#2442 - Ehsan Ahmad

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #2442 – Ehsan Ahmad

Date: January 22, 2026
Host: Joe Rogan
Guest: Ehsan Ahmad
(Note: Co-guests/participants include Tony Hinchcliffe and Kurt Metzger for the duration presented. Joe Rogan himself does not participate in the presented transcript.)

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Overview

This episode is a deep dive into stand-up comedy’s evolution in Austin, Texas, and the broader American comedy landscape, peppered with sharp commentary on politics, culture, conspiracies, and the mechanics of building successful comedy communities. Tony Hinchcliffe and Kurt Metzger share war stories about club life, the grind of stand-up, shifting demographics, AI, media distrust, the nature of celebrity in the "algorithm age," and much more.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comedy Scene in Austin and The Mothership (00:14–03:00, 46:53–52:00)

• Both speakers reminisce about the growth of Austin’s stand-up scene, The Mothership’s role as a new Hollywood, and how social media and club opportunities launch comics’ careers.
• Key Insight: The rise of a “walled garden” culture, where success breeds internal support but external jealousy and rumors.
  • Tony Hinchcliffe (03:00): "You've created a walled garden… There's all these friends, you're all supporting each other and you're all having fun, but there's a lot of people that feel on the outside and they feel like left out of it... so they're like those people, that party sucks.”

Memorable Quotes

• “It's just a fun place to be around everyone just working jokes. That's what it is.” – Kurt Metzger (02:34)
• “The narrative is only with jealous people. It's not based on any reality…” – Tony Hinchcliffe (02:46)

2. Perceptions of Politics in Comedy (03:00–15:36)

• Deep discussion on misconceptions about right- and left-wing bias in clubs.
• The "right-wing haven" label on the Mothership is challenged.
  • Tony: Most of the staff and comics are “progressive people” (04:14).
  • Kurt: “That's like massive projection… There's like leftist spaces that you just can't be in” (03:50).
• Immigration, ICE, and how their media portrayal warps understanding. ICE's work, mishaps, and genuine data about arrests and violent crime are scrutinized (05:09–14:29).

Memorable Quotes

• “If you have cancer in 8% of your body, I would say you're fucked.” – Tony Hinchcliffe (12:10)
• “It's a net positive if you look at it that way.” – Tony Hinchcliffe (06:29)

3. The Impact of Immigration on Politics and the Census (14:44–18:38)

• Debate on how counting undocumented immigrants affects congressional representation, especially California and swing states.
• Political strategies for shifting demographics and census maneuvering.

4. AI, Media, and Misinformation (57:13–61:00)

• Discuss how AI and algorithmic content filter bubbles shape beliefs and elections.
  • New AI tools are making it hard to discern reality, even with video evidence (57:34–60:52).
  • Tony (61:00): “Anybody who doesn't think we're isn't paying attention. It's gonna get super weird.”

Memorable Quotes

• “We're getting to the point where like surveillance videos won't be admissible in court.” – Kurt Metzger (57:38)
• “What side are you on?... Everything becomes divided.” – Tony Hinchcliffe (61:39)

5. Loss of Language and Cultural Memory (71:56–78:01)

• Fascination with ancient languages, lost civilizations, and what humanity will leave for future generations if digital records are wiped out.
• Specific interest in undeciphered scripts like Rongorongo from Easter Island and the Voynich manuscript.
  • Tony (77:36): “Oh, yeah. All the hard drive stuff, gone… We'll have to relearn things.”

6. Conspiracies and Political Cover-ups (27:59–44:00; 143:33–145:20)

• The Epstein case, blackmail rings, and the pattern of elite impunity.
• Famous cases and systemic government abuses (Franklin scandal, Dennis Hastert).
• The mental toll of being consumed by conspiracy, referencing Alex Jones and Kurt Metzger’s recent "corruption obsession."

Memorable Quotes

• “If you have a person convicted of a crime… there's another person involved and that other person is completely eliminated from the trial. Because what. Because they're billionaires? Because they're heads of state? Like, they're powerful enough prominent scientists. What is going… how is that. Okay?” – Tony Hinchcliffe (28:25)
• “You find out how many of [the conspiracies] are true, and you start losing your mind.” – Tony Hinchcliffe (143:48)

7. Art, Medicine, & the Allure/Futility of Defying Aging (19:21–23:32)

• Discussion of facial surgery, societal beauty, new anti-aging philosophies, and the lengths people go for immortality – literal and societal.
• Tony (20:56): “…they're treating aging not like an inevitable aspect of life, but as, like, a disease that you get over time.”

8. Comedy Craft: Opening, Hosting, and the 'Ankle Weights' of the Profession (46:45–52:49)

• Cold opening, hosting, and late-night “monster” spots in tough rooms as a crucible for great comics.
  • Kurt (48:44): “That's the running with weights is a great analogy.”

9. Generational Shifts in Sex, Relationships, and Community (152:15–156)

• The Gen Z “voluntary celibacy” phenomenon, drop in marriage and childbirth, fading third spaces, and rise of OnlyFans/creator economy.
  • Kurt (153:00): "There's a giant percentage of people that are like, voluntarily celibate in this country."

10. Austin as an Emerging Comedy Powerhouse (111:56–118:03)

• The pros and cons of the Austin scene, the influx of comedians, and debates on how to “make it” in a big city scene.
  • The necessity for comics to hone skills elsewhere before moving to "major league" towns like Austin or L.A.
• Ongoing NY vs. Austin vs. LA rivalry.
• Tony (118:03): “Denying that Austin is an amazing scene is just stupid... Don’t you want more comics and more comedy?”

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Notable Quotes & Highlights

• Tony Hinchcliffe (101:59):
  On Fred Rogers' Emmy speech:
  “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take along with me ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life.”
  (A memorable, heartfelt segment urging listeners to reflect on gratitude.)

• Kurt Metzger (132:05–134:44):
  On the origin of the sandwich:
  “He was like, the Earl of Sandwich... a gambling thing... just give me the bread and the meat. I'll put it together... That was the whole premise.”

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Important Timestamps

• 00:14–03:00: Launching comedy careers in Austin, social media, and The Mothership's influence.
• 03:00–04:15: The "walled garden" and outsider/insider culture.
• 12:10–15:16: Data analysis on ICE arrests and the meaning of “violent criminal” stats.
• 46:45–50:05: The art of cold opening, hosting, and experimenting with material.
• 61:00–63:40: The coming wave of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes.
• 77:36–78:01: Cultural memory, unreadable scripts, and the fragility of digital knowledge.
• 143:33–145:20: The mental health cost of conspiracy obsession.
• 152:15–156:16: Gen Z sex, relationships, and the collapse of traditional communities.
• 111:56–118:03: How unprecedented stage time and club proliferation makes Austin the new power center for stand-up.

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The Tone & Style

The conversation is funny, raw, occasionally dark, and peppered with real-world examples, pop culture, and biting sarcasm. There’s a consistent undercurrent of gratefulness for the camaraderie and opportunity in comedy—punctuated by rants about bureaucracy, political hypocrisy, and historical amnesia. Both speakers frequently pivot from observational comedy to intense social commentary, without losing the breezy momentum of comics riffing backstage.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a tour through everything on a comedian’s mind in 2026: the practical side of making a living in comedy, the existential weight of living in an era of deepfakes and political dysfunction; and the enduring comfort of close communities and killer pastrami sandwiches. It’s as insightful as it is entertaining, especially for listeners interested in comedy’s future and its ever-changing relationship with American culture.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Kurt Metzger]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Hey, fella. Hey. What's going on, brother?

[Kurt Metzger]

Good to be back, Joe.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Good to see you as always.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, this time. This time I have something to, like, actually promote.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, you're always promoting, so, I mean, any kind of appearance is sort of a promotion, right? You're promoting, the audience gets to see you.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, right, right. It was so funny. Cause it got me thinking. So I started watching Patrice's Opie and Anthony appearances. Cause there's a list of them on Spotify. And what was so funny to me was like, you know how they have these group of mentally disabled people that they kind of fuck with?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Opie and Anthony.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Carousel. It's kind of mean.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's kind of horrible. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's kind of like, ooh, I'm kind of glad we're past that. But what made me laug every single one of them at the end of the thing was like, and here's my website. I had a website. And I was like, damn, I've been on the Joe Rogan Experience twice and I don't even have a website.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You didn't have a website?

[Kurt Metzger]

I didn't have a website. This is the first time I had a website.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow. What did you do? Did you make it yourself?

[Kurt Metzger]

No. I realized, oh, I gotta just pay people to do stuff like that. That's out of my wheelhouse of things I can do ironically. I'm terrible with technology. For a guy who looks like me.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There'S things you could do. Like, Squarespace has a great setup. It's pretty easy to do. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but that's. I think that's just pure. It's like, pure laziness on my end, for sure. And a little bit, like, I spend so much time on my, like, my brain space, and this is dedicated to my jokes. I don't. I kind of shut out everything else.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a fun time to be alive. One of the things is really. That's really exciting about the Mothership is for someone like me who's been doing comedy for so long, it's really exciting to watch people's careers launch. You know, like, see guys like Cam Patterson go from getting a spot and kill Tony to being a regular and kill Tony to being on Saturday Night Live. Boom.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's crazy. Like, some of them, like Christina Mariani now just, like, sells out rooms at the Comedy Store all the time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

She's killing it just.

[Kurt Metzger]

And then you have, like, Peyton Ruddy and like Dylan Carlino. These are just guys who were just at the club and just made a way, like social media wise.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you get to see people get just tighter and better. Like McCusker's new set, like we did last night. Really fucking good, man. Super solid, really fun. It's just like, we got a good thing, man. It's a good thing. Yeah, it's a fun.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's just a fun place to be around everyone just working jokes. That's what it is. Really. It's so funny. There is such this narrative outside of the ship about what Austin comedy is, and it's just really just a bunch of people just doing jokes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The narrative is only with jealous people. It's not based on any reality. It's not based on people go there and hang out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right? Well, it's, it's. It's always these people who love to talk about Austin, but they don't talk to anyone in Austin. It's like there's a bunch of comics willing to hang out and talk to you.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think I've told you this before, but I have a friend of mine who's, you know, somewhat of a philosopher, an online friend. I don't even know what he looks like. We've been going back and forth for years, but he warned me about this a long time ago. He said, you've created a walled garden. And he goes, and you've got all these friends and you're all supporting each other and you're all having fun, but there's a lot of people that feel on the outside and they feel like left out of it. And so they're like those people that party sucks. You know, it's kind of along those lines. And, you know, if you could find some connections to other negative things, you know, like me and Tony, we have this connection to Trump and so does Shane. And, you know, there's, there's all sorts of that, oh, you got to be a right winger to be. And then the narrative comes up, oh, you gotta tell jokes about trans people. You have to. Yeah, you can't be a liberal. You can't be a this, you can't be like, well, well, that.

[Kurt Metzger]

The, the whole, the whole, like, you have to be a right winger. That's like, to me, that's like massive projection. Because there are these spaces where, like, if you're a right winger in comedy, like, there's like leftist spaces that you.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just can't be in for sure, you'll get pushed out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You'll get treated badly. More importantly, whereas at the Mothership, like that fucking green room, like 80% of the time, it's mostly like progressive people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, and mostly left wing people.

[Kurt Metzger]

A lot of people, Most of the people who work there are mostly left wing. Yeah, It's a place where. It's a place where. But because right wing people, I guess, are allowed to be here or like, also allowed to be here, it's all of a sudden this right wing Nazi haven't.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's also. It's like, what does that even mean?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, what is right wing? Like, because you don't think that that candidate and what they were doing by like storming the fucking gates with illegal immigrants, you don't think that was a good idea? You don't think, like rampant spending, completely unchecked with no documentation, like, what's going on in California? You don't think. I think that's a bad thing, what.

[Kurt Metzger]

Tim Walsh is doing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I mean, spread so there's so much of it, man. But then it's also like, yeah, what ICE is doing, like, fudgeing, Shooting that lady seems kind of craz, you know, like grabbing people that happen to be American citizens and fucking dragging them out onto the snow and ask them for their papers. That seems kind of fucking crazy too.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that seems insane.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But it's also like they have a crazy job. Like, imagine you're an ICE agent. Just imagine what happened. Okay, so we tried. We used our sponsor Perplexity the other day and tried to figure out through AI what the exact number is. But when you deep dive, you realize they don't know the number. They really have, like an estimate of interactions with illegal immigrants. And it's somewhere around 11 million for four years, which is fucking wild. That's 10 Austin's.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

At least of illegal immigrants were allowed to get in this country, aided to get in this country, and then moved to states. They moved them. They flew them out to certain swing states. Like, this is all. Mike Benz has documented all this stuff. There's all you can see. They gave him EBT cards. Like, so imagine. You can imagine two things. One, imagine you're one of those people, like, dude, they're asking me to come. This is awesome. Now I'm in America, I'm gonna get a good job, I'm gonna be able to support my family. And then all sudden you have these fucking dudes in bulletproof vests looking for you on the streets.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I thought you said it was okay. I thought the Red Cross gave me a map. I was you gave me a fucking cell phone and now you're hunting me, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

And then you're just, like, caught in the crossfire.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But now imagine the ICE agents, okay? This is your job. Your job is to go out and find these people. And one of the things you don't get about this, it's like, because there was, like, a recent clip of mine that got, like, highlighted where I was criticizing ice. One of the things that you don't think about when you're into this is just like regular police interactions. The ones that you see online are the horrible ones. So you think all cops are horrible. What you miss is the millions of interactions that people have with cops. Like, how you doing today, sir? Good, sir. How you doing? Can I see your paperwork? Sure. Here it is. You in a hurry? I fucked up. Late for work, you know? All right, man. Just slow down. Go like, all right. Thanks, brother. Everything's nice. That happens, too. Like, there's nice interactions with cops. There's people that save people from bad guys. It happens all the time. There's people that are thankful that they called the police and they stopped the burglar who is breaking into their fucking mom's house or whatever it is, right? There's so many more of those, but you're not seeing those videos. And so with the ICE thing, what you're only seeing and you're only hearing about American citizens that have been arrested, the lady that got shot, you're hearing about all these negative. What you're not hearing about is the number of violent criminals that they've caught. And it's a lot. It's in the thousands. It's not like thousands of American citizens have been shipped out to other countries. No, it's like, net positive if you look at it that way. Like the. See if you can find out how many. Because I know there's probably going to be a bunch of various sources that are not totally accurate, but find out, like, what are the number of violent criminals they've caught since they started doing that? This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace makes building and managing your website ridiculously easy. They give you everything you need to showcase what you do and get paid all in one place. And with cutting edge design tools, anyone can create a custom site that truly fits their brand. Brand. Head to squarespace.com rogan for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code rogan to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter with the new year, you probably have a couple goals you want to accomplish. The problem is the follow through. But here's a bit of advice. Don't try to do it alone. Like, if you want to hit the gym more, find a workout buddy who can hold you accountable. Or maybe you want to be more self sustainable. Start gardening, take a class and learn from someone who knows what they're doing. And if you're a business owner looking to expand your team and operations, use Zip Recruiter. It's the ultimate hiring partner who can help you find the right people for all the different roles on your team. And you can try it for [e-mail] Rogan rated the number one hiring site based on G2. ZipRecruiter goes the extra mile without wasting your time or money. Its matching technology works fast to connect you to potential candidates who could be a perfect fit for what you're looking for. Let ZipRecruiter help you find the best people for all your roles. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. That ZipRecruiter.com Rogan again that ZipRecruiter.com/rogan ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire well, also.

[Kurt Metzger]

Also the there is a question on this is how I Because I know this is how they recruit some ice agents. It's just like their ads on local TV just offering. They do it on the. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

During the ufc. There's an ice ad.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And it's like these are just like also regular people. How much training are they really getting?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Because when you watch the shooting video, you're like, why is the guy shooting also recording with his phone? Like, there's no way that's like anything you're trained to do.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

His own safety. Like just to make sure that you could see this lady's unhinged. Is he not wearing a body camera? He's not a cop, right? Yeah, but he's not wearing a body camera.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So I bet that's why. I bet that's why he filmed it. And also that same guy, turns out was dragged by a car just recently. So like he almost lost his life or someone did try to run him over. He's hanging onto a car for dear life. I think he got 300ft.

[Kurt Metzger]

He got dragged.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy. 300ft is. That's a long way to get dragged. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, you 100% football field. There's a full possibility that you may die. There's no single public record number of violent criminals captured by ICE raids just over the last few months. And available data suggests those cases are relatively small share of recent ICE arrests and detentions. One analysis, ICE internal data said that only 5 to 8% of the people booked into ICE detention late 2025 and early fiscal year 2026 had violent or property crime convictions. But Even if it's 8%, they've gotten rid of a half a million people already and then 1.6 million voluntarily deported. So in a half a million people, 8% is a lot. That's a lot of violent criminals. So this is weirdly phrased as of January 20th, I would say 8% is a lot. Like if you have cancer in 8% of your body, I would say you're fucked. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're saying, oh, it's only been 8% that are violent criminals, it's a lot. That's a lot of people.

[Kurt Metzger]

But now, now the question is, are these 8% and the, and then the nonviolent people sent in this to the same place?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Ooh, that's a good question.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know what I mean? Because like I do you do want the violent criminals out. But then I don't want the nonviolent criminals to be sent. Or not nonviolent people who are here to be sent to a prison.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Exactly. It says ICE no longer voluntarily publishes detailed case level arrest breakdowns by offense type and independ projects. So imagine if you're a dude from Mexico that just walked up here because you wanted a better job and then they shove you in a prison.

[Kurt Metzger]

And now. Yeah, in some prison and you never.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Did anything bad your whole life and now you're in some. Well, the El Salvador thing. Are they still doing that?

[Kurt Metzger]

I don't. That, that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't know. That that was a bad. Yeah, that's bad optics.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, I mean this, there's a lot of optics. Is the optics with ICE has been terrible.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It says recent enforcement has involved thousands of arrests nationwide. But available analysis consistently indicate that only a small min of those. Is that in italics? No. Is it not.

[Kurt Metzger]

Is it maybe weird, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it looks a little funky. No, no, it's not. It's just that's. That's perplexity showing its bias. Small minority of those. That's a tone of those in ICE detention arrested by ICE in late 2025 and early 2026 have violent criminal convictions. Most have no convictions. But when they sang small minority, they indicated previously, that's 8%. That still means a beings.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a lot of violent human beings. Like, if you could sign a piece of paper that said that, you know, we're going to allow a bunch of people into this country. Most of them have no violent convictions, but about 8% of them are monsters. Evil, sociopathic murderers, drug dealers. 8% is a giant ass number.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a giant ass number. Right. The real problem is that they have to do this. This is a real problem because the Democrats did what they did. They did a crazy thing. They opened the border up and told people the border was open and then let people. And then when people tried to stop them from doing it, they used court orders. Like, what was that thing they did down in Texas at the border?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah, because Abbott tried to put up something, some like, wall or something.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or they said, you can't stop this.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which is. Wait a minute. We can't stop people from breaking the law. Like, what are you saying? There's a method to stop this and you don't want it stopped.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because the dirty secret is the census doesn't count citizens, counts everybody. It even counts illegals. So if you live in a community that's half illegal aliens, you get way more congressional seats from that district than if you are in a community where all those people don't count. They said that. I think they said that California, if the census did, see if we can find out what the number is, but if the census did not count illegal immigrants in California, I think they would lose a shocking number of seats.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which is kind of crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You're rigging politics by moving humans into place.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, well, you gotta. You gotta. You gotta do something. And it's a very. Something that no one really talks about a lot is like, the Democrats, every single minority group shifted. Right. In 2024.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Every single one. And no one really is, like, actually trying to figure out why that's happening. They're like, well, if we just import more people, we can overcome that deficit.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But they could. They could. If it was successful, they could overwhelm the political process. They could make it just like, it's California forever, where you get. Half the people are, like, massively disgruntled and so confused about the politics, but they're stuck there. And that would be the whole country. It would essentially be that kind of a thing. And then they do what they do in England and what they do in Canada was they slowly start clamping down on your rights.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And England starts arresting people for social media posts.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, I, you know, I Hopefully that the free speech stuff is so ingrained in our. Who we are as a people, because England, like, at the end of the day, it's not like that country was built on that principle.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

This says that they would only lose two house seats. It says Canada. California would lose. I called it Canada.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it was like Freudian.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Would lose an order of one to two house seats, if possible, if people in the state without legal status were not counted in the census used for appointment based on recent expert simulations. All right, what's that? Here's the thing. Like, how many illegals are in California? Let's find that out. Like, what is the estimated number? Put that in there, Jamie. What's the estimated number of illegals in California? I don't know where I'd be without this kind of.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I'm so hooked on using, like, perplexity for any question I have all throughout the day. It's like, my smart friend, it's like.

[Kurt Metzger]

Better Wikipedia, because it can really, like, you can use it as, like, way better than Wikipedia. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because you can ask the entire Internet and sometimes it does catch some articles in there and says it might be this. You're like, wait a minute. What? Let me go to that article. That might be because it's only pulling from the Internet. Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Undocumented 2.8 million in 2007. That's what. Yeah, that. That would be around two seats. Right. Because there's like 30 million in California.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Something like that. Yeah, yeah, that makes a difference. And then you do the same thing in Seattle. You do the same thing in wherever, you know, places. You have massive numbers of undocumented people Count. Ohio is a big one. You know, this is one of the reasons why they had this thing where, like, why are there so many Haitians in Ohio? Well, what do you think? I think they just decided Ohio's a spot, and they all had a group WhatsApp chat and they all went there. No, probably somebody's moving them there because it's a sweet state.

[Kurt Metzger]

It was funny when the Somalian thing, when Waltz was like, this is white supremacy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

And was like, hey, but then who's the most supreme white man in the state? Governor, you bitch. Yeah, like, that's a crazy Freudian slip.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But it's also, like, what a crazy attempt at misdirection. White men commit Most of the crimes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's part. I think I told you that's part of the reason why I think, like, minority groups are shifting away because it's like one. I don't think that the whole victimhood mentality, that's not something that minority groups really experience or like value.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Especially not minority groups that are immigrants that are in the middle of the hustle.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We got to go to work.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, we got to overcome. That's the whole point. Regardless of the hand you're dealt, you got to just play it and overcome. And so that victimhood mentality really kind of pushes people away from the left, I think, in that manner. And then like, you know, when Biden was like, you know, if you don't vote for me, you're not black. It's like that's kind of how they. That's kind of how they view the minority vote. It's a hostage vote. It's like, vote for us or else. Yeah, it's like no one likes that energy coming towards them and they'll lash out and go in a different direction.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Such a wild thing to say.

[Kurt Metzger]

I mean, unbelievably funny. Unbelievably funny, man.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's just. I can't believe he fucking said it. He's so cr. And he said it with that crazy pulled back face. And it's like, this is madness that whatever they did to him to make him look. Try to look younger. Yeah. Doesn't work, kids.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, my God. All that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We know what you used to look like. You're on TV all the time and all of a sudden you. You have a completely different face. Like your face is different. Like you're all your. Everything's pulled back and looks. It doesn't look like anybody normal that's 80 years old.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, all the, all plastic surgery ages. Like you an alien when you're old. There's just no way around it. I don't know who lip fillers are for because I don't know any guy who's like, yeah, I like, I like that look like that much. But it's. It's crazy how they age.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The facial fillers are crazy too, because sometimes those things become a problem and then you got to get them removed.

[Kurt Metzger]

And well, now they're doing that buckle fat thing. Oh, where they look like ghouls.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Why would they do that? Why would they take fat out of their face? Like fat in your face is what makes you look youthful. What are those ladies going to look like when they hit their 60s?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, they're going to look like ghosts maybe, because their faces will be all sunken in.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

By the time they're 60. I think medicine is going to be at a level where they're going to be able to reverse aging. They're pretty close to being able to do that. They've already done some stuff with mice, and they've. They've done some stuff where they're. They're understanding, like, what genes are causing you to have these problems, what things could be done to mitigate it. And they're treating aging not like an inevitable aspect of life, but as, like, a disease that you get over time.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Instead of, like, accepting the fact that your body's going to age at a very specific rate, and then when you're 60, it's gonna suck. When you're 70, it'll suck worse. Instead, it's like, what's causing that? Let's reverse what's causing it. And, you know, essentially, if you can do that, and I think they can, if it's. They can't do it now, they're gonna be able to do it. Whoa.

[Kurt Metzger]

Jesus.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What happened? Okay, but this is, like, day one, this lady just had surgery. Popped up on my feed a few times. She's 69, almost 70. Holy. That lady does not look even close to 69 or 70. Is that true?

[Kurt Metzger]

Kind of uncanny.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is that true? Is that doctor crazy? He's making it up. She's like, I'm 40.

[Kurt Metzger]

It just. It just feels like one of those human dolls.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What did she look like before? There you go. Whoa. That's the same lady, bro. That's crazy. You could pick her up at a bar, and then you're like, why do you smell old?

[Kurt Metzger]

God, that's. That's crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You got that old people smell. Sprayed perfume all over their body. Oh, I remember there was this episode of that show Autopsy. Did you ever see that show Autopsy? There's this guy, Michael Baden, and he's a famous forensic scientist that, like, examines cases and says, this is actually a murder. And he catches people. And one of them was this guy who was really crazy and his wife died. I wonder if it was his wife or a lady he knew died. I forget the circumstances, but he kept the corpse in his house and had fashioned some kind of an artificial vagina that he attached to the corpse and then had cases of perfume. And so apparently the bot, he just kept it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Is this like, an older guy, an older story? Yeah, it's like some Cuban doctor, and it was like some girl he fell in love with. And then she died. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ye.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. But it wasn't his wife, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, it was like. It was like in a plaster case thing, and it was a. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then.

[Kurt Metzger]

Crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It had a mask on it. So it was like a corpse that was, like, years old with a mask on it and an artificial vagina and cases and cases of perfume. So this guy's just covering this thing. Perfume. Getting his on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jamie, just.

[Kurt Metzger]

You gotta find that. You gotta find the picture of it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He even inserted a paper tube into her decrepit corpse to serve as a vagina for making love. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That said the fake vagina, I think it was. Yeah, it was like something he made. Like, he made something. Dude, people made a thing to.

[Kurt Metzger]

People go through lengths to get their rocks off. That's crazy. That's like ingenuity. That's like. Man, if you. If you had that energy towards anything.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Positive, you could get to Mars.

[Kurt Metzger]

You can figure stuff out.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Find us a photo of the corpse.

[Kurt Metzger]

There we go.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. So this.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, no, that's Carl Tanzler. That's a different guy, but it's a different one. But he did the same thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Thing. Oh, God.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, Key West.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Same thing. Secretly took her body or used French plaster, preserve her skin, rigged wires and hangers to support her skeleton, and then pumped a continuous stream of perfume to mass. The stench of the scent of decay, disturbing arrangement continued for seven years till it's finally discovered by her sister. Oh, God.

[Kurt Metzger]

What a horror story that is.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, God. You find your sister's body, and it's just there's a continual stream of perfume to keep people from knowing there's a rotted body up there.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, God.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He did it for years. God, men are.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, yeah, well, you know, and any sort of, like, weird predator will end up in that situation where they can do their thing, Right? So, like, if you like dead bodies, you're going to be in a corpse. Like, same thing. Like, there's like a. Like, female pedophiles just become middle school teachers.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Those in the 30s.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's what they do.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Jeez. Carl Tanzler. Oh, God. And that's Dr. Michael Baden, the HBO show. That show is awesome, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, and he did Epstein's autopsy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, he's. He's one of the ones that said that the wounds were consistent with ligature strangulation, not with hanging.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. We talked about this last time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know, so far. So I recorded my special on the 25th of October and I have a bunch of Epstein jokes in there. And in the meantime, they. They said they released the files. And I was like, oh, no, but they still haven't released them. And I was like, oh, thank God. The joke still. I was like, oh, my God, thank God. Because I have, like, at least two separate times where I bring them up, because it was so. It was even bigger back then.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's going to go on for a long time, I suspect. I mean, they said they released them, but what did they release?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, they're still not all out yet.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What do they release? Yeah, like, it's weird. The whole thing's weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

It reminds me. It reminds me of that Onion article where they're like, oh, CIA realizes they've been using a black highlighter this entire time. Like, it's like that. It's like, oh, okay, you just blacked.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Out pages, redacted the shit out of everything.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like, what did they release? Did they release something recently?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, they haven't released anything in a minute. They had that initial release where everything was blacked out, and it was that picture of Winnie the Pooh, which was hilarious.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But isn't there talk about some new releases that are happening soon?

[Kurt Metzger]

Have they. It feels like everything's been drowned out by everything else been going on with, like, Somalia, the Somalians and the ICE shooting. It feels like that's completely drowned out anything about it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Think some of that's on purpose?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, 100%, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

27 minutes ago, update story. A federal judge blocked the effort to force the release of more files. Okay, the federal judge let's. We said it a little bit wrong. Is the federal judge blocked the lawmakers effort to force the DOJ to release the Epstein file. So they're trying to. To force the doj. They already were forced to. They've missed deadlines. And a federal judge blocked them from forcing them to release it. So a federal judge said, no, you can't force them to release it. Even though you campaigned on it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Even though you ran on it. Even though you stood outside that courthouse with a bunch of binders.

[Kurt Metzger]

We've got it. Got him.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He ruled that he lacks jurisdiction to. Oh, I see. I see. Okay, that's a little different. So the federal judge Wednesday ruled that he lacks jurisdiction to appoint an outside expert to ensure the Justice Department complies with a law that makes all files pertaining to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein available for public view. Okay, that's different.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but still, the. The. The law chess that they play to make sure it still can't come out is pretty crazy. Impressive. But I don't have the jurisdiction.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But if you're a federal judge, you can't. You have to do. You can't step outside of your boundaries.

[Kurt Metzger]

Is that. Don't they kind of just do that sometimes, though?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it's not. You're not supposed to. Just because some of them are unethical or some of them.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, that's fair.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. I don't understand all this. So I'm gonna charitable about it. Yeah, I'm gonna be charitable about it, but I just don't understand how anybody can go to jail for sex trafficking when you don't have anybody they sex traffic to.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, that don't make any sense. Like, if I was Ghislaine's lawyer, I'd.

[Kurt Metzger]

Be like, to who?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

To who? Like, how did he not do that? Like, you want to tell me there's some sort of a compromise trial? How do you not have a lawyer that goes, who did she sex traffic to?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. That's clearly there's some sort of backdoor deal that was like, hey, because you spend this time in jail and we won't kill you?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, of course.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or also, she's working with them.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

How do you have. I mean, in any way, shape or form, how do you have a person convicted of a crime when there's like, especially that kind of a crime where there's a person that hires you or gives you money or that you use to get influence from, and then you sex traffic to them. So there's another person involved and that other person is completely eliminated from the trial. Because what. Because they're billionaires? Because they're heads of state? Like, they're powerful enough prominent scientists. What is going. Like, how is that. Okay, that doesn't even make sense that you could get through a whole trial like that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but I think that's just a. I was saying this earlier. I think this is just a function of government. These, like, intense, like, blackmail sex rings that everyone just kind of gets away with it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, yeah, it seems like it just.

[Kurt Metzger]

Happens over and over again.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But it's like, look at it this way. Like, imagine if you were selling hash, right? And you had, like, pounds and pounds of hash at your house, and you've been selling hash, and you got caught selling hash. They charge you with distribution and you're like, okay, but distributed to who? Because you're only selling to, like, rich, famous people. You're only selling them to, like, heads of JP Morgan. You're selling all your hash to those guys and they're like, well, who did he sell the hash to? Nobody. Somebody bought a hundred million dollars with a hash and there's nobody. You have no. No purse. That doesn't make any sense. There's no crime. So he's didn't really sell it. It. You could say he possesses it, but maybe intent to distribute. But if you want to get him for actual distribution and selling of hash, he's got to sell it to somebody, man. At least an undercover agent.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. But like in this situation, it's like, did we ever really think anyone was really going to go to jail for this?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I feel like with continual, constant pressure, they have to. It has to slowly leak out, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

I wish I was that optimistic about it. They've done a good job of. They've done a good job of it. Of keeping the names out of the press even after they said they would leak them.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It says here FBI and DOJ records from 2019 reference about 10 individuals described as an alleged Epstein co conspirators, including Maxwell and French modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel, who died in French custody in 2022.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's a way to get out of it too. Be like, oh, he sold. She sold it to a dead guy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. But it's also. This is not saying that sold it to them. They're co conspirators. So they were probably involved in facilitating. They're probably involved in acquiring these girls, making connections because that guy owned a modeling agency. So he's. Or he's a modeling agent. Right, right, right. So that guy's getting him girls. So he's a co conspirator. It's not saying that he was John, you know, he was a John that was getting the girls. He was a co conspirator. So there's at least 10 individuals who are also. Which makes sense. If you have this giant blackmail ring, it's not gonna be like one guy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. I also find it funny the whole we mark that Mark Epstein guy, his just brother came out of nowhere for.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like a little bit.

[Kurt Metzger]

For a little bit. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's like, fuck this.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, wait, first of all, what do you mean a brother that just knows everything that happened? Because he came out and said that wasn't like the, the email that was like, oh, Clinton, Trump's on clip. Suck Clinton's dick.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

He was like, no, bubble wasn't Clinton. But you didn't say he didn't suck someone's dick.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sucks. Some guy named Bubba's Dick. Some truck driver.

[Kurt Metzger]

What is it?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Were you just showing us disapp that a few of those people were protected by the 2008 non prosecution agreement? That little slap on the wrist protected a bunch of people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And so they continued to be protected. Is that the idea? That's where. No. I don't know if anybody knows.

[Kurt Metzger]

Nothing's better in law than a technicality, huh?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Slippery one. So what did Epstein's brother wind up saying?

[Kurt Metzger]

He said it wasn't Bubba and then. Which. Which implied that he knew that he knew exactly what was going on in the island the whole time. And it's just out and about, but.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He'S still saying that Trump summ suck someone's dick.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And then he just straight up disappeared. Where the fuck did he go? We just learned about him, man.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I believe a lot of things. I do not believe Trump sucks someone's dick because he doesn't do drugs. You know, I mean, when Charlie Sheen was saying he sucks some guy's dick, like, okay, Charlie was doing so much crack, it was out of his fucking mind.

[Kurt Metzger]

I feel like that level of power is a drug at that point.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I mean, maybe. I don't think so. I don't know. It's a.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's a very.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't think it's gonna get Trump to suck a dick. It just doesn't seem. That's a guy who's up on drugs. That's like, when Diddy was doing it, they were all doing drugs. It's a drug thing, Right? Unless you're a gay man. It's a drug thing to go around sucking dick. So we're assuming that Trump's been hiding the gay the entire. Not a chance in hell.

[Kurt Metzger]

That'd be the most impressive hide of all time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Also. Why would he do that?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, there's no reason.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If you're. If you're open and you're gay, you side with the fucking Democrats. Like, that's the move. You can probably do all the exact same things when you get into office. Right? Horseshit. I found a follow up question and.

[Kurt Metzger]

It does not know who's in charge of Epstein's estates.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's thinking. Look at this. Look at it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Thinking. Your laptop's about to blow up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Drones about to hit the building. The mothership's gonna be on fire tonight when we get there.

[Kurt Metzger]

So. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Jesus Christ, man. It's so funny. It's like, it's. It's an attempted cover up of corruption that would have been successful in the 70s, right? Right. They had pulled this Shit off in the 70s or the 80s.

[Kurt Metzger]

Gone was the whole Franklin scandal.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sure.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. They, they killed that reporter. Yes, they killed that reporter. There was definitely some.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yep.

[Kurt Metzger]

Underage sexual thing going on there. And they were like dead. You and your son. That's what you get for fucking around. Around.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

We'll kill both of you.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There have. Well, you know, Tucker's talked about this and a few other people talked about this. There's a bunch of secretly gay politicians.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then there's probably a bunch of secret pedophiles as well.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I mean, definitely.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

For sure.

[Kurt Metzger]

There's definitely. I like, I, I pulled that once on bottom of the barrel. Just secretly gay Republicans. That was my thing. And then I was like, can you imagine how good that sex feels? Especially after you spent all day being like, it's bad, it's wrong. Yeah. Sex is extra hot. Yeah. Because you're going against God and your party at one time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Some twink with his converse on your.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. But yeah, and then you go back and be like family value. Like that level of.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think there's a lot of them that are putting on a show. A lot of them, they're putting on an act and you, you're never going to get to know who they really are. And that's why when something comes out, it's like shocking. They're all weirdos. They're all weirdos. You have to be a weirdo to want to run the. Or you have to be like this amazing person. Like it's two options. You have to be Gandhi or you have to be a weirdo.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know what I mean? And speaking of pedophiles, we had a Speaker of the House that was a pedophile for like eight years.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. A real one.

[Kurt Metzger]

A real deal pedophile.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Real deal convicted pedophile.

[Kurt Metzger]

What was his name again? Haster. I think might have been. Has.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think so.

[Kurt Metzger]

I feel like we should look that up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I don't want to be like, oh, it was like a nice guy and we're calling it redible.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But what.

[Kurt Metzger]

Speak of the House.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He was involved in a very big scandal of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Dennis Hester.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes, it was, it was, it was like some Sandusky. It was at a school that he was teaching at.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Exactly. Allegations that Senate. Scroll up a little. Senate candidate Roy Moore spent his 30s dating, propositioning and sexually assaulting high school aged girls was shocking, but not without precedent. There have been plenty of congressmen who carried on sexual relationships with teenagers From Thomas Jefferson. That was back when people died when they were 18. Yeah. Strom Thurman, perhaps more dastardly Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert served as speaker of the house from 99. 2007 and a little further down and.

[Kurt Metzger]

Additional agreed that Hastert sodomized a fourth grade boy in a high school in a school bathroom and threatened him. If you're for assault, that's like Sandusky stuff. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Christ. Since the statute of limitation had expired on these crimes, Hastert was instead convicted of evading bank reporting requirements in order to secretly pay off his victims.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's so funny.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Serve 15 months in prison. That's it. Holy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's so crazy. To pay off your victims and not do it in cash. What? Yeah. That's a lot of money. That's fair.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I bet it was. I bet it was quite a bit of money. Holy. Dude.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And just figure the House one kid that got a fourth grade boy in a school bathroom. How many more did he do that to? How many? Just don't want the shame of it coming out publicly. How many guys are struggling with it right now? They're 35 years old. They don't want to tell that story.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That ruined their life. Because the speaker of the House them crazy, crazy, crazy. And he. So he's not alone.

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's the Franklin scandal.

[Kurt Metzger]

And there's no way that wasn't uncovered beforehand by people. Just the way the political machine works. But that's like sort of like you.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

Me for this. I'll get you for this. So you keep that under wraps. You just have that in your back pocket.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think it's just part of that game that they play.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, for sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like Game of Thrones.

[Kurt Metzger]

For sure. It's definitely.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It really is. It really is like Game of Thrones.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's just. Yeah. Whorehouse isn't like.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And also House of Cards. Right. It sucks that Kevin Spacey got busted because that show ruled.

[Kurt Metzger]

I know, right? But you know, it's so funny because thinking back on it, like, if you looked about movies, I. My genuine take before. Before he got busted for this is he plays the greatest villains.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yes.

[Kurt Metzger]

He's like the greatest villain actor of all time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's the greatest creep.

[Kurt Metzger]

Mm.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's like a brilliant creep. Like, with darkness behind his eyes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then can turn it on the charm, that Southern charm for the camera. How about when he did that weird video in front of the fireplace?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, dude.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like in character.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Kill him with kindness.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right after. Right after the witness to his case died. Like another witness to his case died. Yeah. Like, yeah. People were dropping or like flies around space. Either crazy. Real deal villain acting out the literal.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Plot lines as the character being the character while he's tending the fire.

[Kurt Metzger]

Goes to show you you can still be a. I mean, he's still a genius artist. Yeah, yeah. Just like amazing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And in any other time, he would have never gotten caught.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's just how the machine worked.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. I mean, he's just one of those guys that got an immense amount of power and he. Dick grabber, like, give me that dick. And I bet a lot of guys are like, okay, that's the problem with wild pitches. You know, you. You swing at every pitch. You're gonna hit a few.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, but he's probably, you know, for all these guys that he grabbed dicks and said, oh, you know, probably Drunk, probably up. How many guys like let him suck their dick? A lot. I bet, I bet it was an effective strategy, Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Especially for famous in Hollywood.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Did it to gag guys. But he was like the one guy that the story broke was a young teenager. Right. When he like 14 or something like that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And they were working together or something like that.

[Kurt Metzger]

It was, it was definitely a minor.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But it's also like, why is that teenager at a minor with a bunch of drunk gay guys like, hey, where's your dad? The is going on? What are you doing there? But it's, you know know it's not excusing him for doing it. The thing about people in the gay community is they look very differently at teenage boy gay teenage boy men relationships than we do at like teenage girl men relationships. They look at it very differently. Like Milo got in trouble for that is Milo on his, on my podcast was talking about this guy that molested him. He's like, trust me, I was the Protestant.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's what he said. That's a crazy thing to say, but they look at it differently.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah, yeah, that's. I remember someone was. I was living in LA and we had this gay dude who was sleeping on the. You know, we had a bed in the living room for guests to stay over. So he was, he like lived there for like two months and they were. We were watching Call Me by youy Name. Name and he. It's like a, it's like a. It's army hammer and maybe it's Shalam. I forgot I, I was in and out. My roommates were watching it. But it's like a, about a, a gay story between an older man and a, a younger boy. And yeah, he, he would said, he said this red like he was watching it. Like, oh, this reads like a fanfiction of an older gay dude being in love with like a younger gay guy. Yeah, it's like a. I, I remember that. I remember him telling us that. I'm like, okay, that's interesting.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, I mean it kind of makes sense, right? Because we think very differently of like, like a high school football player that winds up banging a really hot science teacher.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, you're not mad, you're just like, this is crazy. That lady's crazy. She's 35, she's got two kids. She a 17 year old boy in the bathroom.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, yeah, yeah, that's. I said that earlier. Female pedophiles become teachers. That is, that is what they do. They find the way.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's very, very Very different. Different than the scenario of, like, the football coach that's banging the cheerleader. That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's what makes want to lynch him.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's way gross.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's weird, right? Yeah, it is weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's like. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

With.

[Kurt Metzger]

With every. Every time there is that there's a South park episode about it. Every time you hear that story about, you know, the. The. The older teacher, the young boy. Every guy's kind of like, nice.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, well, you know, had the best joke about it was Zach Alanakis. He said, do you hear the boy D. Died? Yeah. His friends high fived him to death. Man.

[Kurt Metzger]

That live at the Purple Onion.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, fantastic.

[Kurt Metzger]

That was. That was a. That was a great special.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What is he doing these days?

[Kurt Metzger]

I have no idea. He. He was on that show for a while in fx baskets. That was really good about the Clown. Lou Anderson won the Emmy on it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He owns a farm somewhere. He has, like, a farm.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think he's like. Like, he's very smart. Have you ever talked to him?

[Kurt Metzger]

I've never met him. I've never. The only time I saw. I only saw him. I saw him live was at Brody's memorial.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, he was real tight with Brody. He was one of the ways that I found out that Brody was off his meds, he contacted me. Do you remember that one time when Brody got real kind of like almost aggressive crazy. Uno's like, yelling at people in the audience sometimes. And it got weird. It wasn't like performance arty anymore. It was like, what's happening with Brody? And then he got back and he. And he, like, bounced it out. What? Brody had, like, legit problem. What. Whatever. It was. Whatever his mental health issue was. Like, he needed medication. Like, he was. He was legit crazy. And Zach contacted me and said, it seems like Brody's off his med, so just don't engage with him.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, damn.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So it's like you got to kind of figure out a way to corral him, get him back on his stuff and.

[Kurt Metzger]

But, man, when it. When he was in that main room, when he was in that main room and that cr. What was left of the crowd was rocking with him. It was just so much fun just watching him play drums.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He came into the improv one night. We were doing a later show, so it was like a 10 o' clock show, and he was on late, and the show was kind of petering out, you know how it does. And at the time, it was probably like about half full. And then, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brody Stevens. Brody takes his shirt off and starts swinging it around in the air like a FL flag. He goes through the crowd. Let's go. Energy. And like, he just gets everybody fired up. He immediately breaks out the drumsticks, starts drumming on the seat, and then starts telling jokes and just change the whole tempo of the room. Like everything lit up. It was awesome. It was like, that's what Brody can do.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

With pure charisma and talent and just, just personality.

[Kurt Metzger]

And anytime I see him, like, anytime I see a person in the audience like this, all arms crossed, negative. That's all I can think. That's all I can think. It's like, wow, you are giving me negative energy right now. For no reason. For no reason. You're at a show. Come and enjoy it. You know, especially when you see it, because I cold open a lot. You see like, like, you see people be like, why are you, why you come here? Like, impress me. Like, you're already here.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just enjoy the energy sometimes for people to loosen up. You have the hardest job when you have. When we do those Joe Rogan and Friends shows and you cold open. I've only cold open a few times over the last few years.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And over the last 10 years, it's hard. You got to hypnotize those people. You got to slowly work your way into the rhythm of jokes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah. You have to sort of like, it's, it's. I like it because it's energy matching. Like you find out where they are, catch on to them, and then bring them to the energy that you want, you know?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Really good at it. Yeah. Hans Kim.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Really good.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's just straight jokes. Uh huh.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's just straight jokes. And he, he's funny looking, you know, like, like he's got a big smile on his face, like he's having fun. You kind of get into his groove real quick. And you know, he did so many arenas with me in so many big places. And he was the perfect guy because he would just go, let me tell you something about myself. Then right away he would take control of the room. It was awesome.

[Kurt Metzger]

Derek's great at bringing him into. It's fun watching. It's fun watching the different people, like their different cold open strategies.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Derek is just like getting everybody fired up. Excitement. And he's so lovable, you know, he's, he's so, again, so much charisma, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. But it's the cold opening for as long as I have done and my career Even pre this club, it's just, it made me, I feel like so much stronger because like almost like running with ankle weights on and then now like leading up to me releasing the too soon, I was like, oh. I was like all these spots I was getting at the end of the shows, these were material. This is all material that I tested. At the beginning. Beginning of Rogan and Friends, which especially at the beginning of the club, a lot of people were like, wait, you're not Rogan talking to a friend. Like they thought they were coming to a live podcast before, you know, it took a while before the shows were like, oh yeah, this is a stand up show. So really?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. People thought it was going to be.

[Kurt Metzger]

A podcast at the very beginning. There were some episodes where you had to like introduce the concept of this is gonna be stand up. Yeah, yeah. Now it's not like that but like at the very beginning it for sure was. But like it was, it was like I felt my material was like battle tested.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it certainly is. I mean that's, that's the running with weights is a great analogy. That's exactly what it is.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It makes the jokes so much stronger.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know what else is really good for your act is hosting.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because you go up so often. Like one of the things that really helped a lot of guys at the store was hosting potluck. Because you know, you have to. There's all this chaos. Someone just bombed. Something crazy just happened. Someone just did something completely insane. You have a chance to make fun of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Reset the room.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Reset the room. And there's a comfort level that comes out because you're essentially doing stand up from 8:00pm to 2:00am yes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. When I first started, when I lived in first was a door guy in Hollywood. Derek was booking the Madhouse and I would come down and host the weekend shows. So every day I'd host from. Every weekend or two weekends a month, I would host from 5 to 2 in the morning. Because you'd host the open mic afterwards and you just host the entire night. It's a full day's worth of hosting.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's awesome.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's like it's, it's cuz the opening spots suck, but like they make you better. It's the ones that suck that make you better.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's definitely. Well, you realize like where the sloppy parts of your bits are where like you're saying them, you're like, ew.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, like it gets you. You're like, oh, right. Like, whereas the. When the crowd's popping and they're laughing and everything, they want to laugh. You can get that through and it actually get a laugh. But then when like it's quiet and it's the beginning of the show, you realize, oh, this bit sucks.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, oh, I got to bring this bit to the garage.

[Kurt Metzger]

Ye. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta not put it up front. What was I thinking?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I gotta tighten this motherfucker up. But it's, you know, there's plenty of other spots. That's the beautiful thing. I mean, we're running four shows a night every night. And so, and then, and there's so.

[Kurt Metzger]

Much around the scene. There's so much. I was, I was telling someone in la, it's like, oh, if I. True. If I chose not to get up 10 spots in front of an audience member in a week at the very least, then I chose that because it's so easy to just go on, get spots. There's so many people and like there's around in downtown alone, there's like 12 dedicated comedy rooms. It's insane.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Did you see, was it Rapaport that got kicked off of a show at Cap City? They canceled his show.

[Kurt Metzger]

They canceled Rapaport and what.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Let me see what the Post was, cuz they said something like there's another big club that will have you or something like that. Are they insinuating that we would have him and that he's racist and we would have him?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. They just assumed. They assumed the mothership is full of racist people.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They don't.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, people do.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But the guy that owns that is the guy that owns Helium.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but no, not just that. I think that's pervasive around comedy. For sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's d. They just. They're pretending. They think that there's no way. They think that. If you just look at the lineup, there's no way.

[Kurt Metzger]

No one's looking at the lineup. They're really, they're really like, oh, Joe and Tony support Trump. So this must be filled with racist people. That's what it is.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What did they say? Could you pull up the. It has to. I mean, I think they phrased it in an interesting way. So Austin for Palestine Coalition.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's a. Rapaport was pretty funny.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a Rapaport. He's done canceled. Thank you, Cap City Comedy and Helium Management for listening to Austin and canceling the racist provocateur Michael Rappaport show at your establishment. And so.

[Kurt Metzger]

Hey, Michael. Rapaport. There's a. Is. Make sure. Yeah, yeah, that's the. The caption is like, but there's another club insinuating that we would take.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But what is this? This is just Austin comedy. That's just someone's account.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's just someone's account. Yeah, that's right. When I first moved here, that was when I. That's how I figured out where all the open mics.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But they're not even accusing us. It's pretty sure there's another club or large venue space that will welcome you that aren't run by Helium. So. But there's a lot of places that. That's not necessarily. They're saying, if you still want to make a stop in Austin, just let them know. Most of us here are friendly and won't use politics and hate to cancel silence performers. So that seems like they're kind of saying, like, hey, Michael, come do another spot. Do it somewhere else. I don't think they're accusing him of that. Right, right. That sounds more supportive of him coming here and saying most of us are friendly and won't use politics and hate to cancel and silence performance. Performance. So that's not helium saying that.

[Kurt Metzger]

I guess he's. Is he like. I mean, I guess he's outspokenly pro Israel for this to happen.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. I'm not paying attention that dude because I feel like a lot of it is needy. You know what I mean? There's a lot of, like, trying to get attention too hard.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like, yeah, he's like, I get. He's not a dumb guy. He's got some really good points. But the problem is if you try too hard and you're doing it all the time, then the good points miss me.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They miss me because you're already connected to all that other silly.

[Kurt Metzger]

They're just lost in a se. Like, yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which is good and bad, depending on whether or not you want to be taken seriously. Right? I don't want to be taken seriously. So, like, if I do UFO shows or Big Foot shows, like, good. Oh, he believes in dragons.

[Kurt Metzger]

Good, good.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Don't take me seriously. Yeah, but when you're talking about something like Israel and Palestine, I guess because it said something. Citizens for Palestine.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, yeah, it had to have been. I. They're not canceling the coalition. Signs not going out of their way.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I had no idea anybody was calling Michael Rapaport racist.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, well, yeah, I don't. I, I. This is the first Michael Rapaport news I've heard in years. If I'm be honest.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I had no Idea that like there was an organized campaign to stop his shows.

[Kurt Metzger]

There must be. If it's happening here, it's happening everywhere, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Has to be. Okay. Since early November, our coalition sent several emails. That's all it took. No, it says they were ignored. While employees had privately shared that they're uncomfortable. Oh, they privately shared that with anti Palestinian hate monger Rapaport being hosted. Management seems unwilling to listen to their community. That's not necessarily their community. That's just some people in the community. Rapoport isn't just a fanatical Zionist with political views we disagree with. He's a racist who cruelly mocks dead civilians and children. He mocks immigrants and supports ICE detentions of people whose viewpoints he dislikes. Additionally, as a reputation for being generally disliked by people he's worked with doxing his political opponents and has been accused of working with Fox News to spread fake propaganda. Okay, this is like a lot.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Who wrote this?

[Kurt Metzger]

Austin for Palestine Coalition. So maybe it's just in Austin. Oh, yeah, that's it. Austin. Yeah. And then they got him out of Cap City.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, but so what does it go back up to the top of that thing? What is the original. No, no, no, no. The original thing that I read, it said he's mocked. He's a racist who cruelly mocks dead civilians and children. Is that true?

[Kurt Metzger]

I don't think you'd have to. We'd have to go through his. Yeah, that's the thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like when you say something like that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. You just have to take that for face value that he does that. If you want to believe that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I've never seen anything like that. I would imagine that if he did something like that, it would go viral. Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Maybe not.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Mocking dead children.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I mean. Yeah, maybe not. May probably this day and age. Yeah. If he's, he's famous enough, for sure. Oh, yeah. Straight up mocking.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If you're mocking dead show. Look, look at the people that mock Charlie Kirk. The, the hate came strong.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah. They, they, they all, they all like lost their jobs.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They felt the heat.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Immediately.

[Kurt Metzger]

Immediately.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. We.

[Kurt Metzger]

It is, it is like the Internet makes people very comfortable with putting their initial emotional reaction out for everyone in to see. And it's like Derek talks about, it's like, we got to go back to the times when like people were like, oh, you can't post yourself with a red cup because like a job might see that you won't get the job like that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You think you're drinking yeah, yeah, that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Used to be like now people are like just full on sketches of like people dying. And like you see so many people die just constantly too. So it's like everyone's just desensitized to everything.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's a lot of desensitization. There's a lot of people that also live in these echo chambers and they think when they say things like, well, who was that one lady that was. She was CEO somewhere. She had a very high level position somewhere and she posted on her Instagram story, I think something like that. She posted Rest in piss. Charlie Kirk.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, like you're a regular person with a real job. You're talking about a guy who got murdered and you just wrote Rest in piss on the Internet because in their bubble they were saying that kind of stuff. They thought it was a cool thing to say.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you're out. Your. Your algorithm is so designed to just show you what things that agree with you.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

So everyone gets, gets more and more like, oh, everyone believes this. Everyone. Because everyone around or everyone I perceive to be around me believes that. When really it's just, it's all like half of it's fake. Most of it is just some Pakistani guy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Somewhere with like a million new AI where you can constant.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No, no, no. The new one where you can be any celebrity and it looks exactly like that celebrity. So all your movements you could be. Be like, you know, Mike from Stranger Things.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And it's super accurate. Damn crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

We're getting to the point where like surveillance videos won't be admissible in court. Like it's gonna be, it's gonna be up to there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It'll. Well, it all have to be on the blockchain. But even that, like I don't understand the blockchain, do you? Who knows if something manipulated. See if you can find that video of. Because there was one performer, former, who did a series of different people from Stranger Things. He did like l from Stranger Things and Mike from Stranger and it's fucking nuts. The same person just moving their hands around and talking and they look exactly like the other person.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. So now you're seeing heavily manipulated content. Like you. Unless you go out of your way to look for another opinion, you're just going to become entrenched in your own opinion. That's sort of the problem with what's happening right now is like.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or entrenched in the opinion that they want.

[Kurt Metzger]

That they want. Yes. They want to promote you. Just sort of like, oh, you're just being fed this Constant line of like, bullshit. You got to do some like algorithm cleanses. That's what like, fuck. Like, you know, you go on juice cleanses. You got to do that with your algorithm. You got to.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think honestly what you got to do is stay offline.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You're going to get got no matter what. Your algorithm is eventually going to catch you again. It's like, I'm going to do a little heroin this time and the next thing you know, you're a full on heroin junkie.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

For me, it's like there's so many videos of people getting killed by alligators and lions that are fake and they just look a little off. Like the line jumps in the car and pulls them out. You're like, no, like something's wrong with this.

[Kurt Metzger]

The way people react right now, the reactions of people in the background don't match. Right. That's what's. Because it used to be you could see the fingers and the fingers would be all fucked up. But they got the fingers pretty down now. They're getting better at that now. It's like you got to look in the. If the people in the background aren't reacting, you're like, okay, yeah, like if I was. People in the background react to. Would react to a guy getting eaten by a. Of people lot lying.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I guess they could probably fix that though. The prompt. Well, that would be the next generation. Scatter. I don't even think it's the next generation. I think it's just. You got to just ask it, do a better version, keep correcting it, asking it to do better. Kind of this fix that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Have you ever done that with a video where you asked it to keep fixing things? It gets overloaded and it just gets worse and worse and worse. If you ask it to fix that, it's not good at making an edit on the video you already have. Oh, so you can be like. Let's say it'll just generate another thing and because it's making a video about a video video, everything gets up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Look at this.

[Kurt Metzger]

Holy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

This is crazy, dude.

[Kurt Metzger]

That one looks kind of AI, but this is like a lot of a.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Little smooth in the face, you know, so it's probably better for. Do it again. Run it again from the beginning.

[Kurt Metzger]

So, you know, the first couple. The first couple ones might get you. It's one when. When one seems like obviously really fake.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, the thing is too, I think it's really good with young people and like him. It looks fake for some reason.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. When I got there. But Then you realize they all look fake. After you see one that looks fake.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But not that fake. No, it's just if they did the lighting a little better, you know, it looks a little too bright.

[Kurt Metzger]

I want. But yeah. See, I wonder if our perception. Because the first three look real. I wonder if our perception would change if they put the one of the guy that looks fake first. You feel what I'm saying?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, I don't know. Because this one looks real. Like that looks like her. Like if you just had that one and had her saying a bunch of things, I would think it's her saying a bunch of things.

[Kurt Metzger]

So if that's. Well, that's great.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We're.

[Kurt Metzger]

We're.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We're. Man, Anybody who doesn't think we're isn't paying attention. It's gonna get super weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And how much, how much of that are they gonna use on us in the news, you know?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah. Oh, it's a. Yeah, it's. The news is all. The news is already fucked. But it's like I was thinking about this the other day how it's crazy that because our algorithms are so different. I think this is why everyone gets so charged over news things now. Now is news is the only thing we have in common anymore. Like, there's not really a show that, like, everyone's watching or like a set of shows that everyone's watching. Your algorithm sends you things that you like, so you're completely disconnected, entertainment wise to the people around you. And the only thing you really have in common is what's going on in the world.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Because that's the only thing that's consistent.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And your opinions on it. What side are you on?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Cuz every. Everything becomes divided.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes. And you have to have a take on everything. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Vaccines, food pyramid, Gaza.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Everything. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, we were cooked as a. Like, companies have to do it. Yeah. I have been saying, like, we've been cooked as a country. I've known we've been cooked as a country ever since Ben and Jerry's had a take on Gaza. It's like, there's no reason for this. Yeah. There's no reason for this. Well, there's a company trying to sell stuff.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's a lot of incentives for companies to like, whatever. What is that ESG score? Is that what it is? What is the score that they give? Like, so, so companies have DEI scores that. Yeah. Like, and for favorable loans and for government money. It gets real weird when you start intertwining the. It. It gets real Communisty ESG score evaluates a company's sustainability and ethical impact, measuring its performance in environmental, social and governance areas such as carbon footprint, labor practices practices and board diversity to help investors and stakeholders access long term risk and potential. Excuse me? Assess long term risk and potential calculated by specialized agencies like MSCI and Sustainal Sustainalytics scores offering from 0 to 100 or letter grades. Gauge how well a company manages risks in these non financial areas. Influencing reputation acts, access to capital, this is what's important. And long term financial performances. Yeah, so climate change impact, resource use, waste, pollution, energy efficiency, employee relations, diversity and inclusion, labor standards. So you're essentially forcing the company to act a certain way. You can't do it completely as a meritocracy. You have to have a representative board of people which a lot of people agree with. None of those people are exceptional. None of the people are exceptional at their job that agree. You should have specific categories of race or gender replace meritocracy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No one really good, male or female, black, white, Asian, whatever. No one really good at their job wants that.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, no, because that just gets in the way of the job. It's like I have to like work worry about this social score. Yeah, that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But fuck off.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's kind of what we're like heading towards, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's less so now with Trump in office. There was a guy who was a CEO of some company that was. Talk about the gigantic shift in dealing with the government that had occurred right after Trump took office. He was like, it was instantaneous, like all the restrictions and regulations and this is one of the problems with California in particular. It's incredibly overregulated. So it's really difficult to do anything. Which is one of the reasons why so few people have even begun attempting rebuild their fucking house.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Regulations everywhere for everything. It's just over regulated.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well then the government buy a lot of that land. Or are they trying to buy that land right now? The Palisades?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's. I don't think it's government. I think there was people that were interested in doing like low income housing and then there was like whether they were going to carve out things without their speculators. And there's that famous video of Nome standing in front of the rubble of a burning house. Go. There's been some discussions. He's doing that little dance. Remember that?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What a sociopath. What a freaky dude.

[Kurt Metzger]

He's running for president. There's no, no way. He's not. Yeah, I mean he's absolutely running for President.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Good luck, dude. You think there's a lot of fucking fraud in Minnesota? Just wait till they start digging deep into the fraud in California. It's going to take an army of people to do. It's going to take a long time. But look, man, there is so much money missing. They spent $24 billion on the homeless and they can't account for it. And. And didn't. Is it true that Gavin. Let's find out this. Because I saw this whole article about this that said Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would do an audit of where the $24 billion to the homeless went.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, if their goal was to create more homeless with that money, they did a great job.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They did a great job.

[Kurt Metzger]

They did a fantastic job.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The crazy thing is they're literally incentivized to have more homeless because the more homeless people they have, the more money.

[Kurt Metzger]

Money goes y.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which is what. And then you see the salaries of the people that are working. Working on it. Coley Coleon Noir, my friend that's a Second Amendment advocate who's a lawyer. He was the first guy to tell me about that because he's a lawyer and he was in San Francisco and he was like, why is there so many homeless people here? It's like they need more money. Like, is it? And his friend who was a lawyer goes, no, no, no, no, no. This whole thing is a racket. The more homeless people you have, the more you have to fund the homeless initiative. And then you have this entire ecosystem that's built around the homeless.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. And it's just money's going to executives.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Millions and millions. California, $24 billion. Okay. David Spade was talking about it. This really happened. He blocked bills for an audit multiple times. Bipartisan. Bipartisan bill AB 2903 unanimously passed 72 to 0 in the Assembly, 40 to 0 in the Senate and would have forced annual public reports on where the money went. And Newsom vetoed it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Is there no system in the state? Because it's like if the president vetoes vetoes in a. At a federal level, I'm pretty sure if the. The. I think it goes back. If it goes back to the Senate or the House, they can do a two thirds vote to pass it anyway.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't understand.

[Kurt Metzger]

There is legislative ways to override a veto this veto. Federally, I don't know.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Federally, I don't know about state level. Says Gavin Newsom also vetoed similar bills AB 272570 and AB 2093. Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That is crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That money's just gone.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

20 billion plus dollars in missing homeless money went. That is really wild, man. That you would veto that, that it passes unanimously.

[Kurt Metzger]

And you're like, nah, playa, that's gangster, dude.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's why you become a governor. It's probably a good move if you're really shitty mayor of a place like San Francisco and you ruin it. Better be the governor.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Tighten up and stop the investigations.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Stop all the loopholes.

[Kurt Metzger]

I, that's who I would call that. Good gameplay on Newsom's part.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, look, I like looking at politics from an outside perspective. That's some good gameplay right there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It is.

[Kurt Metzger]

If, if it's a game, that's what. Exactly what you should do. Great moves.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it's a great move.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And now you're, and now you sort of can launch yourself as this anti Trump guy and you're like, it's, it's, it's trying to get on this pod. The problem with dude is presidential run is coming.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He lies so much he doesn't remember that he lied. Like he gets busted on like, he's like. We've never used the term Latinx because Latinos do not like that Latinx.

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You. You want to alienate the Mexican American community, Start calling them Latinx. They're like, what the are you saying?

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, that's fundamentally gendered language. Yes. Fundamentally against their language.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yes.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's the whole point. There are female and male things in their language.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a gendered language.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. So everything.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy. That's crazy. Stop. The really crazy thing is, you know, we were, we were talking last night with Jimmy Carr's friend that was there last night. What was his name?

[Kurt Metzger]

I forgot his name.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sorry, sir. Fun. Fun guy. Interesting guy. But we got to talking about the, the, the different people that lived in America before Columbus got here and before Cortez got here. Here. Before all these Spanish explorers turn the entire country into a Spanish speaking Catholic country. Right. Which is really nuts, man. You know, you want to talk about colonizing like those people in Mexico. Oh, we respect their religion, their culture. That's the culture of their oppressors from just a few hundred years ago.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They lost a hundred different native languages. Man. They had so many languages in what is now Mexico. Mexico. But wasn't even Mexico until 1820. Like whatever it was, whatever they called it in the different areas. They had like over a hundred different languages are just lost in the wind. Cuz the conquistadors came through.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And, and out outnumbered. They were able to do that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Bro. This crazy number.

[Kurt Metzger]

Crazy, bro.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They had 13 muskets. That's all they had 600 dudes, 13 muskets. They burned the boats and took, took over Mexico.

[Kurt Metzger]

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then to this day.

[Kurt Metzger]

But here's the gift of gab too. I was able to convince Montezuma that they were God.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, they showed up with metal.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They're wearing armor and they're riding horses and they're like, this is crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

These guys are riding horses and there's like a famous. What was it? La Malinche was like a. Was like a female Native American or native to the area who was like, helped them take them down.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, there's quite a few people that helped him. Well, they were very clever what they did because there wasn't united tribes because the Aztecs. Aztecs were absolutely brutal. One of the Spanish chroniclers, some, I forget his name, something Diaz. But one of these Spanish chroniclers before the arrival of Cortez, he was there at the celebration of the completion of one of the temples, I think it was to Nochitlan. And, and they killed somewhere between 20,000 as the low end and 80,000 as the high end. 20,000 to 80,000 people sacrificed in a four day ceremony.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's pretty gangster.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So these are the people that were there. So those are not loved people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So it was really easy for them to get the other tribes and go, hey guys, we got horses, we got 13 muskets.

[Kurt Metzger]

Whether you're your help, we can take them down.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We could speak Spanish.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Carnitas.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's so, I mean, is a Mexican.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Word, but it's a Spanish word. Yeah, it's like this, the language, like they had names like North American, Native American names. Like one guy was a cacao lightning God. That was his name. Like I, I did a whole bunch of research on these people because I would just got fascinated because one of the things about the Aztecs is a lot of these like super complex temples. They didn't build them, they found them.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah, we talk about that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like they called it the place where the gods were born.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. These sort of like civilizations that like clearly probably existed. This is something that I think about is like, okay, so do you know the story? Story of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, like succession.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't know it in detail, but I'm aware of a lot of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, so you have Cyrus, he has two kids, Cambyses and Bardia. He splits up the realm between the two Cambyses goes off to conquer Egypt, but he's like, well, Bardi is popular, so let me secretly kill him and then go off to Egypt. A magi priest then impersonates both, takes over the Achaemena Persian Empire, is the ruler now. Cambyses sort of dies on the way back mysteriously. And then Achaemenid nobleman named Darius is like, hey, this is a magi imposter. Kills Bardia. He's now ruling. Darius leads the Achaemon Persian Empire to be as big as it can be. And he's the father of Xerxes, the back guy in 300. So that's. But. But that is the only official narrative story we have that's from a first, like a primary source. And the only reason we have that is because Darius carved that story in himself into a rock relief. It's called the Histune Relief. So that story is basically propaganda, but then 50 years later gets picked up by Herodotus and that becomes the story of the Ascension. Right. There's no other primary source on what happened there. You just have to take Darius his word for it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And that's in the fifth century. And the only reason we know that is because someone carved it into a rock, bro. Right. Like, we're not carving anything in the rocks now. So if. Yeah, so if something, let's say like, something happens to the Internet tomorrow and it disappears and then our civilization just vanishes off the Earth. Couple people survive and they build a whole new civilization.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's all those lines. Is that writing or is that erosion?

[Kurt Metzger]

I believe that's writing. I haven't really go back to that primary.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The original. Original. Okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

It looks like cuneiform and it's the way it's. Yeah, but that's the only reason we know something that happened from that time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is because this exists and we have no idea if it's true.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, we have no idea if it's true. But no one's even carving anything into stone for us. Right? So.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, look at it. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

There's no way. Way.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

How dope is that line? Look how cool that looks. Look how cool that looks. That's how people used to write things down, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Can AI, like, find. There's got to be some of these, like. I know there's one from Easter island that they can't decipher. Seen that one?

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Graham Hancock explained it and what he said was, essentially they. The island. It was a very small island, they got raided by slaves and they took everyone except for like a hundred people. And the people that they took and enslaved, they were the ones who knew how to read this language. And then this language was lost forever.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's one piece of, like, wood where. Yeah, that's it. Where it's written on. Look how dope their language looks like. Zoom in on, like, how crazy is that, man? Just like, what are they saying? And we don't know. Like, I wonder if they could throw that through AI and get sort of an understanding of what these symbols. But you'd have to have a base. Like, that was the thing about the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta stone really helped people in Egypt because you're like, oh, this is how it's written in Greek. And this is. Okay, now we know what, what it's, it's said in multiple languages. Now we get an understanding of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but so the, the overall point being though, is like, this episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

The old school stress spiral way. Endless paperwork, confusion, and unsure if doing it right. Yeah, we're leaving that in the past.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

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[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

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[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

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[Tony Hinchcliffe]

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[Kurt Metzger]

In our time, if the Internet disappears and we're gone, there's nothing from this time that's really being recorded. It'll just be lost.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, yeah. All the hard drive stuff, gone.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Just be lost.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We'll have to relearn things.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. But our time, the Americans, there'll just be some ancient thing that people might know, not know ever existed.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It says about the. It's called the wrong Rongarongo. Rongorongo. A glyph based script from Easter island remains undeciphered despite over a century of study. Imagine you're studying it for a century. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

People's whole lives have been dedicated to this.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No one knows exactly what it says. As all attempts to translate it fully have failed. And with scholars debating if it's true writing or proto writing, Writing as used as a memory aid. A memory aid?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Lines alternate direction, often upside down. Oh, so that's so hard. Every. Even the direction is ever changing. You're not writing right to left. You're just kind of going wherever you want with it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What is the latest on the Voyage manuscripts? Has anybody thrown that through AI to try to see if it makes any sense? Do you know about that?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Was it. Were they found on a guy? Was that one of them?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No, it's some weird book and the. The question is whether or not this book is just complete gibberish and nonsense or whether it's some lost language and where. It's. It's really detailed too.

[Kurt Metzger]

What was it found?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a good question. I don't remember. Published Nabi Cipher. Is that what it's called? Published November 26, 2025. Encrypt cryptologia by science journalists Michael Greshko. Interest introduced the Nabi cipher, which uses 14th century Italian playing cards and dice to encode Latin or Italian text into glyphs, mimicking the Voynich manuscripts. Voyages. This cipher replicates key statistical features like glyph frequencies, word lengths, grammar rules, suggesting a similar medieval method could have generated the original 15th century text. Although it does not decode it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Wow.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Have you seen it? See, you find images of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Freaky.

[Kurt Metzger]

Where. Where was it found? That's what I.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a really good question. Yeah, let's find that out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Voyage Ninja. There's like groups and dedicated to this.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, people are obsessed with it. I mean they've been.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is a fun Thing to be obsessed with.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just do me a favor and just go back to perplexity and say, how was it discovered?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, I'm curious.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because I feel like someone had it and someone bought it from someone.

[Kurt Metzger]

I thought I could have been wrong. I thought it was found on a body. I could be wrong about that. I might be thinking of another thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It was rediscovered in 1912 by Polish American rare books dealer Wilfred Voyage. Okay. He named it himself. What a clever guy.

[Kurt Metzger]

I like that. It something. Something of mine. Well, they say you died. The second time you die is when someone says your name last. So we're just keeping him alive. Alive.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He acquired it from the Jesuit college in France, Fras Frascati, Italy, as a part of a batch of 30 manuscripts discreetly sold mix amidst the Jesuits financial difficulties. How many of these in the Vatican are sitting on some that they don't have to sell? Oh, yeah, that would, like, change.

[Kurt Metzger]

Change the world completely. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Carbon dating places its creation around 1404-1418. Likely in northern Italy. Emperor Rudolph 2 bought it in the late 1500s for 600 gold ducats, possibly from John D. It later passed to Jacobus. How about this guy's name? Jacobus? Horsiki dependence.

[Kurt Metzger]

Decent European stuff that feels you can't even.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's some names like Joanna Yunjay. Check. If you saw the way it's written, there's no way you would pronounce any.

[Kurt Metzger]

Of those Eastern European names. It's like. It's like, how did you even get that?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Stayed in Jesuit hands until 1912. He publicized the undeciphered codex now at Yale's Beinecke. Beinecke Library, sparking global interest despite failed decoding attempts. Pull up some images of it so you can get. See what it looks like. It's real weird, man. It's real weird. And it has detailed illustrations of, like, plants and stuff. Well, here we go. Listen, here's a little video so you could see, like, how cool it looks when they're opening up the book. Anything that you're getting. That's a book that's from the 1400s. Where? 1200. When is it from? 1500. 1500s. So 1400s. Any book that you're getting from the 1400s is wild as it is. Just imagine these people living back then writing this down with a feather.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just touching it with her bare hands. Huh?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, you have to. It's actually worse to do it with gloves.

[Kurt Metzger]

Really?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. They found out that gloves, the, The. The rubber is more abrasive than your finger. The Oils of your finger is actually more protective or something along those lines. Wow, look how cool that looks though. And they don't know if that's a real language. That's what's nuts. You can't decode it.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is, this is a good, this is a good YouTube rabbit hole.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a, a good one. Yeah, it's an interesting one because people say it's a hoax but the thing about it is if it's a hoax it's like really well done and very complex and like incredible amount of time.

[Kurt Metzger]

The fact that it's still tripping up people now it's like it's an all time great hoax then sort of.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But think about how many languages we've lost. Like we just talked about 100 languages were lost somewhere around that in what is now considered Mexico. Now you know, think about the rest of the world like here's an opportunity. Other instance, mobs of indigenous people in Australia, the Aborigines, right? So they call themselves mobs and that, you know, instead of a tribe and they have mobs that will live 6, 10 kilometers away that speak a completely different language and they're all over the place and they don't have these things written anywhere. So there's a bunch of their languages that are just spoken orally and just disappear. And they will disappear. And we don't know how many languages there are. Like my friend Adam Greentree who he used to own a mining company in Australia and he employed a lot of Aborigines and he knows a lot about the culture and he was like dude, it's, it's the, it's the craziest history because a lot of it is not written down and there's a lot of horrible tragedy and genocide attached to it. There's a cave that you can go to where they gave these, this mob of Aborigines poison food on purpose. Like a whole crew of them. And so there's like just. Their bones are in this cave still to this day. He goes, dude, it's the darkest thing you've ever seen in your life. You think about this family and their children, they're starving and these people, these you know, white people in Australia were essentially prisoners that England shipped over there, right? Just gave them poison and just.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn. That's. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Damn. And they got, bro, they got some crazy rock art. You ever see the, the, the, the glyphs of like alien looking dudes and. Oh yeah. And like.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, there's like people with like rocket that look like they're in rocket ships and spacesuits.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What, what information, what stories? What is their version of the Bible that we missed? Well, it's because they never wrote it down.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. There's something to do with a large flood that seems to be consistent.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The Hopi had that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Something to do with a large flood and something to do with some sort of either dragon or serpent type bad guy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Though those are, those are the two main consistent things across most, most cultures. Some large flood event and some snake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all. And I wonder what the snake in the Bible really looked like, because in, in the Adam and Eve story, anytime you see a picture pointed, painted of it, it's painted as a snake. But his. The snake's punishment was it lost its limbs. So this was a dragon. Right. Because the snake, the, the snake's punishment was it has to sleep on the ground.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But is that the snake's punishment forever? Is that like why God did that to the snakes, period?

[Kurt Metzger]

I think so. I think that's the whole. That.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. Doesn't that just explain what a snake is looks like? Rather than describe a dragon, like, why doesn't have limbs?

[Kurt Metzger]

God took away its limbs saying, it's maybe it's. Maybe it's reversed.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It seems like it's reversed.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, maybe I just really wanted to be a dragon.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. It seems like, how come they don't get to have legs?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

How come you don't get to have wings? You know, because if you really think about it, like, there are so many different stories. This is why, like, you know the view, like, that's that famous Joy Behar clip. He believes in dragons.

[Kurt Metzger]

Great clip.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it's awesome. It comes out of a conversation that I had with Forest Gallant, who's a wildlife biologist. He's like, there's a lot of depictions of these flying serpents and large serpents with wings all over the world. It's weird, right? It is really weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's like, it's like a thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Really weird. And we know some dinosaurs flew, so.

[Kurt Metzger]

There might have been some. You think there's some sort of cross?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, here's the thing. The Congo has had a legend of some sort of a large dinosaur like creature forever, to the point where explorers have made their way into the Congo to try to find this thing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That resembles, resembles. I think it resembles a brontosaurus that could fly. No, no.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That was in the jungle, like, so the question is, is it possible that a creature could live for an Extended period of time. And then, you know, Maybe in the 1100s or a thousand years ago or whatever, 2000 years ago, they slaughtered them all and killed them off. Like maybe it, maybe they have a long gestation period like an elephant know. Maybe, maybe it's possible they realize these things were a threat. They knew where they'd end up. There was a small population anywhere and they killed them off.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Maybe, maybe it's not likely. There's no bones, there's no nothing. But there's no bones of most things. That's the thing. Most things that die do not leave a fossil.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then they find things that they thought were extinct. Not just extinct, but extinct for millions and millions of years. One of them is the, the coelacanth. You know about the coelacanth?

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So the coelacanth is this crazy looking dinosaur fish that is unchanged from, God, I want to say tens of millions of years. I don't know how old, but when you look at it like, yo, look at that thing. And then they caught one. Once they caught it, like I, I don't know, it was a fishing net or a fishing boat, but they caught one and then they realized like, oh my God, these things are still alive. Like we thought this was a part of the fossil. Fossil record.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then they, they realize that there's parts of the ocean that we just haven't explored and these things. And they've caught a bunch of them since and then other fishermen have caught them, but it's a very deep, deep sea creature that is really ancient.

[Kurt Metzger]

And they found, they.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

How old is the coelacanth? Like how long has it been around for?

[Kurt Metzger]

Man, that's so.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I hope I'm saying the word right.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's so wild to not find one for years and then all of a sudden you just find a bunch.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, they found a few. Well then now that they know they exist, they're looking.

[Kurt Metzger]

They kind of know where to look for them.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They're fish area and they caught him. But can you show me an image of the co camp?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, I think there's a, there's a YouTube channel that I think you'd really like called like, I think it's called arc. Like it's a. It just goes and looks through what the earth look like in every, like in different eras.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So that's that freaky fish.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah, I've seen this.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's armored. It's got like these crazy scales on it. It just, it looks like a throwback. So three, hold up go up. Relatives being the first left seas. 385 okay. So they're not our direct ancestors. But they're still relatives of beings that first left the seas. They left the sea 385 million years ago and became four legged terrestrial animals.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn. And this is like. This is like a common link.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So what's. There's creatures that left. So something left like that left the sea 385 million years ago and became four legged terrestrial animals from which we sprung. And these relatives are still alive today. So how long has the coelacanth been around.

[Kurt Metzger]

188 pounds.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So they come 38. Floating off the south African coast in the Indian Ocean. Fishermen from the urban caught an unknown creature. Weighed 188 lbs. 5ft in length. Dark blue in color. In color. And unabashedly chomped its jaws. This was not a fish. Not just any fish that scales, fins and limbs. Or more precisely rudiments thereof. Moreover, there were seven of them. Two in the back. Three on the belly and another pair on the head. They had limbs on their head? Whoa. Should we know? The local population occasionally caught these creatures. Didn't even come up with a name for them. Gombesa. Which can be translated as bitter fish.

[Kurt Metzger]

Love that. Just eat it first. Find out later.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The residents knew that it was nearly inevitable. Inedible. It was consumed due to the belief that its meat helped to cope with malaria symptoms. Yo. Although it was possible to make something like sandpaper from their extremely strong and bristly scales. So when did they think When? Look at what it looked like. That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's. That's. That's wild though.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That thing looks scary. It looks like a monster with all those weird appendages.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Eventually made its way onto.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Nuts. Man. That's. How long ago is that? Like how long did they think that thing had been extinct for?

[Kurt Metzger]

You'd have to look that up. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just put up. Put into perplexity the history of the seal helicanth. Okay. Here we go. How old is this?

[Kurt Metzger]

420 million years.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Rediscovered. Damn. Bro. That's. That's wild.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow. They thought it had been extinct for 66 million years and it was just living. Whoa.

[Kurt Metzger]

Dude. To live that long. That's pretty. That's pretty crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's incredible. Incredible.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. That's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's incredible. So this thing that was alive 400 million years ago is still alive today. They thought it was extinct for 68 million years. Is it possible that there's something else like that? That's on land, like less likely. I think. I think ocean is more likely.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, it's more undiscovered. Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So not just that, it's also like more protective of environmental changes, change. Right. So.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's probably less dependent on all that. Like especially if you're a sea predator, you're probably less dependent on, you know, all the plants growing and nuclear winter that's happening on the surface.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Everything dies off and the ice age comes and meteor dust everywhere.

[Kurt Metzger]

You can survive a lot of stuff like climate change. You're not worried about that really.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Probably you are, but it's probably something more things would probably survive in the ocean, I would imagine.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like how. How old are alligators and crocodiles?

[Kurt Metzger]

Aren't they like. Aren't like. Isn't like. Aren't like sharks older than trees or something?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Older than trees.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Older than trees.

[Kurt Metzger]

Such a mind to think about.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. There's something could be older than trees.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. And they still are essentially in the same form, just swimming, eating machines, apex predators forever. You hear about that lady off Santa Cruz that got got the other day?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, but I. Have you read that book about the, the I read that book about the shark attacks in 1916.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, yeah. In New Jersey.

[Kurt Metzger]

Ye short, where it's like, oh, damn river. Yeah, it went. It went in a freshwater river.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

But they also didn't think sharks were dangerous at that time. Like that was in that time. They were like. There were people like, oh, sharks, they're just like sea puppies. They'll. They'll leave you alone. That was a thought. Part of the reason why that stuck out to people were like, oh, sharks are like dangerous creatures, especially bull sharks.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because bull sharks are the ones that can swim all the way up to like they, they made their way to Illinois.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah. And they're just as. They're more aggressive than great whites, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, yeah, they're hyper aggressive. But they make their way all the way up freshwater rivers, all the way up into like cold environments. Illinois had bull sharks. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Fresh water just can. A freshwater shark is just. How bad luck do you. How much of a bad luck do you have to be in a river and get attacked by a shark? It was your time to go.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You got your legs dangling out of an inner tube.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just all of a sudden you feel this sharp pain and you see red in the water and you realize your leg's gone.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It takes you a second to realize your leg is gone too, because it's so sharp and so, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Slices through and you don't expect it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Jeez. Yeah, well, we were not expecting a shark in the lake.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you look down, you see the white of your kneecap. Everything underneath it is just torn tissue. And.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. They didn't think it was dangerous at the time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like that crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's so wild. It's so. All the way up until 1916, in fact, some people thought sharks were just something that saved. Made up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Whoa.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Just like, oh, this giant sea creature that'll eat you. They don't know what to talk or like, this is just a sea myth.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's also when you think about it, when people came to America because there's no sharks in England, there's no sharks in Ireland. Right. They don't have a problem over there. So when they came to America, there was only like, we're talking about this shark attack was in the early 1900s, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes, 1916.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So think about that. There's only like a couple hundred years of people even being here. Here.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And this episode is brought to you by the rip. Here's a question. If you walked into a stash house and found it full of $20 million, how much would you steal? That's the question Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have to answer. In Netflix new movie the Rip, they play a team of Miami cops alongside Tiana Taylor, Steven Yun, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kyle Chandler and Sasha Kaje, all trying to decide are they the good guys or the bad guys? This movie is an edge of your seat thrill ride the entire time, keeping you guessing till the very end. Don't miss the rip. Watch now only on Netflix. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. So here we are. It's the new year. Which means it's about time to hit reset. Just because it's January doesn't mean you need to disappear into a cold plunge and never drink again. Just rotate. In some Athletic non alcoholic beer, you get the taste, the perfect meal pairing and the night out. But you wake up without the hangover with over 185 taste awards. They brew all kinds of styles. IPAs, Goldens, Hazy's, you name it. Athletic is proud. Brewed in America and sold at over 75, 000 grocery or liquor stores, bars and restaurants across the country. You can also purchase a variety of limited styles exclusive exclusively on their website. Go to athletic brewing.com rogan to find stores near you or get brews shipped right to your door. Use code ROGAN to get 15% off your first online order. Near beer terms and conditions and certain limitations apply. Athletic Brewing Company fit for all times.

[Kurt Metzger]

That year was like a perfect storm of like the beach became like an acceptable thing to go lounge at. Before that it was wasn't a thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Even tried to twist it to say that it was trying to attack the dog, not the person's in the way. No, hates dogs.

[Kurt Metzger]

What it there are, it does lay out certain things. Like if you are swimming with a dog, you're more likely to get attacked by a shark.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Interesting.

[Kurt Metzger]

And it's like something like a full moon. Like the moon really regulates sharks emotions. So like more shark attacks happen on full moons and stuff. There's certain things, yeah. Apparently having the dog. They never attack the dog really. But the dog attracts the something about how they swim attacks.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Dogs don't get killed by sharks.

[Kurt Metzger]

Not they will attack the person.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Really. Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's something. The book lays it out. There is something. There is like a. Like a coordinate. Like if there are a bunch of different factors that sort of apply to that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Whoa. I don't think there's anything alive right now that is, you know, dynasty dinosaur like. But I wonder how long they stuck around for. How long some of them stayed just the last. If crocodiles and alligators didn't exist. Like, let's just imagine crocodiles didn't exist. The big ones, the Nile crocodiles. Let's imagine, okay. No one thought there was a crocodile. It's nonsense. And then one day someone got a video of one in the Congo. You'd be like, no, dinosaurs are real, right? That's a dinosaur. That is a straight, straight up dinosaur.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's a giant lizard. That is. Yeah, that is technically what's left.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

This dude, Josh Bomar, he's a bow hunter and he just killed a world record crocodile. And I think it was in Tanzania. I think he actually, I think he might have did it like two years ago. This thing is so big, it's. I think it's like 17ft long. And it's probably over a hundred years old. He killed it with a bow. Look at the size of that thing.

[Kurt Metzger]

God.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Now imagine if that thing didn't exist. If no one thought that that thing existed.

[Kurt Metzger]

And then you saw that and then you saw that. You'd be like, yeah, that's a. Yeah, you'd be like, that's a monster that I saw.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, look at the size of that thing, man. Like if nobody went to Tanzania ever. If it was just a place that no one went to and yet. And then people went there and they Saw that. They're like, oh, my God. Dinosaurs are still alive.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because that's a fucking dinosaur.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's period, full stop.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You would.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you'd be absolutely.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You can call it a crocodile, whatever. It's a species of dinosaur. Dinosaurs that made it. It's still here. Like, when did crocodiles first evolve? 83 to 95 million years ago. Late Cretaceous.

[Kurt Metzger]

Younger than the coelacanth.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Up to 250 million years ago.

[Kurt Metzger]

Still younger than. By 100 million years.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's probably the ancestor that came to shore and started eating shit.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If everything came out of the ocean. Allegedly.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, okay. There is something. So there's something that I do. It's like a gratefulness thing that I do every year because it's like, this is like a big moment for me in my career. I just released the special I'm walking away from. I'm like, not working social media at the club anymore. I'm like making steps out. So this is a YouTube video that I watch every. Every time something like, sort of big happens to me or like I'm a crossroads. And it's. And it's. Have you ever seen this Mr. Rogers, Emmy acceptance speech? Have you seen this?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, can we pull that up, Jamie? And it's like a three minute video. But like, genuinely, because I'm. Because I'm going to do it too. I want you to do what he says.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's just a quick little thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And I'm. I'm. Yeah. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Let's see it. Yeah. For giving generation upon generation of children confidence in themselves, for being their friend, for telling them again and again and again that they are special and that they have worth. It is my honor on behalf of everyone here and on behalf of the millions of children whose mornings you have brightened with your kindness, to present you with this lifetime achievement award. Oh, it's a beautiful night in this neighborhood. So many people, people have helped me to come to this night. Some of you are here. Some are far away. Some are even in heaven. All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take along with me 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. 10 seconds of silence.

[Kurt Metzger]

I'll watch the time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Whomever you've been thinking about how pleased they must be to know the difference you feel they've made. You know, they're the kind of people television does well to Offer our world special thanks to my family and friends and to my co workers in public broadcasting, family, community communications, and this academy for encouraging me, allowing me all these.

[Kurt Metzger]

Years to be your neighbor.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

May God be with you. Thank you very much. He seemed like the real deal. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Nothing ever came out about him.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. For real, right? He was like Jimmy Savile.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I just. I'm happy he was the real deal. He really does seem like he is.

[Kurt Metzger]

Who do you think about?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, do I want to say it publicly?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, if you don't have to.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, Family.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Some people, you know, but I, you know, we. You and I in particular, are very fortunate. We have a lot of people that help us be who we are.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, and that is like, the one thing that I think we really highlight at the club is that we really are all happy. We really are all lucky. And we. We really enjoy our time together and feed off of each other.

[Kurt Metzger]

I. I'm. I'm so happy, too. Like, the. The way this. I. I would say the scene is like, incredibly, incredibly supportive of each other in a way that, like, it's nice, I guess, in this sort of new system that we live in too, where, like, you can just make it on your own. Like, you don't need, like. I'm not auditioning for a spot that, like, Fuzzy's auditioning for. Cause we're both brown.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know what I mean?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like in the old days.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. There's no, there's no, no reason. There's no reason for me to be like, damn, I hope he doesn't get this right. You know, there's like. It's a system of, like, oh, dude, we can all just create and then help each other.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, piggyback off each other. And like, that's. It's like such a refreshing experience to have.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It really is. The rising tide lifts all boats. And that's how it should be.

[Kurt Metzger]

And it happens everywhere too, because, like, you know, obviously you're at the mothership and you see how hard the door guys there crush. But, like, I'll go to Sunset. And Sunset has songs fucking killers as door guys now, especially because, like, they came up in this experience where Sunset, you know, famously, the ceilings are high and like, the. The room can be cavernous, can feel cavernous when it's, like, tight. And so they come up in a harsher, like, mothership. The rooms are set up for comedy. Sunset. It never happened that way. The guy. The guy died before he could make it what he wanted to make it. And Redman came in and just sort of saved it so he can open at the very least. So it's like they come up in these harsh situations. And, like, there's this one. There's this one kid at sunset, his name is. Well, kid is very fun to say. He's the grown man. But Mumford Davis, he closes every single death squad, which is like 18 hours long. So he closes every single one. Goes up in front of a tired beat audience. And now he's just an ass. Absolute monster.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Running with ankle weights.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I mean, he's running with the biggest ankle weights on to go at the end of that. In that room. They're tired. They've been there forever.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But you think about it like, that's how Kinison came up. Kinnison was the they. That was. The Kinison spot, was the last spot at the or, you know, and.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Think about his style. That screaming, yelling in your face. That's designed to shock an audience back to life.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. Just trying to keep Brody.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's Don Barris, that's Brian Holtzman. Like those guys that develop that act, they could just jolt you out of your complacency. It's kind of by necessity.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. How to just like, keep keeping someone's attention.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, bringing it back is just so. It's so impressive. That's what I miss about the comedy stores. I. I left before I got passed. So I never got those, like, late night or spots. Those one in the morning, six people just survived. I mean, some of my best sets. Favorite sets I've seen people have are in those spots. Damn, you really made this work.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, sometimes, like, reality shines through. Like, they have a real moment on stage where the comedy is just like, people like, oh, shit. Like, I remember Laura Bytes had a set one time, and I even posted it. Me and Bert Kreischer sat in the back of the room and she crushed so hard in front of. There was only like 25 people in the room. Right. And by the time she was off stage, there was 50 people in the room because people were coming in from other places to come and watch her.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. When you hear that noise, you're like, okay, what's going on here?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

She was just on fire. She was killing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's like, those spots are nice because it's like, you know your jokes at a certain. You have to work your jokes to get to a certain point where, like, my jokes are funny enough to showcase and work at the club. And now that I'm at this level, I got the jokes. Now can I be funny?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know, beyond like what my written. Can I be just funny? Me as a person? That's. You can kind of really hone that in those sort of levels. Late night, tough rooms.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, you got to do those.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, the store at the end of the day, even through hard and like good times and tough times at the store, that's the reason why they always create monsters. Yeah, the store creates monsters.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And Mitzi knew what she was doing. You know, she had a method to her madness and she tweaked it and got it to the perfect form. We essentially use a similar form here.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's. It's kind of like the method to make comedy happen. It's like, like just put people in like these tough spots over and over again. Can you follow monsters?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Can you follow monsters? That's the best part about being at the ship is like I've had to follow like Theo and Shane and be like, damn, I just got to do this.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

And then you. And then, and then you have to follow like the emerging stars too. Cuz then they have a whole separate energy to them. Like I remember following both cam and James McCann after they both started like popping and being like, whoa. Just watching the energy around them shift. Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Lost McCain Australia.

[Kurt Metzger]

I know. He'll be back.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Gotta be back.

[Kurt Metzger]

He'll be back.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I can't believe he had to go back.

[Kurt Metzger]

So funny though.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's the best.

[Kurt Metzger]

He's so.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's one of my favorite guys out there because he's got such a unique. Like it's his perspective. It's like you don't expect it. It's coming out of him. If you think the way he does, you get it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But if you don't, it's really smart, really funny.

[Kurt Metzger]

High energy too. Yeah. It's because usually this hyper intelligent go low energy. It's very rare that a hyper intelligent person like, who's intelligent on stage on purpose like that, like he is those high energy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's, that's what makes him unique to me too is because when they're, when usually when comics are being smart on stage and I'll do this too, they go soft, they go, look at me think. Yeah. McCann's like, I have the energy of I'm in a bar yelling at you. But it's about Kyrgyzstan.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're lucky, dude.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. The, the, the scene is thriving.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. There's so many places to go that's why I did mine at Black Rabbit. Just a small, little black box room that's been like. I've had sets there, and it's like 10 people, and they're on. Amazing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Yeah, they're just. They're just there for comedy. A lot of them are like. They tend to be like, these sort of just out of college kids who can't really afford to go to, like, any of the clubs. They're just. They just have money for the first time. We're like, oh, we can go to this little spot, like $10 tickets, just get introduced to comedy. It's a bit of a younger audience there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, there's just. How many spots are just on our street?

[Kurt Metzger]

On our street? I mean, like, there's within our street.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, within. Close. Like that. You can walk Cap City. Because it's like one over. Not Cap City. I'm sorry.

[Kurt Metzger]

Vulcan. No, And Sunset Creek.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Creek in the Caves.

[Kurt Metzger]

Creek.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Creek in the Caves. One.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. Over in that area, you have Vulcan, Sunset Creek, Velveeta, and then Bulls. These are bars that run. At least run comedy at least three to four times a week. Is Bulls. Oh, fuck. I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting one of the. Of the places it's. I'm blanking on it now. So. But Bulls, Black Rabbit, if you want to count Roscoe's in East Austin, they're a little bit down the road, but they're still kind of in the downtown area. So it's nine right there. Nar Bar. That's the one I was thinking about. That's 10. Shakespeare's runs it a bunch, and Maggie Mays runs it, I think, three times a week. So it's at least 12, pretty much dedicated comedy rooms. And that's not including mics.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's not including mics just in the area.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

When you say mics for people who don't know, you mean open mics.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, just open mics.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You're talking about booked clubs of professional comedians.

[Kurt Metzger]

Y. These are shows with people, and, like, there's. Some of them are rough bar shows, but they are shows and they're booked.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And there's a. It's. You can get on. You can. There's so many ways to come up. Oh, you can walk. You can walk. I've. I've had nights where I've had five sets, and none of them are at the Mothership.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

I'm just. You're just out and about. Yeah, it is. It is. So. And it's just different People getting up in different places. It's each, each of the. Each different place has their own ecosystem of comics who, you know, because you go, you go where it gives you what gives you time. That's where you always. That's the right way to go, no matter what. Yeah, just whatever is feeding you go. That's where you go. So there's different ecosystems in each places and it's really, it's really fun and you just get to see people like, man, just figure it out and it's. And it's fun to watch and they'll figure it out on the podcast and they'll figure it out on the comedy end and it'll all sort of works together.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's gotta be extra dope for you too, because you were a, an early settler, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

I got. I feel like I got to the gold rush in 48, I feel like.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Because.

[Kurt Metzger]

Because when I got here, there was only three. It was me, Hans, Kim and Derek and Dylan. Dylan was eight years in. But those are the only four of us that were like not famous headliners, that weren't new comics, basically.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

So we got to just do so many shows come. Because there was no middle class. It was all. It was. It was like California. It was all upper class and all like lower class. It was very. That now, now it's robust. Now there's just a bunch of killers that are like just moving here all the time. There's this guy, Nick Murphy, moved from Atlanta.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What year did you move here?

[Kurt Metzger]

2021. I moved here early. I got on a zoom, I got on a. With Dylan Sullivan.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We were.

[Kurt Metzger]

I used to play this. This I used to play. We used to play game nights from the Pandemic online with our friends because we weren't allowed out. Right. And so he pulled me aside one day on Discord and was like, you gotta move here. And he made the pitch and then I was like, I was pretty much there and then Derek moved here and he was like, you gotta.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And this was just when we were doing shows of the Vulcan.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is just Shows of the Vulcan. This was just. But it was indoor shows, man. And so I moved here and then I was like. Cuz the way I looked at it was like, look, either I'm going to like LA is going to reopen and I'll be working at the Comedy Store again and I'll. We'll have at least gotten up in that time and gotten paid to go up because they paid, they paid for every spot here, right? If you're booked so it's like, at least got paid. And so I was like, and then I'll go back to la Glitch.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But so. So when you came here, it was just like, look, I'll get some spots, I'll get paid, and if the comic store reopens, I'll go back.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, I'll go back and. Or the club was still two weeks, two years away from opening, but it's like, I'll stick it out to the club and see what happens if it works.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just starting to talk about club back then, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. You had put it on the universe. And that was enough for me to be like, I think he's gonna get that done. And so I took a chance and it ended up working. And then I ended up being one of the first people, like, pass through there, which ended a huge, huge blessing because now there's so many killers that it's, like, hard to get in the mothership.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

There's so many, like, people who have moved. It's like, it's. I almost tell people, like, it's a major city in that way, in the sense of, like, if you can get good where you are first and then move to Austin, that might be better now than a blind move to Austin, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

As an opener.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

As a beginner.

[Kurt Metzger]

As a beginner.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's hard. As a beginner.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like L. A was for a while.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, LA LA is super tough. I imagine New York is super tough as well.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The store was really tough. If you wanted to go from open mic to actual spots, like, bro, you got to do spots some else, Right. You really should be better. You're better off coming there with potential. Like, you've already gotten a few years.

[Kurt Metzger]

Under your belt than, like, trying to figure it out. Because the LA Mics are especially brutal.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The thing is, man, if you guys didn't come, it wouldn't have worked. Like, that was the thing. It's like the people that really are responsible for the movement, the. The crazy new scene, here are the ones who came before the club was open. Brian Simpson, Tom Segura. Segura was here early, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I told him about it. He's like, I'm moving. And then, bam. I was like, whoa. And when Tom moved, I was like, that's a big deal, you know, because Tom was already doing arenas. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

It required a certain amount of people to buy in. Yeah. And. And that I. You know, I'm very. Because of that, I'm very pro Austin of, like, man, if you buy in, look what can happen? Like, yeah, you shouldn't.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No one should not be pro Austin. It's funny because Lewis and Tony were going back and forth and arguing like Lewis shits on the Austin scene.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

This New York vs Austin thing is the stupidest thing of all time. It's like, there both be awesome. Who cares?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's unnecessary. It's unnecessary. Like infight. It's like Caddy girl fighting. It's like, why we both clearly can exist in a space where we can also help each other. The New York guys are always here and we're. I feel like we're always there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But the point is. What? What? Tony and Lewis were going back and forth and Lewis said, well, LA isn't even into consideration anymore as what's the best place for comedy in the country. And. And Tony goes, goes. Agreed. And why do you think that is? What do you think happened? Where'd those people go? And Lewis is like, oh.

[Kurt Metzger]

But you know, I will say this because I was just in la. I like where the LA scene's at. It's rebuilding stronger.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Of course it is.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. It's the store, It's Hollywood. It goes. It goes through dips. It's done it before. When I got there, was at a low. When I came in 94, the OR was half empty. Main room was never full. It was. Oh, and then there was no big talent there. It's always like that. It comes, it goes, New people come up. It's legendary. It's got a vibe to it. It creates comedy just by existing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's like, it's still. Every time they're like, man, this is the place.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's the place, man, that's been the place since 1970 something. I mean, it's. That place is crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. You could do it. The building is alive in that place. That's crazy. Yeah, you feel it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's like soaked with the memories of Kinnison and Hicks and Prior.

[Kurt Metzger]

And here's what's crazy. You know the bucket seats in the back? Yeah. If you go during the day, they might have repainted the wall. So this is when I worked there. But when you go during the day. Cause I'd get there early and like write or whatever. And you can look where the bucket seats are. The outline of all the heads because of all the oil of the people leaning back was just there. So you were just there. And it's just the energy of all these great comics just in the room with you. Yeah, it was. It was. It was an interesting Place to, like, be during the day because you could feel it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Very special place. Very special place. You never get to take from that. But the thing is, it's like it should be and it will be even better than it used to be, I'm sure. But the point is, it's like denying that Austin is an amazing scene is just stupid. Yes, it's just stupid. And also, don't you want another great scene? Do you want a limited amount of options for comedians? Don't you want more comics and more comedy?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. And more places for you to end up performing?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Shut up.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like now? Yeah, now. You can go to Austin and spend a couple weeks there and get a of lot of time and learn how to talk to people here.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's so many in this world. So many. And those never get anything done. They just sit and this and this. Nothing ever gets done.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They never progress.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, man. Just video essays. I watch. I watch all the video essays.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's so funny. Why would you watch those?

[Kurt Metzger]

It's just so funny to me because they all start. They all.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The.

[Kurt Metzger]

The whole concept that Austin is ruined comedy is very funny to me because there's so many comics that are blowing up outside everywhere all the time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's just silly.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it's like my friend said, it's a walled garden. That's what it is. It seems like the people are having too, too much fun. And if you're not there and if you don't have aspirations to be there, you feel bad about it. When I lived in Boston, the store was like Mecca. Like, people would talk about it, you know, I was like, you had to make the pilgrimage to the Comedy Store. It's one of the first things I did when I came to la.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, no, it's a big deal. The first time you go there, I remember looking at it being just the feeling in my heart.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The first time I went there, I hadn't even moved there yet. I went there just to watch. I told them I was a comedian from New York. I'm like, can I go watch a set? I'm like, yeah, sure. And they let me come in and I sat in the back and watched. And it was like Bodaks. It was terrible. It was really bad. Really. A bunch of cruise ship acts, like a bunch of guys with the same act from the 1970s. They had never. You know, those dudes that, like, you'll see them at the store occasionally now that have an act from the 80s. Well, these dudes. It was like a decade Earlier. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

When I worked at La Jolla, there was one guy that they booked that they had like, some. Some deal with Mitzi that he got to perform once a year at the La Hoya. And, man, you could just tell, man, it's been. You haven't changed this act since the 70s.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, they just never evolved. And, you know, and they weren't getting spots when Kinison was around. The place was packed. And then Kinison left, and then he had a billboard. He put a billboard right in front of the. The Comedy Store of his new album that was coming out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, why did he leave the store?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't know. He probably did something stupid.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think he definitely fired off a gun because, remember, he shot.

[Kurt Metzger]

The bullet hole is still there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, Yeah, I heard they fixed the. The sign, though.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, it's fixed the plastic. I. Yeah, they might have. I think the plastic was falling apart, but they kept the bullet hole because the bullet hole is still there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, I went. I went and looked. I made sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Pretty crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

The kid is in bullet holes like part of the thing there. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But the cracked glass was also part of the thing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. But I think eventually just fell apart. It's been like 40 years since that happened.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I might have been what got him banned, not sure. But then he was banned, and then when I came, it was 94. So he was already dead. He was dead and Hicks was dead. So it was weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. And so that. That was the L was from. They were just kind of missing that top level guy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There was a lull and guys would occasionally drop in to work out, but they didn't put their name on the marquee. No one ever knew they were going to be there. Like, Chris Rock would come in and work out. Damon would come in and work out. But the big comics that were there, like Dom Aero would stop in. There was guys like that would stop in. But then it was mostly us younger guys. Holtzman was a big part back then.

[Kurt Metzger]

I can't imagine Holtzman as a young guy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I mean, me and him, we're only a few ages, a few years different.

[Kurt Metzger]

It feels like he's just looked like that since he did.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He was a throwback. He looked like he was from the 1950s when I met him in 94.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, slicked back, dark hair.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Always the best, Always a nice guy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Oh, my God. He's the sweetest guy in the world. There's something about guys who are like that on stage are always super sweet off stage. Oh. Because they, like, truly get all the venom out. It's like William Montgomery. If you watch William Montgomery on stage, he's a raving lunatic.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, that picture.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, wow.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Look at Holtzman to the right with a suit on.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, my God. Nepali. Who's next to you?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Freddy Soto.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's Freddy Soto.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Damn, boy. That was probably like, 96 crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Brian does look the exact same.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He looks the exact same. He had jet black, black hair. And he would look at. He's looking.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know what it kind of looks like. There's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's his headshot.

[Kurt Metzger]

There's this guy on Instagram where his whole. His whole thing is just. He pretends to be a greaser.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, really?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but, like, unironically. And that's kind of what he looks like. But his. It's really funny because all his. All his comments are just like, yo, show us that hog. Like, that's. That's become the. He does, like, greaser shit. And all the comments, like, but how come. Where's the hog reveal? Why is hog. It's become like that he's so unironically trying to be a greaser that. That the comments came up with their own sort of culture around him.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So it's coming accidentally.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. The kind of mocking. They're all kind of making fun of him, but he's genuinely trying to be portrayed. This guy, this greaser guy. Like Mike the greaser or something like that. It's so funny.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, Holtzman was just. I thought he was going to blow up, man. I really did. I was like, oh, this guy's gonna be huge. My. This guy. This guy's gonna be gigantic. There was a few guys back then that I was like, that guy's gonna be big. You never. Did you ever see Mike Rica?

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The early 90s. Mike Rica was great, man. I don't know what happened. I know what happened with him.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's so.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I don't even know if he does comedy anymore.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's so, like. It's so easy. People fall off all the. Like, it's like. Because it is brutal.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The game.

[Kurt Metzger]

Game is brutal.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It can be.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. But you have to have something brutal outside of the game to keep you centered. You should do something else. That's also difficult for me. It's obviously working out. That's a big part of what keeps me sane. I think it's important for mental health. The people that are the most mentally unhealthy and unstable that I know all have no control of their body. None of them exercise. They don't eat well, they eat terrible food, they take mental health medications and they're all up in the head. And then little things can send them off a deep end. Once a person makes a mean tweet about them and a couple people pile on, they want to jump off a building.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, there's a bunch of those people out there and I think like with the pressures of this job you have to, for your own sanity you have to find some sort of an outlet, find some sort of a thing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Or like take a walk.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That too.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. It's so it's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That'll help but should be something that's a little bit that you exert yourself.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well that's like I was like that's a good place to start if you're one of these people that like don't do like. Yeah, just a simple walk can really get the ball rolling.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Don't jump right into CrossFit.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Nothing couch to CrossFit.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Just be outside and like smell the air and be or so. Because like does your phone send you the screen time updates?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What do you mean?

[Kurt Metzger]

Like so my phone will send me like a weekly. Like this is how much you spend on your phone.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

For me it's like damn, this is like a full time job that I'm spending on my phone. It's disgusting. And I have to just remind myself like, oh, the reason I feel bad is because I'm on this 100% I'm on this and I'm consuming a fake reality that like I think one of the most dangerous things that the phone like the online existence does is it calls like people like call their fans and stuff a community. And it's not really a community. Your community has to be people you see in person. And it can't be this online possibly fake fan club basically.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it can't. Certainly can't be a large percentage of your interactions with people. That's nuts. But I mean there is some sort of a community that you kind of cultivate by interacting with people on social media. It's just at what price, right? You know, and at what price? And then how much are you doom scrolling other than interacting with people and having like semi my positive experiences communicating with like sharing ideas. How much of it is just doom scrolling?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

For me it was a, it was a lot and so I backed off it heavy. So I still spend a lot of time on YouTube though my distraction time is almost all YouTube now my.

[Kurt Metzger]

I'm a doom scroller yeah. Cuz you get caught, you see one thing and you're like, it's so easy to just do that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It is. But I don't want that because it makes me feel weird. But YouTube doesn't make me feel weird. So if you. I watch some really cool video on, you know, ancient history or something, it's. I never feel bad at all. I'm like, oh, that was cool. Yeah. Like I don't. I don't. Don't come out of it with any negative feeling. I just come out of it like, oh, that's interesting.

[Kurt Metzger]

I learned something. YouTube is like the modern television now.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's phenomenal.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's the one.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Phenomenal.

[Kurt Metzger]

You can just find some. There's people making high quality things. Sometimes I'll get caught up in things that I don't even care about.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like the. I don't. I'm not like a huge horror movie fan. I like movies. But. But I found this one. One page called Nightmare Movies. Just explains his favorite horror movies and he has a great voice and I've watched like all of his videos. Zero interest in watching any of the movies. I'm interested in watching him react to the movies.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Really?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What's really dope on YouTube also is these little short horror movies that people make on their own. Like real super low budget, but like really interesting ideas. There's a ton of them, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Some of them are great.

[Kurt Metzger]

They're really cool.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They're like eight minutes long.

[Kurt Metzger]

They're two minutes long and they can just get you. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's so much entertainment. I like watching people make furniture for some reason. I really do. I love watching people make like live edge tables and. And I don't know.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's just. It's just like, oh, this tickles me.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I like watching people cook. I like a. I watch a lot of cooking.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, it's. It's so. It's so like you can. Everyone's entertainment so like in their own lane that you can come across a video, be like 8 million views and you've never even seen it. Right. Like True Vibration, virality is tough. Like in the future, are there gonna be even like a list celebrities like that, you know, like. Or like it's gonna be. There's gonna be less and less like a. Like what would you describe as like an A list celebrity?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Everyone has their own sort of lane.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, there's more celebrities now than there ever have been before. For sure. There's more, let's just say famous people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's more people that are known than ever before because of social media. Like, think about all the streamers and, you know, YouTubers and.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah, Austin Pod, huh?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's insane.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So there's that. So that muddies the water because, like, you go back to, like, let's go Back to, like 1960, when Paul Newman was a superstar making movies. How many Paul Newmans were there?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Was it 10? Yeah. On Earth, if you wanted to make a big movie, you got Marlon Brando, Paul Newman. You know, you have a few people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like a star on Sydney Sweeney's like, level now.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Back then, that would be a name to sell movies now. Like, there's movies that she's in that people don't watch.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

And that's like, what, like an A list celebrity is now. It's like they see there's so much stuff you're competing with.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There's so much content. Just period. I'm always watching a new show. There's always a new show. And they're. This episode is brought to you by Visible. Have you heard of Visible? It's the one line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. All on Verizon's 5G network. It's the ultimate wireless hack to save money and still get great coverage and a reliable connection. Got a resolution to save? Kick 2026 off right now. For a limited time, new members can get the Visible plan for just $19 a month for the first 26 months. Ring in the new year with code SWITCH26. Share the savings with a deal that's too good to keep quiet. Switch [e-mail] terms apply. Limited time offer. Subject to change. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. This episode is brought to you by Gold Belly. Listen, if you're gearing up for game day, you need to hear this. Gold Belly has officially cracked the code. They've got the most legendary eats in America, and they ship nationwide and get this free shipping everywhere. They've got the original Buffalo wings from Anchor Bar in Buffalo, the place that invented the wing. They've got Guy Fieri's trash can, nachos, delicious chaos in a can, and real Philly cheesesteaks. Not Philly style. Actual cheesesteaks from Philly. And yes, they even have Franklin's barbecue from Texas, the goat of smoked meat shrimp shipped straight to your door. Easy. So if you're hosting the crew for game day, Gold Belly is the move. Or maybe you want to be a hero on Valentine's Day. Gold Belly has you covered with show stopping Valentine's gifts too. Head to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code Rogan. Great. There's so many great shows.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or not even.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just random Instagram accounts. I, dude, I watch this guy sandwiches of history. All he does is he finds a sandwich book from like some of them from like the early 1900s and just makes a sandwich in them.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is any of them good?

[Kurt Metzger]

Some of them are amazing and some of them suck at. Some of them are like. Some of them are like depression era, you know what I mean? It's like bread and sawdust or whatever, you know, like. But some of them are. Some of them are like, damn, that's like a good sandwich. And I just watch this guy eat sandwiches and be like, this is, this is a. This is a great use of my.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Time making an orange peel sandwich from 1921 here. 1921. So you take orange peels, you mix it up with mayonnaise and you spread it on bread. Let's see his face.

[Kurt Metzger]

He always, he always goes, I'll give this sandwich a go. He has like a catchphrase. I'm all about it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

It doesn't look like he likes it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a terrible idea.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's a terrible idea.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Orange peel sandwich. The out of here.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, that's what people ate.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Starving. Starving. Eat an orange peel sandwich.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The sandwich was made by a guy who was in a hurry, right? Wasn't that the idea? Just threw some fucking meat in some bread to eat it all together?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, I think so. And other people were like, wow, was his.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wasn't his name Sandwich?

[Kurt Metzger]

He was like, the Earl of Sandwich. I think it was the same place. Yeah. As I'm saying that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is that real though? Is that just like. Didn't we. We definitely searched this before.

[Kurt Metzger]

Isn't there an Earlo sandwich or is that like a.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No, there 100% is, but it's also like a store. And I'm just like. I'm like, is that even maybe just like a silly myth?

[Kurt Metzger]

I'll tell you what. If the sandwich didn't originate with the Earl of Sandwich. What a mighty coincidence. That is. What a real deal. Crazy.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

There is an Earl of Sandwich. What is the origins of the term sandwich? I'm stuck looking at the Earl of Sandwich.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, so the Earl of Sandwich exists.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But just put into perplexity. What are the origins of the sandwich? I'm pretty sure it was like military Guy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And he was like, it, just give me the bread and the meat. I'll put it together. And he cut the bread open, stuffed it in there. Because I think they used to just eat bread and eat meat. Eat bread. They just ate bread by itself. Stupid to combine them.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. Very autistically. Keep the food separate.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

18Th century England, named after John Montague.

[Kurt Metzger]

The 4th Earl of Sandwich.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is the Earl of Sandwich during a.

[Kurt Metzger]

Prolonged card game in 19 and 1762.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, that's right.

[Kurt Metzger]

He was gambling thing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's right. Now I remember.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, well, now that gambling's so massive, now what cool food is gonna come out of that?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's already here. Fast food ubereats will deliver it right to your table. Allowing him to eat without interrupting. Play the practice creation. Popularized the handheld meal among England's elite. There it is.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, that's so fun. It used to be an elite food.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, okay. So it looks like the Romans had had it before. It says similar concepts predated Montague, such as the Roman ofella, which involved meat or cheese between bread slices. That's a sandwich, right? They just didn't call it that. Huh.

[Kurt Metzger]

They finally had a name that stuck. Is there a current Earl of Sandwich?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I bet there is.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Imagine if he's gluten sensitive. That's what I was thinking through is this. But I didn't get any good information from it. Well, now we know. Yeah. You want to talk about places to eat? Austin has an amazing fucking selection of places to eat during the.

[Kurt Metzger]

During the day. The night leaves a little. Yeah, there needs to be. There needs to be a late night diner.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, we were talking about that last night. Like, one of the things I really miss about L. A is the Jewish delis. Like Cantors.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We used to go there after a club. We'd leave and we'd go to Cantor's and I would get a pastrami Reuben with steak for fries. Oh, my God. Have you ever had a pastrami Reuben from Cantor?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's what you get at canters.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Good Lord, that's good. Yeah, I mean, it might be the best pastrami Reuben on earth. It's right up there with Katz Deli in New York City, which is maybe the king.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, I've never been there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, Lord. Katz Deli in New York City is legendary. First of all, you have to. You get a ticket when you get there. I don't even know if they accept credit cards. You might have to pay in cash.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, I like that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You get a ticket when you get there, and you can't lose your ticket. If you lose your ticket, you got to pay like. Like 50 bucks. Because you take that ticket, and on that ticket, they write all the things you get. So you go up to the counter, and they're like, we're gonna get you. And there's guys that have been chopping meat since the 20s, you know, and they'll slice you off a couple of pieces of brisket, slice you off a couple of pieces of pastrami, and you get to eat it while you're there, while you're waiting for your sandwich to be made. And, you know, you tell them what you want. And he pulls the pastrami out, starts slicing it up in front of you. Steam's coming off of it. He's piling it on that rye bread. You're like. Like, you can't wait. And then he gives you a couple pickles in there, and then you're like, what else you want? And then you move down the line, like, get order fries. You get order fries. I want a root beer. And then you get to the end, and they put it all on your ticket. And then when you leave after you've eaten, then you bring the ticket up to the counter.

[Kurt Metzger]

Ah, okay. So it's food plus accountability. You have to. A little bit.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a weird old system, so nobody pays attention. So everyone loses their ticket if you're from out of town, if you've never been there before, you know, like, what. The ticket. What. What happened? How much is it?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, it's. It's a way to. It's a way to scam the tourists a little bit. It's like a tourist fee, not a scam.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, I just think it's how they used to account back then, and they just never changed it. It's kind of the charm of the place, right? This weird thing. Show me some canter sandwiches, son. Show me some of that. We were.

[Kurt Metzger]

We. My. When I was a door guy, we were big swingers guys. That was the. That was.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Show me cats.

[Kurt Metzger]

Cats, yeah, that was. That was the. That was the. The diner we went to. But, like, Swingers was great.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That was a great diner. Yeah, that was a great diner. Really good food. And that was open pretty late, too. Look at that, son. Are you kidding me? Look at that. Pastrami with Swiss cheese. Oh, Lord, that's so good. And they pile it up high. And they've been doing it that way since the 1800s. How old is Canters? 1888. 1888. Geez.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's 1888.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Look how good that looks.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You can see how she's pulling it like that. The flavors. Oh, yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

See, this is what. This is what Austin is definitely missing. Yeah, we need. They need something late night. Something that we can all. Where you can go and hang out and like.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Now, I had heard that someone was opening a Cat's Deli in Austin. Right. But I don't think it's Cats. Cats Deli from New York City?

[Kurt Metzger]

No, it's just called Cats Deli. Cats never closes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, coming soon. Go back. Coming soon on 6th Street. How far is that from us?

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, we're on six.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's on west.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's on west six. So it's like near taking over our current spot.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. What's that? It's taking over us. Like, I think there's like a bar there or something now. Oh, okay.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's kind of near where.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Opening in the same location as the OG Cats is operated for 32 years. So it's way down by J. Carvers.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but this says that's not.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a five minute drive.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's. You can walk there from the club. We do that. We do that all the time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Cats never closes.

[Kurt Metzger]

But that was August 18th. Any news since?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is it open? Yeah, it's. No, no, no. It's going to take a year.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, it's going to take a year.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They're building it out. Whoa. There's a few places like that that are. They got the name out and it's going to be open in a year and a half. So was there an original Cats is never closes or is this a new. The one. That's. That. That's where it was. It closed in 2011. So they lied. No. What do you mean closed?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, Cat sometimes closes for 15 years, by the way.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I would have never allowed them to use a K for closes. Like, guys, we're not kooky. Stop.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you're not Krispy Kreme.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Why are you doing that?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

So expected in 2026, maybe 2027.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. Well, hopefully they. Yeah, because that's. That's the big hole right now in the Austin game.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Look at it, though. This is it. New York style deli menu with sandwiches like Reuben's Day, long breath breakfast dishes like waffle egg sandwiches and blintzes entrees including pork roasts and meatloaves. Oh, my God, it sounds amazing. Open 2024 7.

[Kurt Metzger]

That'll be it for us.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That'll be it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Finally. Finally. Because that was the big hole. Outside of that, Austin has like amazing food.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We should help them.

[Kurt Metzger]

But yeah, after, after 10pm it gets rough pickings around here.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Let's blow them up. When they open up a lot of.

[Kurt Metzger]

Halal carts, which I wouldn't expect in Austin. That's such a funny going through there. I wouldn't be like, oh, halal carts would be a good way. I get late night food entrepreneurs. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Dudes recognize the need.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. That's the only, the only things you can get.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, there's Golden Tiger. That's great. They're open pretty late, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

They're open till like, like 1:30.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's pretty late.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's pretty good.

[Kurt Metzger]

The comic life. You're like out at 2.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I know.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Looking for food at 2.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, at 2. And you're like, well, I thank God the, the Mexican hot dog hearts people are here, right? Yeah, that happened recently. They started showing up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. There's always smart people to capitalize because there's always. I mean there's just so many people walking around drunk.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. Just looking for stuff.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Especially 6th Street. You got a taco truck, you kill it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah. On 6th Street, 2 in the morning, all the zombies.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And there's that road when you go up to seventh where. When you're headed towards Creek, there's a whole parking lot that's got a bunch of food trucks. Oh yeah, up in there.

[Kurt Metzger]

That, that. There's a. There's a place, my favorite place is called Diddy Dog. They got Bulgogi fries.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Bulgogi fries.

[Kurt Metzger]

Bulgogi fries.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Isn't there a really good cheeseburger place over there too?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. This is the Yellow Burgers. They're pretty good. But for me, downtown, if I'm. If I'm eating downtown, I'm eating the bulgogi fries.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That good, huh?

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh yeah. There's a. They're a lot. So you can't. I can't get them very often now that I'm older, that I'm like, oh yeah. To take care of myself. But when I first moved here, I was on that bulgogi fried diet, son.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's kind of insane how many great restaurants are here though. It's like, oh yeah, the numbers nuts.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, just. And good casual eating place places too. It's like you can really. Everyone who moves, I call it when you move to Austin, there's the freshman 15.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just for me.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just from eating here. You just get it. And then after you live here for like five years you get. I think you just get so tired of brisket that you can't look at it again for a while. I, I, it's so much brisket that I only go now when, like, out of town. People are funny. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I could eat it 24 days out of a month. Like, take six off.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, no, no.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I love it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Sometimes they. The, the Terry Blacks will come to the green room, and I'll be like, I can't look at this. Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, no.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is, like, day three in a row of Terry Blacks. Not to complain, but it is.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Terry Blacks has those beef ribs, dog.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's their best.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Beef ribs are insane.

[Kurt Metzger]

I do describe it. I had. You got to take every tourist. It's like the Disneyland of Austin. Yeah. Yeah. It's a line that moves quickly. You can see how everything's made.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And it's a huge place. They, They. I think they're, like, the highest volume restaurant. Restaurant in the country.

[Kurt Metzger]

Really?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. I think in terms of, like, brisket and barbecue and stuff, like, I think they were telling me that. I forget what the exact statistic they told me, but it was, like, the volume of food that they served there is, like, as high as anywhere in the country.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's. That makes sense. It's always. There's always a line there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Giant line.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and they always move quickly, so they're always getting people, like, in and out.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, you can only eat so much. Like, when you sit down and eat barbecue, you ain't sitting there for three hours.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, you can't. No. You also always get more. More than you can eat. Yeah, yeah. You're always like, yeah, because it looks so good up there. And then like, the second you have, like, their cornbread, you're so full. What the is that?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Especially those beef ribs, man. They're so rich. You can only eat, like, so much.

[Kurt Metzger]

Of it before you're like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I. No, not before a show. That's always a. That's a mistake that people make, bro.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Last time we had a whole group of us, I made a mistake of sitting next to Metzger, and I was in the corner. I was looming over me with conspiracy theories. My, Like, Kurt, you gotta stop trying to enjoy these ribs. Yeah, you gotta stop. I don't know if it's just the Terry Blacks in Austin, because I know they have one in Dallas. I think, too, but it says 18% of America's brisket is served by them.

[Kurt Metzger]

18% of America. That's so much brisket.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Mexico is a fun one. In the green room, he said, my favorite is when he'll be like, what? I thought this was common knowledge.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You don't know.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. You don't know. There was something he said in the green room the other day about, like, Morgan Freeman at some deep conspiracy about Morgan Freeman. And we're like, what the are you talking about? It's like, well, I thought this was common knowledge. It's like, no, no one knows anything about what you're talking about.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is it the Morgan Freeman dated his granddaughter?

[Kurt Metzger]

Step granddaughter.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Step granddaughter, yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Had a. Dated her. And then the. The boyfriend went crazy and, like, killed her. And he was like, I thought that was common knowledge. It's like, what do you mean?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Is that true? The boyfriend went crazy and killed.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's what he said. I was. I looked at it afterwards and I was like, I don't know where Kurt. Kurt gets his news plugged in. Straight from the Matrix, I think. I don't even know where he finds his stuff.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, he's on that Jimmy Dore show, you know, and Jimmy Dore show, the entire show is about exposing corruption and conspiracies. And it's a lot.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You live in that world all the.

[Kurt Metzger]

Time, then everything becomes a conspiracy, and.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Everything doesn't leave a lot of room for sunshine. Also, here's the thing. There's enough conspiracy. Like we talked about the Franklin scandal. There's enough conspiracies that are absolutely real and provable, that if you go into it, you will kind of of go crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I mean, this is what kind of happened to Alex Jones is what happens to a lot of people that get involved in conspiracies. It's like you. You find out how many of them are true, and you start losing your mind. You're like, what is real? Like, what really controls the world? Like, what? Lizard people are really at the center of this whole thing, Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. This is kind of better to just stay away at a certain point. Just be like, yeah, we should probably.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Pay attention a little bit. But some people must have an obligation to do it, because if it doesn't get exposed, then it's going to continue. And the only way that you can kind of put a stop to this stuff is people have to get busted. They have to be held accountable. The public has to get outraged. So someone has to be making these videos, but doesn't have to be you, Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, for your own personal mental health. It's just not good to absorb all of the evil of the world.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. There's no reason to take that on. There's no reason. Just. Just find happiness. Happiness in your lane.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's. That's. I feel like that's pretty easy to do.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, I. I feel like that's pretty easy to do. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just. Just be a lot of it. Just be happy with where you are and work from there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, but it's just like, some people feel obligated to be a part of something, you know, and then you, You, You. You find the thing about, like, with Metzger is, like, he wasn't always like this. I was friends with him long before he started working with Jimmy, and he was, you know, fun and crazy. Me always, like, the same kind of guy. But now it's like the. The obsession is all on deep corruption and conspiracies. It's like, yo, he's right. He's right about a lot of it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which is nuts. And he maintains a lot of it in his brain, just bouncing around in there, like.

[Kurt Metzger]

But, yeah, but I mean, it. Yeah, it just takes over, man. I do think White Precious is. Has kind of common central special that's low key. One of the most underrated specials of all time. That. The special is great.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's very funny.

[Kurt Metzger]

That special is great.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's very good. His writing's very good. He's just very smart, you know. He's a great podcast guest, too, basically. Just got to kind of corral him a little bit, you know? Yeah. Because he'll go from one subject to the next subject to the next, all in, like, one rant. You're like, okay, go back to that first one. Queen Elizabeth did. What?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you know.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know. Yeah, he's just. Well, we have a lot of. I mean, he's another one that lives in Austin now. We have a lot of them. It's pretty cool.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's. It's so fun watching, like, all these, like, young kids. Dude. Like, rise up and be like. And just, like, find themselves. It's so, like I mentioned Fuzzy earlier, but just watching him on stage, like, he does it, it's so. It's great watching him just, like, figure out to not give a fuck and then see what comes from that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like, right now he's doing these things at the end when he closes out, like, fat man. He'll also do a Q and A, but he's not famous, so the questions are so much funnier and, like, the answers are so much wilder because it's just some guy that they all just met.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's hilarious.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. So it's a. It's a very fun dynamic to watch his Q and as and just being. Because the whole audience is like, wait, we're doing a Q and A?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Why?

[Kurt Metzger]

We had no questions coming in.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's funny.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The first time I ever saw anybody do a Q and A was Seinfeld.

[Kurt Metzger]

Really?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, he did a whole set. He did like, like 45 minutes. And then it was at the paradise in Boston. The paradise was a small club. It was a rock and roll club that was connected to Stitches and Stitches was the comedy club. So for the comedy club, like, if you're a regular comedian, I think Stitches probably seated maybe 150 people. It was like a little bit bigger than Little Boy. And so if you were a regular comic, like road headliner, you would do Stitches. And then if you're a big guy like Jerry Seinfeld, who had been on television, you do the Paradise. Okay, So I. I was with a date, I think I was maybe 20, and I went to see Jerry Seinfeld before I ever did stand up. And he did stand up. And then he came back out and he answered questions and he would just riff with the audience and it was fucking great. It was really cool. He just started riffing about stuff and I guess that's like how he was creating material and coming up with new premises.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Do you get bits when you do that?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not an exact science. Like we'll have a whole fun Q and a session for 20 minutes and there's no bits.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And I'll do it five times, six times, and then one time, bam, I got one. And then you just gotta grab that sucker and reel it into the shore. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

And just work on it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. And then figure it out. But I've. Bottom of the Barrel's the best. Bottom of the Barrel is the best premise factory ever.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I feel like. Cuz there's certain people who do it. Like, I think you, you're. I mean, you're great at it. And I feel like you should. Like, if you were thinking about doing a special, would you ever consider doing a bottom of the barrel type special?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No, because I'd say too much wild shit that I wouldn't want to get published.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's a very fair point. That's a very. The most insane shit I've ever said has been on Bottom of the Barrel. And just like, I'm so glad there's a place where I can get this thought out, because they'll look at you like, yo, what the fuck?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you're like, hey, this isn't my idea. You fucking wrote this down.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. They get mad at you for. I remember one time I got bestiality and it reminded me of a story. So the way we consumed porn as kids because you guys had, like, magazines and you'd find in the woods. You have a bit about that. Yeah, yeah. That was not so weird that they were. Was these. This was like pre pornhub. So these pre youtubes of porn, as I call them. But there are these, like, dedicated sites. They'd be like. One of them was like, Mr. Choose Asian Beaver. I think you can tell what that's about. That one was great because.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Probably run by a Jewish guy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Definitely not a Mr. Chu.

[Kurt Metzger]

There was a. There was. At the very end, there was this very racist cartoon beaver. And he would have, like, the buck teeth and the rice hat. And then he would rate every girl out of four fortune. Like, out of five fortune cookies at the end of each video. That was the whole premise of the site. That's what we were coming up with. Important. And then one day, and we'd watch that together in, like, seventh grade, like, that's the R. Are huddling around the magazine. And then one day we invited the weird guy, and he had found one where people fuck animals. Yeah, it was, like, wild. And there's been very famous videos. I think there's one called, like, Mr. Hands or something. Yeah, yeah, there's very famous. Like, those originated out of those sites. And so he was showing us that. And then what I said on stage is it gave me the life experience to know that sometimes when you. Sometimes when you watch people fuck a dog, sometimes the dog enjoys it. And they all looked at me like. I was horrified, which is a kind of horrifying thing to say. But I was also like. Well, you brought it up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

I wasn't gonna tell this story unless you asked me.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Some dogs must like it. It's probably a girl. Girl dog out there. There that like some dick.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh. I mean, there's probably a guy. There's probably a guide dog out there that's giving some dick right now, for sure. Oh, yeah. To some. Yeah. I've seen crazy ladies.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I've seen videos. When I was a kid, there was, like, this video that a friend of mine had. And I remember one of us had to watch the door. So it was like, there's like, a century. Yeah. Because there's a door down into the basement. So one of us had to stand up at the door. And the rest of us were huddled in front of this 12 inch television with a VCR attached to it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you put the VHS tape in there. We're watching like a copy of a copy of a copy of Barnyard Betty And Barnyard Betty was this crate. They took some crazy crackhead and they gave her money to suck a dog's dick and get by a German shepherd. It's weird to watch, man.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. You come across some weird out there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Dog just pump nut into this poor, drunken, sad, alcoholic, drug addict lady.

[Kurt Metzger]

Jesus.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sad. Yeah, sad.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's. But that's. Yeah, that's. That's how fuck. Well, porn's fucked. It's just so. It's so crazy how it's just moved towards. I guess it's more empowering, I guess. What it's about individual creators.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. Like only fans.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's all the numbers. You ever seen the numbers?

[Kurt Metzger]

I saw the. The one lady that makes more than LeBron. Yeah, that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But I mean the number of actual girls that are on OnlyFans.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, must be. It must be be depressing.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And it must be depressing how many people are selling themselves to like nobody.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Exactly. That's the thing. The vast majority aren't making any money.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then their out there forever.

[Kurt Metzger]

Just forever.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. They're getting by a dildo in front of the whole world. The guy saves it on his hard drive forever and ever and ever and ever.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you were 19. You just didn't want to work. But I think the number between girls of 18 to. I forget what the age is. Something in their 20s. It's like 10%. That's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Wild. It's. But it's content creation. It's like that's a genuine market that people are going for. And that's way to. That's the way to do it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's also pornography.

[Kurt Metzger]

It is pornography. Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But I mean content creation is Tik Tok Instagram.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know what I mean? Like that's content creation.

[Kurt Metzger]

I think they view it in the same vein.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow. Like it depends on what you do.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. I know that top lady. And this is something.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Sophie Rain.

[Kurt Metzger]

Sophie Rain. And this something that's just interesting across all Gen Z is that her thing is that. That she's a virgin.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

And that's how she sells. Which is like. Yeah. Which you know, take it for what it is. But like her and that. The Nick Shirley guy. Virgin. Nick Fuentes, virgin. It's like that's like A thing that you can sell to Gen Z is virginity. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You were talking to me about this in the green room. That like, this incel problem is unrecognized. That there's a giant percentage of people that are like, voluntarily celibate in this country.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes, I think so. And it's like a lot of it is maybe this sort of new religious. This sort of religious fervor that's sort of developing with them as well. Because Gen Z is more religious.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. But aren't they horny? I don't get it.

[Kurt Metzger]

They're not me. They're not. There's something like some crazy amount of women under 25 have never been approached by a guy their age, like, in public.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, it's. The game is DMs. So it's all online. So it's all fueling that sort of loneliness. Yeah. They don't go out. They don't go out. Like, alcohol consumption from Gen Z to Millennials is like, they drink 800, 100% less. Some crazy. Like that. Third spaces. You know the concept of a third space?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, so you have work and home. That's space one, space two. And a third space is like. You know, when I was in college, we go to the bowling alley every day for one one summer, it was stuff like that. So place that you can all go, the library, the mall. Places to exist outside of the two spaces. Those places are completely disappearing. Whether people are staying inside all the time or. Or they've become too expensive. Like movies now are like, very expensive. So it's like kind of priced out of being a third space on top of all the things that are going on with movies, so those are also disappearing. So places where you can meet someone in person are gone. So they're not meeting in person. A lot of it is app driven. And. And you know, and then you got.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

To wonder about like, sex drive drop off.

[Kurt Metzger]

Mm. Because, well, you can access porn like, like instantly now.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

So you can at least play that part of your brain. Give it something. Right. Give it a rush of some kind that it would kind maybe get from like a lesser version of sex, but still feel fill that void.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. But there's also testosterone levels have dropped. Like, fertility levels amongst women have dropped.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Miscarriages have risen.

[Kurt Metzger]

The. The West. West. The West. The fertility rates in the west are like, massively concerning. Like, it's. You know, we. People like, worry about bringing in migrants, but at the same time, there's the only ones having kids at replacement level. Like the west isn't having that. I had my, I had my 15 year high school reunion recently and I was in town, I was like, I'll go to this. And I was like, damn, I'll probably be the only one who's like not married and doesn't have kids. And most of the people weren't married.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or didn't have kids.

[Kurt Metzger]

You now 33.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Wow.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, most, most of the people there just, I would say of.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Didn't have kids. Which is, which is wild. At 33. At any other generation, this is a late time to not have a kid.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is pretty. For people who grew up middle class millennial, I would say this is pretty standard to not have a kid. And there's certain, I think driving factors to the fact that a house is unbiable for a lot of people my age and a young younger that like because you're sold the dream on a house and two kids. Well, if you can't get the house like it, it sucks to be renting with kids.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know, the instability.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Average home buyer age is increasing while the median age for all u. S. Home buyers reaching 59.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Whoa. That's pretty late.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Record late.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

20, 25, 40. Median age for first time buyers hit a record high of 40.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. So it's like that's how much, that's how long wrong. You have to like, it's hard to raise a kid without a house.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, that's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

And the American I, I think the American community in that way is dying because like, you know, you, it takes a village to raise a child. So you raise a house, you raise a child in a house you bought. Your neighbors generally say the same. There's a certain level of comfort and like, you know, oh, my mom couldn't do this thing for me. I can go to my neighbor's house. And you know what I mean? There's safety in that. But if everyone around you is a renter, then your community kind of disappears years.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

There's no like set community.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's a really good point.

[Kurt Metzger]

And it's like bringing up a. Kids need consistency. So bringing up in a world that's constantly shifting, it's. It's probably anxiety inducing to people who can't afford homes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

For sure.

[Kurt Metzger]

Definitely on that. And then child care is expensive.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Then if also your friends aren't doing it, you know, and then women are waiting later and later because they want to prolong their career years.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then it becomes harder. And then you get into in vitro fertilization yeah, there's definitely some.

[Kurt Metzger]

This, this. With this wave of feminism and capitalism, there's definitely some like insidious ties there of just like you can, you can, oh, like work. Create capital for us and then make it. Make it. So it's impossible or very hard for a one working house spouse to like, just. If the man is working to raise a kid.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Do you think it's on purpose?

[Kurt Metzger]

I think maybe it wouldn't start on purpose, but I think it sort of became intertwined.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, isn't it just a. Just a side effect of if women want to pursue careers, yes, you're gonna have less children.

[Kurt Metzger]

But that, that is for sure. But there's a thing about it. There's this like almost demonization of the women who choose to stay at home. Like, you know, it's like, look. Oh, trad white. It's looked down on.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But it's not just because of the women that are pursuing careers that give them that, that look down on.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's true.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And it's probably because they secretly feel like maybe they're missing out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Maybe. To me, it's like, it's so funny that both can exist. It can be the woman that go for their careers and the woman that want to stay home. It's just for one group to demonize the other, I think is just very interesting.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, it is weird, but it's also like population drop is a real thing.

[Kurt Metzger]

It does look like the humanity. Have you ever seen that population curve. Curve of the deer? Yeah, it's like. So I think humanity is kind of at that point where it levels off. Have you? Yeah, because I remember my bio classes, they would. That would be the populate, like the, the exponential growth and then the level off and we've had the exponential growth and we're looking like that part of the graph.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, the thing is, like, there is still exponential growth. It's just not in the West. That's what's kind of weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Poor people. Poor people want to have a bunch of kids and they're having them all the time.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And then they want to come over here.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Over Minnesota. And then have their kids in daycare. That doesn't exist.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. But yeah, there is something happening in the west or like the way that like the South Korea and Japan.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Oh, they're fucked.

[Kurt Metzger]

They're like fucked. They're like actually fucked. They're like a couple generations away from like, how are you going to support this whole thing?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

Unless you let people in.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well. Or you encourage people to have kids, if you turn it around with the youngest people and then you have, like, a blip for a while, but then it gets back to it. But, man, you have to, like, make a concerted effort. And how do you encourage people to have children? Like, because you're going to have to have women that don't pursue careers.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If you're gonna have five kids, like, what are you gonna do? You're working all day.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's kind of crazy. When you have kids, you realize how nuts that is, because it's like, man, your kids, they. They want their parents, you know, and that's good for them to have their parents around, especially. Especially in this world of predators and creeps and weirdos.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And things that can happen at daycare.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's. It's. I don't know how they would incentivize that to happen.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

How do you.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you can't. You can't. Really?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Because people are selfish. They want what they want in their life. And, you know, when Elon's like, oh, we're experiencing population collapse, they're like, so. Not me. Bye.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I'm going to the movies with my friends. You know what I mean? Like, the idea of changing diapers, like, I don't want. I don't like her that much. Stick around with her for the next 18 years.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you also. You also. When you have the ability to choose everyone at your fingertips, it's like Netflix. When you can watch everything, you watch nothing. So we can choose everyone. You can't. You don't commit to anything, right? Yeah. It's just because everything's these sort of superfluous, like, kind of deep relationships.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I know a lot of people that have used the apps and then found someone and go off the apps. There are people, but generally they're a little older, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes. They're. They're like. At a certain age, you sort of, like, look for that. Yeah, but like, when. In your early 20s, when people were, like, settling down in their 20s beforehand.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

It made sense. They were the only person around, maybe. Like. But now you're in a city, you can just. It can be like in a big one in New York, where there's, like, an endless stream of people. There's no reason to make a choice if you don't want to.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I saw a video of a lady who created an app where a man is allowed to pay for her preparation for the date. So the man sends her money so that she can get her nails done, get Clothes for the day, all these different things for the date. And this lady set up this app.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn. I'm like, smart.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's kind of prostitution. I mean, it's.

[Kurt Metzger]

Sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I mean, it's kind of without the guarantee of sex.

[Kurt Metzger]

I know.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's weird. You're not just showing up. These are my clothes. I drove here in my car. I'm meeting a person. No, it's. That person is paying me to prepare for our date.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. And creating me into a person in his head. It's.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, you're going to get a very different kind of person that's going to meet you. You're going to get a kind of person that's willing to give you money immediately before he has any connection with you at all.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like he might meet you and you're super annoying. He's like, God damn it. I gave that 100 bucks.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's so funny. That's a Richard. I think it was Richard Feynman. He was talking about getting girls because he was good at it. And he was like, yeah, I never paid for the drink on the first date. Wow. Never something like that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's not going to get a lot of quality women. Ah, well, maybe it's back then it was different.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And you're kind of famous in your world.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, he's a famous, brilliant guy. The scientists back then were all like rock stars. Isn't that crazy?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah. They're all like just everyone around them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was normal, the atomic bomb just losing their minds.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That was the crazy thing about the Oppenheimer thing. Right. Oppenheimer was a freak.

[Kurt Metzger]

Good for him.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's just out there getting his on.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Communist chicks. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They're probably fun.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah. That's living. Especially back then. That's living dangerously. That's the. That's the same level of. That's the same level of come as the gay Republican senator. It's like, this is. This is banned.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

This is bad.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. How many gay Republican senators you think there are? I mean, not zero.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, for sure.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

In the closet. Not zero.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, definitely not. It's usually. It is usually the ones that are like the most pro. Like anyone who's like, still very pro. Anti gay marriage now, like loudly. It's like, what's going on here?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Or really into war. We got to get those Iraqis out of their homes.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah. The just. So just warhawks with Iran's going through it right now.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What's going on right now?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, you don't know what's happening?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, I know about the protests, and I know about killing the protesters.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I mean, that's why. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It seems like there's some sort of a strike that may be imminent, isn't it? It feels like it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Like from the United States.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

I think the US Is kind of gonna stay back for a little bit.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You think so?

[Kurt Metzger]

A week in Duran is. They're weak right now.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well.

[Kurt Metzger]

Because they're dealing with internal strife.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's kind of crazy to see how many people are on the streets.

[Kurt Metzger]

I mean, the Iranian. The average Iranian civilian has gotten a pretty raw deal since the 50s. Since we installed the Shah. Yeah, we installed the shah. And then Khomeini comes in, is like, hey, remember the democracy they stole from you because we had deposed the democrat, an elected leader? Well, we'll bring it back. And they're like, okay. And then the clerics just took over and fucked them. And they've just been a constant stream of, like, the average. The average of any citizen just getting by outside forces for so long.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's all about the nationalization of their oil.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yep.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They wanted to nationalize their oil.

[Kurt Metzger]

And we were like, no player that. That you thought. You think you're going to have control over your own state. Get out of here.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Did you. You heard Metzger's theory about Venezuela last night?

[Kurt Metzger]

No.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's like. He goes, I think. I think Maduro is secretly working for the CIA. He helped them arrest him, and then he is going to testify that the 2020 elections were rigged.

[Kurt Metzger]

Wow. If that comes true. What a. What a babe. What a babe Ruth call. What a point to the sky. That is. That's great.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That comes true. I'm buying you a car.

[Kurt Metzger]

Go find a.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Find a car you really like. We're going to get you a car.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy American muscle girl. Get you a Mustang GT or something.

[Kurt Metzger]

But I will say this. When. When the Iranians protest, it's, like, admirable, because you know they're going to die.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

A lot of them have already died.

[Kurt Metzger]

A lot.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Thousands of them.

[Kurt Metzger]

A lot of them died. And the same with the hijab. Protests were just. Women were disappearing for not wearing a hijab. It's like, damn, bro, how bad it got? They really like it. They've gotten a raw deal historically, for the last half a century, and they're still fighting.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I read. When I was a kid, I read this book called Persepolis. It's in my, like, greatest books of all time, but it's I read Persepolis and I was like, maybe in high school, early, late middle school. And I just realized, like, oh, man. Because you get bombarded, Especially at that time we're in fighting in the Middle east, you get bombarded with propaganda of like, what these people like over there. And I'm reading Persepolis, I'm like, oh, right. They're just people. Like she has a scene where she's just wanting to listen to music with her friends, but the Islamic police is like, will fucking fuck them up if they get caught. And they just have these secret parties with just listening to music.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Secret listening to music parties, just listening to music. Jail.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, Just regular things.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What is this? Venezuelan oblation Opposition litter. Maria Karina Machado insists that Maduro rigged the 2020 U. S. Elections against Donald Trump and many other elections in the region. What? I saw that going around too, so I don't know that Kurt's too crazy on that one. What? Yeah, there's a. This isn't even the first one. This was just. I was showing you the day. How could Maduro rig United States States elections?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. What? Yeah. What is. Where is that power coming from all of a sudden? Because if the power to rig election, do you think he would be able to stop himself from getting arrested?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

This is from the gray zone. It says Hugo El Polo Carval Carvajal is likely to serve as the star witness for the US Against Maduro. Max Blumenthal reveals Carvajal is a coerced witness who cut a secret plea deal to save himself. He's even indulging the Trump. Trump's conspiracy theory that Venezuela rigged the 2020 US election.

[Kurt Metzger]

The great. What's the gray zone? Is that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think that's Max Blumenthal show.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, so that's like a source.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

He's legit.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Anti war guy. So if. If he's saying that maybe there's something to it.

[Kurt Metzger]

Damn. How would be. How would he. In what mechanism would Maduro be able to. That's what I'm saying, Do an election.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What are. Okay, let's find that out. How do they think Maduro had a hand in rigging the 2020 election? What's the conspiracy?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Was it like he did all the. Like he helped with the mail in votes. Right. Because that's the only. That's the only way you could steal that election. Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Like, Venezuela's pretty far away. Here's a tweet from before the election even happened. Nicolas Maduro's campaign. Campaign Manager. This is from 2024. Just went on national TV to declare victory. Despite exit polls showing a historic loss for their socialist regime, they're setting up to commit a bigger election theft in the 2020 election in the United States. No, that's not, that's just someone's opinion.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. How does that add up?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That they're stealing the election?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, because they stole it Venezuela.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But they did steal it in Venezuela, that's for sure. What does it say? Looking around, that this is. It says he, he did clearly stole Venezuela's election. Threatened bloodshed if he lost. Restricted. What is that? Intel. What is it? International observers. International observers block transmission of results.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that, that definitely happened. I mean it was very telling how happy the Venezuelans in America were when he was gone. Yeah, that was, that was a genuine thing. If they were very, very pleased about that. Yeah. And then you had people, you had like white leftists be like, this is bad.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, you're supporting a dictator. It's like in the way they did, it was so unprecedented. Going and storm the castle and steal the guy. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Kind of shows the power. Like, kind of tells also the other countries like, hey, back off.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's pretty crazy what they did, if it's true, with that whole sonar weapon or sound weapon, whatever it did that like literally like makes your organs bubble and everybody like falls to the ground. They're in, writhing in pain and agony. And then they just stormed in and everybody was incapacitated. Stormed in, everybody up. And that was a wrap.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, if that's what war is becoming, that's kind of better.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's kind of crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's kind of better than like ground ground troops and non stop fighting in 20 years in Afghanistan.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Okay, here's lawyer Sidney Powell in 2020 talking about Maduro having access to voting fraud technology. Maduro is going to sing like a canary and the Democrats are screwed. No wonder. What?

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay, is that lady even real? Who that, that, that looks like a. No, I'm the avatar that the person, the person tweeting this. See this, this, this reeks of bot to me.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Follow me for breaking news.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do you know or just guy clearly account. Clearly just making stuff up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

See if you can find an account of how they did it. Because there's an account by someone who was a witness that was there at the scene that said how fucking crazy it was that these guys came out of nowhere. The helicopters came out of the nowhere, the drones, they shut down all the radar. Everything got shut down. And then all of a sudden there's drones flying everywhere and helicopters and these dudes. 20 guys killed, you know, who knows how many humans, right? No one got killed on the American side. They captured him and his wife stuffed him back in the helicopter and they were in and out in 10 minutes.

[Kurt Metzger]

In 10 minutes. Yeah, there's. There's that. There's a very famous video of a twitch streamer in Venezuela just out on the streets and then everything just really.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Whoa.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it just goes dark.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That's crazy. Damn, that's crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

And yeah, you can. And you're a human, you can tell like, oh, something's up. Yeah, this is not a normal. Everything, like all the street light, it went just dark.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's crazy because we knew they had some really wild technology, but they didn't know. We didn't know what they were capable of until we've seen this and we're like, oh. What's really interesting is my friend Evan Haer was talking about that like a year ago on the podcast. He was talking about it maybe less than a year. He was like, if we go to war with the cartels, like they have no idea what kind of ultra violence they're in for. He's like, the. That these guys are going to do when they get. When they're going to plan this out. They had a. They built a replica of his house and they went through it blindfolded. Yeah. So they know exactly where every turn is, where to go. They. They g. War planned this for a long time. Thing was false.

[Kurt Metzger]

False.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Which one? From the live stream going out.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right. But find the account of the witness that. And I stumbled across that on the way to it. Okay. The. The account of the guy who said he was there, if it's accurate, is crazy. Cuz he's. He basically said they just incapacitated everyone and then just went in and murdered everybody and pulled. Pulled out Maduro. Like no one could move. You can't do anything. And then these guys land in helicopters and everyone's writhing in agony, like just running through whacked everybody. No one got shot shot back at. Crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but I think, yeah, I think that's what warfare outside of what's happening in Russia, Ukraine, that's kind of what warfare is now. Right. Like, oh, is. Is Iran gonna. Is Israel gonna go to war with Iran? We'll just quickly just take out all their governor, all their generals real quick. Well, that's if the threat of war is done.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You know, you're dealing with Venezuela versus the United States of America.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But if it was the United States.

[Kurt Metzger]

Of America versus Russia or China, it'd be a lot different.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's a lot more up. Yeah. Venezuela doesn't have nuclear bombs. That's why get away with shit like this.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right, right. Yeah, that's a fair point.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That is part of the thing, you know, and then it's like the whole thing. So transparent. Trump's like, immediately, we're going to take the oil. There's plenty of oil.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Working on a deal.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. I don't think it was a coincidence. All of a sudden there was. I had gas under $2 last week in the gas station across the street. I was like, huh, I wonder if that's Venezuela related.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

No, in California. California gas companies are pulling out. Valero pulled out of California. It's going to cost them $1 billion. And they're like, yeah, it's not worth. Rather leave.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Damn you.

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, yeah, the cost of living there is so high, too. It's like, like, when we talk about, like, young comics, it's like, it's. What you have in Austin is like, at least a. A way, a much cheaper quality of life and better and better. Yeah. Where you have space and, like, you know, things are more expensive than anywhere else in Texas, probably, for sure. But, like, it's still like, gas was under $2. You can get. You can, like, rent is stabilizing. It's going down. It's going to go down. I think a lot of, like, California, New York developers came in here and they were like, austin's where people are, so we can just build a lot. But in New York and California, you have a finite amount of space. And also you can just build, build out. And once you build out, like, the rent at my place went down because people were like, I'll just buy a house out there.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

And no one's living in this apartment complex. And it d. Like, you know, like.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If you live in Dripping Springs, it's way cheaper and it's only 30 minutes away. Everywhere in the country, 30 minute commute is normal, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. Yeah, it's normal Here. Here. It's. What's nice about here is you'll see something that's 15 minutes. It'll be 15 miles. You're like, oh, that's. That's normal. That's normal. Yeah. Yeah. An hour and a half. No, it was almost two hours. I went from Redondo beach to fucking Burbank after a podcast at 5, and I was like, oh, I should have just killed myself. That would have been a more effective use of my time.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Locked up.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

When the four or five or the five gets locked up, it's depressing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, it's hell.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That trip down to San Diego. If you want to do the La.

[Kurt Metzger]

Hoya store, you got to leave early.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You got to leave at noon. Leave at noon. That means you'd be down in San Diego right around the time rush hour starts.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Crazy.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, It's. It's. But yeah, it's just a cheaper place to like. For a young comic who, like. If it's time to move to a place.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's like Austin does offer a cheaper quality for quality stage time as well.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's also just a better vibe. There's less tension. There's less people.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yes. Yes. I feel like there are times where I would take a day off in L. A and I feel like I'm falling behind because everyone around you is so frantic. And here it's like, oh, I can breathe. I can actually just enjoy this day.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Off, which is important. You got to have some kind of balance. You know, you want to be a little bit frantic, but then you gotta. You gotta achieve some balance and let your brain sort of recalibrate, Come back on. Just get a new perspective. Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Rest is so. We're. So this. So this grind culture for.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Get into this, though. Same kind of thing. I'll check the account for up account. Main proponent for the drive to recall Gavin Newsom. California needs rebuild the better. So it might be a fake person. And then there's no. There's no evidence to, like a link or where they got the information from, which is why I just checked first. But they. They just have a long story here. It just says interview security guard. So it could be total propaganda. Right?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Made up for me. You know, you could ask AI to make up a story. What it. Right. Good story to put on Twitter.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right. And then. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just don't try to find it anywhere else. Is it only from this one guy? Yeah. This I was finding. It was Caroline Levitt shared it. And this is the. That's the main account where she shared it from what you're doing and read this. I Googled that and she. She said that a ton of times.

[Kurt Metzger]

How long. How long has Carolyn Lever been the press secretary? This whole time. Right. Aren't they. How quickly do they move past those?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They usually last about two years. Except for that last.

[Kurt Metzger]

Except for the last one. Yeah. I want to set a precedent.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

She decided to hang in there to bitter end. They were trying to get rid of her. She sucked.

[Kurt Metzger]

St. Pierre, right?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah. Whatever her name was, it wasn't.

[Kurt Metzger]

St. Pierre wasn't saved yet. I thought it was something like that.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Karine. Jean Pierre.

[Kurt Metzger]

Okay. Yeah. Something Pierre. It was something Pierre. Yeah, bro.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

She was terrible.

[Kurt Metzger]

She did it forever again.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The president is committed. The president, like, she would do, like, the Obama thing with her fingers.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Out of here. They just try. She had a lie all the time. Like, that's her job.

[Kurt Metzger]

Dead person.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. That's hard to do. That's. That's pretty. Like, you know, you have to keep juggling a lot to be like, oh, this dead person's still alive.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I thought he was going to die, like, immediately after he left office. I'm like, he's going to die soon. Like, real soon.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it's kind of wild. He's kept going, but every now and then he'll.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

They'll trot him out and he'll start talking.

[Kurt Metzger]

He'll be at an Eagles game. He's like, yeah, you know what's going on?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But every now and then, they'll. They'll. He'll talk. They still let him talk, like. And there's been a few of those where he'll talk like, thank God you didn't win.

[Kurt Metzger]

Jesus Christ.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

If you came back. If. You know, they never replaced Kamala with you and you. You won, or you with Kamala and you won and you're this guy now?

[Kurt Metzger]

Well, yeah, well, he fucked them by not bowing out.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. It's like, let him. At least let him have a primary. Because. Because then it just became Kamala versus Trump and the whole, like, oh, vote for me to fight fascism. But no one voted for you in the first place.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

The thing is, if they had a primary, who do you think would have been it. They probably would have made her. The Democrats would have decided on her anyway, I think, because it would have.

[Kurt Metzger]

Been too soon for Newsom to run. He still hasn't us think of COVID on him. So he's. That's why he waited for this. This go around. Yeah, it's been enough. People have forgotten Covet enough. It's been more than half. It's been half a decade since. It's people's minds. Like, people's political memories are so short that. Yeah, 20, 28, that's so far away from COVID that he. He can. He can just be like, I did fine or whatever the fuck.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Do you think so?

[Kurt Metzger]

I think so. Enough to. Enough to run. Enough to probably get the Nomination.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Do you think he's going to get the nomination? Who else?

[Kurt Metzger]

Who else?

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Someone else can rise over the next three years.

[Kurt Metzger]

Someone, someone else would have to. If it been an Obama thing, it would be like someone who would be rising in this upcoming midterms. So if there's someone like that, maybe.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

But all it takes is someone who's a compelling speaker who's not demonstrably full of. Because the, the thing about him is he's so vulnerable to any kind of a debate. When someone starts talking about the fraud and waste in California. How about the high speed rail? They spent billions of dollars. This nothing.

[Kurt Metzger]

Soon.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

We're going to get it done soon, right? So much fraud, so much waste.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, but I don't think they have anything because you can right now all you can, you can just run on like, I'm not Trump. And that'll be enough to get people be like, yeah, he's not Trump.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What about that Josh Shapiro guy? The guy who's governor of Pennsylvania?

[Kurt Metzger]

Maybe. I don't know. It's just, to me it's like a, it's just like a popularity contest and he's making a lot of noise.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

A lot of people upset at the Jews right now.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a fair point.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, that's a very Shapiro H. It just seems like.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, that's a good point. It just seems like he's the one making the most noise and we're getting some, we're getting towards crunch time. Not really, but like it's the closer we get to the midterms and there's no other big voice. It makes me feel like it's gonna be him.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, clearly he wants to do it.

[Kurt Metzger]

He definitely wants to do it.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

And he might just be powerful politically enough to win that nomination.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

That guy up San Francisco, up California and then goes on to up the whole country.

[Kurt Metzger]

Oh, it's very possible. I think that's maybe not very possible, but I think it's, it's a, it's an outcome. It's an outcome. He's definitely running. It's going to be, it's. I don't know what that ticket's going.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

To be, but they're going to make us all trans.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it was going to be like, it's going to be like a Newsome Crockett. That's my early call of what they're going to try to shut the up.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Are you kidding me?

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, yeah, I think that's who they're because she. She's very aoc, Maybe aoc.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

I think AOC is more reasonable.

[Kurt Metzger]

AOC is much more reasonable.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

For sure. See, when Crockett, Marjorie Taylor Greene start going after. Back and forth with each other, insulting each other and yelling at each other.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, that's. Oh, yeah, I did. I did see that. That's a very, very fun moment.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Nobody wants to be a representative. That's the thing. It's like all these successful. They all want people and academics. Like, they don't want to do that.

[Kurt Metzger]

No, it's all, like, lawyers and, like. Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And creeps.

[Kurt Metzger]

And creeps. Yeah. That's the only. Well, it's like. It's one of those things where you're right. The person who wants to do it probably isn't a person who should do it probably going to want to do it 100%. Because you do have to make decisions that negatively affect millions of people's lives sometimes.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And you got to grease the pockets of your donors.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. And to be like a regular guy and want to do that was. Probably Would tear you apart. To be like, oh, here's a decision that'll kill people. You got to be kind of a sociopath.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

What's really fucked is how much of an impact people like us have on elections now. That's what's nuts. Like, podcasters have a big impact on elections now. Well, that's how really weird.

[Kurt Metzger]

That's how much the mainstream media has kind of lost its lead.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Drop the ball.

[Kurt Metzger]

Dropped the ball. Hardcore.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Well, it's just by being unreliable, by being people that you can't trust and uncensored conversations.

[Kurt Metzger]

Conversation is like, people are gonna trust them more because this is how. This is how people talk to their friends more often than not. Yeah. Then, like, oh, I can't say this because this sponsor is gonna be mad at me.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Right.

[Kurt Metzger]

You know, like this. This is. This is just a much more accessible way of finding out people's real thoughts.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And a lot of it is just how we talk. I mean, this. There's been so many times we've been in the green room that totally could have been a podcast.

[Kurt Metzger]

Right.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Just put a camera on it live in the green room. It would fuck up the vibe. But it would be a great podcast.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it would.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It would fuck up the vibe.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah, it would. It would lose that quality. That would make it a good podcast if we were trying to actually podcast.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right, brother. Well, I'll see you tonight.

[Kurt Metzger]

I'll see you tonight.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

And tell everybody special. It's out it's on YouTube.

[Kurt Metzger]

It's called Too Soon. Check it out. It's. I'm very proud of this material.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

It's great material, man. And you've been killing it. You've been killing at the club. And the new stuff's fantastic, too.

[Kurt Metzger]

Thank you. And, yeah, go to a hair.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Look at that.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah. Every time I've been on here, I've had different hair Today. Today I went cornrows.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

Yeah.

[Kurt Metzger]

Yeah.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

You've had the cornrows for a while now, right?

[Kurt Metzger]

A coup. Just a week or so. I did it for a sketch, and then I was like, I kind of like this. Yeah, it's crazy for this guy, this hairline, to have cornrows.

[Tony Hinchcliffe]

All right, my brother. Appreciate you. See you tonight.

[Kurt Metzger]

See you tonight. Bye, everybody.