that. And they go, yeah, he's right in that room. He goes, I refuse to believe that. And to demonstrate it, I will now have this room sealed off. And he started bricking the room up. And he got all the way up to the last brick, and then the pussy was on the other side. And he went, father, no, this is recent.
Bill Burr
And then.
Paul Verze
Oh, this happened in Tuhunga, Orange county or something.
Harris Stanton
Oh, wow.
Paul Verze
And he goes, brick it up. That was it. They put the last brick in and that was it. The dude died. No, they found skeletons with powdered bone. Dude, it wasn't. Now it's a. It's a fable.
Harris Stanton
Oh, it's not real.
Paul Verze
Yeah. Jesus. How crazy do you think white people are?
Bill Burr
How free do you think we are.
Paul Verze
That we can brick our kids up in a.
Harris Stanton
You've done worse.
Paul Verze
We actually have.
Anyways. Jesus Christ, let's get out of slavery. What else do you want to talk about? The Patrice o' Neill benefits. Coming?
Harris Stanton
Yes. Yes, man. Yeah. Excited about that. Like, I always like seeing Georgia.
Paul Verze
Yeah. Yeah.
Harris Stanton
I actually spoke to her before I came here.
Paul Verze
What's your favorite Patrice o' Neill story that you had? You went on the road with him. You did Amsterdam and all of that, man.
Harris Stanton
We coming back from Charlie Goodnight's. Raleigh, Durham. Oh, yeah. And you guys, firecrackers is illegal in Boston, right?
Paul Verze
Fireworks.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, fireworks.
Paul Verze
You have to go up to New Hampshire.
Harris Stanton
Yeah. So Patrice said, you in a hurry to get back in New York? I go, no, no. What's up? He goes, I never really. You use fireworks? And I go, okay. Well, we stopped by. He spent, like, $300 on fireworks.
Paul Verze
Did he?
Harris Stanton
Yes. He just. Just put them all in one bag and just rang it up. And he goes, oh, I want to. I want to set some of this off. So I go, yeah, I'm from down. He was in North Carolina, so I'm from here. So we can just find one of these little abandoned fields. So we did. But it was a. It was hot, and the grass was dry.
Paul Verze
Oh, Jesus.
Harris Stanton
And we started a forest fire.
Paul Verze
Oh, no.
Harris Stanton
We lit it up. We had just came back from eating, so Patrice had tea. He shouldn't have had tea. And I had a big glass of water or tea. And the fire started getting bigger. But before it got bigger, we tried to put it. Stomp it out. So it was just two black dudes.
Paul Verze
What? Your tea?
Harris Stanton
No, we did that. We did the feet first. We both had new sneakers on. Our sneakers were black. When we were done, we were trying to stomp this fire out. And then we went and grabbed the tea, and we both poured our tea on the fire. That did nothing.
Paul Verze
They did.
Harris Stanton
I said, let's get out of here. You go. No, no. We got the. Then the ambulance came. The fire truck came. The owner of the land came in, like, ten minutes.
Paul Verze
Oh, Patricia, you said, let's get out of your own state. You were like, this place. Yeah, I live in New York.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, let's get out of here.
Bill Burr
So what happened? They put it out.
Harris Stanton
They put it out, and they were really cool. Patrice was honest. He goes, let me do all the talking. Stupid. And.
And when they got. When they got there, he's like, I'm from Boston. I know pop firecrackers before. So we just started to be good. Like, oh, it's okay, man. Don't worry about it. I just. I just put some pesticide on this crops and everything is dry or whatever, and they let us go. Wow. They take our statement, let us go.
Paul Verze
There you go.
Bill Burr
Look at that.
Harris Stanton
But we almost started a forest fire. That shit was going. The field is here, and the forest was, like, maybe 10ft from the fire.
Paul Verze
Why didn't you just light it off in a parking lot?
Harris Stanton
There was no. It was in North Carolina. There's no parking lot.
Paul Verze
Yeah, there is. I lived there.
Harris Stanton
Well, not where we were at. We were, like, off the highway, off the beaten path.
Paul Verze
Fucking do it in a rest area. Scare a couple of pedophiles out of the bathroom.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, we didn't do that.
Paul Verze
Let's put it in this fucking pile of hay.
Harris Stanton
Oh, dude, it was hilarious. Our feet were. Both our shoes were black from trying to stomp fire. We poured our tea on it.
Bill Burr
Where you go. Where are you working these days?
Harris Stanton
Everywhere in the city. I'm actually pretty busy in January. I'm going to Denver, Colorado with Dean Edwards and.
Paul Verze
Dean Edwards, man, I haven't run into him in a minute.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Verze
Where are you guys playing down there?
Harris Stanton
The improv is that. Yeah, I was at the Funny Bone.
Paul Verze
The Denver comedy works.
Harris Stanton
No, no, no, it's the improv, I think.
Paul Verze
Oh, the improv. Okay.
Harris Stanton
And then after that, I am in. Damn, where am I? I'm in Myrtle beach, where I started at Comedy Cabana.
Paul Verze
How close is that to the forest fire? Myrtle Beach?
Harris Stanton
What forest fire? As forest fires in South Carolina.
Paul Verze
The one that you started two minutes ago.
Harris Stanton
Oh.
Paul Verze
Trying to do a call back here.
Bill Burr
Trying to help you out here.
Harris Stanton
That was in North Carolina.
Paul Verze
Oh, North Carolina. Where's Myrtle Beach? South Carolina.
Harris Stanton
South Carolina. Yeah.
Paul Verze
That's all the same down there. That's all the damn same. You know what I don't like in the South? The Chain Waffle House.
Harris Stanton
Oh, yeah. I just, I used to work in one.
Paul Verze
You know, I like.
Bill Burr
I.
Paul Verze
The signage.
Harris Stanton
The what?
Paul Verze
The sign is so. The font is so not exciting. And then it's like piss yellow.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
With like the most basic thing.
Bill Burr
And you get in there and it's just.
Paul Verze
I don't. There's always like. Either a fight's about to happen or just happened. It's just really like.
Harris Stanton
I worked at three years and when I was in high school, people go.
Paul Verze
There, they seem like they're hiding out. Like, you know, I can't go home because of such and such situation.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, it's, it's, it's. It's a. I didn't enjoy working. I had.
Paul Verze
How long did you work there for?
Harris Stanton
3 years, off and on. When I was.
Paul Verze
How many fights did you see?
Harris Stanton
I didn't see any fights, but someone after, After I worked third shift sometime and the club, when the club let out, these drunk people would come in and one person went in the bathroom and shit everywhere, all on the walls. So the waitress comes out, she goes, harris, I'm cooking food. She goes, harris, and I need you to clean the bathroom. I go, what's going on? Somebody made an accident. I went in there and it was just.
Paul Verze
It was an. On purpose.
Harris Stanton
I don't know, it looked like a crime scene with. And I said, no, I'm not cleaning out I don't get paid to clean off walls.
Paul Verze
They don't make a mop for that.
Harris Stanton
No, they don't.
Paul Verze
Yeah. Cause call a Hazmat group.
Harris Stanton
Exactly. Exactly. I refuse. And one of them did it. And one lady came in and she wanted a cheeseburger. And I said, the cheese is 50 cent extra. She goes, 50 cent? Can't you just put it on there? I go, no, lady, I can't just do it. You have to pay for it. And she didn't get the cheese the next day. The next night she came in, she had her own cheese in the plastic, and she said, put that on my burger. Like using a nightclub. This cheese is in your glove compartment for two hours. You left your house, you got your purse, your perfume, and your high heels and your cheese. So when you get to the Waffle House, the cook can put it on your burger. Cause you don't want to pay 50 cents.
Paul Verze
Wow.
Harris Stanton
Hilarious.
Paul Verze
That is. That is. That is a level of cheapness. Because that is cheapness. If you're going out to a club and you're gonna pay a cover and you're gonna do some shit like that. I fucking hate cheap people.
Harris Stanton
Like, yeah.
Paul Verze
And also dumb with money.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
I don't have any sympathy for that. My white guilt only goes so far, you know, I mean, I'll white guilt all fucking day long until I watch you get a deal and buy a bunch of dumb shit that I just like, I forget it. Right, right, right. You know, all kinds of shiny shit. Remember that? Remember the. Remember the age of the deals?
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
In Montreal Comedy Festival. And everyone would go up there and.
Bill Burr
He'D be like, oh, my dad was.
Paul Verze
Crazy and my brother was crazy. And everybody's like, that's a show.
Harris Stanton
Right, right.
Paul Verze
And then you'd go out and you'd get a six figure deal. Remember all those fucking idiots that went out and they buy flat screen TVs?
Harris Stanton
Ty Lin did that. Ty Lin got a bunch of money.
Paul Verze
Todd Lin, rest in peace. Literally did. And I refused to believe it until Dean Edwards fucking confirmed it. Did the Coming to America thing where he fixed up a place he was renting. He even redid the fucking floors. Showed his landlord, she raised the rent and he had to leave after a while.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, yep, yep. He bought a bunch. He bought two cars.
Paul Verze
He. He bought that gold Lexus. He had the. Jesus.
Harris Stanton
It was. It was infinity, infinity, infinity. And he had.
Paul Verze
He had a waist length mink with a hoodie on it. Zip up. And he would be on stage talking about white people.
Harris Stanton
Right? He must have been. He must have.
Bill Burr
Just like this guy. You could be as white as fucking ever. No, you're never going to keep money.
Paul Verze
If you do that.
Harris Stanton
Right. He must have spent 20 grand on whores. It was hilarious.
Paul Verze
I feel bad going, we can't go that far. He's not alive to defend himself. But if he was, if he's listening to the spirit of him.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Do you think in the afterlife, both his arms worked?
Harris Stanton
I thought we weren't doing anything.
Bill Burr
Jesus. Jesus.
Harris Stanton
Oh, my God. You know, it's funny. Ty would have that arm and people were still afraid of him. What the.
Bill Burr
Are you afraid because he had that.
Paul Verze
He had the mean mug.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Bill Burr
Face.
Paul Verze
I used to always tease him about this Roman nose. Yeah, he had like a Julius Caesar nose. Yeah, he was. I don't know. He kind of looked like a male Missy Elliott.
Bill Burr
When I really think back, you know.
Paul Verze
When she needs to lose weight, you know.
Harris Stanton
Right, right, right.
Paul Verze
That size Missy, whatever happened to her? I think she took her money, left, I think Napster, which blew up comedy. I'm convinced of that.
Harris Stanton
I'm smart on my money. After the accident, I was only bought two people.
Paul Verze
Can I get any credit here for going this far in and not making you fucking relive that again?
Harris Stanton
Oh, that's fine. We could talk about it.
Paul Verze
Okay.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Harris was one of the people, unfortunately, who was on the bus with Tracy Morgan when that Walmart truck crashed. Not the bus. I'm sorry. It was one of those little. Those Mercedes van things.
Harris Stanton
Van, limo, party bus without the pole.
Paul Verze
And rest in peace, Uncle Jimmy.
Harris Stanton
Uncle Jimmy Mac, yeah.
Paul Verze
Oh, man. I remember bombing with him at fucking Le Bar Bat one night.
And I remember he was.
Harris Stanton
I bombed at Le Barbat too.
Paul Verze
Oh, everybody, I. That fucking room. That was talent's room. I never figured that room out. Never. That room was like this really cool bar and it had an upstairs and a downstairs. And it was Tuesdays. The after work crowd, you know, they never called any white people. I remember that. It was the specifically all black crowd, after work crowd. And every time I went there, I think I must have killed first because I went back.
Harris Stanton
Right, right, right.
Paul Verze
So I killed the first time, then I bombed. Then I killed and I bombed every other fucking time. It was unbelievable.
Harris Stanton
They only did it twice and I bombed both times.
Paul Verze
Oh, I remember one night.
Harris Stanton
That's back when I was new. Anyway, so I probably bombed so bad.
Paul Verze
You never bombed so bad that the next guy's bombing off of your bomb? Like, that's like. It was like the aftershock of what the fuck I did. So Uncle Jimmy went up there and was bombing, and he was bo so bad, and it was so quiet. He was just like, ah, man, y'. All.
Bill Burr
He goes.
Paul Verze
And this woman was giving him. And he said something about, like, whatever, you know, something about his career, Right? I still got my career. And she was like, n word, what career? And everybody. That was the biggest laugh. Everyone laughed at him. He was trying to talk about being on bet.
Dude, you remember what's his face? Gerald Kelly.
Harris Stanton
Gerald Kelly.
Paul Verze
Yeah.
Harris Stanton
Green Eyed Bandit.
Paul Verze
I did one of his rooms out in Jersey. It was one of these places. It was a dance club. And like the next week it was closed because someone shot off guns or some. And I went in there, and it was me and Roz G. And I forget who else. And he was supposed. He was supposed to host it. It was his room, and he was like two hours late. And he came on stage. Oh, yeah. And just was like.
Bill Burr
He's like, yo, what up?
Paul Verze
You know, just got back from Atlanta.
Harris Stanton
You kind of go.
Paul Verze
And he goes, doing Comic View. He goes, made six GS.
Greg Olson
He tried to say he made six.
Paul Verze
Grand doing comic View.
Bill Burr
Now, people not in the business, Comic.
Paul Verze
View, you got paid like 600 bucks.
Harris Stanton
I got thousand dollars one time.
Paul Verze
Did you? I think that was actually after everybody I remember was in the hundreds. It was like 700 bucks.
All inclusive.
Bill Burr
Like, you lost money.
Harris Stanton
You lost money.
Bill Burr
Yeah, yeah.
Harris Stanton
You had to pay for your hotel, you had to pay for your flight.
Paul Verze
So he. Nobody knows that. So he showed up, told the crowd that had waited for him, like fucking Axl Rose back in the day.
Bill Burr
He was late because he was doing.
Paul Verze
A TV show, and he made six grand. So that's how we started. He's like, what the fuck? And I remember Roz went up and she had such a tough set that she ended her set and she goes, damn. She goes, I don't know who's coming up next, but he better be funny. Cause you motherfuckers ain't laughing at shit.
Bill Burr
And walked off, right?
Paul Verze
And then they brought me up. And of course, the second I talked, everybody did the white guy voice. Nice to be here. Yeah, I ate it.
Harris Stanton
Jimmy. I tell you a funny story with Jimmy, because Jimmy had. I guess he was away for comedy for a little while. So Tracy brought him on the road, was on tour with us.
But before I got on the tour, Mark Field said that Jimmy would go up and open and be bombing. So Tracy said, jimmy, you go up and warm the crowd up. And Jimmy Will go up. And Jimmy started bombing. And then Artie comes back and goes, yo, Tracy, Jimmy's bombing. You want me to get him off? Tracy's like, nah, nah. Let him simmer for a little bit.
Artie goes back out. Yo, Jimmy, stretch. And Jimmy turns around and goes, okay, they want me to stay out here. And he just bombed for five more minutes. I'm like, tracy, you're an asshole for just letting him sit in his bomb for five more minutes. Let him out off the hook, man. And before. So the next night, he goes, jimmy, you're up again.
Bill Burr
He sounded like that dude in Pulp Fiction.
Paul Verze
Let him simmer.
Harris Stanton
Let him simmer a little bit. And then so the next night, Jimmy. Tracy goes, jimmy, you're on again tonight. And Jimmy literally went in the corner and started rehearsing his lines like new comics do.
Paul Verze
Oh, God.
Harris Stanton
All right, all right. And he went out and bombed again.
What an asshole. Tracy.
Bill Burr
I know.
Paul Verze
No, we had a bunch of those. There was a guy. I remember when I was in Boston, this guy. This guy, Dick Daugherty, he still has rooms. He had all of these fucking rooms, right?
Harris Stanton
Right.
Paul Verze
He was like the Godfather of the. Outside the satellite rooms. Right? You had the main clubs in Boston, and then he had all of these places in, like, fucking Drake it. And all these places in Massachusetts and. Which are all great towns, but, you know, not the best place sometimes to do comedy. So he finally did one. He finally got one in Boston. I guess he always had the. He had the comedy vault for a while, but he opened this other one in Kenmore Square right in the college area, and they called it Comedy Campus. So this. This journeyman guy finally, you know, they gives him the room. Like, you're booking this room, you host it. And he's fucking psyched, man. I'm finally fucking making something in this business. And he fucking. The first night of it, I'm on it with Greg Fitzsimmons. And the dude goes up, and it's this really small crowd, 10, 15 people. And dude, when I tell you he didn't get a fucking laugh. He got nothing. Brings up the first act. The first act immediately starts killing. Crowd fucking livens up. Everything's going great. Dude finishes his set. Thanks a lot.
Bill Burr
Back to you.
Paul Verze
Host so and so Host comes back up. Immediately bombing again.
Bill Burr
The host bomb.
Paul Verze
Yes.
Harris Stanton
That's always funny when the host is bombing also.
Paul Verze
Bombs again. Brings up the woman that Greg was dating at the time. Fucking she kills. Back to him, bombing. So finally brings up one more person. That person's killing Right? So fucking Fitzsimmons looks at him, and he just goes, hey, buddy. He goes, dude, you know, if. If it's not happening for you, just bring Ax up. You know, we got plenty of show here. We got plenty of show. And, like, pissed this guy off, so he got on stage, and he fucking immediately just starts bombing again. So finally, dead silence. He just looks at the crowd. He's like, you know what. What the fuck?
What the fuck kind of jokes do you fucking people want?
Harris Stanton
Exactly.
Paul Verze
This guy in the crowd goes, how about some funny jokes? And he goes. He goes, funny how? Like, things going in and out of Uranus. Oh, that's.
Harris Stanton
That did that kill.
Paul Verze
It killed with me and Greg.
Harris Stanton
That's hilarious.
Paul Verze
He said it was such fucking bile in his voice. You actually pictured this guy's asshole puckering up.
Harris Stanton
That shit killed.
Paul Verze
Me and Greg were. It was the funniest joke of the night. We were crying, laughing, and the crowd.
Bill Burr
Was just like, whoa, what the fuck?
Harris Stanton
Oh, wow. You remember Kevin Hart's Sweet Cheeks in Atlantic City?
Paul Verze
I never did that one, but I remember they threw chicken at Big J.
Harris Stanton
Oh, it was awful.
Paul Verze
They loved gay bar. No, it was Sweet Cheeks.
Harris Stanton
It sounds like a gay bar.
Paul Verze
I remember Patrice worked a gay bar called Fiddlesticks.
Bill Burr
I did one.
Paul Verze
It was called Queen of Hearts.
Harris Stanton
Oh, man. No, it wasn't a gay bar. It was actually the opposite. Gangsters hung out there. It was fights all the time. And they love Little Kevin, and. But when everybody else will come back on, they would just. They do, like, the little. The plastic that you put the menu in on the table. They threw that at Jameek. They just. They were awful. But they loved Kev. I was like, well, that guy is funny, too.
Paul Verze
Oh, I didn't do rooms like that. After a while, like, there was. If enough people came back. If enough people came back with stories.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Kev was trying to get me to do that room. And I remember I was far enough in my career, but you didn't have to do it. I don't need to drive to Philly to bomb. Like, I can do that. I'll do Drew Frazier's room. Manhattan proper.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
I'll take the E to the end.
Harris Stanton
That just finally closed.
Paul Verze
Take my. I love that room. I remember one time doing that all the time, too. I remember doing that one time, and I remember one entourage chasing another entourage out of the club. And then the next week, there was like, a metal detector. Yeah, way back.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, that's Tupac. And gangsters used to hang out. They used to Gangsters used to hang out there like real live drug dealers.
Paul Verze
Yeah, that was the vibe. But then this really cool after work.
Thing was there.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, like supreme. He. He was on American Gangster. They used to hang out there.
Paul Verze
There was not a guy there named Supreme.
Harris Stanton
You probably didn't know when your whiteness. You had no idea you was Mexican.
Paul Verze
They probably thought I was a cop.
Bill Burr
Supreme.
Paul Verze
You know what people used to do when I got off the fucking. When I took the E to Jamaica, Queens and get up. They would look at me like. They would just be like. People would try to help me. Jamaica, Queens going like, dude, get back on. You want to go?
Harris Stanton
Yeah, exactly.
Bill Burr
You want to go the other way? You want to go the other way?
Harris Stanton
Yep. You know you was performing in front of killers. Did you.
Paul Verze
Ah, no, I knew that there was definitely some shit going on that wasn't legal. But I mean, I thought it was kind of like. You ever think about that? How many like, people that killed somebody at this point? How long you been doing stand up? How many people in the crowd who've killed somebody that people just don't even know yet or I used to think that on the subway.
Bill Burr
Right.
Harris Stanton
Well, in Manhattan property, you definitely had some clientele and it killed somebody. I had somebody killed some.
Paul Verze
Some future stars of the first 48.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
Let me. How far into this am I? Half. Half hour. Okay, cool. Look at me. Still can fill a half, huh? I got type in my goddamn password. What's the name of your special again? So people know to look for my name.
Harris Stanton
My special cd.
Paul Verze
Sorry.
Harris Stanton
God damn. Naive innocence and this. That's the theme. Because I moved from South Carolina and I was naive and innocent. Then I got up here and I got around you guys and I became fucking terrible.
Paul Verze
You gonna blame us like that demon wasn't in you youu right?
Harris Stanton
Yeah, it was in there. But you guys, I haven't even talked.
Paul Verze
About half the fucking shit that I heard you did.
Harris Stanton
Lubricated it out. You guys lubricated it out.
Paul Verze
No, you were. You were. You were on your own. You. I remember you. Tracy didn't help over fucking night. Overnight, you would just went from like, hey, how's it going, everybody? To Harris did what?
Harris did what?
Harris Stanton
Yeah, that's pretty wild.
Paul Verze
Yeah. And I'm just leaving this open. You want to tell your fucking stories, you tell them. But other than that, I keep my mouth shut.
Bill Burr
There you go.
Paul Verze
Yeah, goes into falsetto sideways there. All right, let me do. Let me do a little read here real quickly. Oh, look who's back for the holiday season. It's Sherry's berries. All right, how far in are we? And you have 40. Okay. 10 minutes of bullshit there. Sorry.
Harris Stanton
You have a tape. That's the camera. Just so people don't watch you jerk off. Is that really.
Paul Verze
I just feel. No, I'm just like, what if you're banging your wife and you just have your thing on? Like these fucking nerds, you know, they're not getting any pussy. They just watch you. They actually caught people. Like, they. They buy a tv, they watch you watching tv.
Harris Stanton
The fuck I. Yeah.
Paul Verze
And for some reason, that's not illegal. And now all these fucking morons are.
Bill Burr
They got that.
Paul Verze
That little thing there in the house being.
Bill Burr
Being like, alexis, what's the capital of South America or whatever?
Paul Verze
I mean, Brazil. South America.
Yeah. You just bugged your own house.
Bill Burr
I mean, you already have.
Paul Verze
With all these devices, and now you got this other thing, right? That's like, Alexa.
Harris Stanton
I'm not. I don't have Alexa in my house.
Paul Verze
No, it's like inviting a vampire into your house. You gotta put a thing of garlic around his fucking.
Harris Stanton
Fuck Alexa. The fuck out my house, bitch.
Paul Verze
That's exactly what I said.
Okay, here we go. It was bad timing. We both took a sip. All right, here's some questions. All right? Now, I tried to get some ethnically diverse ones so I can show you that I'm woke. How annoying is that to hear a white person say that?
Harris Stanton
By the way, you married to a black woman, though, huh?
Paul Verze
Yeah, but, you know, once you're married that long, just a woman, you know, it's the same.
Harris Stanton
You gotta have cultural fights.
Paul Verze
Yeah.
Bill Burr
It's not like you hold the fork like this and I hold it like that. Wow.
Paul Verze
There really is a difference. It's the same shit.
Harris Stanton
Right, Right, right.
Paul Verze
Like, can I finish up here in the bathroom before you try to steal the sink? Brushing your teeth. It's the exact same shit, right? It's only when you go out in public and everybody's like, what the fuck.
Bill Burr
Are you doing together.
You fucking race traitor.
Harris Stanton
Yep.
Paul Verze
But when you're in the house, huh?
Harris Stanton
I love.
Bill Burr
Well, you can have mine.
Paul Verze
You could have mine. Whatever one I was supposed to be with, and I took yours. There you go. And then one day, we'll go on a double date. Like those two freaky fucking. Was it the Yankees or the Indians? You ever hear about them? That they swapped wives?
Harris Stanton
No.
Paul Verze
There was two teammates. They went on a double date. By the end of the end of the date, they fucking realized, hey, man, we're like, sort of like, you know, they probably sat at a four top.
Bill Burr
Boy, girl, boy, girl.
Paul Verze
And I think they just sort of. The dudes stopped talking to each other and chick stopped talking by the end of it. Some they. They agreed to switch.
Harris Stanton
Swap wives in real, like, to go forever, like.
Bill Burr
Yeah.
Paul Verze
And I think one of them made it and the other ones didn't.
Harris Stanton
That's hilarious.
Paul Verze
I think the other one didn't. That'd be the funniest fight.
Bill Burr
I should have stayed with the right fielder. Well, I know he's getting a better blowjob than I am.
Paul Verze
Oh, this would be brutal. All right, here we go. So I tried to have some ethnically diverse. Okay, so we're gonna start. This is a nice one that. I feel like anybody of any sort of background transgendered. Anybody? This one's called favorite Ozzy Osbourne guitarist. So this is right in your wheelhouse. This is a fastball. I feel like you can jump on this one.
Harris Stanton
Why is this in my wheelhouse?
Paul Verze
It isn't being an asshole. I know you are.
Bill Burr
Breaking Bad, Bill.
Paul Verze
I'm watching a documentary on Ozzy that's four hours long and boozing while the girlfriend is out with her. Her peers doing Sex in the City shit. While Randy Rhodes always gets to me, especially during Mr. Crowley. None of this means anything to you? My favorite has always been Jakey Lee. I grew up on Bark at the Moon when I was a kid and still listen now and again to the last furious riffs of Jake in the last minute of the song. I always felt he was underappreciated. Could not agree more. Zack Wilde is all good, but it feels like he's using five pedals instead of showing pure skills. Well, you should have seen Zach Wilde when he played with the Allman Brothers. That would have cured all of that shit for you. More style than substance. I don't agree with that. What do you think, drummer boy? P.S. was great to see you. Montreal, last summer when it was your birthday. All right. What do you think, Harris? Just by the names alone, who would you think is the best guitarist? Would you go with Randy Rhodes? Jake E. Lee or. Or Zach Wilde?
Harris Stanton
Probably Zach Wilde.
Paul Verze
Zach Wilde. Why?
Harris Stanton
Because it's wild.
He goes crazy.
Bill Burr
I know you're gonna jump on that, Jakey Lee.
Paul Verze
What does that sound like to you? Jakey Lee sounds like borderline Asian.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, borderline Asian. Trying to fit into the culture.
Paul Verze
Okay. And Randy Rhodes.
Harris Stanton
Randy Rhodes.
Is a racist.
Paul Verze
And.
He died in a plane crash, by the way. Oh, yeah, Go easier. This is like making Fun of Tupac for a lot of white people.
Harris Stanton
Right, right. Oh, sorry. I don't know any of these people, listeners. I don't know any of these people. I would never say that if I don't know.
Bill Burr
Well, he did play in an all.
Paul Verze
White band, so, I mean, your theory does work.
Harris Stanton
Racist. No, I'm just.
No, no.
Paul Verze
Is it brutal. Story is he was on tour with Ozzy. Ozzy left Black Sabbath. All right, and that would be. That would be.
Bill Burr
Well, whatever.
Paul Verze
They had a fallen out.
Bill Burr
It'd be like one of the.
Paul Verze
Well, how do I relate to you here? Well, it'd be like something in the Wu Tang Clan. They leave and then they put out a solo album. That's. That's critical there. Right, But Wu Tang never really broke up, right?
Harris Stanton
No, not really. Just haven't made another album.
Paul Verze
Okay, well, just say they broke up and then all of a sudden, you know, one of those guys that's not old Dirty Bastard, a Method Man, Ghostface Killer, decides, I'm gonna put one out, you know?
Harris Stanton
Right.
Paul Verze
You know, it's a very. That's a very, like, precarious point in your career. Like you. You don't get a second solo album if the first one bombs. Especially if, you know, came out in a super group. So Black Sabbath thing was over. He was coming out on his fucking own, and he ended up meeting Randy Rhodes. And Randy Rhodes basically saved his fucking career. So they go out on tour, he's destroying. He's like the new guy and everything. And they were in Florida and they pulled in and the bus driver, wherever they were gonna gas up the bus. There was also a little plane there and this guy had a pilot's license and he fucking got in the plane with Randy Rhodes and he was fucking buzzing the bus, doing all of that shit in his last pass, clipped the bus and either flew into the house or into the barn, one or the other. And then that was it.
Harris Stanton
That's crazy.
Paul Verze
That was it. And you just said he sounded like a racist. I hope you're happy.
Harris Stanton
No, man.
Paul Verze
You know, maybe if you shouldn't be googling all your fucking porn, you could look up Randy Rhodes before you soiled his name. All right, here we go.
Bill Burr
Here's.
Paul Verze
Here's one that we can both jump on here, right? Girlfriend isn't very attractive and I want to cheat. All right? I've been dating my girl for a year now, and I love the shit out of her, but God damn if she isn't on the wrong side of the 10 point scale. Oh, my God, what an asshole.
Bill Burr
You don't love her?
Harris Stanton
No. And why would you date her if she's ugly?
Paul Verze
If you think she's ugly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't love this woman?
Harris Stanton
No.
Paul Verze
All right, we got it. It's not like there's anything wrong with her face. She's just not really my type. Physically, personally, personally wise.
Harris Stanton
Does he eat food?
Paul Verze
Physically, personal, personally. We jive. He says personally wise, personality, wise. Sorry. We jive like crazy jive. This guy's got to be, like, 50.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
It's like, dude, what do you look like?
Harris Stanton
Does he eat food that he doesn't like, too?
Paul Verze
Let's see. She's really pretty when I'm laying on top or next to her, but any other position, and I can't help but be disappointed in how overweight she is.
Harris Stanton
Jesus Christ.
Paul Verze
This guy is a fucking monster.
Harris Stanton
He sure is.
Paul Verze
On one hand, the sensation of being with thick girls really appeals to me. On the other, my male gaze does not agree with. Because of this, I found my thoughts wandering to other women and have started flirting with them for seemingly no reason. I'm afraid I'm gonna cheat, but I really think, all things considered, that I could marry this girl. This guy's all over the fucking map. Yeah.
Harris Stanton
He is.
Paul Verze
Breaking up with her for something so shallow would absolutely kill me, and it hurt the woman I love love's heart for no reason. What should I do?
Harris Stanton
Go see a therapist?
Bill Burr
Yeah. He's, like, oddly, like, brutally honest.
Paul Verze
He's being brutally honest here, but he's all over.
Harris Stanton
Like, it makes no sense. I like purple, but I don't like purple. Like, which is it?
Pick the pros and cons. And you know what it is?
Paul Verze
He made a very mature move where he actually fell in love with the person. And now I think that that's getting old.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
You know, there's no more surprises. Now he's just looking at her, and I think that that's what's going on.
Harris Stanton
Exactly what's going on.
Paul Verze
All right, now, how can he. For Christmas, what gift can he give her that, in a funny, loving way, can be like, you need to lose some weight or I'm gonna cheat on you.
Sherry's berries.
There is no way. There is no way, like, you know the end of an action movie where it's, which wire do I clip?
Harris Stanton
Right, Right.
Paul Verze
And they fucking. Take a guess. Yeah. Both of them blow up.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
All right, Harris, I got to put you on the spot. How would you do it? How would you tell the woman you love? Personality, wise? You guys jive, as this guy says, how the fuck would you tell her you're putting on too much weight?
Harris Stanton
Well, if you know someone that long, then you go, bitch, you fat. You need to lose some weight.
Bill Burr
So you.
Paul Verze
So you rip the band aid off, right?
Harris Stanton
Listen, you're getting a little overweight. I had a boy, a friend of mine, who dumped his girl. He warned her before while they were dating. He said, if you get big, I'm out of here. She got big. He was out of there.
Paul Verze
She tested him.
Harris Stanton
She ate too much. She tested him around.
Paul Verze
And he said that.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, he said that to her.
Paul Verze
And he left her crying. I told you exactly. What did I say?
Harris Stanton
I told you exactly.
Bill Burr
Look in the mirror. Look.
Paul Verze
What did I say?
Harris Stanton
You're £100 bigger than you was when I said that shit.
Paul Verze
But here's the thing, though. I actually did. There is, like, a complete lack of respect for your partner if. If you let yourself go. Absolutely, there is. Now, here's the thing. Unless, you know, you're sick or something or, you know, she got. She was pregnant, she had a kid. Then fuck all of that. But before having kids or if you're not having kids, all right, if you're sitting there, man or woman, if you're just sitting there, just becoming a fucking lard ass.
Harris Stanton
Exactly.
Paul Verze
What are they supposed to do?
Harris Stanton
Exactly.
Paul Verze
You're putting a lot of pressure, like Patrisse said.
Harris Stanton
However you look to get him, you have to somewhat maintain that. Otherwise he's gonna venture we're animals. We're like, we.
Paul Verze
And what I loved about Patrice is he could be that overweight in the crowd. They would never even think to say, like, well, what about you?
Harris Stanton
Right, right, right.
Bill Burr
He would just be like, bitch, I've always been this size.
Yeah.
Paul Verze
I don't know. What should he do?
Harris Stanton
Talk to her like he talking to you on these emails?
Paul Verze
I would just say I would put it on me. This is what I would do. If you really loved her, I'd put on £20 myself and then just be like, listen, man, I got to get this weight up.
Harris Stanton
You get diabetes.
Paul Verze
Just a. Yeah. If I loved her, I would put on £20 myself and just say, listen, I got to get this weight off, but I can't do it on my own. I need you. Okay? I've been weak lately. I need you. And she'll be there for you. And you take her out on walks. This is what you do. You buy. I wouldn't do that. No, I wouldn't. I dump her. No, I wouldn't. You buy his and her fucking matching workout fucking outfits. Walk, just steer right into it. Just walk and be that couple that dresses the same, right? Oh.
I know. That's when it's just like.
Bill Burr
That's either.
Paul Verze
Like whenever I see that, that's like either they literally are soulmates, if you believe in that, or there's one person that needs to be rescued from that relationship because the other person, like, who's that guy in the NBA?
Harris Stanton
What would Ric Flair do?
Paul Verze
What would Ric Flair do?
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Paul Verze
Oh, geez. Well, he wouldn't be around long enough for her to get fat.
He'd do. When he came home from the road, when she fucking put on all that weight, he'd do the flare flop right.
Bill Burr
In front of her.
Paul Verze
And just turn around. Or he'd do the Henry Hill.
Bill Burr
He'd just do that laugh. Remember that?
Paul Verze
And he turns right back around and he gets.
Bill Burr
He gets back in the gut. The fuck kind of people are there.
Paul Verze
He gets back in the car with Joe Pesci. I think that's what he would do.
This guy. I think he was trying to be. Sometimes people try to be funny by being really blunt. I actually think this guy does really like this girl. But, like. Yeah. Cause I think if they start getting that fat before you had kids, you just start thinking like, oh, my God, I don't want to be with a. No one wants to be with the. No one wants to be a whale, and no one wants to be with a whale.
Harris Stanton
Well, some. Some guys like big women.
Paul Verze
Okay. All right. Okay.
Harris Stanton
But he doesn't, obviously.
Paul Verze
No, he likes. Well, thick and.
Fucking obese.
Harris Stanton
My father had a best friend who wanted his woman as fat as she could be.
Paul Verze
Oh, he did?
Bill Burr
Yeah.
Harris Stanton
He had a best friend. She would. His wife was a fat motherfucker, too.
Paul Verze
What is that about?
Harris Stanton
I don't. I think they like.
Bill Burr
You know what?
Paul Verze
This is what's so weird? Do you know, maybe they want him to just look adorable. You know how adorable a baby looks with all those rolls of. They'll have like a roll of fat.
Bill Burr
In the mid forearm.
Paul Verze
You're just looking at like, what is that?
Bill Burr
What is that?
Paul Verze
I think they want that.
Bill Burr
They just want a big.
Paul Verze
A big giant baby.
Harris Stanton
I think it's a lot of. They like a lot of woman, but I like a lot of women. But far as, like, not fat, but like, let's say 6, 5, 11. That's a lot of women, too. Yes, I understand what you're saying, but it's not fat.
Paul Verze
Not fat. What's the biggest. You Will go, give me height and weight. Let's break down your draft picks. And in the first round of the big girl draft, Tara Stanton picks picks.
Harris Stanton
185 pound, six foot. No, five.
Paul Verze
How tall are you?
Harris Stanton
I'm six, two and a half.
Paul Verze
Six, two and a half. All right.
Harris Stanton
Yeah. So she has to. If you're gonna weigh 200 pounds, you have to be five' 11 and better. Otherwise, you're just a fat bitch.
Paul Verze
You know, that's considered insensitive, but it's actually. There's an endearing thing where you're just being brutally honest. I mean, that's what your heart is saying.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
It's saying you're a fat bitch. It's not being like, listen.
Your heart's doing all the work. Yeah.
I would go.
Whatever, because I'm like, I'm five, nine, three quarters. I'm exactly Doug Flutie. Height, not quite 5 10.
Harris Stanton
Big women with curves have a chance. Like, if you still, you know, the fat women that are really fat, but you can still see the curve, the curvy. Like, they look like a skinny woman, but fat.
Paul Verze
Yeah, like a hot giant. Just sack of fat. Right. I would say. I would say 165. Because I'm about 175. I don't want to throw me around the room.
Harris Stanton
What height is that?
Paul Verze
Like five five.
Harris Stanton
Jesus.
Paul Verze
Five six.
Harris Stanton
That's big. Yeah.
Paul Verze
That's not that big. Depends on the, you know.
Bill Burr
Depends.
Harris Stanton
5, 5, 160 pounds.
Paul Verze
She's got a nice ass on her, you know?
Bill Burr
Okay.
Harris Stanton
I don't like those cankles with the. With the ankles running to the. To the foot.
Paul Verze
You know what's weird is, is when you got. They got fat feet and skinny toes. Oh, yeah.
Producer/Co-host
It's like.
Paul Verze
It's like someone was at, you know, the carnival, right, where you slam the.
Bill Burr
Hammer down trying to win that prize.
Paul Verze
And they hit him mid feet.
Harris Stanton
Right. You ever heard Corey Holcomb's joke? You ever fucking.
Paul Verze
There's a underrated comedian.
Harris Stanton
Absolutely. He's not underrated in my head, but he fell. You ever a fat girl with regular people legs? Like, God damn, I just fucked a Hamburglar.
Paul Verze
That's usually an alcoholic body. There was a. There was a guy that I used to work with who I found out recently died, which wasn't a surprise. He was like the biggest booze hound cokehead. He was like 6, 5.
Harris Stanton
Oh, wow.
Paul Verze
It was funny, man. He was just big. Just like, dude, his legs were as skinny as mine. And he would push his jeans down and just up Top was all. Was just all booze and burgers and he did blow and. And he had the little skinny hit and then. But he had like, his arms and legs. Was like. He never worked out in his life. It's just skinny as shit. And he just kept all of that stuff there. And I think he died of a heart attack. That's it right there. Which is why going back to this guy, it's just like. That's another thing you have to look at. Gonna be like, I'm gonna be a widower.
Harris Stanton
Mm.
Paul Verze
In my mid-50s.
There's gotta be an exercise video just to get rid of your fat feet or at least to fatten up your toes, right? You should get, like, fat feet. You should get like the ass injections in your toes just to fucking even it out, you know? All right, here we go. Ladies get deprived too. How are we doing on time? Oh, good.
Bill Burr
Killing it.
Paul Verze
We're right on schedule here. All right. Ladies get deprived to. Dear Bill, I am a lady in my late 20s, and I need a male perspective on something that's too embarrassing to bring up with my friends. All right? On a good day, one might consider me quite easy on the eyes. I exercise every day. I have a natural look that is not trashy, 20 layers of makeup kind of gal. However, I always make a case of looking well put together, even at home. See, she gets it. However, my husband's a fat fuck anyways. But for some reason in the last year of my five year marriage, my husband denies me sex. Even if I only want to service him, he knows I like to do it.
Harris Stanton
Jesus Christ, you don't even want a blowjob.
Paul Verze
Yeah, this is bad.
Yeah, this is bad. This is when you got to start taking off the police tape and getting out the blankets.
Harris Stanton
Dudes take a blowjob from another dude.
Paul Verze
I don't know about that. All right? On any given evening, he will be. It's not the mouth, dude. It's the stubble. I think that that's what you couldn't get past.
Bill Burr
I almost got you to do a spit take.
Paul Verze
On any given evening, he will be sitting on his desk working late, and if I try to initiate things by touching him and kissing his neck, he will say, sorry, babe, it's too late and I'm tired. Same goes for when we are in bed. It has gotten to the point where I just. You know what? I got this paranoid thing.
Harris Stanton
He's cheating like a motherfucker on her.
Paul Verze
Either that or he got replaced by a robot, and they haven't Worked out the genitals yet?
Harris Stanton
Right, right.
Paul Verze
Sorry, babe, it's too late and I'm tired.
What's wrong with your voice? Same goes for when we are in bed. It's gotten to the point where I will try to approach him in lingerie, sit on his lap and even go as far as begging for just five minutes. All without any success.
This is like. This is one of these things. If it was a news story, I would shut it off because I don't want to see the fucking ending. Here we go. What baffles me is that during normal day to day life, he will frequently grab my ass or tell me I'm hot.
Greg Olson
Wow.
Paul Verze
I also do the same for him as I know men like to feel manly around their lady. This woman's like a dream. I don't know what this guy's problem is. The possibility of an affair?
Harris Stanton
I wonder.
Paul Verze
Okay, the possibility. She said she's, you know, she's easy on the eyes, she takes care of herself.
Harris Stanton
Okay.
Paul Verze
Yeah, I don't know. I got a nice picture in my head.
Anyways, the possibility of an affair is very unlikely seeing as we both work on the same male dominated company. That's not good. And go home together. Also, he doesn't have a password in his phone. I think maybe he's gay, male dominated.
Harris Stanton
I don't know, something wrong with him.
Paul Verze
Also, he doesn't have a password in his phone, which is another huge indication of nothing to hide. We have a very nice interaction. I never nag him. If anything, he nags me. And we do cool stuff like play ball together or watch some Netflix.
Harris Stanton
Maybe his dick don't work no more. He don't want to tell her yet.
Paul Verze
Yeah, you need to sit down and talk to him. He's a very loving husband. Except for the actual physical loving part. I've tried to ask, but everything is fine.
Everything is fine is in quote as it appears. Bill, can you please let me know what the hell's going on? Aren't men supposed to be always in the mood? That's not true. But generally speaking, yes. I am going crazy and I'm starting to get aroused from the most ridiculous thing. Like men smiling at me or opening the door for me.
Jesus. Thank you. I really enjoy everything you're doing. Contrary to what you think, you are very balanced and insightful in your opinions. Look at this. I gotta read that to my wife. Happy fucking holidays and go fucking fuck yourself. One itching lady itching to get fucked. Listen, I think you've been nice for long enough Exactly.
Bill Burr
Me too.
Paul Verze
You need to sit down and be.
Harris Stanton
Like, look or leave him.
Paul Verze
No, no, no. You got to have the conversation.
Harris Stanton
Well, first.
Paul Verze
That's it.
Harris Stanton
First. Yeah.
Paul Verze
What is going on?
Harris Stanton
Mm.
Paul Verze
Cuz, you know, I'm about ready to jump on a rolling pin. What the fuck Are you doing it. You need. You need. You guys need to have a talk. Need to go on. And I wouldn't. I would go nice. Cause just in case it is some physical thing.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, you gotta go nice first. Yeah.
Bill Burr
Mm.
Harris Stanton
But maybe.
Paul Verze
Maybe he's addicted to online porn.
Harris Stanton
That might be it. Has a problem, man. But that definitely can't continue what they're doing.
Paul Verze
They seem like they're around each other the whole time. I don't know what's going on.
Harris Stanton
You get a lot of. You have a lot of weird stuff.
Paul Verze
Yeah. All right, need advice? Quitting drinking.
Bill Burr
So I would.
Paul Verze
I guess our advice is I would sit down and talk to him and. You're not being a nag at all. If anything, you've been too nice, and I would just go easy just in case it's something fucking.
Harris Stanton
It's a problem.
Paul Verze
Yeah. He got molested as a kid and it finally came out. Now he doesn't like.
Harris Stanton
Did they ever used to go at it like bunny rabbits?
Paul Verze
I don't know.
Harris Stanton
That's a good question. Did y' all ever used to have, like, a real healthy sexual relationship then just fell off a cliff or was it gradual or.
Paul Verze
Yeah, I think once you have a kid, though, that. That just happened. You just like. The appeal of going to sleep is just fucking unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And it's something if you do it together, like, that's just sex, you know? Like, oh, God, we're going to get eight hours. This is fucking awesome. All right. Need advice. Quitting drinking.
I know you're. I know you're at 100 something odd days now of no drinking. 116 days of not drinking. I'm at a whopping day three, and this is my third attempt in the last two months to take some serious time off. Most of my attempt only lasts three or four days max, because every Friday rolls around and I can't help but buy some booze. I want to quit because my problem is serious enough that I experience minor withdrawals, like minor shakes. Oh, geez.
Harris Stanton
Oh, wow.
Paul Verze
If I haven't had a drink in like 12 to 16 hours, meaning I'm physically dependent. Yeah, dude, this is a great reason to stop. It's not serious. To the point where people notice. I'm able to keep it under control. But drinking every day needs to stop. Yeah, you're what's known as the intelligent alcoholic. So you can fucking what I call you. You're a smart guy and you're boozing so you can play shit off and nobody notices where if you're just a fucking moron, everyone's gonna notice.
Harris Stanton
Exactly.
Paul Verze
My question for you is, how did you go about filling up the boredom that comes with being sober? Oh, what a great fucking question. I feel like I'm drinking. When I'm drinking, anything is fun. Sitting on the couch for hours. It's so true on end, watching YouTube videos. But when I'm sober, I've got like 20 minutes tops before I'm bored with whatever I'm doing. Also, what was your problem? Was your problem ever bad enough that you felt withdrawals? I know how to taper pretty well at this point, but I have failed so many times that if you know of any tapering tips or basically how to wean your way off, I guess I'd love to hear them. P.S. i've always missed the old overrated, Underrated segment you used to do circa 2009. Ish. On the podcast. You should bring that back. Or actually bringing it back.
All right, this week we'll bring it back. We'll keep doing it if you guys want to send it in. Overrated, Underrated. I find when I stop drinking, like, when I stop, it's tough for, like, the first.
Like, six to 10 days. And what it is, I'm more habit addicted. Like, I just, like, if I'm eating well, like, I'm addicted to going, I want to get a salad. If I'm eating, like, shit. Like, If I eat McDonald's the next day, I'm craving McDonald's. If I'm drinking, then I want to drink. So it's basically, I tried to be conscious of those thoughts in my head and just be like, try to get to the next morning going, tomorrow morning. What's going to make me happier? That I had a drink right now or that I didn't? And it was always that I didn't. So I would choose that.
Harris Stanton
That's a good way.
Paul Verze
I used to do that at the Boston Comedy Club.
Harris Stanton
I never really noticed you had a. Like, I never really seen you drunk ever. Back in the day.
Paul Verze
Yeah, I. In the last, like, like 15 years, I. I gradually just drank more and more and more and more, and then I. I just. I'm not an alcoholic, but I. But at the amount that I drink, I absolutely am right But I'm one of those guys, I can shut it off and like, this guy just sits.
Harris Stanton
Even after, like, shows you don't like. I can do it if I'm not performing, I, I can I not have a drink. But if I'm performing, I, I, I need one or two. But I'm, I'm, I'm not an alcoholic by far. I have other problems.
Paul Verze
I, I, my thing is like, I, if I'm doing something, I'm doing it. So the first thing I do when I sit down at a bar is I always order a double because I'm assuming that their poor.
Harris Stanton
Is you sit down in the bar. Do you go to the bar Destination leaving your house is the bar. Or like, how's the, or is it after shows?
Paul Verze
Well, by the sump, this, this summer, it was becoming like going to the liquor store, buying a bottle. And always like, I was on the road doing an acting gig, and I made sure I had a ball, and I just was. And I knew I was shutting it down, so I was just like, this is where it is, Bill. This is bad.
Bill Burr
Yeah, it got, it got way, way.
Paul Verze
Way worse than it ever went as far as like, what am I doing? I remember coming home from the set one night and being excited that the bar was still open. And before I went in, there's nothing wrong with that to where, where I was staying, but I was by myself, right?
Harris Stanton
Oh, okay.
Paul Verze
And I ordered a double, sucked it down, and said, give me another double. Cause I was sort of addicted to that, that crazy buzz and then going asleep. I think I like it too, but. And then the whole time wanting to stop or wanting to not do it as much. And that was the only time there's the first time ever. My wife brought it up, going, you know, you're really drinking a lot and you're gonna snore and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then one night, I came down.
Harris Stanton
To bed with a wife beat on. I can sleep.
Paul Verze
I know. I'm so embarrassed by this. I came downstairs and I actually was hiding the glass of booze on the other side of my leg when I was coming down the stairs. And I was just like, whoa, I'm that guy now. How soon before the bottle's in the back of the toilet?
Bill Burr
But I'm kind of too much of.
Paul Verze
A control freak to make it happen like that, so. But I find, like, once I go 10 days.
The way I'm wired, I could go gets easier. In theory, I could go forever.
Harris Stanton
Okay.
Paul Verze
Because now it's just something I Don't do. I'm just like, whatever it is that had its fucking claws in me, it only takes 10 days for how I'm chemically made up to just be like, yeah, like right now, 116 days in, I could easily go a year, I could go two years. I could like never drink again for the rest of my life.
Harris Stanton
And you don't think about it anymore, like at the shows or.
Paul Verze
No, there's certain things that like makes me just wish I was still drinking. Like what did I see the other day that I was just like, ah, man, I love to do that. Like I saw some cool looking bar and it was just like, man, I would love to go there at 2 in the afternoon and just get fucking drinking till 6, get fucking hammered. But then, but now, the way it plays out, you would never flare though. I know. I would jump in the Uber and I would come home drunk to my daughter and it's like, ah, can't have that on the resume.
Harris Stanton
No, no, no.
Paul Verze
So that's over.
So my life also kind of, I'm not telling this guy needs to have a kid. So I would just say what you.
Bill Burr
Need to do is you got to.
Paul Verze
Push through that boredom. And I put. There's so much fun, fun shit that you can actually fill that time up with that. There's stuff that you wanted to get good at. Like. Like I've always been into music, like playing drums and playing guitar. If you do that instead or working out. Like if at night. Yeah, if at night you go out for a jog instead. And then this is another thing. This is another thing too about not drinking is the fucking pounds just fall off you really. As long as you don't substitute it with. Then like I'm going to eat ice cream so I can get like a sugar rush. If you actually eat well and you don't booze, yeah. It just falls off you.
Bill Burr
It's got nowhere to hide.
Paul Verze
So I don't know, man, but it sounds like, you know that the shakes and stuff, you're on another level than I was. So if I was you, I might even go to a meeting.
Harris Stanton
That's borderline intervention TV show. Would you get the shakes?
Bill Burr
Yeah, a little bit.
Paul Verze
I would go to a meeting, just check out a meeting, Just go down there, check it out, sit in the back, have a fucking donut, whatever the hell they do there, and just listen to these people's insane stories. It'll actually make you feel better about yourself. Feel better about yourself.
Harris Stanton
Exactly.
Paul Verze
All right. Okay, here we go.
Bill Burr
Overrated Underrated.
Paul Verze
Bringing this back. This is something this. This guy said. So we actually. We're going to do one this week. This is something I used to do way back in the day, 2009. I used to do overrated. Underrated. It was the thing of the week. Whatever you thought was overrated. Whatever was underrated. All right. Overrated. Texas hold'.
Harris Stanton
Em.
Paul Verze
Underrated. Five card stud.
Now, here's the deal. I don't know shit about cards.
Harris Stanton
Me neither.
Paul Verze
I. I don't know. You got to give me the explanation. All right. That was a bad. That was a soft open.
Harris Stanton
Yeah. I don't know anything about cars. I don't play cars.
Paul Verze
All right. What do you think's overrated right now?
This. This topic.
Harris Stanton
No, no, no. What I think is overrated right now.
Hip hop.
Paul Verze
Really?
Harris Stanton
Yeah. Like.
The not having any words in your song and it being, quote, unquote, a classic or a hot song for this time. And then. But 10 years down the road, this guy said nothing. It was just.
Beat in sounds.
Paul Verze
Oh, it's just beating.
Harris Stanton
It's like mumble rap. Like they don't. They don't say anything.
Paul Verze
Oh, everybody. Yeah, everybody sounds like they're kind of like half in the back.
Harris Stanton
Yeah. And there's no originality anymore, but people are still celebrating something that is less original than it used to be.
Paul Verze
Do you know how old you sound right now? The people in your generation, gangster rapping.
Harris Stanton
But originality is not old. That's. That's true. That's universal. And they don't have any.
Paul Verze
When did they.
Harris Stanton
So unoriginal that their name's not even different. How many little rappers do we have? Little this, little that little. You can't even name yourself an original name.
Paul Verze
All right, when did they lose? When did hip hop lose you?
Harris Stanton
Probably the mid 2000s. No, late 2000s, late 2000. Like maybe 2011. 12. On and up. But not bad.
Paul Verze
You hung in there.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, but not all hip hop. Like, you got artists like Eminem and Nas, who's still doing what they're supposed to do.
Paul Verze
God, you're doing, like. That's like me going. You know, Zeppelin and AC DC, they're.
Bill Burr
Going back, like 20 years, but those.
Harris Stanton
Guys are still rapping. Those guys are still relevant, and they're still relevant. And it's the words like, you got. You can't have a song with. It's instrumental.
Paul Verze
What about the. Who's got all the awards? Migos.
Bill Burr
The me.
Paul Verze
Is it the Migos?
Harris Stanton
I don't even know them anymore. I don't Listen to them. I don't even know I heard of them, but I know, I know a lot of rappers name got little in it and that bugs me. Little Uzi Vert. Nigga, just change your name to original name. Lil Wayne was first and then everybody else is little. Remember Tupac and Biggie? They had their own names. Not it's original name.
Paul Verze
Yeah, he went, he went little because there was already a too short. Who is, who is the. The little person there? And that fucking. God, what was that fucking? I don't know anybody. There was a guy, Bushwick Bill.
Harris Stanton
Bush? Yeah, he was.
Paul Verze
No, he didn't even say little.
Harris Stanton
No, he was Bushwick Bill.
Paul Verze
He said where he was from. Well, you know, these millennials are sensitive. Okay. I would say overrated. Being informed is overrated.
Harris Stanton
Absolutely.
Paul Verze
I am off social media as I don't read the shit anymore. I post my shit on there, but I'm done. Like, oh, I fucking took a picture of this thing today. This is the classic. Classic. It's gonna take forever to turn my phone on, so I'm just gonna have to keep going.
Harris Stanton
Classic fucking like a joke when you forgot the punchline. You just keep repeating the setup.
Paul Verze
Oh, yeah. Shit is crazy.
Harris Stanton
Shit is crazy.
Bill Burr
Shit is crazy.
Paul Verze
We also say, we used to say when. When comic. White comics were lost in their act, they'd look down and be like, yeah, yeah, so what else is going on?
Bill Burr
Black comics? Shit is crazy. Yeah, shit is crazy out here. But you're a good looking crowd. Give yourselves a round of applause for coming out tonight.
Harris Stanton
Give it up for the ladies.
Paul Verze
Ladies. All the strong women in the crowd, they're always strong. Women are always strong.
Harris Stanton
I used to do that so I wouldn't bomb early like in black rooms. Like, I'll just go give it up for the ladies and compliment the crowd enough so they'll give me at least 30 more seconds not to boo me.
Paul Verze
What's the hardest room you ever did?
Harris Stanton
Sweet cheeks.
Paul Verze
Sweet cheeks. Back to sweet cheeks.
Harris Stanton
It's not even. I don't think it's like, it's just a fucking place to go get pick up $200. What was it, 250 back then?
Paul Verze
Oh, yeah. That was literally like fighting like Mike Tyson. It's just like, all right, if I can survive around, I get my fucking purse. All right. This is something that somebody tweeted today about that pipe bomb that went off on in the the Port Authority.
Harris Stanton
I'm uninformed. When did this happen?
Paul Verze
Yeah, I mean, fortunately nobody died. They said there was non, non life Threatening injuries, but that doesn't mean somebody didn't lose an eye or fucking hearing or something.
Harris Stanton
The bomb went off on 23rd street right by Gotham Comedy Club. And they closed the street off.
Paul Verze
I thought you're gonna do a joke, so and so just got off stage.
Harris Stanton
When I got there, the street was closed off. And I actually asked the cop, but I have told this cop I have a spot I didn't give a fuck about. I just wanted to do my spot.
Paul Verze
Well, this is what this fucking jerk off tweets about the Port Authority bum. He goes, I have no idea what's going on at the Port Authority, but it was chaotic and I didn't stay to find out.
So you have no idea what's going on, but we had to find out how you felt about what you didn't know was happening.
Bill Burr
Who gives a fuck what you did? There's people down there hurt.
Paul Verze
You fucking asshole. This is what I can't stand. I'll be an old man about young people now.
Bill Burr
Nobody cares about every fucking thought in your stupid fucking head. Were you there? Did you see what happened? Do you have any information?
Harris Stanton
I wish you guys could see, I.
Bill Burr
Have no idea what's going on at Port Authority, but it was chaotic and.
Paul Verze
I didn't stay to find out.
Bill Burr
And then there's gonna be a thousand fucking people going, so happy you're okay.
Harris Stanton
Yeah, exactly. People just want to. I didn't know so many people wanted to be known.
Bill Burr
No, all these fucking people. You know why?
Paul Verze
All these fucking people on social media.
Bill Burr
It'S like they have their own TV.
Paul Verze
Show and they're acting like celebrities. Self involved fucking celebrities as opposed to.
Bill Burr
Cool ones like us.
Harris Stanton
The one who had the skill set.
Paul Verze
Sorry, sorry. All right, last one. Here we go. How do I tell the truth? Hey, Bill. Well, I've been thinking with my dick. I recently downloaded the popular hookup app Tinder and I've been using it to fish for some action with some college chicks in my area. I'm pretty good looking and I'm not bad with chicks, so I've had moderate success. I recently found this one chick in.
Bill Burr
My area who is.
Paul Verze
Oh, pre med. Is that all one word? P R E M E D.
Okay, thank you. I was like, I knew I was dumb. I didn't think I was that fucking dumb.
You know what's funny? That fucking guy who said. The guy who I was telling the story about, like, you know, funny how like things going in and out of your ass. He just sent me a text. How fucking random is That.
I recently found this chick in my area who's pre med. I really like spending time with her, and we have the same sense of humor and political beliefs. And she has an excellent body and face. In short, she's pretty close to my ideal girl. However, there's one problem. I'm in high school and she has no idea.
Bill Burr
Fuck. Fuck this guy.
Fuck this guy. Dude. Dude, you're a legend. You should be giving me advice.
Paul Verze
I have dodged most of her questions about the classes I take and where I couldn't dodge. I lied. Ah, Jesus. We haven't done anything physically, but she made it clear she is interested in me. I'm in deep, Bill. How do I tell her without her hating me? Do I have to tell her? I just fucking tell her. Just say, listen, I don't want to go to a physical level without fucking telling you the truth. I'm still in high school. I really liked you. I would have told you sooner, but I was afraid you weren't gonna like me. Just do that.
Bill Burr
Put it out on the table.
Paul Verze
If she tells you to go fuck yourself, fine. But you've learned a very valuable lesson with women, which I wish somebody taught me way back in my teen years. Just tell them the truth. What are we doing? I want to fuck you. I have no intention of having a relationship with you, okay? Most will walk away, some won't.
Greg Olson
But you can.
Paul Verze
You can literally leave your fucking car out in the front of your house and it will never be keyed. None of your shit will be lit on fire.
Harris Stanton
You gotta be honest.
Paul Verze
Yeah. Yes.
Harris Stanton
That's why when I see guys who. Who.
Damn, I forgot my train of thought. But honesty is always the best policy because you don't have to worry about people getting mad and doing crazy shit to you.
Paul Verze
Dude, it works with cops, too. Cops and women. Nobody lies. Gets lied to more than those two. And when you actually come with the truth, even if they don't like the truth, it kind of like, yeah, you might not get a ticket.
Harris Stanton
That's probably why Patrice fired that. No one. No one. We didn't get in trouble. Yeah, because he was fucking honest about what happened.
Paul Verze
Do. I'm trying. I fucking banged this u. Turn right. And Friday, as I did, this fucking cop got out of his car. And as I'm pulling up and thinking, ah, maybe he didn't see it, and he's just coincidentally getting out and he walks right up to my window. He goes, let me see your driver's license and registration. I was like, ah, fuck. He goes. He goes, you know why I'm asking for that? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, why? I go, cause I just made an illegal U turn. And he goes, why did you do that? I go, cause I'm impatient, and I didn't want to wait in that line in there. And he just laughed. And he goes, do you want me to give you. Would you want me to give you a ticket? I said, no, but I'm not gonna lie to you, right? And he laughed again. He goes, all right, get out of here. I said, you're awesome.
Harris Stanton
Right?
Paul Verze
That was it. Then other times, I've told the truth and, like, all the way to the point, is this your current address? And I said, no. And the guy wrote me up for everything and my fucking address. And I was like, this motherfucker, he's.
Bill Burr
Trying to get fucking cop of the month.
Paul Verze
That guy did that in western New York. All right, we're out of time. Harris.
Harris Stanton
Yes.
Paul Verze
So great to see you once again.
Harris Stanton
Your album, my comedy album is coming out. It's out already.
Paul Verze
It's out right now on itunes, Amazon.
Harris Stanton
And Google Play and anywhere else that you can get comedy anywhere else.
Paul Verze
And the name of the album is Naive Innocence. Okay. I almost said Google Alert is where you can get it. Like, I don't know what the fuck anything is. All right, thank you so much for stopping by. Thank you for being on the podcast and everybody. I forgot to mention here, we got a couple of benefits stuff here. Santa Steve, the great Steve Simone and regular hero are raising money again this year for children fighting cancer and their families.
That's worded really weird. They're fighting cancer and the families of the children fighting cancer. Isn't that weird? They're raising money again this year for children fighting cancer and their families. These kids are fighting cancer in their own families. The children and their families fighting cancer. Monday morning podcast listeners helped raise 15 grand last month, and it had a huge impact on a lot of families. The stories are brutal and every bit helps. We're gonna save you the fucking stories, okay? The goal this year is to raise 50 grand. We're gonna tweet a link. Thank you so much. Ahead of time if you got anything to give. And also, here's some dates I got coming up. I'm gonna be at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida. December 14. December 16, the Bob Carr Theater in Orlando, Florida. February 2, the Reno Ballroom, Reno, Nevada. February 20, the Patrice O' Neill Comedy Benefit. The sixth annual makes a great Christmas gift. Get a pair of tickets to that. Tickets have Been going fast. It's a great benefit raising money for Patrisse's mom and loved ones. Thank you guys so much. Go fuck yourselves and I'll check in on you on Thursday.
Producer/Co-host
What's up, everybody? And welcome back to the Anything Better podcast with your host, me, Paul Verze over here in New York. We got Bill Burr over there out west. And today we have an incredible guest, somebody that we're very excited to have, an amazing football player, amazing analyst. Greg Olson is here. Thank you so much for being on the show, bud.
Greg Olson
Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me. It's great fun.
Bill Burr
Yeah, you're the. You're the first legit, like, beyond legit guest we've ever had. We went from knucklehead gamblers to a professional football player analyst. I gotta tell you, I love.
The way you call a game. I do, you know, and I really do believe that former players, you know, cause you played the game, your knowledge of the game. And then you can go beyond like someone who may or has a broadcaster background, as you understand, beyond the, like, analytics cannot, like, measure like, emotions in the game. Like, when to go for something, when not to, when to. I don't know.
Paul Verze
I don't know.
Bill Burr
It's just something that I've noticed when I listen to you call the game. So just wanted to say that before we started.
Greg Olson
Absolutely, yes.
Producer/Co-host
I echo those sentiments because you. Yeah, it's just something about like a player that, like, I kind of like when guys know what's gonna happen. Like, I like watching the game where they're like, this play looks like this. I know some people don't like that, but I kind of like that to be like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about, you know? No, and that's no offense to like, I like guys like Mike Tirico and them. But like, I also like when they're like, you know, dude, this is going to happen.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah.
Bill Burr
But it's weird when it's a former player and they didn't have a good career and then they seem to know everything that was going on. It's just like, what the hell was this when you were on the field?
Greg Olson
Well, so two different. So in the booth, two different roles, right? So the play by play guy, he's setting everything up. He's painting the picture. He's talking down a distance and score and remainders and he's driving the ship in and out of commercial breaks. He's doing ad reads, he's pitching Bill Burr's new comedy special on Fox. You know, he's, he's managing all of those things. And then obviously as the color commentator, as the quote unquote analyst, I believe our job is to not necessarily tell you what you're seeing that in today's day and age, cameras, instant replay, slow mo. I mean it's pretty clear what's happening. There's not a shot that these guys miss. Our job is to fill in all the blanks of like, why are you seeing this? Why is this the right decision? What is the coach considering? When are they going to use their timeouts? Where how is their run defense? Why do they struggle? Like paint the picture for the audience and the viewer. The why fill in the gaps? Because I think it's very easy to say nice throw, nice catch, you know, really good run. Saquon Barkley's awesome. Those are very generic things. I think a lot of people can sit home. But filling in the gaps, painting the picture behind the curtain of the why, I think that's what viewers are really interested in now. The interest in the passion of football is at its all time highest. And I think people are very, are much more educated than we used to give them credit for and we need to speak to them accordingly.
Bill Burr
Yeah, well, we all have our fantasy teams now, so we all think that we're GMs.
Paul Verze
True.
Greg Olson
I'll tell you, fantasy football is a dangerous game, man. When I was a player, I'd have a game where we won and I'm feeling good. I might only had three or four catches. And you're, you're in the grocery store checkout line and a woman behind you is like, hey, good win, but you kill. I lost my fantasy because of you. And you're like, so like it's. That shit's real now, like that fantasy.
Bill Burr
No it isn't. That's what you have to say. You have to say this isn't real.
Greg Olson
In one man's mind, in fans minds, it is all that matters. My kids who have like 100 fantasy leagues with their friends outside of the Panthers, who they watch as like the hometown team, they only watch the game if someone from their fantasy team is in it.
Bill Burr
That's why I never played, because I didn't like that. It went from I want this team to win to lose to. Now I'm just rooting for a guy to have nine catches or whatever the hell it is I, you know, I got to play. A lot of non athletes, people were like really into that type of thing, you know, and it rewards, I don't know Nerds are running the world right now. Greg, I don't know what to tell you. The Tesla guy, the Amazon guy, the Facebook guy, analytics, that's another thing that I hate is when you used to make a bad choice decision as a coach, you had to sit there and take it. Now they can just be like, well, you know, the analytics told me to do that. It's like, well then couldn't I have just done that if I just have a book that has, you know, the answers?
Greg Olson
I'm, you know what, I'm an analytics guy now, Bill. I'm an analytics guy. I, I not blanket across the board, like just put in your eyes and just go down the book. But it is the wave of the future for, for NFL football. And that's.
Bill Burr
Can you expound on that when you say you're an analytics guy? It's just like, so all of this information of every game that's ever played, I guess is. It's crammed into a computer. It does the math. This is how they pick the spreads now, Paul. This is why we're getting our asses kicked. And then it spits out like, what's the difference between you, pro football player, played it all your life and me? Jackass. Looking at analytics, does your pro football background give you a better. If it's just an answer, am I looking at it too simplistically?
Greg Olson
I think there's two. I think it's a great con, it's a great conversation that I love to have and we can go as deep as you want to here. There's two elements to this, right? So analytics, you know, data acquisition, data based decision making is happening for me as I prepare to call a broadcast, I get reams of information from all different data sites. The days of how many yards does Philly throw for? How many touchdown passes does does Jalen Hurts have? How many touchdown runs does Saquon have? I have Philly this week. So they're like top of mind. Those days are over. Like, you are not studying box scores. Yards, touchdowns are completely irrelevant. If you're really trying to understand what makes a good a team, good or bad, struggling, you know, whatever. There's so many more deep layers to it that comes from a lot of this data that's collected. Now like anything, the data is only as good as your ability to interpret, interpret it, right? So as you, as you start studying some of these charts and these graphs that are really getting into the weeds, we're not going to say it on the broadcast, we're not going to say that EPA per play and the yards per drop back. And we're not going to get into the real nerdy ins and outs of analytics on the broadcast, but it does shape storylines. If you want to start talking about the struggles of the Philadelphia Eagles instead of just saying they stink, they can't score, fire everybody. Well, let's really dive into why is this team different? Well, you start looking at their average first down yardage. Well, what does first down struggles do? Put you into second and pass? Are they a good downfield passing team? And you start layering in elements and you say, okay, maybe this is why the formula is broken. Let's have that conversation on air and how do they fix it? That's a lot more interesting of a conversation than just saying, hey, they're, they're scoring seven less points a game. Well, why. So that's part of it, the in game decision making. That's the stuff that everyone is really hot on. You know Andy Reid the other night, on Sunday night, he goes for it on 4th and 1 in a 1010 game on his own 30 yard line, fails, Houston scores a touchdown. Those are the hot button topics that generate a ton of conversation. Fourth down tries, two point conversions. That's really where the bulk of the quarter unquote analytics pushback comes from. And the notion that it's just a book, that's a blanket. It's the same for me as it would be for you as you all. The context that people argue is not being taken into consideration is being taken into consideration again, each team has access to all the same Data points for 25 years of tracking over general times. But then their team of analysts, their team in house boils that down with how is my offensive line, how is my defense, how's my quarterback? Is my running back hurt? And then you tailor make those decisions to you. Then when you get into the game, they're non emotional decisions, right. I don't sometimes hit 16 and sometimes stay. I hit it and I hit it and I bust and I bust, but I still hit it. It's the same idea, right? It's the idea of taking a motion out of very critical moments in the game. And let's say what this doesn't guarantee it's the right end result, but it is the right formula of decision making that over long periods of time does tilt the game in my favor. Even if it didn't tilt the game in my favor in this moment.
Bill Burr
That's really interesting. So if you, if you, so it does, you still have to have like football knowledge to then dissect and analyze the analytics. I would look at that as far as like being a stand up comedian. Some big story happens in the news and the general middle of the pack. Comedians all kind of have the same angle, but like the great ones that I'm a fan of, they can do a topic. Like I always feel like a great comedian can do a topic. Everyone's mulched and not only have a whole new angle, but like it's like fresh. So it seems like it's like that.
Greg Olson
Like, yeah, you could give me your stance. You said you have a show tonight. You could, you could print me right now your stand up routine and I'll fly to California and I could stand up on the stage and verbatim say the exact same words you say. It's not nearly as funny without your delivery, without your tone, without your mannerisms, without your timing. Right. There's an art to it. It's no different than football.
Harris Stanton
Right.
Greg Olson
Like there is an art behind all of this. There is an expertise, there is a instinct, but it is not a gut, in the moment emotional reaction that everyone wants it to be. Right. Like we. Momentum and all the things. It's all right.
Paul Verze
Correct.
Bill Burr
Momentum is bullshit.
Producer/Co-host
Question that I have though is like, Dan Campbell is somebody.
Greg Olson
I have come back to that.
Bill Burr
We'll come back.
Paul Verze
Okay.
Producer/Co-host
Yeah, Dan. Dan Campbell, somebody I have a problem with because I think that whether you have the game plan and the blueprint of the game or not, in my opinion, what he did in San Francisco cost him going to the super bowl.
Greg Olson
In my opinion, I called that game.
Bill Burr
Oh, okay.
Producer/Co-host
Yeah, like that to me. And then to see him do it the other night five times and go 0 for 5 and still go. I mean, I'm sitting here going like, I mean, I know, listen, I'm a stand up comedian. I don't know shit. I can't coach like that guy can coach. But I'm going to take the points when I need to take the points and stay ahead. Either two possessions or three possessions, which he could have done in San Francisco. And then I don't like the idea of, well, that's what we did the regular season and that's what got us here. But it's like, yeah, but it's. And maybe I'm nuts, but it's like it's not the regular season. This is to go to the super bowl and go get those points to. Also another thing that analytics does not take into consideration is how momentum with the crowd. Everybody knows that when A defense gets a fourth down stop at home, people are going crazy. People are losing their shit going. Yeah, we stopped them. And then that's going to make the next unit come out gassed up. So I feel like guys like Dan Campbell, I don't know if he can't help himself, but I think if that doesn't change, the Lions are in trouble.
Greg Olson
All right, so a lot to unpack there and I love these conversations. Let's just talk. Let's talk last week's Thursday night game because it was Detroit versus Dallas.
Bill Burr
Yep.
Greg Olson
Neither team could stop anybody. It was fireworks, right? The offenses were awesome. At the end of that, towards the end of the fourth quarter, I don't know off the top of my head how much time was left. But the back half of the fourth quarter, Dallas had the ball inside the 10 yard line. Fourth, it was like fourth and three and they were down 10 points and they kicked a field goal to go down seven. So they made it, right? This notion that it's a one score game, we're so excited that it's a one score game. We're so motivated. The momentum is in my favor. I don't know if you guys watched the game, but do you know what happened the next possession that Detroit got the ball? So Dallas makes it 10 to 7. It goes from a 10 point to a 7 point. They come off the field saying, great job, we're only down one score kickoff. Detroit comes on offense, so Dallas, it has all the momentum. The game is solely there for the taking. You know what Detroit did on the next drive? Scored. They went the entire length of the field and went up 14.
So, so my point of saying all this, and there's a million examples of all this, right? Like, I'm not suggesting that guys don't feel momentum. Emotion is still a huge element of sports and it's a huge element of football. Right. There's an energy. You're. I'm not saying guys don't feel it. I felt it. There were games where you could throw the ball behind my head and like you just, you're in the flow, right? There's, I would argue it's confidence. It's a mindset, right. That's real for athletic. There's days where I'm sure you guys stand up on stage and man, it just comes out exactly the way you imagine. And I'm sure there's other days where like your timings off and it didn't land the way and you just felt, you feel uncomfortable. But in a game like football Those feelings are real. I'm not discounting how guys on the sideline in their brain imagine. All I'm saying is it doesn't impact the game. You feeling moment, right? Like how many times have we heard on a broadcast this team has all the moments momentum and then they go three and out. Or this team just got all the momentum and they fumble.
Bill Burr
Right. I feel like it doesn't have, I feel like all of a sudden the wheels fall off and everybody just, then.
Greg Olson
They get them back on back.
Bill Burr
But I don't see the game the way you do.
Greg Olson
Yeah, I mean I, I again we, the game that spurred a lot of conversation from a couple weeks ago was Philly versus.
Chicago. And it was the whole thing about going for two and they were down 15 and I'm not going to get into all that. But that game, Philly at the end of the game when they, when Sirianni went for two to try to make it to cut the lead, they were down 15, he tried to make it seven, he went for two and failed. It stayed at nine. They just went on an 85 yard touchdown drive. Who has all the momentum?
Bill Burr
Well, if you missed the two point conversion, the other team does but you.
Greg Olson
Just scored the touchdown. So who had the momentum after the 82 yard touchdown drive, who had the momentum?
Bill Burr
The Eagles did till they went for the stupid two point conversion and then they missed it and then the other fans get excited.
Greg Olson
It's just, it's irrelevant. All I'm saying is feels like math class. No, it's not math, it's the argument. The argument is the game takes ebbs and flows naturally regardless of how you feel.
Producer/Co-host
Greg, I feel like you could be, honestly, I feel like you could be and should be an NFL head coach because you just have that demeanor. But I got to ask you a question real quick and I know fans.
Greg Olson
I want to talk about Dan Campbell though. Go ahead.
Producer/Co-host
Oh yeah. The one thing I wanted to ask you though, when you're, when you're calling a game and you see a call that is just so egregiously wrong, does the, are they like, are you guys kind of told like, hey, you could mention it but don't go so hard hard with it or do you have free reign to be like that's the worst thing I've ever seen.
Greg Olson
I've never gotten a call from Fox in five years ever telling me to tone down my evaluation, my assessment. Good, bad referees, coaches. Now I, I will say I, my personality and just who I am, I am not like a On people, guy quarterback's having a bad day. I gotta say, hey, that's a throw you got to make. He's late with his eyes, his feet, whatever. You have to be honest or else you lose. You lose the trust of the audience. That you can have perspective, right? Sure. Coaches, decisions, you can. I'm always, I always say, like, you could be critical of decisions. You don't like the decision, great. Everyone has their opinion. You don't like, you know, he's late with his footwork, he drops a ball bad, whatever it is. Those are totally fair criticisms.
As long as you don't get personal. Right? Like, that's my one rule is like, there's no personal attacks.
Paul Verze
Right.
Greg Olson
You're not lazy, you're not a dog. You're not. These guys are high level professional athletes and they deserve to be spoken about in a certain sense. Same thing with the referees because they make. There's bad calls made all the time. I don't envy the position of NFL referees. I think NFL officiating is actually better than it's ever been. I think as a viewer, we have insight and access to views and pictures and replays and angles that have. That didn't exist 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. So this idea that more calls are missed, I would argue the game has gotten so complicated so fast. So just the notion that these guys can get anything right, I feel like is pretty impressive. And I think the calls are no different. We just didn't know if the guy false started by half of a millisecond because the camera didn't pick it up. Ten years ago, we didn't know if that guy's face mask grabbed his jersey collar or his pinky grabbed the face mask. Because now we have like 9D zoom in extra. It's just a different experience for the viewer right now, and we have more information than ever before.
Bill Burr
All right, I got one for you real quick.
Harris Stanton
Quick.
Bill Burr
Before you do, Dan Campbell, my opinion on the two point conversion that drives me nuts is the team goes, you know, is first and goal, don't get it. Second and goal, don't get it. Third and goal, don't get it. Go for it. On fourth down, score a touchdown, and then everybody goes, go for two. It's like, because it's only two points, people aren't looking like, dude, you have to score another touchdown to only get two. And it just took you four downs. They stopped you three times. It took you four times to get that ball across the goal line. Now you're looking at because it's only a two point conversion. You're now going to, you have to score back to back touchdowns is what a two point conversion is. But you only get six points for the touchdown, two points. So people look at it like it's, they equate the amount of points to the, the difficulty of it. And I feel like in the first quarter why are you going for two points? Just get the extra point and the amount of times that they missed two two point conversions and then hit the third one. It's like you could have just kicked three extra points or you could have just kicked two extra points. You end up where you would have been. I think the two point conversion is overrated.
Greg Olson
Well, 2.2 point conversions have really become a end of game strategy. Possessions trying to chip back typically for teams either trying to extend leads to two score games or cut into a deficit. Right. We don't see a ton of teams in the early first 3/4 of the game. There was a time years ago where guys were toying with it. Pittsburgh started doing it. Everyone for the most part now is kicking extra points. The only time you'll see an early two point try is we actually had it in our Buffalo Bengals game. Josh Allen threw a fourth down touchdown pass. He got roughed like they caught it, he got personal foul. They elected to have the penalty enforced on the point after try which now instead of going for two from the two, you go from two from the one yard line. Nine out of 10 times every NFL coach is going to say from the one yard line, I'll take my odds of getting one yard to get two, two points as opposed to kicking a chip shot field goal. Outside of that, typically two point conversions are coming at the end of the game like it did in the Bears Philly game where you're down 15, you're down 14 and you're trying. The idea is to try to win the game in regulation, maximize your possessions. That's a longer conversation, but that's typically Right now the NFL average on two point conversions is about 45%. It ranges any given year 43, maybe to 48. It is less than a coin flip to get a two point try because remember if it was 52%, I mean you guys are gamblers and we all like you play the odds over long periods of time. If it was 50, if people could figure out how to make a two point try over 50%, forget it. They would do it every time.
Bill Burr
I, I, you know, I learned, I think I just watched the game emotionally because I Feel, Feel like everybody, that's the key word for two points in the third quarter. And I'm calling him up going, what the fuck are they doing? Kick the goddamn John Madden. Take the points. Yeah, I must be so wait a minute. I think it's the usual, my usual problem. Paul, I'm too emotional.
Producer/Co-host
Bill, you emotional?
Freddie Spencer
No.
Greg Olson
Remember, emotion drives all of this and it's real. I don't just. I'm emotional. Like when I'm coaching a game or playing in a game, I am highly emotional. I am a very intense, competitive, emotional person. Whether I'm coaching my daughter's basketball team or I'm playing in the Super Bowl. Like that's just my personality. So I don't on people being emotional. I believe people that don't have a fire and don't have that. I, I don't relate. I can't process how those people operate. And everyone, to each their own. That's not me personally. So this whole embracing this non emotional decision making is me taking a step back and saying, okay, if I was an NFL head coach, knowing how I would be on an NFL sideline, which is highly intense, high feedback frequency, a lot of energy, a lot of emotion. Do I want to make critical decisions? In that mindset, us all sitting here nice and calm, we'd say, of course.
Bill Burr
You don't want to. Interesting.
Greg Olson
You don't want to make your. You don't. Dan Campbell is a very emotional person. He's a very, he's a very heart on his sleeve. He the guy and that's why the guys love him, because he's so real. Right. He doesn't hide behind this like fake facade.
Producer/Co-host
Right.
Greg Olson
So he's saying to myself, do I want to make these rash emotional decisions based on how I feel? No, that's not in the team's best interest. He has made a clear moment from the time he took that job. They are going to play a very clear brand of football. He was an early adopter of this mentality. They have won as many if not more games than virtually the entire league. Maybe with the exception of Kansas City and Philly over the last couple years. It has been a highly productive mentality. It bit him in the ass in the playoffs that year. I called that game. I was in the booth talking over those fourth down failures. He stood up at the podium virtually in tears and he ate it. And he stood up there with us. And emotion is why people don't do it. Because I don't want to stand up on the post game podium and Say you're the reason Greg Olson we lost. It's easier for me as the coach to say we should have made the kick, we need to play better defense. We didn't execute. It wasn't our day. All this.
Instead of I'm the head coach and that decision, yeah, it didn't work, but I would do it again. That is very hard to do, but I commend the guys that do it.
Producer/Co-host
I get that. But if, and this is football wise, forget emotion. If, if he kicks that feel, if he kicks the field goal to go up 17 instead of go for it there and keep it a 14 point game. And then San Francisco came down and then made it a seven point point game. If he still keeps it a three point thing, a three possession thing, isn't that just mathematically their chances of winning that game?
Bill Burr
You also just made the assumption that they're automatically going to make the kick. I mean, it was like, you know.
Producer/Co-host
One was from like the 28, wasn't it, or the 30.
Greg Olson
I'd have to go back and pull up what I know. There was three of them. There was three critical fourth downs, two were dropped and I don't remember the other one. Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you what the down, what the yard line was or what the score was. I, I wish I could. I just can't. I don't know exactly. But of course I remember the moments of the game really well. But the notion that I'm gonna play one style of football and then I'm gonna just arbitrarily. I always think the best that people can relate it to is everybody has sat at a blackjack table, right? Like, and I know this is probably oversimplifying it because football is not just a deck of cards already predetermined. So like there is some nuance to football and I'm not, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but just from an emotional standpoint. We've all had 10 up on the dealer face card. And in your mind, you know, it's 20 and you got 16 and it takes every ounce of, of commitment and consistency to keep taking that card. And then he flips over and he had a five and he flipped, right? And now you just become, now you're just guessing, right? So you all of a sudden now just put everything to luck and listen, we've all sat at the table where the asshole stays on 16 and he wins. Does it mean it was the right decision? We all know it's not.
Bill Burr
I've always been Intimidated to go to a blackjack table because I don't know the rules. And it's just like you feel everybody, you're taking my cards. What are you doing? And blah, blah, blah. And all of this, none, none of any of it watching makes sense. Like, I'm not taking your cards. They're not yours. You don't know. No, we don't know what card is coming. You should have. And I would have got that card. All of that.
Greg Olson
But why do we say it? But Bill, why do we feel. We feel that. We feel that emotion. We feel like the deck is flipped. We feel like you screw screwed me because you didn't split your eights or whatever. But you're arguing. It's not. You're arguing. It's bullshit. And I'm saying I agree with you.
Bill Burr
No, no, I, I, no, I'm saying I am. I like, how do you learn how to play blackjack? You sit down and there's like four degenerates next to you just huffing and puffing about everything you're doing. It's just like, didn't you ever not know what you were doing? So I, you know.
I stay away from that shit. I always play the craps. I like crap table.
Greg Olson
The reality is, in today's modern NFL, this is the last point I'll make about it. We can talk about whatever you guys want.
Bill Burr
Yeah. Then we got to get into your youth sports thing.
Greg Olson
I can talk about this all day. The reality more often than not. Again, there's always outliers to everything. There is a game where I could kick five field goals and beat you 15 to 10. And me taking the points, which I. That phrase drives me insane. Taking the points. It worked out for me. Right? You could say it about the other night's game. The Monday night game. The Chargers scored one touchdown on the opening possession of the game. They scored a touchdown against Philly and they proceeded to kick nothing but field goals the entire rest of the game. And they won in overtime. So they took the points and they won. They won because that Jalen hurts through four interceptions.
Harris Stanton
Yeah.
Greg Olson
In a neutral. So when you make these decisions, you have to make these decisions based off what, what I call like neutral possession games. I cannot game plan that I'm going to return a punt for a touchdown. I cannot game plan and say I'm going to get a strip sack, fumble return for a touch. You can't prepare the game strategy like all these one offs are going to happen if they do great. And I will adjust accordingly as the game unfolds. That's the job of a great head coach, is to evaluate the moments of the game as they happen. But I can't plan that. Jalen Hurts is going to throw four picks. He threw three picks over 12 games.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah.
Bill Burr
That's the difference between coaching and gambling.
Greg Olson
Correct.
Bill Burr
That's what we do. He's going to throw a pick. So, like, I'm feeling a special teams touchdown here. Paul, what about. I got a feeling. I got a feeling.
Greg Olson
So that's where all these. So the general rule of thumb is field goals are going to get you beat. Now does that mean it's always going to get you beat? Of course not. There's no certainties in any of this. If people had certainties, no one would ever lose.
Bill Burr
I would love to hear what Adam Venatori thinks about field goals are going.
Greg Olson
To lose you 50 yard field goals are great. Rings.
Bill Burr
He's got four rings.
Harris Stanton
Nope.
Greg Olson
Here's where field goals matter. End of game, end of half, fourth and long and 45 yards plus.
Producer/Co-host
See, I agree with that a hundred percent. But, and listen, I'm all for going for fourth and one or fourth and one and a half, but when these guys are going fourth and four and it's a 40 yarder, that's what I'm saying too. Like, I'm looking at like more yardage. So what do you consider, like, if you see a coach, Greg, if you see a coach going for it on 4th and 5 and it would be a 47 yarder, do you think that that's a silly move if it's not?
Greg Olson
Those situations you just mentioned, how much time. There's so many factors, right? How much time's remaining? Am I winning or losing? Does this make it now? If I'm up. If I'm up eight and there's three and a half minutes to go, of course I'm gonna kick the field goal. I'm gonna go up 11. And with two and a half minutes, barring you recovering an onside kick, you're not gonna have enough possession to beat me.
Bill Burr
Right?
Greg Olson
So there's, there's a math in all of this where it comes down to how many times most likely will you possess the ball and in those possessions, do you have enough to catch me? If I don't think you have two possessions left. Being up two possessions is great. Going up two possessions with nine and a half minutes to go is much different than going up two possessions with two minutes to go.
Paul Verze
Right?
Greg Olson
Because you just virtually don't have the amount of Time. So there's a lot of elements to this. If I was goal to go situation. Unless it was end of half game winner, fourth and goal. Am I kicking a field goal? Okay, because now again, I, I have fourth and goal from the five yard line, right?
And I don't get it. You now possess the ball on your.
Bill Burr
Five yard line, right?
Greg Olson
If I have the ball in the five yard line, I'm trying to get a touchdown. That's all ultimately the greatest part of all this. But let's say I kick a field goal, I got three points, and you now get the ball at the 35 yard line. So for me getting three points, I gave you 30 yards from the five to, let's call it the 35. With the new kickoff rule, you got 30 yards for doing nothing.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah.
Bill Burr
I hate how wrong I was about all of this.
Greg Olson
Again, it's not wrong. It's not right or wrong. Remember this new kickoff, new. Remember the kickoff rule. Remember the kickoff rule is brand new. Teams are still trying to figure out how to kick it, where to kick it, how to kick.
Bill Burr
They won't kick it out of the end zone. Now everybody does like a little, little pooch kick.
Greg Olson
Well, because you kick it into the end zone, you get the, you give your opponent the ball at the 35.
Bill Burr
Yard line, you get the 35.
Sells the game. This is what drives me me nuts. There's no like monsters of the midway anymore. It's like nobody can stop anybody. I remember a few years ago, I'm gonna go on a fucking rant here. That fucking Bills Chiefs game was one of the worst fucking games I've ever seen in my life. It was like 57, 56. Everybody's up and down the fucking field. And there wasn't one tackle in the whole game.
Producer/Co-host
Seconds left.
Bill Burr
What am I watching? This is like a fucking video game. And my feeling is that they've reached maximum density on the fucking real football fan, the casual fan. They got Taylor Swift, they gotta get her to the super bowl. So all the Swifties are watching. Then they call off the dogs and they let them play. And you get a shit game, right? I mean, I just feel like all of these, like the hockey, they get rid of the red line, the stupid stretch pass. You want to sit behind the goaltender now because you do what you're doing this like you're at Wimbledon. I don't know. I just feel like every game now they're trying to like juice up the ball, make the stadium smaller, try to like, you know, I mean, plenty of Time. There's plenty of time left. You're like, what the fuck are they talking about? This game is over. And then there's like three more scores. I just feel like it's, that's what they want. Look, I feel like the prevent defense was invented not by coaches. It was invented in the marketing department of the NFL to make sure no game is over. It drives me insane. It drives me insane. Like I can't.
Greg Olson
You should get season tickets to the Houston Texans. You would love them.
Bill Burr
That's what I was gonna say, that.
Greg Olson
Their defense is nasty.
Producer/Co-host
Their defense is unbelievable.
Bill Burr
Defense is unbelievable. Seattle, like Seattle playing belichick ball wins. 17, 10, 19, 17. They're playing like that. I love how they're playing. I like to see great offense. I also want to see great defense. I just, you know this up and down and up and down and everybody turns into Joe Montana. You got some scrub coming off the sideline running the two minute offense like he's fucking John Elway. It's stupid. It's not. There's something, whatever.
Paul Verze
I don't know.
Bill Burr
I don't know. Well, listen, let people started doing this.
Greg Olson
Here's, here's, here's the experiment.
Bill Burr
Everybody turns into a Hall of Fame quarterback with two minutes left.
Greg Olson
All right, we're gonna do an experiment, Bill. I'm gonna get you and you gonna come do a game with me in the booth. And it's gonna be 10, 7 in the, it's gonna be 136 in the fourth quarter and I'm gonna be holding you from jumping out of the window if you got to talk over that, that for three hours.
Bill Burr
There's a lot more.
Greg Olson
There's a lot more. I'm just talking about from a broadcast perspective.
Bill Burr
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask you to go any further into that. That is the rain delay of football 13 7.
Producer/Co-host
Well, let's, let's tell Greg the real reason why he's here. Greg, the real reason why he's here is because I need you to coach the Giants. I'm a diehard Giants. Let's, let's get you to New York. Come on, man. You got, listen, you have dart, you'll have a healthy neighbors, you'll have a healthy scatter boo. You got a nice defensive line. We'll draft. You got a maybe first round pick. You draft a defensive back. You got a good team there, Greg.
Greg Olson
You want to hear a great story?
Bill Burr
Yes.
Greg Olson
So a couple years ago, the hiring cycle where they, where they hired Dable, this was probably like a Week or two before they officially announced that they hired Dable. My wife and I are in New York City and we're having dinner at the Polo Bar. And we're sitting in the. In the Bait, you know, in that basement there. It's an awesome spot in New York. And we're with another. With two of our friends, and we're having a nice dinner, and there was a couple next to us. And, you know, you're having drinks and we're having fun, and, you know, we're. We're living, you know, we're having a good, good off season dinner. You know what I'm saying? And over the course of the dinner, we start talking to this couple next to us. It turns out it's Tish, the owner of the Giants.
Producer/Co-host
Yeah.
Greg Olson
So I've probably had a couple old fashions. And we start out just like, how's the hiring going? And we start, like, getting, like, a nice conversation about the process of hiring a head coach. Well, like, an hour and a half goes by. I don't know. I guess I had a couple more old fashions in me by the end. And next thing you know, I went on, like, a 20 minute, like, job interview.
Producer/Co-host
That's fucking.
Greg Olson
And I'm like, I'm literally sitting three feet from him in this restaurant, and I'm. And I'm getting like. Like this. I'm, like, getting progressively more, like, emotional and, like, excited. And I'm, like, selling this idea that he should hire me because we sat next to each other in the Polo Bar. So, long story short, the next morning, I wake up and my wife's like. And I was like, kara, did I pitch myself to the owner of the Giants? She's like, yeah. I was like, do you think he bought it? Like, how did I do? So I've. In my mind, I've interviewed for one head coaching job. Unofficially, I didn't get it, but it was with the Giants.
Bill Burr
Next one you do, you'll be sober. You know what I mean?
Greg Olson
Maybe.
Bill Burr
I'll get it, dude. Yeah. Instead of being half in the bag. Hey, Paul, we're gonna run out of time here. Let's make sure we. I want to talk to you about something that I'm getting into because my kids are, like, starting to play organized sports and everything.
Producer/Co-host
Yes, please talk about this.
Bill Burr
And there's a part of me maybe wants to coach a little bit, but I'm like, what do I know? Obviously, I've learned I don't know anything listening to you, but I know, like, that youth sports is a huge thing for you. And that was one of the things that you wanted to talk about. The whole, you think. If you're wondering why he's wearing the merch and he's got the flag above them. Tell us a little bit about this.
Greg Olson
Yeah, it's a project that we're really excited about. You know, I've been out there having conversations with people via podcasts and different outlets for the last couple years on our Youth Inc. Program and, you know, interviewing coaches and athletes and Olympians and parents, just everyone about, you know, the good, the bad, the in between of the youth sports landscape. And really what started was, you know, my dad was my high school football coach, prototypical old school discipline, high school football vibe for 30 years in New Jersey, coached me and my brothers. So I grew up in locker rooms, grew up around it and now full circle. After making a living, I'm raising three kids, two boys and a daughter. My wife and I would lay in bed at night, we'd be at dinner with friends and the entire conversation was about youth sports. A great story. What team is your kid on? Are you doing lessons? This guy in the gym, what the coach is doing. It would dominate everything we did. And I was like, you know what? If we don't have the answers for any of this, who does? I've lived my entire life in this world and I don't even understand what's going on. Now let's go out and have these conversations. So from there it's grown into an entire platform, multi content contributors, all sports, men's, women's, high level, just all across the board. There's content, there's information. We're doing, doing like a mini doc of, you know, we got some guys going around, they're like crashing practice at baseball teams. Some two really cool social media influence guys. So it's a really cool. There's a commerce engine behind it for teams to like customize gear and schools and whatnot. So it's a really fun project. But Bill, I'm just going to call it right now. You're going to say you're going to be the calm parent. I'm going to sit by myself and I'm going to clap. You're not going to do it?
Bill Burr
No, you can't.
Paul Verze
No.
Greg Olson
It'S impossible.
Bill Burr
No, dude, I was, that I was at a practice. Not my, my daughter's. No, she had a game and I yelled out, don't be afraid to hurt someone.
Producer/Co-host
Oh no, dude, dude, she was playing.
Bill Burr
Like she's a little bigger than the other kids. So. And then I was like, I just said that out loud. And like, I'm gonna get, you know, Sue.
Producer/Co-host
I coach so far, Sophia's fifth grade basketball team. And in the championship game, the ref kid who was a senior in high school, his parent, his. His sister was against us. And when they beat us by two, I go, you guys wanted to fix it, huh? And I meant it to. I sounded like a lunatic. Like, I sounded like a lunatic. I go, you can't do that.
Bill Burr
That's his sister.
Producer/Co-host
And my wife was like, let's get out of here. So it's nuts.
Greg Olson
Yeah. I feel like it's one of those things, like in the heat of the moment, like, you're not allowed to bring it up the next day. Like, what said is. And then we all get to like, move on. Because it, it does sound crazy. And I am the first one to raise my hand. Like, I feel like I've gotten better. I still have a lot of room for improvement on like the most honest, like, self assessor in this world.
Bill Burr
Like, you can't shut it off, man. You can't shut it off.
Greg Olson
I can't. Like, I am a highly competitive. Again, to your point, I am a highly emotional competition. Competitive. I want to see kids play hard. I don't even care about the winning and losing. Like, I've walked out of gyms, of teams that I've coached or fields that I've coached, and we've lost. And I'd be like, you know what, they were better than us, but actually thought we played pretty good. I'm fine.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah.
Greg Olson
And then I've walked out of gyms and fields where we've won by 30 and I like, can't sleep. Like, I am all about, develop the kids, get them better. If the environment is getting them better in middle school and elementary school, you should stay on that team and stay with that coach. Or if you're the coach, you're doing a great job. That is all that matters. High school wins and losses matter. Don't get me wrong. Like, we're not doing this shit for a hobby. Like, we're trying to win. But the development piece has gotten so bad.
That I sit there and I just like, jump out of my skin. And that's why I end up trying to just volunteer to coach as many teams as they'll let me. Because I'm like, I'm not saying I'm great, but I'm gonna bust my ass to get your daughter better, your son better, your daughter, whatever it is they Will get better.
Bill Burr
When you say the development piece, what are you talking about? Pre high school and getting your fundamentals down and that type of thing.
Greg Olson
Everything about the youth sports journey has completely flipped from developing skills, both emotional skills, physical skills overall, just like gross motor skills, running, jumping, big, strong, fast, the individual skills relative to the sport, field hockey, lacrosse, baseball, football, they all have very different fine motor school fine motor skills that are, you know, important to the thing. All that skill development emotionally and physical is the entire reason everyone should do youth sports for their kids. If your kid by a sophomore year in high school is a gifted athlete and your daughter's a great basketball player and your son's a great hockey, whatever, you'll know it. And it's. And now we got to get serious. And now it's time to like really hunker in and like we got to go and we're taking blood, right? Like we're playing for blood now and we're ripping when they're in sixth grade. Like, I need to teach my daughter how to play basketball. I need to teach my son how to pitch or how to hit or how to field a ground ball. Like, we need to focus on the development. And what happens is, myself included, you get so caught up in the winning and the argument is I could get better players and then the end result will be I'll win more. And everyone feels like you're a better coach and the team's gotten better. But what's lost in all of that is if you focus on development, the grind, practice communication skills, consistent messaging, and you do all those things right, you will, as a byproduct, win a lot of games. But that is a much more difficult path for a parent. It's a much more difficult path for a coach, but it is the best path for the kid that has completely flipped upside down across the spectrum. Travel ball, guest playing, kids flying in.
Bill Burr
From all over the country, travel teams, man, this kids, you know, my daughter, they're on travel teams. And I'm like, you got a road game at 8 years old? I mean, this is insane.
Greg Olson
I've done it.
Bill Burr
I don't know, I'm sort of viewing. The whole thing is like, you know, they're gonna go out there, they're gonna have fun. Look, they got, they have my genes, all right? You know, I'm a stand up comedian. I don't think I'm gonna make an MLB baseball. I mean, I'll, you know, if all of a sudden, I don't know, something from way back in the past Gets into my kids DNA and all of a sudden I'm obviously, obviously going to support it. But like, my thing is, I played sports. I had fun. It was fun. And I go there now it's just like, dude, the equipment, everybody with all the different cleats and all of the shit and the bats and all of this stuff, it was just like, I would have had just like dirty baseballs and like these, these bats that were like 30 years old. The crap.
Greg Olson
Those days are over.
Bill Burr
Yeah, yeah. Like the, the grip would be worn out on like the aluminum bats from all of these years. And like, if you had two batting gloves, you were a rich kid when I was a kid, especially if they.
Greg Olson
Were the same color.
You know, one's red and one's white. You know, here's the thing. We coach our kids, my two sons, we coach their middle school football team the last couple years at our school. And no one's ever going to say, oh, they don't care about winning. We do care about winning. We are very honest with our families. Like, we aren't giving up our whole summer. We are not giving up all this time and energy that we're going to pour into these kids to not get the end result that everybody wants. The difference in our approach and we win a lot. The difference in our approach is we are going to pour into these kids for six months. Every day. Summer workouts, weight training, speed and conditioning. All summer.
Bill Burr
We're talk to the press.
Greg Olson
How to talk to the press? Don't. Don't listen.
Bill Burr
Yeah, but like, it's a, it is a.
Greg Olson
There is an art, though, to like, teaching these kids the art of work, the art of hard, the art of grind. And if you do that every day, as cliche as that sounds, all of a sudden Wednesday afternoon, the whole school sitting in the bleachers watching us play a middle school football game. And we rip and we're, we throwing touchdowns, we're running for touchdowns, we're knocking kids helmets off. Like we're playing real football. Everyone's like, oh my God, this is so fun. I'm like, yeah, but we started doing this four months ago at 8am While you were at the beach. Like, this shit's hard.
Bill Burr
The game is fun when it wasn't fun. I also think the great thing about sports, you know, for the cliche stuff, learning how to lose, winning and losing and how to take a loss, I'm a terrible loser. But like, taking responsibility, understanding that, you know, if I want the ball the whole time that's hurting the Team I hate. Like, you know, that's something else that's driven me nuts. Like watching sports, how.
Certain sports, like, really like people like just like, this is my team, you know, I'm not going to get into. But people walking off the court, courts during losses and shit. You did that when I was a kid. You were a bad teammate and it wasn't rewarded. And I feel.
Paul Verze
I don't know.
Bill Burr
I don't know. I'm a bit of a grumpy old man. But we do have to get onto the picks. We gotta get up. Yeah, I do have something at 11, I was just gonna say. But real quick, you think, what is the website? It's something that parents can go on to and get this information. Let's make sure people know where they can go to that.
Greg Olson
Yeah, it's youth.in and the platform, the commerce, the content engine. It's all there on one, on one simple site. And appreciate you guys giving me a chance to chat about it.
Bill Burr
Yeah, I'm going to get.
Paul Verze
I'm going to.
Bill Burr
I'm going to check that out. My daughter is like crazy into sports, as is my son. This is my proudest moment so far with my son is I was throwing overhand to my daughter and he came up and I underhanded the ball. He didn't swing at it. And he goes, dad, don't throw it like that.
Paul Verze
Throw.
Bill Burr
Throw it like this. And he threw it at me like really hard. So I said, all right. And I, I threw one overhand and he crushed it.
Freddie Spencer
Nice.
Bill Burr
Of course, in my no greater feeling, he's already going to the mlb.
Greg Olson
He's Aaron Judge. He's Aaron Judge.
Bill Burr
Exactly.
Greg Olson
Get him a private coach. Get him a private coach.
Bill Burr
Yeah, it's, it's. It's fun. All right. Are you gonna.
Producer/Co-host
Let's do. Yeah, we're gonna do the picks now. Here's how this works. So with anything better, Greg, what we do is Bill and I, and our producers too, and our injury guy. We all do it. But Bill and I do picks. We do four games each against the spread. This is our fifth year. I beat the book four years in a row and I am getting the shit kicked out of me this year. Bill is hovering right around 500. I did go 3 and 31 this week. Shador Sanders and the Browns were the only game that screwed me. But Bill, it is an odd week. Oh, before we do it, though, we have to shout out the sponsor guys. It's BetMGM. You guys know, it's the best odds out There. Here's how it works. You download the BetMGM app to your device. You put as little as $10 in your wager. If you lose the wager, you will get fifteen hundred dollars in bonus bets. Please bet responsibly. And we also have the first touchdown promo. You pick any player in any NFL game to get the first touchdown of that game. If they do, you win. If they don't, but in fact get the second touchdown, you'll get your cash back. So there you go, Bill. This is an odd week. So that means you go first on an odd week. And there you go. The floor is yours.
Bill Burr
All right. I'm going to wade right into the deep water because I, you know, up until like the last couple of weeks, I didn't know who, who was good this year. You know what I mean? So weird year. The Patriots have already beaten the Bills. It was a shocker when they did. The Bills are like reeling. I just can't believe that they're not a good team. I really have a difficult time with thinking that we're going to beat them twice. And you know, it always feels like when a team, team is, you know, division rivalries, they're going to get you with one. So we already beat them. Now they're coming in. This is how I look at it, Greg. There's no analytics, there's no knowledge or whatever, but I just feel like this is a pick em game and I just feel that Mike Vrabel, where he has this team, you know, we had major problems fumbling, turning over the ball, that knock on wood that has gone away. And I just think that this team is getting tighter and tighter and tighter every week. Everybody's doing their job. I know the Bills need to win. I know this is huge. But I'm actually going to take the Patriots getting one point at home because I think it's going to come down to the more disciplined team. And I just feel the Patriots are. Everybody's doing their job.
Producer/Co-host
All right, all right.
Bill Burr
Well, see that, Greg? I can sound like I know what I'm talking about.
Greg Olson
No, it's a reasonable argument.
Bill Burr
Well, I'm going to do something that.
Producer/Co-host
Look, I think the Miami Dolphins, what they're doing is pretty nuts considering McDaniel is going to get fired and they've, they've rattled off these wins. The Steelers are up and down. I'm not saying the Steelers are going to lose, but it's that, that half a point, it's the three and a half. So I'm going to take The Dolphins getting three and a half on the road Monday Night Football against the Steelers. I just feel like they're, and I feel like they're going to actually win the game outright, but I like the three and a half points. So I'm going to take Miami on Monday night.
Bill Burr
I'm actually going the exact opposite. I'm taking the Steelers because I think the Dolphins have been playing some really shit teams and patent some wins and everybody's looking at them like all of a sudden they figured something out.
I actually, I don't know, I think Aaron Rodgers, the level of competitor that he is, I don't think he wants to go out, you know, not winning. And I think they had a big win last week and I just, I think, I don't know. I like, I like, I think that guy. I think they got a little mojo going there in Pittsburgh. I'm taking the Steelers, Paul. We're going head to head there.
Producer/Co-host
All right, I like it. I am going to take the Denver Broncos at home. I'm going to take the Denver Broncos at home against the Packers. Getting two and a half. Andrew. That's right. Get the. Denver's getting two and a half.
Oh, wait a minute, Bill. How dare us. We forgot to bring in Jake for the injury report. Jake, get in here.
Bill Burr
This is how awkward it is every week, Greg. This is massive, massive, massive, massive chunks of science. How you doing? Take the snake. Snake. What do you got, dude?
Jake (Injury Reporter)
Hey. Well, just before we got on the chapter tweeted out that Jaden Daniels will be out against the Giants. So that's a big loss there. He re injured his elbow against the Vikings. Two big defensive injuries. We saw Jalen Carter have shoulder surgery. So he's going to be out again. He's a really big player for the Eagles. And then the Lions lost their best safety, Brian Branch. And then Greg, I had a question for you. Since we're talking about injuries here. We were talking about this a little bit before we got on but Daniel Jones, Jones obviously out for the year with the torn Achilles. So they're going to bring in Philip Rivers, 44 year old Philip Rivers and then the other quarterback of the that's out for the year is Kyler Murray. So they're both free agents this summer. Who do you think is more likely to resign with their team or do.
Bill Burr
You think they're both moving on?
Greg Olson
Yeah, I think, I think you're, you're in. The difference between Indianapolis and Arizona is think a couple weeks ago the they trade. At the trade deadline, Indianapolis felt Obviously, very good. As they should about Daniel Jones and their season. You're thinking you're going to be a playoff team. There was a time they were the number one seed in the afc. You're thinking, all right, we, we win a couple playoff games, we're trading around. They traded a first round pick for Sauce Gardner. But at the time, you're thinking you're going to make a deep run and we'll give a first round pick, but it's going to be at the end of the first round, not as valuable. Well, now all hell breaks loose. You lose Daniel Jones, we'll see how the season finishes with Philip Rivers or Riley Leonard or whoever ends up playing quarterback. But if they lose too many games, God forbid, don't make the playoffs. All of a sudden, what they thought was going to be an end of first round, first round pick now turns into a middle of the first round pick, albeit sauce Gardener is a good player. If you need a quarterback and the plan is to draft a guy in the top in the draft, maybe not a great, great quarterback draft, especially if you're not picking at the top. So they're in a little bit of an interesting scenario. We'll see how it all works out based on how they do in the playoffs. But I love Daniel Jones. I was a Daniel Jones guy when he was in the Giants. I thought he got a lot of negative flack for a guy who did a lot of things really well. He's big, he's strong, he's athletic. He was playing as well as anybody in the league until he broke his leg, showed his toughness by playing on a broken leg and obviously compensated and unfortunately ruptured his Achilles, which is devastating. Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked to see. I, I guess to answer your question is I think Indianapolis is much more likely to resign Daniel Jones, Kyler Murray, I cannot imagine, is back in Arizona.
Producer/Co-host
Yeah, I agree. All right, well, that, listen, that being said, I'm going to take the Broncos at home against the Packers. I just, I watched the Broncos and I just, I think they're really good, man. I think they're really good. I mean, listen, nothing really interesting end.
Bill Burr
Of the game last week.
Producer/Co-host
What's that?
Bill Burr
That whole delay a game and let's kick a field goal for no friggin reason.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Burr
Paul is Pete Carroll. It's, it's all above board. It's all above board.
Greg Olson
And then the week before, Washington went for two to beat him, didn't they?
Bill Burr
Oh, did they?
Greg Olson
Yeah, yeah. That was against Denver and They tipped and they tipped the ball down. That was against Denver, wasn't it?
Bill Burr
Listen, there was a reason for a long time they did not want to have any professional teams in Las Vegas. This is before professional sports gambling took over the whole damn league. All right, so, Paul, you're going Broncos, I'm going Broncos.
Producer/Co-host
Getting two and a half at home against. Against Green Bay.
Bill Burr
All right, I'm taking the Chiefs. Getting four and a half at home. I always feel those games come down. Chiefs games always come down to a couple of points. They need a win like nobody's business. The Chargers already beat him this year. Division rivalry, those games are always close. Three and a half. I still would have taken the Chiefs four and a half. I'll take that extra point. I'm taking the Chiefs. Paul, not watching the game. Not watching the game, though.
Producer/Co-host
All right, well, I'm going to take my.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
I was gonna ask, since we were talking about the Chiefs, what do you think is the biggest problem with the Chiefs so far?
Paul Verze
Like why.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
What's been the reason they're not in the playoffs as right now?
Bill Burr
I think fans all last year, there was just too many of us saying that they were getting all the calls and this was manufactured stuff to get Taylor Swift there. And then they got Taylor Swift to the super bowl and then they called the dogs off and they got exposed.
All right, Greg, you don't have to weigh in. Yeah, definitely.
Greg Olson
That's definitely.
Producer/Co-host
No surprise here. I'm gonna take. And I'm. Look, I'm gonna take.
Bill Burr
Bill.
Paul Verze
Sorry, Bill.
Bill Burr
Just for the record, Chiefs are. Chiefs are giving four and a half. Just want to make that clear. Oh, my fault. Wait.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
Chiefs are fake.
Producer/Co-host
The Chiefs are favored for four and a half.
Bill Burr
Jesus Christ. All right, fuck that game. Sorry.
All right, I'm gonna do a stupid bet here because I'm an old dad. Philip. Philip Rivers got 10 kids. Thirteen and a half points. I'm just sniffing a backdoor cover here, Paul. All right, Seahawks are going to be up by like 19, and then they're going to go try to run out the clock and Phillip's going to, you know, little Grecian formula in the beard going to go down back to a cover.
Producer/Co-host
Philip river is going to walk out there like John Wayne and get that to make sure that they get those 13 and a half. I love that. All right, I'm going to take my New York Football Giants look. Jackson Dart's got a swag to him that I, I really like Jaden Daniels not playing for the Commanders. And I think the Giants, I, I just can't see them not getting another win this year. So I think that this is the win that they're going to get. And it's minus two and a half. They win by a field goal. Who knows who the kicker is going to be? But I'm going to take my Giants against the beat up commanders with, with the backup quarterback.
Greg Olson
All right.
Bill Burr
This is my last one. Why the Jake, why the Vikings getting six points in Dallas?
Jake (Injury Reporter)
That is a strange spread. I don't know the answer. It feels like, you know, they always try to juice up the Cowboys, try and get people to, to bet it either way. But I mean, there's not a ton of injuries either way.
Bill Burr
All right, I'll be the idiot. I'll be the idiot and I'll take the Vikings because I feel like that's what Vegas wants me to do. I'll take the Vikings.
Greg Olson
Who's favored?
Bill Burr
The Vikings are getting six points going into Dallas.
Greg Olson
Oh, the Cowboys are favored over the Vikings.
Bill Burr
Yeah.
Greg Olson
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Paul Verze
All right.
Bill Burr
I don't know. You can't comment on this.
Greg Olson
I don't know. I don't know enough about gambling. I'm having a hard time, I think.
Bill Burr
You know, a little giving and taking.
Greg Olson
I play for blackjack.
Producer/Co-host
All right. For my last pick, I am going to take Dan.
Bill Burr
Am I staying on 16 with that?
Greg Olson
No.
Bill Burr
All right, go ahead.
Producer/Co-host
I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions, they are getting five and a half points from the Rams again. I could see the Rams pulling that out, but I kind of like the Lions getting five and a half. I just think that they're gonna fight this week. I think they need to fight this week. So I like the points with the Lions.
Bill Burr
Didn't Jake say that best safety's out?
Jake (Injury Reporter)
Yes.
Freddie Spencer
Yeah.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
The Lions do need to win this game at 85. They gotta keep up.
Greg Olson
Think how much easier it'll be for them to cover if they get a bunch of those fourth downs, though. Exactly.
Bill Burr
Yeah, yeah.
Greg Olson
All I know is here, I'm just going to say this right now. If Dan Campbell goes for a late fourth down and it's the difference between you winning what you bet. You have to come back on next Monday and take back everything bad you said against them. Is that a deal?
Producer/Co-host
That's a deal.
Greg Olson
That's a deal market.
Producer/Co-host
All right, we got the Monday night special now where we all.
Bill Burr
We don't want a half ass apology. The Paul, I want a written statement.
Producer/Co-host
Yes, actually, Greg could be part of the Monday Night Special or at least nod his head with something. So what we do on the Monday Night Special is collectively as a show, we pick three things that are going to happen in the game. Whether it's the spread, who's going to catch a touchdown, who's going to throw one. We do three things. And this week's Monday Night Football, we have the Miami Dolphins going in to Pittsburgh. Miami is getting three and a half points. I think you got to take a. What do you want to do, Jake? You're usually good. You like the running back getting one?
Paul Verze
Yeah.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
The Dolphins have Devon Hn. I think he might be questionable, but if he plays, that's definitely a good pick. I think Steelers Moneyline might be a good pick. If you guys think Steelers will win.
Bill Burr
Steelers money line. And Aaron Rodgers to throw one. And then we need one more thing.
Oh, you don't like that because you took the Dolphins. This is what's going to be hard. No, we're gonna wrap this up. Greg has a life.
Producer/Co-host
I care. I care more about my pick than the. Than the thing. I'm. That's fine.
Paul Verze
Go ahead.
Producer/Co-host
I'm fine with it. I'll roll with it.
Greg Olson
All right.
Bill Burr
Money line. Aaron Rodgers to throw one. And then.
Producer/Co-host
We'Ll do the Dolphins running back to. To score one. And there you go. Whatever those odds are. And here's how you know Greg Olson was a great guest and he's a gentleman because he talks to parents and he says, I'm going to make your kid better. You know what I would do if I was you? When the parent came to me, I go, I'm Greg Olson. Get out. I know what I'm doing. Get out of here.
Greg Olson
I don't know what I'm doing. That's the best part. I'm figuring it out as I go.
Producer/Co-host
Yes, dude. Obviously. Check out the website. And thank you so much for being on, dude. You were such a great guest. So insightful. And you made me really second guess all the times me and Bill text each other saying, take the points.
Paul Verze
Okay.
Bill Burr
That's what we do.
Greg Olson
Put me on the group checks.
Harris Stanton
We'll.
Greg Olson
We'll share thoughts. Just don't text me while I'm on air.
Producer/Co-host
That's awesome. Awesome. Guys, enjoy the games this week. Bet responsibly. Check me out at the Edmond Town Hall Theater this Friday night in Newtown, Connecticut. And we will see you guys. Yeah, we'll see you guys.
Bill Burr
And Youth Dot Ink. Check that out.
Jake (Injury Reporter)
Greg does great stuff with. For people with heart conditions as well, so really unbelievable. Wanted to shout that out before.
Greg Olson
Before we go. Appreciate it.
Bill Burr
He's an all around great guy. All right, Greg.
Greg Olson
Thank you. Appreciate you guys.
Bill Burr
This has been. Anything better. We'll see you next week.
Paul Verze
Thank you.
Host: Bill Burr (All Things Comedy)
Episode: Freddie Spencer | Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 12-11-25
Date: December 11, 2025
This episode of the Monday Morning Podcast features legendary MotoGP racer Freddie “Fast Freddie” Spencer as a guest. Bill Burr dives deep into MotoGP, motorcycles, the difference between car and motorcycle racing, and the mental and physical demands of elite motorsport. The tone is enthusiastic, genuine, and candid—true to Bill Burr's comedic, ranting style. The conversation is a mix of hardcore racing insights, childhood memories, reflections on sportsmanship, and lighthearted banter, plus a few memorable stories about officiating, survival on the track, and the evolution of racing itself.
“Our ability to pass, and that the rider can make such a big difference... you can move on the bike and you can change trajectory and you can change lines much easier.” –Freddie Spencer (02:13)
“With electronics, it’s like having an AI on the bike... In my day, everything was done with your throttle hand. Your telemetry was your brain.” –Freddie Spencer (11:18)
“I would give myself one lap, basically, to make the adjustment... That really was what my job was.” –Freddie Spencer (14:51)
“We look at trajectory and we have high speed cameras... race incidents aren’t just about blame; it’s the context.” –Freddie Spencer (18:56–20:15)
“Divine intervention is the only way I can say it... That’s why we changed the track design after this incident.” –Freddie Spencer (21:41)
“I wasn’t teaching about speed. I was teaching about how to work with the motorcycle, how to be a better and safer rider.” –Freddie Spencer (32:00)
Stories of survival and “the silence before impact”: Freddie explains how elite racers train their minds for survival, what high-siding feels like (a brief moment of “airtime and silence”), and the mental techniques for processing fear and adrenaline (36:28–38:47).
“Everything slows down... I still can close my eyes and remember every incident, even 40 years ago.” –Freddie Spencer (38:47)
Racers’ dreams and trauma: Freddie shares recurring dreams about missing the start, and how he’s processed big crashes, including a particularly peaceful “near-death” out-of-body experience in 1987 (40:04–41:06).
“Basically was playing two football games on the same day... but on a motorcycle at 200 miles an hour.” –Bill Burr (30:06)
“We’re already working on a screenplay for a film...” –Freddie Spencer (42:45)
On motorcycle racing’s uniqueness:
“The rider can make such a big difference... That’s what separates us from other elite motorsports.”
—Freddie Spencer (02:13)
On intuitive “feel”:
“The best meditation I read as a kid... was five hours a day in my yard.”
—Freddie Spencer (05:28)
On switching bikes successfully:
“I would give myself one lap, basically, to make the adjustment.”
—Freddie Spencer (14:51)
On officiating and race incidents:
“We look at trajectory and have high speed cameras... I could explain it to you.”
—Freddie Spencer (18:56–20:15)
On near-misses and fate:
“Divine intervention is the only way I can say it... We changed the track design after this incident.”
—Freddie Spencer (21:41)
On the craft’s demands:
“Everything slows down and you remember everything... It’s survival mode.”
—Freddie Spencer (38:47)
On teaching:
“I wasn’t teaching about speed. I was teaching how to work with the motorcycle...”
—Freddie Spencer (32:00)
Freddie to Bill:
“You take me for a ride in your helicopter and I’ll help you.”
—Freddie Spencer (31:06)
True to Bill Burr’s style: passionate, open, frequently comedic, and filled with awe for Freddie’s achievements. Freddie is reflective, humble, articulate, and eager to share hard-earned wisdom—whether about racing, officiating, teaching, or life.
This conversation is a rich, accessible masterclass in motorcycle racing—its dangers, its zen aspects, and its characters. Both fans and newcomers will leave with a heightened respect for the sport, its athletes, and the wisdom that comes from true mastery and humility.
Don’t miss this one if you love sports, stories about high achievement, or just want to hear Bill Burr geek out in the best way possible.