#2492 - Ari Shaffir

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #2492 – Ari Shaffir

Date: April 30, 2026
Host: Joe Rogan
Guest: Ari Shaffir

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Episode Overview

This episode reunites Joe Rogan with frequent guest and comedian Ari Shaffir for a wide-ranging, deeply comedic, and at times philosophical conversation. The episode focuses on Ari’s recent six-month journey wandering through South America, reflections on psychedelic therapy and drug policy, observations on societal change, stories from the road, and a behind-the-scenes look at the comedy industry and Ari’s new storytelling series, “The End.” The discussion features the signature Rogan/Shaffir humor—uncensored, irreverent, and insightful—while also exploring politics, world history, and the evolution of media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ari’s Wandering Adventures and Living Abroad

• Ari’s Disappearing Acts:
  • Ari recounts his recent trip through South America, especially Ecuador and Brazil, characterizing it as "six months off the grid" but technically keeping in touch via remote podcasts.
  • Quote:

    "I just kind of disappear for six months, just me and a coconut. It was just a Tuesday, guys." (04:11, Ari)

• The appeal of being disconnected, living simply, and how it triggers creativity and personal reset.

2. Psychedelics, Therapy, and Drug Policy

• Use and Legalization of Psychedelics:
  • Discusses new legal initiatives in Texas around ibogaine for addiction therapy (supported by politicians previously opposed to drug reform).
  • Details the movement for MDMA and psilocybin legalization, referencing MAPS and Johns Hopkins research.
  • Quote:

    "MAPS had already pushed [MDMA] through, and Johns Hopkins had already done these studies with psilocybin... but nobody wants to stick their neck out." (13:06, Jamie)

• Cultural Shift in Weed Consumption:
  • Conversation on the rise and return of milder strains ("Mexican weed"), the problem with ultra-high-THC products, and nostalgia for simpler times.
• Role of Microdosing & Reset:
  • The duo discusses how microdosing helps mental health and the obstacles of stigma from the Nixon era Drug War.
• Funny Drug Memories:
  • Edible mishaps, unregulated dosing in the pre-legal weed era, and anecdotes about feeling “two-dimensional” from strong THC doses.
    • Quote:

      "It was like the longest 20 minutes of my life waiting for that subway to come out from under the ocean." (08:10, Jamie)

3. Social Commentary: Politics, Media & Power

• US, Terrorism, and War Funding:
  • A sharp critique of the “symbiotic” relationship between the US and terrorism, with references to Israel, US military spending, and policies that perpetuate conflict for profit.
  • Quote:

    "Terrorism can't exist without US dominating their countries... and the US can’t keep funneling money to weapons without terrorists." (26:07, Ari)

• The Opioid Crisis & Corporate Evil:
  • Explores the Sackler family, pharma greed, and the ‘Painkiller’ series as a lens for corporate malfeasance.
  • Discussion of Tylenol murders and 70s-80s corporate scandals (Ford Pinto, Coca-Cola's violence against unions).
• Labor & Globalization:
  • The impact of outsourcing, Detroit’s decline, and the broader effects of free market ideology against morals.
• Comedy Industry Gatekeeping:
  • Ari shares his experience with Comedy Central canceling “This Is Not Happening” because he refused to do a special exclusively for them, highlighting how the internet and podcasting have made old TV gatekeeper power irrelevant.
  • Quote:

    "Networks killed me, man. Why would I go back? Now you just go straight to the people." (135:58, Ari)

4. Ancient Mysteries & Global Travel

• Megastructures and Lost Civilizations:
  • Delves into Machu Picchu, the Nasca Lines, giant stones in Lebanon, the underground city of Derinkuyu (Turkey), and Chinese caves—expressing awe at the lost knowledge and the thrill of modern discoveries.
• Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • The mysterious lack of records for ancient megalithic projects, speculation on alternative human histories.
  • Quote:

    "If you ever stand in a place like that, you instantly feel the history—not knowing who made it and how… it’s bananas." (109:08, Ari)

• Nature, Human Evolution, and Mental Health:
  • The restorative effects of true wilderness, the science of “grounding,” and how our brains are wired to need natural soundscapes (birds, nature).
  • Quote:

    "Mammals have been using ambient soundscapes as a predator detection system for 200 million years. Silence makes you anxious for a reason." (117:22, Jamie)

5. Standup Comedy, Creativity, and The End

• Ari’s New Show “The End”:
  • Discusses reviving his storytelling series, the old Comedy Central era vs. new indie model, enlisting help from fellow comics, and producing without corporate interference.
  • Quote:

    "This show didn’t end on the right terms. That’s why it’s called The End. I had to do it right this time…" (143:03, Ari)

• Comedian's Perspective:
  • Reflections on being a working comic; the Job is globally respected (“10 countries in a row, it's the coolest job”).
• Behind the Scenes:
  • Insights into batch-producing podcasts, production hacks, and the importance (and headache) of technical support.

6. Media, Platforms, and the Evolution of Entertainment

• Rise & Democratization of Content:
  • Shift from network TV to direct-to-audience models, comedian-led productions, and the power of podcasting.
  • Example: Theo Von and David Spade self-producing their own movie; Ari and Tom Segura’s partnership for “The End.”
• Audience Saturation & Authenticity:
  • Warnings about “short-form” content dictating artistic output (“build your stuff for laughs, not for YouTube Shorts”).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ancient Mysteries

  "Could you even imagine? You drain a pond and find an underground city that holds 20,000 people—no record of it at all."
  — Jamie, (105:24)

• On Psychedelics as Therapy

  "I talked to Ed Clay about ibogaine for years… the Texas politicians finally got it. $100 million now just for the initiative. It helps veterans, it’s neuroregenerative. A crazy plant."
  — Jamie, (14:08)

• On Social Media Sabbaticals

  "Buddy, when you have no responsibility and no social media, your brain just lights up. You don’t even realize what you’re carrying until you put it all down."
  — Ari, (133:33)

• On Comedy Industry Power Shift

  "Comedy Central canceled my show for not doing a special for them. But now, the gatekeepers are gone. You just do it yourself."
  — Ari, (135:58)

• On Ancient Construction

  "Being in Machu Picchu is like, you see what the Incas built, then see the older stones—way bigger and weirder. Who made that? How? It's not in any records."
  — Joe, (98:38)

• On Mental Health and Nature

  "Central Park will buy me two days of city sanity. You gotta get to real woods for a week or two to feel balanced."
  — Ari, (122:03)

• On the Value of Standup

  "Everywhere I went, people would ask, 'You pay your rent just doing standup?'—they could not get over how cool it is."
  — Ari, (152:49)

• On Not Chasing Trends

  "Don’t let them tell you you need to write a 60-second bit for YouTube Shorts. That’s a dumb way to build your stuff."
  — Ari, (154:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic / Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30 | Ari’s latest disappearance: 6-7 months of travel, disconnecting from US | | 03:00 | Glory holes & sexual fluidity in comedy circles (hilarious but irreverent banter) | | 13:06 | Legalization of MDMA, psilocybin, and ibogaine in the US | | 26:07 | US, terrorism, and the cycle of war spending | | 29:29 | Opioid epidemic, corporate crime (Sackler, Tylenol murders, Ford Pinto) | | 40:54 | Labor unions, Detroit, globalization, and corporate greed | | 61:31 | Rise of bare-knuckle boxing, chess boxing, and weird hybrid sports | | 69:13 | Three-cushion billiards, international gambling pool halls | | 86:20 | Middle East conflict, Israel-Gaza, journalism in war zones | | 98:38 | Megaliths, ancient engineering, and unsolved mysteries of world history | | 117:22 | Birdsong, ambient noise, and evolutionary anxiety triggers | | 125:05 | Ari on the creative benefits of unplugging from social media & travel | | 132:04 | “The End” storytelling show: how Ari brought the idea back after years | | 135:58 | Comedy industry, network TV vs. freedom of online model | | 152:49 | Reflections on the global appeal and respect for standup comedy | | 154:00 | Advice to comedians: Don't tailor your art to algorithmic trends |

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Tone & Language

True to form, this episode blends sharp-witted humor, candid confessions, and philosophical insights, moving fluidly from self-deprecating stories to critiques of global politics and society. Both Ari and Joe riff irreverently on taboo subjects, American culture, and the quirks of human nature, always returning to the value of finding joy, truth, and laughs amid chaos.

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Conclusion

This episode exemplifies why fans love the Rogan-Shaffir dynamic: globe-trotting tales, the quest for altered states, takedowns of corrupt institutions, celebration of the creative process, and raw, relatable comedy. Ari’s reflections on traveling, freedom from digital noise, and the return to storytelling mark a high point in the ongoing evolution of comedy in the age of new media. The episode is essential listening for anyone interested in psychedelics, global adventure, standup, and the changing tides of culture.

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For more, check out Ari Shaffir’s “The End” on arishaffir.com, and Joe’s ongoing podcast archive.

Transcript

[Ari Shaffir]

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. You know what you are on my phone?

[Ari Shaffir]

What?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Ari the Wanderer.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's a new phone number. That's not bad.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's the new number because that's what you are. Oh. I was telling you last night that I. I thought it was in Mexico City, but we had a report that you were at an Oasis concert in Mexico City and you said, no, it was in Rio.

[Ari Shaffir]

Sao Paulo. Oh, Sao Paulo.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Okay. So it was in Brazil. So we. No one knew where you were. You were gone for how many months?

[Ari Shaffir]

Six, seven. Jesus. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How many times have you done that now?

[Ari Shaffir]

I guess three. Although when I went to Ecuador, I was very much in touch with everybody, so it was like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That was a halfway.

[Ari Shaffir]

That was halfway.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But you were there. You were kind of checked out for six months.

[Ari Shaffir]

But I was. I was in touch. I still had numbers. I was still, like, doing, like, podcasts and stuff. And.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What are you doing remotely?

[Ari Shaffir]

Doing remotely? Yeah. I would do one with Big J and Soder. We did a 21 jump street breakdown podcast. Yeah. Yeah. We were so bored during Pandemic. We were like, let's find a show and just. Let's get together and watch Tony on Jump Street. First we chose Sex in the City and then found out Gay fucking Ian already had a Sex in the City podcast. He had fight dance. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Did he really?

[Ari Shaffir]

Dude, that guy blows dudes. Obviously he loves Sex in the City.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, I guess so.

[Ari Shaffir]

So we're like. We don't want to step on his toes. Like, let's pick another.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He seems like he's straight sometimes.

[Ari Shaffir]

He does.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's weird. Like, is he only gay?

[Ari Shaffir]

No. No. He. He fucks better than we ever did for women.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Women.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Okay.

[Ari Shaffir]

He gets it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So. And then. But then he went to guys.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's a new breed. He's a new breed of just, like,

[Jamie Kilstein]

when did he go to guys? Is that a new thing?

[Ari Shaffir]

I think he battled with it for a while.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, okay. So he was fucking girls but hating them. God, I wish you were gone. Like, that kind of a deal.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Then he went to glory holes and he was saying he wasn't gay. I'm like, bro, one of the biggest signs of a gay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So you just stick your hole. Your dick in the hole or you suck the dick that comes out of the hole. Like, was he the glory giver or the glory taker?

[Ari Shaffir]

You asked me questions. I don't know. I always assumed in my head, it was. He was sucking dudes off. But. But I'm. I'm actually not sure.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Interesting, right?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's interesting.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Because if the dick comes through the hole, if you, like, you ever want to suck a dick, but I don't want to look a guy in the eyes. I just want to know what it's like, see if I'm good at it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. I don't want to be embarrassed in front of anybody. They can recognize me later. I just want to work on my technique. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I just want to find out if I'm right.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. I need more research. Not enough data points.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Because. So you didn't even ask him which side of the glory hole he was on.

[Ari Shaffir]

I think I was so overwhelmed by this heterosexual dude who was telling me it was the glory hole.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And so then he was heterosexual. This is back in the day.

[Ari Shaffir]

We did a podcast, my old podcast. On the way down to, like, somewhere.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This is Skeptic Tank.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. And. And he was telling me that. But he was telling me he's not gay. And I was like, how do I say that? Wait. And I was like, buddy, I think you are gay. He goes, why? I'm like, the glory hole stuff, it's a big sign. Do you think I was like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Do you think I was like. But you didn't even. That's the crazy thing is you didn't ask whether he sucks or gets sucked.

[Ari Shaffir]

I was lost in it. You're right. As an interviewer, I didn't do my job that day. Obviously. That's a major question. It's a one in two chance. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. How do you not know?

[Ari Shaffir]

How do I. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's like, very important to know it

[Ari Shaffir]

is because there is a percentage chance it might be a chick blowing you. There's no percentage chance. There's 0% chance it's a chick blowing is a vagina.

[Jamie Kilstein]

0% chance it's 100% a guy or a guy pretending to be a chick.

[Ari Shaffir]

I bet there's a ton of those dudes who have wives, you know, who live in that world. Like, I thought. I always thought it was a woman. Like, shut up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Shut up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Plausible deniability.

[Ari Shaffir]

Plausible deniability.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. So then he just decided to just go straight gay.

[Ari Shaffir]

No. He's everywhere. He does everything.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, no.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's like Miami bisexual. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Okay.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. So we did this 21 Jump street podcast. And. And I would do it sometimes I'd get on. They're like, are you drinking a coconut with a palm tree behind you like out of a coconut. I was like, oh, it's just a Tuesday, guys. What's going on? I really milk it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because you're in Ecuador.

[Ari Shaffir]

Because I was in Ecuador. I was having a good time.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What is that? That gay tea you drink, mate? So you just got into this. It's literally a jar of hay.

[Ari Shaffir]

It really is.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You pour hot water and there's so much hay in there.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's so much. It tastes. You tried it? Yeah, yeah. It tastes like. Just like ass. Yeah, just hay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't understand.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like a ritual. It's all the gauchos in Argentina and then spread to Chile and southern.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And so it's just a bunch of

[Ari Shaffir]

leaves that are in the yerba tree.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yerba mate, Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. But that drink is like, different.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I've had that stuff.

[Ari Shaffir]

I think it's different. Really? Yeah. I think it's about as much as like, what Willie Nelson's like, drink is actually weed.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, Willie Nelson's drink is weed.

[Ari Shaffir]

Really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

I take it back then.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah. I don't know what the legality of that is, and I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but Ron White brought a bunch of it to the mothership and it's very legit. Yeah, it's. It's all dose dependent. I think one glass is like 5 milligrams, or one shot is like 5 milligrams. But if you drink a glass of that shit.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, yeah. You're going to go in for it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You're going to go into that weird dimension, you know that weird dimension where you're like, I think this is Earth, but it doesn't seem like Earth anymore.

[Ari Shaffir]

Something's off.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's like a facsimile of Earth.

[Ari Shaffir]

Try to look at people like. You see what I'm saying?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. I remember one time I was doing Fear Factor and we were in San Francisco and back. This is the unregulated edibles days, you know, because this is before marijuana was legal. You could get a prescription.

[Ari Shaffir]

Do your joke. Can I do your joke?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Which one? The X. Oh, yeah, I'll do it.

[Ari Shaffir]

You'll be okay. This is early days. And by the way, it was just like, there's banana bread going around now it's killing people. It's great. Not killing people, but like destroying people.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

He goes, they came in these doses, 1x, 2x or 3x. The problem is X didn't equal any number.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

So it was just some guy mixing up his bathtub full of fucking whatever like weed infused cookie dough and deciding what's X to him. That's not a mathematical equation.

[Jamie Kilstein]

X had no number value.

[Ari Shaffir]

So it's one times this. What's this? Right?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, Well, I had the joke too, about the gummy bear. The guy literally said that to me. I go, how much should I take? He goes, just a leg. I go, just the leg. I go, why the fuck are you selling whole bears if I should only eat it? Like, because it's only that big. Like, no one's in to eat just the leg.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a crazy dose. Half a cookie is the right. That's all cookie is a dose.

[Jamie Kilstein]

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[Ari Shaffir]

The bart? Yeah, bart, whatever it is. No, I called the BART just to fuck with them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So I, I took this edible and it was an unregulated edible, so I have no idea. And it was way too was. I was like, why do my ears feel weird? And they're like, because you're under the ocean. And I was like, no. It was like the longest 20 minutes of my life waiting to pop out on the other side, where I was like, we're under this. How long has this subway been under the ocean? Like, how long has this existed? Like, what are the odds this thing is still good? Is anybody out there diving, checking on the tube, making sure there's no holes in it?

[Ari Shaffir]

You know, in this, you start doing all the research in your head and

[Jamie Kilstein]

it was like I. I felt like I was talking to people, but what I was seeing was a two dimensional, like, you know, like Those stand ins, like when you go to the movie and it's like, you know, a person standing there, like thumbs up. But it's like just a two dimensional cardboard cutout. That's what everybody looked like to me. It was like a two dimensional cardboard cutout. But occasionally I'd see their soul peeking around their shoulder looking at me. It was so heavy. I don't know what the number was. Don't you miss how many X's that kind of high?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't get that kind of high or drunk anymore.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, that kind of high is really fun.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's so fun when you look back

[Jamie Kilstein]

when it's happening, it's terrifying.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, that was the best.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I remember a guy did Jiu Jitsu with. He made pills, he made THC pills. Cuz he was like one of those all day guys. He was just high constantly, all the time. And so yeah, the dab guys. But this is pre dabs.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And so this guy made pills, THC pills. I, I go how many should you take? And. And he goes, you should probably start off with one. But I take two. So I took two because I'm an. And I wound up having this conversation with this guy and he was weirding me out. It was at a Jiu Jitsu tournament. I was like, why is this guy so weird? Turns out the dude eventually got arrested for rape. And not just arrested for rape, but he was on the run and he was on the run and couldn't stop doing Jiu jitsu. And the way they caught him was he went to like Seattle or somewhere. Like because this was in California, he's

[Ari Shaffir]

signing for classes and he was just

[Jamie Kilstein]

rolling but he was killing everybody. And I was like, who is this guy? Like, why is this guy so good? And then eventually they realized it was him. They go, oh my God, this guy's wanted for rape.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He was a crazy person. And when I was like super high in these pills, I could see all the crazy in his eyes. Like it's like he didn't say anything crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dude, you can was in your own drugs. You can see through people.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You can, you can, you can see they're so old.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's, it's, it's interesting.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It is.

[Ari Shaffir]

You really can see it. It's not one of those where I'm like, no, it was just the drug with me. You can tell.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And so this is like happier. A year or so later he gets arrested and winds up fleeing. I think he maybe was out on bail or he was wanted and fleed and Went to the Pacific Northwest. But I remember when I heard the story, I was like, oh, that makes sense, because he had the weirdest energy. Just like, this dark energy. Like, creepy dark energy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Sometimes if you're on, like, a psychedelic, and then someone's not on with you, you know, but they're around you. You're like, hey, you got to go. You're freaking me out. Like, I don't know. Your energy is not of this. I don't know if you're looking at me, but, like, you got to take off. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You see, like, motivations. You.

[Ari Shaffir]

You see everything so clearly.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I know it's weird, but it's not reliable. It's not like. Like, I'm about to go into a. A meeting with this defendant. I need to know if he's actually innocent or guilty. So I'm going to take five grams of mushrooms.

[Ari Shaffir]

Me and Big J were leaving a blues fest in Ottawa. Once we're leaving, it's like a city festival. But then you wander into the. What used to be the safest city in Canada. So you're all fucked up. It's great. And as you're leaving, you just see who's on what drug. Like, you just can tell. Like, mushrooms, acid, weed, drunk.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Molly.

[Ari Shaffir]

Molly. Yeah. You just see it all. You just see through everybody. They're just sitting there talking. Yeah. I don't.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I wonder what's gonna happen now that this thing happened in the White House.

[Ari Shaffir]

First of all, I thought, you know, I'm not on the news, so I'm hearing stuff little by little about everything.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

I thought it was just ibogaine, which is, like, great. Those people need that. And then. And then. I mean, Ed Clay has been telling me about that for so long.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, Ed Clay, I talked about him on the podcast because he was one of the ways that I found out.

[Ari Shaffir]

Me, too.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

In Nashville.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

And he would tell you. He's like, you should get on. It helps the addiction. I'm like, I'm loving what I'm doing right now. I don't want to get on.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I need to up my high.

[Ari Shaffir]

But, like, I'm like, this makes sense. And then find. Great. You got that? And then I find out it's also, I mean, the best hippie flip. You got that. MDMA and boomers and shrooms and psilocybin.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Well, it's because MDMA and psilocybin. Maps was already doing MDMA studies with veterans, so for people that, you know, watch a bunch of people get blown up and lost their friends and come back. MDMA was one of the best therapies.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

For helping them overcome ptsd. So MAPS had already pushed that through, and Johns Hopkins had already done these studies with psilocybin. So they already pushed these things, and they were already on the way to getting approval through the fda. But the problem was nobody wants to stick their neck out and sign off on it.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a problem with. With politics. If you're running. We talked about this. If you're running for an office and the opponent can say he wants drugs legalized, then you're fucked. So it's like, it really binds your hands.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. Well, that's funny, because that's kind of what Dan Patrick did in Texas about marijuana. But to his credit, Dan Patrick met with Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard, the guys that passed this Texas ibogaine initiative, and they convinced him of what this stuff actually is, and so they've donated. So he's allocated rather a hundred million dollars in Texas for the ibogaine initiative, which is amazing. But that's a sign of an intelligent man like this Dan Patrick guy had this stance on weed. There's like, weed's bad, it's ruined and everything. And then they come to him and he's like, I am staunchly opposed this. And they sit. They sit down with him. He explains. Brian Hubbard explains. And he's very eloquent, explained what ibogaine does. It's not recreational at all. And. And he hears it, and he hears how much it'll help. Particularly veterans that come back, they're addicted to opiates and they're all fucked up. And even cte, even, like, brain injuries from getting blown up. It's neuro regenerative somehow. It's a crazy plant. And so he, to his credit, he signed off and they allocated $100 million for the Texas ibogaine initiative, which is amazing.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's like all these people have these ideas in their head, but it's all because of Nixon. All of it goes back.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, you grew up. This is evil. This is. You'll get stuck that way kind of stuff where it's like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think some people do.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This is what's important about studies. Yes. This is what's important about these studies. Like, I think this is important about weed, too. You know, I'm very adamant that it's not for everybody. I think there's a lot of things so strong, some of it's so strong. And some people are already on the way to schizo. They're already on the way. There's schizophrenia in their family. There's like. They just. That's not a good thing for them.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, what's making a comeback, luckily, is, like, Mexican weed is like, oh, the 12 12% THC, where it's like, let's just get beyond the old days. I'm trying to bury myself in this movie again.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't want to go to Pluto.

[Ari Shaffir]

Is there anything.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is there?

[Ari Shaffir]

I want to.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I want to be in the clouds right above the city. That's it.

[Ari Shaffir]

What's the Shot in a beer of weed? I want that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's it, right? Yeah, right. I don't want to fucking dab. I see these dabbers.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Oh, I asked for meds in a dispensary once. They're like, what are you.

[Ari Shaffir]

What? What's.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What is that?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They're all so hardcore.

[Ari Shaffir]

I remember the early days. It was like Zen Dispense, one of the early ones. And I was like, just getting into it. Atari hooked me up. Remember that guy with, like, weed? And it was like. It's like, okay, so now I'm into it. And I went to Zen and I was like, hey, listen, I like to smoke cigarettes while I write. I'm off cigarettes now, but it's a habit, so I need something. But if I smoke a joint, I'm done writing, right? And that's what they say. Oh, you want Mexican weed? We can do that for you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Just something calm.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, mild.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's like going to a powerlifting gym and saying, do you guys have yoga classes?

[Ari Shaffir]

It feels so wrong out of here to get checked. Yeah, they did that in Ecuador. There was a city I was in when I did Ayahuasca, and it was a guy from the tourism board, and he said, what's going to. There's three cities that are, like, on the border to the Amazon, and. And, you know, you could go in from any one of them, and they go, what's going to separate our city from all these other Amazonian cities? And they go, let's be the Ayahuasca city. And everyone else on the tourism board said, no, we are not getting a bunch of fucking hippie backpackers in here to be drug addicts in our town. Like, that's not what we're looking for at all here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This thing sucks. Yeah, it did.

[Ari Shaffir]

You just filled it up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'm not.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's a lever on it, too. I don't know. And he goes, okay, fair. But he goes, can I take you on an AYAHUASCA trip to each member. Each member was like, you know, they're half indigenous. They're like, sure.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then one by one, they all go, oh, this isn't an addictive thing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

So I had the wrong idea in my head of what this was. You come once, you don't come back for a year.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Everybody had that thing from the Nixon administration. It's the Controlled substances Act of 1970. And that thing that's. It's really nuts. But for 56 years, we've been living underneath that.

[Ari Shaffir]

It just becomes a given, huh?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

You don't think to reevaluate any knowledge that's in there already. I know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And it's like so many people. Just a little micro dose of shrooms, it'll change your life. It would. It would help so many people. There's so many people that are stressed out for no reason.

[Ari Shaffir]

It really does give you such a reset. 100 Molly, too. I know. That's why I talked to you. The MDMA maps people were always like, please start calling it mdma. When you call it Molly, it becomes a party drug. I'm like, well, I do it at parties. So that's what it is for me.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The problem with what they're saying by saying that is like, no, because it is a party drug too.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's also just like, what are we going to call whiskey? We're going to call it, you know, alcohol by volume. Are you going to have a technical term for what whiskey is? Fuck, it's whiskey. You know what I mean? Like, that's why people like it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Like, you call it that if you want.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, you do whatever you want. I'm going to call it Molly.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, fuck off.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know about you guys, but with spring here I am ready to go outside. There's so much to do now that things are warming up, like getting your garden ready for the growing season, cleaning off your camping gear, or even taking a quick jaunt around the neighborhood. Anything to get outside. But that also means you're probably extra busy this time of year. That's where AG1 comes in. A healthy daily drink that helps support you all day long. One scoop of AG1 supports immune health, energy, digestion, and more. Plus, AG1 can replace all those multivitamins and probiotics crowding up your cabinet. See for yourself how making AG1 a part of your routine can help you stay on top of everything going on this season. Visit drink ag1.com Joe Rogan and for a limited time, get a bottle of Omega 3, vitamin D3K2, and an AG1 flavor sampler for free with in your welcome kit with your first subscription. That's $111 value@drink ag1.com jorogan fuck off with all your rules.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's a good ringtone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's because they've spent so much money and so much time and so much effort trying to get this stuff passed through.

[Ari Shaffir]

It would be so huge if you could just go get some mushrooms.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, it'd be so huge. And why can't you? If you can go to Costco and just buy a jug of whiskey and drink yourself to death, it also.

[Ari Shaffir]

So, like, in Edinburgh, they have a season for it. And you can go through the meadows or any of these fields and just, like, pick mushrooms, right? But if it's on your shoe, it's fine. And if it comes off your shoe, then it's illegal.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, that's hilarious.

[Ari Shaffir]

But it's just, like, growing there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You know, where Duncan used to live in Asheville, they started giving the cows, like, a certain type of feed that had antifungal properties to it.

[Ari Shaffir]

What?

[Jamie Kilstein]

So that they wouldn't grow. So who knows what it did to the cow's gut, you know, ruined the cows. Just because so many kids were picking mushrooms off of the cow shit, we got to put a stop to this.

[Ari Shaffir]

In Thailand, it's the elephant shit. And they. And the guys who ran the elephant, like, abusive centers, whatever. So you could ride them and make them play harmonica. It's natural in the wild. Oh, no. Oh, no. Guys, elephants love painting you a picture.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We wrote them when we were.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's okay. I went back my second time and they were. Everyone in the hostel was doing that. And then I was like, no, I already did it. And they go, humane or non humane? I'm like, oh, definitely the humane one. Like, did you write them? That's inhumane. I'm like, oh, yeah, inhumane.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, the elephants wanted you to ride. They don't mind, like, because you weigh nothing. And you feed them first and you make. You give them an offering, right? So you, first of all, you wash them and you feed them. So you feed them like you give them sugar cane. And you have to develop a relationship with the elephant before you ride it. Like, these people were all. They were all free range elephants. They're all rescue elephants. So the elephants would come in out of the jungle. They weren't in cages.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah. It was wild.

[Ari Shaffir]

And they let you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Get a saddle on them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, you don't. It's barely a saddle. You just kind of climb onto them, and there's, like, a thing that you hold on to, and they're totally cool with it. And then the end, you go to this, like, pond and you wash them. And so it's like, they could kill you anytime they want to, you know? So it's like, it's a relationship, and it's not. They're not prisoners, and they're not abused at all. The people that are running this, the place that I went to, but even then, I did a video with it, and I said, you know, I. You could ride them. I go, I wrote them.

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't recommend it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't think you should do it. I would never do it again. I would never ride them again because it just feels up. I would rather just feed them and pet them and say, you're nice, but

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't need to go through the jungle. Yeah, but also, like, you wrote them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I did.

[Ari Shaffir]

So, like, if you. If you hadn't wrote them, you'd be like, I've never ridden an elephant.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I would have done it at all. If my family didn't want to do it, they wanted to do it. So I said, okay, let's go. And they enjoyed it. It was a good experience. You know, the kids are. They're little, and we're taking them to Thailand. And, yeah, it's. It's wild.

[Ari Shaffir]

I wonder sometimes if these kids. I was talking to Tommy about it, like, if they'll know later in life how cool their experience was. Like, it'll be till like, the 35 or 40. Like, oh, I had a great job. I didn't understand the coolest things I did.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, I think my kids are pretty aware of it.

[Ari Shaffir]

But anyway, they had these. These hippies would go over the encampment and pick out mushrooms from elephant patties. And then eventually the people, the herders were like, why do these fucking dreadlock people keep coming in at night and, like, sniffing around our shit? And then they realized what it was, and they go, oh, no, no, we'll sell this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, so they sell it. Is it illegal in Thailand? Like, what is the legality of mushrooms now?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know, because I think they just legalized weed in Thailand.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Did they really?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, but it. Back then, when it was illegal, there were bars that sold you joints, and those are the bars that paid the cops. And so for all intents and purposes, you're fine, bro.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I would not around with drugs in another country.

[Ari Shaffir]

Lame. Yeah, me.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's me.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, Super, Lynn.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I mean, talk to Brittany Griner. How'd that work out?

[Ari Shaffir]

Not good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Do you think when she was in jail, the guards would with her and show videos of her missing? Like, how come you miss. How come you missed this shot?

[Ari Shaffir]

Return to Breakdown.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You eat too much, you smoke too much weed. You miss this shot? She was in jail for a long time.

[Ari Shaffir]

She was in jail for a while.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think she was in jail for like, wasn't it like six months or something like that?

[Ari Shaffir]

I knew someone who worked at the, the agency. She was at the Sports Management Agency. Every day they started with 15 minutes of like, hey, before we get into anyone else's business, how are we getting her out?

[Jamie Kilstein]

10 months, almost a year in jail in Russia. That's crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

For nine years in a penal colony. Oh, that was a fun one. Because they just told America like, hey, guys, keep quiet. We can get her out. She's a nothing asset. Just everyone be quiet. And the liberal angry housewives like, no, I want to say something. And they all just kept talking. Eventually Russia's like, oh, is this an important one? Oh, really? We'll keep her in.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is that what happened?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, I think so. I think it was Biden was like, just shut up. We'll get her out to shut up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And they made it into a bigger thing so that they could get the merchant of death released.

[Ari Shaffir]

We are the worst at hand. Americans are so bad at handling things they don't know how to handle. They just rush in full bore going, I know how to fix it, with no knowledge of it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it's also, once a story gets out in any form, influencers cannot help talk about it. It's their currency. There's no way they're not going to talk about it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Same as all the late night guys. They knew after Trump won that, like, talking about him helps him. Before we said we're trying to take him down, but now we've seen the research, we know it's helping him. I'm still going to do it because it's my money.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, people get help. They can't help it. Yeah, I mean, that's like CNN's. Most of their ratings were talking shit about Trump. Like, every time he did something outrageous, they would. They would talk shit about him and they would have him on, and it just made him more and more popular because I don't think they understood how much America's dis. Americans despised them. You know, they thought, we're cnn, we are the news, we're cnn. And then because the fact that Trump was opposed to them and they were, they just kept showing him, they're like, oh, he must be good because you guys suck.

[Ari Shaffir]

Right. You ever hear the theory that terrorism and the US are symbiotic?

[Jamie Kilstein]

What's the theory? How's it work?

[Ari Shaffir]

Terrorism can't exist without the US dominating their countries.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

[Ari Shaffir]

And the us, they can't keep funneling money to weapons without terrorists.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, US and Israel, I mean, that's

[Ari Shaffir]

the thing for sure, sure.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's like, and, and Netanyahu, he famously said they were funding, we need them. We, we, we. When we fund Hamas, we can control

[Ari Shaffir]

the height of the flame for 9, 11. Like, yeah, it popped off a little high, but there was like, we need something to be like, hey, we're all against that. And then that those countries, like, look, they're all against us. So they just like, they need each other to keep growing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it makes sense. And also you need an enemy in order to get higher military contracts, higher budgets. I mean, if you don't have terrorism, how can you justify a trillion dollar military?

[Ari Shaffir]

So you need to like, say, hey, they're a real threat. Like, that's a 30 person group. Yeah, they're not coming for us. But like, we got to take them down. Look at the training they're doing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Shane's bit.

[Ari Shaffir]

Monkey bars. Monkey bars doing the training.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I love that bit. Yeah, I love that bit about how bad they are at jumping jacks.

[Ari Shaffir]

Fat people do to get in shape of the biggest loser.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. And they're stuck over there. Like, shut up. Yeah, they're not going over there. It's. And then I always wondered why we left behind all the shit, like cynically.

[Ari Shaffir]

But now, you know, do we leave

[Jamie Kilstein]

that stuff behind so that they could use it?

[Ari Shaffir]

The older I get, the less I think there's accidents, there's ineptitude, for sure. But there's also like, we've done the research, we know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

At some point, you know, there's bad moves you make here or there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But I mean, we left behind tanks and Blackhawk helicopters. Like, what? We couldn't get those out. We had to leave right now. We were there for 20 years also. We got to get out right away.

[Ari Shaffir]

You don't want to put a grenade in each one first before you go. Like, what do you mean? And also those are still good. Yeah. We didn't get out like Vietnam, park

[Jamie Kilstein]

them in a field and drop a bomb on it. Yeah. You don't have to leave it there for the enemy. It's for the Taliban so they can keep the people under their thumb.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. If you retreated last second, I could see it, but it wasn't that. And then you're like, yeah, they didn't

[Jamie Kilstein]

have to leave when they. The way they left was insane. When you see those. Those ships that are the planes that are flying away and people are hanging on to the wheels of the plane and falling off because they don't want to be left behind. Because I know so many people that work with the Americans.

[Ari Shaffir]

You said you'd protect us over and over again. And then you're like, yeah, we've done this over and over again.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We'll just say this is that we.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

It was equipment we gave to the Afghan state. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't US Equipment any longer, and it's already

[Ari Shaffir]

given over to them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We gave it to the Afghan state, but not the Taliban, the National Defense Security Forces. Right. And then it. There was not that many of them. And so the moment that we left, the Taliban just took everything.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's also like, I guess what is the Taliban? We have this word on it. It's like an evil word. But are they just like the government in a lot of these places, like the cartels in. In Colombia, they like build schools, they do bad, but they also are the government. They make sure the businesses run okay. And so you have this idea cartel. It sounds like that, but it's like, it's more than that. I wonder how much of the Taliban is all actually into terrorism and how much is like just running day to day stuff.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, that's a good point, because in America, I mean, what are the pharmaceutical drug companies? I mean, how many people have we talked about this? The other day? It's like 70,000 people died of opioid overdoses in America in 2024. 70,000. 70,000. So like. And a lot of that is probably cartel fentanyl, but a lot of it is like flat out old school oxycodone. So it's like, what are they, what are they and how much are they?

[Ari Shaffir]

2911 campaigns every year. Right. But they thought you saw the most effective thing of that, Sackler with Ferris Bueller, that documentary series, whatever painkiller is. They started every episode with a real person talking about how their son is dead.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Or, you know, something like that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then they're like, oh, my God, this makes it so real.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Painkiller. That's what it's called.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

So good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's Peter Berg's Yeah, we talked about that the other day. It's one of my amazing series. Amazing series like that. That.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Matthew Broderick plays such a good creep. He did such a good job. God. That. That show's so disturbing because it's based on true story.

[Ari Shaffir]

And he show a guy falling into the despair from being fine.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. To just like, we all know somebody who got hooked. I. I mean, it's so potent. It's so powerful. And they told doctors, they told people, they told everybody. That wasn't even addictive. They knew it was addictive. They knew. Operating on the same path. I mean, that's in the painkiller series.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That it operates on the same pathway as heroin. Like, you're saying that this is not addictive. This is a lie.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. What they did there was go. If that movie is completely accurate, it's like, okay, so this is for heavily cancerous, like, bedridden people that have a pain threshold of 8 to 10. Like, it'll be good for them. Why don't we just extend the pain threshold to 3 to 10?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And that allows a lot more people in. If you're at a nine, it doesn't matter if I get addicted. My life is awful right now. Right. If you're at a three, like, walk it off.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Exactly. I talked about when I got my nose fixed, when the doctor tried to give me two different opiates, and I was like, why? It was nothing. I mean, it didn't even hurt. It was just mildly uncomfortable. And that was also because it was stuffed up with gauze. Like those. It wasn't even gauze. Like these foam things with a tube that they stuff in your nose to keep your nostrils open while it's healing. But, you know, he gave me two different opiates, and I was like, is it gonna get worse than this? Because I don't.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'm fine.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Fine.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. They don't tell you, but be careful. I would not take. Unless you absolutely need it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, they don't tell you any of that. They want you to do it because they're financially incentivized.

[Ari Shaffir]

I got a wisdom tooth out, and the dentist was like. I was like, hey, I don't want to.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, why'd you get a wisdom tooth out?

[Ari Shaffir]

Did it hurt? I don't remember. It was so long ago. Yeah, like 15, 18 years ago.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What's the. What's the logic on that? Are you supposed to get wisdom teeth taken out?

[Ari Shaffir]

Had both out.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because I've had people say. I've heard people say, you shouldn't like, there's no reason to take them out.

[Ari Shaffir]

Why do you. Then they get impacted or something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Often they grow in. They're growing in wrong, and they cause problems with other teeth.

[Ari Shaffir]

It had to be that. But he gave me this thing of Vicodin. I was like, I don't want to. And he goes, you're friends with comedians, right? And I was like, yeah. He goes, your friends will want it. Whatever you don't need.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What?

[Ari Shaffir]

Whatever you don't need. I'm sure you could find. He was joking around, but he was right. I have tons of Attic friends. They. They are all like, nice.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Advising me to take aspirin, not use up one of those precious.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I took that stuff once when I had my first ACL reconstruction, and it was. It made me so stupid.

[Ari Shaffir]

Vicodin.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think it was Vicodin. It was either Vicodin or Percocet. I can't remember, but I think it was Vicodin. But I wound up selling it at the pool hall.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, sell it. Get some money.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Do the right thing. The only time I would advise taking Vicodin is if you have, like, two beers and really want a good night. Really? Oh, yeah. Those go so well with. With liquor.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is Vicodin an opiate? Is it the same thing as oxycodone? Like, what is Vicodin?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a downer. I don't know what. You're a downer.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

It's a. Yeah, it combines hydrocodone and Tylenol.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, Tylenol, Tylenol and hydrocodone.

[Ari Shaffir]

Nice one, Joe.

[Jamie Kilstein]

A lot of people die from that, too.

[Ari Shaffir]

Tylenol.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. I was reading this sad story once about this lady who. She had Covid, and she was in so much pain from COVID that she kept taking Tylenol. And she died of a liver failure because the Tylenol, the acetaminophen, killed her liver.

[Ari Shaffir]

Sometimes you see people dying, you're like, what a loser way to die. You can't ever tell anybody. There's no victimhood. Aspirin overdose. Dork.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's crazy. How much aspirin do you have to take before you die? That seems nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

I feel like all these middle school girls would try it before they had access to stuff. Really? When they just want to be drama queens. Like, I took a whole bottle of aspirin.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah. Oh, I knew a girl did exactly that thing exactly that night.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, me too. Yeah, she took aspirin, but it's like, that's not going to do it. But your call for attention is there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

She was also crazy annoying.

[Ari Shaffir]

Like, let me tell you how she actually do it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Big tits and she. Everybody. She was nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

And I'll accept it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This girl was a freak. She everybody. She was an animal.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Catholic school girl across something weird.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

I just typed in Tylenol deaths and this thing came up. The Chicago Tylenol murders. It seems like it's an UN Drug tampering. Yeah. There's tampered Tylenol that people bought. That was potassium cyanide. Seven people died.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. They broke. That's when they started. That's when they started doing the seal on top. Yeah, yeah. Right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I remember this. I remember this. This is when I was in high school. Do they know why?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Investigation suspects.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I wonder what the conspiracy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. What.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What's the tinfoil?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Someone recently was arrested. No suspect has been charged as of 2026.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Whoa. So a bunch of people died and they just got away with it?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Someone was convicted of extortion. Sending a letter to Tylenol manufacturer claiming responsibility possibility and demanding a million dollars.

[Ari Shaffir]

If I remember right, they said. They said, we found out the. The problem with one plant that had whatever. And we've. We've got. And someone else like, well, okay, I bought this bottle before that happened, so this should be safe. And then it wasn't. And then there was like Tylenol or whatever was like, covering up how bad it got instead of going recall everything.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Estimated 31 million bottles were in circulation with a retail value of over a hundred million dollars, equivalent to 334 million in 2025. The company also advertised in the national media for individuals not to consume any of its products that contained acetaminophen after it was determined that only these capsules had been tampered with. Wow.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Other ones in California that strict. Nine in them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow. So that's probably one of those things too. There's copycats, right? Like one person hears about someone buying poison. Tylenols do that. Yeah. I want to poison people in Ohio. I want to poison. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Hacks.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Get your own hacks. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just be original. Be awful, evil, but be original. There's so many. Those like the Tylenol, we're like, wait, were you guys evilly covering this up and resulting in more deaths that. That I found out down there was like Coca Cola Dole. We're like, oh, these are like evil corporations.

[Jamie Kilstein]

As soon as they realize that, you

[Ari Shaffir]

know, the pinto story, the Mr.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So Ford found out. Let's.

[Ari Shaffir]

Let's oh, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Research this to make sure this is true. Someone brought it up on the podcast. They're blowing up. And they realize it's cheaper to just pay people off that died from their car being blown up than it is to recall all these Ford Pintos. Because the Pinto had like the gas station. The gas tank, rather was in the back.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There was something about the design where if you got rear ended, it would blow up.

[Ari Shaffir]

And it was just did a dollar value on it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, somebody did. I want to say for. I want to, you know, you say Ford, but really it's a person. It's. It's not the Ford of today. Some guy.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Would that be a production crash test?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Investigators and lawsuits showed that pre production crash tests had already revealed this vulnerability, but the car still went to market largely unchanged. Yeah. Who told us about this?

[Ari Shaffir]

I kind of remember that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So one of our guests explained that to us and it was just like, oh, God. Whoa, it's so dark. It's such a dark, evil thing to do, to say, well, people are gonna die, but we'll just pay them all.

[Ari Shaffir]

What's the number?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, what is the number? First of all, the car sucked. Why'd you make it in the first place?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a terrible, ugly shoe. It kind of looks cool now, but.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, it doesn't.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's got that sun, sun deck in the back.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Garbage car.

[Ari Shaffir]

So Coca Cola would have people just like, if you were like a leftist leader running for whatever. They were worried that if that person got in power, they would unionize their population and that would cost them more money in the plants and they would just have people straight killed, straight up, get them out of the way.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Had people whacked.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dole used to be the American fruit company.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Coke and a smile. They had people whacked, James.

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, look it up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But like, it's probably an executive somewhere. Probably an executive.

[Ari Shaffir]

They didn't draw a big house of

[Jamie Kilstein]

card style who had some guy who was a fixer for him.

[Ari Shaffir]

Right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And he's like, look, these are causing problems. And this guy was concerned with his job as whatever, CEO, executive.

[Ari Shaffir]

But it's happened over a long period of time. They were giving money to, I think FARC or something in Colombia after they were already labeled like a terrorist organization. They're still giving them money.

[Jamie Kilstein]

For decades, Coca Cola has faced several severe allegations regarding the murder and intimidation of union leaders at bottling plants in Colombia and Guatemala.

[Ari Shaffir]

They hired paramilitary death squads to suppress labor activism. That's like, oh, what they. They want an honest like, day's pay. Get rid of him, you know?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Do you remember when Ross Perot was running for president? You were too young.

[Ari Shaffir]

I barely remember, but sort of.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I was just starting to be aware of how fucked up politics were. And because he was on television explaining about the World Trade Organization, about when they were going to start opening up plants in Mexico and moving jobs to Mexico, he's like, what you're gonna hear is a giant sucking sound where all the money and jobs are gonna go down to Mexico. And what we allowed during that time was essentially what the labor unions were doing in this country was making sure that people had a great wage because the corporations were getting paid well. So the CEOs wanted all the money, like they always do. The corporation wanted all the money. But you really can't make a Mustang unless you have the people that are on the assembly line, unless you have the people that are doing all the hard labor and all the work. And they should get compensated correctly. So the auto union's workers organized it and they went on strike and they did the. They did what they had to do. And they were making a great living. They're making a great living. And these people had a nice house and they had a car and a garage. And it felt good that they were getting paid really well. And so a lot of people thought, well, they're getting paid too well, and this is up our profits. And so what? And I'm simplifying this.

[Ari Shaffir]

If you're take 10 bucks, people, instead of like, the top guys make a

[Jamie Kilstein]

million dollars, they did is just open up a plant in Mexico and pay people slave labor. And they go over there and they pay them slave wages. And these people are making cars for like, fucking, how much? A dollar a day or something like that, instead of getting health care and retirement and, you know. And so that's what we're talking about.

[Ari Shaffir]

The free market says, go to Mexico. The moral market says, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. Let's just pay people what they deserve here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's not just that, but they destroy Detroit.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's Roger and me. That documentary, Michael Moore's greatest documentary is all. His first one, is his best one because it's really documenting a horrific attack on Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and all those places up there where there's all these auto plants. And they all just went away, man. And those jobs went away. And now Detroit is. Detroit's kind of bouncing back.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's kind of back. Danny was talking about it Brown, where he was like, Just before COVID it was, like, starting to be like, some cool new restaurants and, like, really coming back. Then Covid kind of nailed it down again, and now it's, I think, back, back, going back up again.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They have some cool stuff in there. I mean, there's. There's a bunch of companies that are, like, proudly, like, made in Detroit underrated pizza.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, Detroit pizza.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, really square?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, it's really good square.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Interesting.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Crispy, like on every bite, every slice.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, okay.

[Ari Shaffir]

Because it's not thick crust square. It's like that thin crust square. It's just really good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Isn't it funny that we want it in a circle? I want it in a circle.

[Ari Shaffir]

Why?

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know.

[Ari Shaffir]

Odd.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's weird. You get committed to it. It's like we don't get committed to that with a sandwich. Like, if I go to a Jewish deli and I get a square sandwich, I don't say no.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I want it to look like a submarine.

[Ari Shaffir]

Doesn't look right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. You know, like, no one cares.

[Ari Shaffir]

No one cares. The shape.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No. It's a really good salmon. But some people do, like, if you give them a cheeseburger, but it's on bread, they're like, what is this bullshit? Square bullshit. I want a round bun, motherfucker.

[Ari Shaffir]

On rye bread.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What is this? Rye bread is for pastrami. Don't give me rye bread with her cheeseburger, you communist.

[Ari Shaffir]

Is my name Reuben? Then why you give me something like. Looks like a Reuben?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. What is this? Like, if you buy an Italian sandwich, it has to come out a big old hoagie roll, a ciabatta. You know, one of those big seated. Yeah, that's what you want.

[Ari Shaffir]

All bread.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's weird that we want our pizza to only be searched.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then what's weird, too, is you're not eating it in the round version. Right. You're eating it in this weird triangle.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

You're eating just an edge of round. That edge could be.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You know what I've seen that deeply disturbs me.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, no.

[Jamie Kilstein]

When people take a circular pizza and then they chop it up into a bunch of squares, I'm like, what have you done?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

No, that's the Ohio style.

[Ari Shaffir]

Is that what it is? Really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's what it's called.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Or pub style.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes kind of sense. But not for you.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Bring one pizza into the bar. Now 10 people can get a bite

[Ari Shaffir]

as opposed to, I guess the only other way. More slices like that. Thin, like real thin. Like long. But that's not fun.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

We also have edge to edge toppings.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How many pizzas has Dave Portnoy sold? If you really stop and think about it, Dave Portnoy is probably responsible for more pizza sales in this country than any other living human being.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, probably. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because I watch his pizza reviews. I want to go get a pizza.

[Ari Shaffir]

He gives it to you honest?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Oh, he's very good at it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I mean, he really loves pizza too. Like you could tell, like this is a. He's not making any money off of that.

[Ari Shaffir]

No, he's really not.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, just like some. It's a labor of love. He likes it, it's fun for him and it's become a thing. And he gets in arguments with pizza places sometimes. Like they yell at him, yells at them.

[Ari Shaffir]

You can't film in here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They throw at him. It's like really crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's so great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But I've, I've gone to places because he recommended him. Like, if I'm. I find out that I'm in a town and I know that there's pizza there, I'm like, what does Portnoy think?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want a local wreck?

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's always better than it's done that with anything else. Like what other celebrities done that with any other kind of food where they go places and review it.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's a guy in New York, not a celebrity, but he was. His goal was to search out every single slice in New York. It took him years. And then name the best ones.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Boy, how would you know? How are you going to compare a slice to a slice you had a year ago?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's right. I guess you got to. Yeah, you really got to know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How are you going to know?

[Ari Shaffir]

You can instantly go, no, but yeah, anything that's good, you got to go back and forth.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Plus it's super subjective.

[Ari Shaffir]

Obviously.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

You got to go cheese. You got to prepare cheese to cheese.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. It has to be just plain cheese

[Ari Shaffir]

pizza, which is a classic.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's so good. I mean, other pizzas are great, but man, a really good plain cheese pizza is phenomenal.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Especially if it's done well.

[Ari Shaffir]

Fresh out. Here's the secret too. If you're in New York, underrated tip. I told Ruddy this. He's going to New York, fat guy, so he's gonna want to like get some tips. I was like, no matter what you were gonna get, just say, do you have anything fresh coming out? And they say it's gonna be like 10 more minutes. It's okay, I'll wait That's what you want.

[Jamie Kilstein]

When you go to Krispy Kreme and they got the serve the hot donuts, they're coming out hot. The lights on with that lights on. If I'm thinking about having it. When I used to live in la, yeah, there was a Krispy Kreme down the street. Like it was on the way home. And if I Dr. Hot, the hot light was on. I'm like, I'm pulling in. Yeah, I'm getting a hot one.

[Ari Shaffir]

So much better than warmed up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's so much better. Like when they come right out and the glazed ones that are coming right out hot, they just dissolve in your mouth right there.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, and good for you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah. It's better than, better than vitamins.

[Ari Shaffir]

Look at that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It cures diabetes.

[Ari Shaffir]

You have all dough and you're like, let's put some with sugar in it. Like, let's put some sugar on top.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Let's fully overwhelm your system. I remember I would eat them, then I'd go back to my house and I'd go, what was, what's wrong with you? Why did you do this? The fuck is wrong with you?

[Ari Shaffir]

We've all been there, you fucking idiot. What's wrong with you?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Feel so bad because I would eat like a half a dozen too. I'd eat like six donuts. I'd get, I'd. I always buy like a box and I'd eat half the box. I buy like a box of a dozen and I'd buy like chocolate cream filled and all the different ones and I eat like six of them in my car right home. And then I'd get home and I'm like, oh, just poisoned.

[Ari Shaffir]

An adult has learned nothing about his body.

[Jamie Kilstein]

39 years old, sitting on the couch.

[Ari Shaffir]

When you have that after 23 years old, you're like, what? You're hurting. Like, I just have to let this pass. I have to just like for an hour. Like, what a loser.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You're a loser. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

You ate yourself into feeling bad.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I do that all the time.

[Ari Shaffir]

Drinking, I get sneaks up on you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I eat when, if I go to New York. Every time I go to New York, I eat myself into a coma. I eat myself way too, just way too fat. I get hurting like where my stomach stretched out so much it hurts because I got so much food in there. I really can't fit any more food. And I look pregnant. My stomach sticks out.

[Ari Shaffir]

You got burnt belly.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, he looks so awful. And it's all swollen and bloated because it's all the pasta and bread, it's all the water and the wines making it expand.

[Ari Shaffir]

Think straight. Your body's like bring everything into the stomach right now.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, you have no. Like, if I had to pass a spelling bee, I'm. My IQ dips by like 40 points. Yeah, it's. It's terrible. I'm a glutton too. I'm a. I have a real problem with like volume. I just, when I start eating, I'm like a dog. I just keep eating. I just can't stop. Like, I'm good at not eating. Like, I cannot eat for like 12, 16 hours. But when I sit down for a meal, I just. Or when I'm ordering, I think it comes from being poor when I was a kid too. So it's like there's something about like wanting everything. I want it all. I want steak, I want pasta, I want this, I want that with that. And then after, like, you never learn, you idiot.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, and you're like, you're like, I've had about enough. And then you're like, like, one more bite. And then you're like. And now if we're talking, like, I'm gonna eat like two more full plates worth as we're talking.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I remember we were in Atlanta once. This has happened more than once. But this one lady in Atlanta was like almost arguing with me. Yeah. We went to a diner in Atlanta after our show and this I ordered two things. I ordered like meatloaf and I order a steak. And she's like, oh, honey, that's too much food. I go, no, it's not. I go, I'm gonna eat it all. And she's like, that is too much food. I go, you don't know. You don't know me.

[Ari Shaffir]

You don't know you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You don't know me. I can consume. I will consume. This is not a problem. Need this.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. When it's time for you to eat, you eat.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Especially also after shows, dude. Oh, God. You do fucking long ass shows.

[Ari Shaffir]

I brought you and Goldie once a hot dog. I was just like, it was. I was doing the early days of yours. Not early but like mid level days and then high level days. So I remember having more access than anyone could really get anymore.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah, you were behind me in the. I remember the time when the camera was on you and Duncan. So you guys made out.

[Ari Shaffir]

We were bored. They timed it so we noticed. We noticed the camera was sitting right behind you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So the way they could see the monitor. So they were sitting behind me so they knew what the camera was capturing.

[Ari Shaffir]

So we're on that camera, that guy's camera.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They waited, and then this guy right here. And in the middle, as soon as the camera's on you guys,

[Ari Shaffir]

Frosty died.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, my God. This is the early, early days. This is probably like 2002 or something like that. That was way back in the day.

[Ari Shaffir]

First, though. First we're giving out. So Duck was being accused of being an Illuminati a lot then. So he goes, oh, there's a camera. I mean, I gotta do this thing. He goes, what? He goes, it's just to stoke the flames. So he'll just do this. He'll do triangles. At some point, we made a big triangle with both our hands. And then I think he said it. I don't know. It doesn't matter. One of us said it, the other reacted. Hey, next time we got a kiss. And it was like, fuck, yes.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'm pretty sure it was.

[Ari Shaffir]

God damn it. Yeah, you're right. We do. It was like, this is gonna be awful. But you have to.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I didn't know about it till after it was over. People like your friends were kissing on camera. And I just. I literally couldn't breathe. I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I go, show it to me. Show it to me. I like, made the guys in the truck show me the video of it. I'm like, oh, my God, this is so funny.

[Ari Shaffir]

There was also, like a wrestling moment, or it was. There's a lot of wrestling in that fight. If I remember right. It's a long time ago, but there was a blog said from, like an MMA blog, say two bored bearded dudes make out during a UFC fight. Dude, you give a comic a camera on you, and we're like, let's go, we gotta do something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Especially, like, you have six hours. Six hours of fights. So there's all this time to think. And they're not all exciting. Some of them are fucking boring. And when they're boring, you got to come up with different ways to entertain yourself.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What you gonna do?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, it was so fun. You could see the one that was on it. So, like, when those fighters are in front of us, I'm gonna fix this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, it wants to work.

[Ari Shaffir]

It wants.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This one works. Those are fun times. That was back when the UFC was like, no one was watching anyway.

[Ari Shaffir]

You could just do whatever you want. The weigh ins was the best. We had a weigh in in Florida and it was just like. Only the camps kind of came in and the tap out guys rest in peace. They. They'd come in there. Well, just one. Rest in peace. Yeah, Live well. But it was just like, you'd be in there and I remember once you were like, hey, Ari, maybe I'll call you up to weigh it. And you could. You just could and be like, you want to go now? All right. It was like there was no real rules that. It was pretty. Pretty wild.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No one knew what was going on.

[Ari Shaffir]

Ari Shafir.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And you just walk out. Yeah. You could do anything back then. That was also a real weigh in. That was when the guys actually would get on the scale. Now it's a ceremonial weigh in.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, because now the. They weigh in in advance because they want to give them more time to recover.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The whole thing's gross. They shouldn't be weighing in and they shouldn't be cutting weight.

[Ari Shaffir]

As a casual fan, it's the most obvious one. Make him weigh in at the event.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's crazy. I mean, we've had long discussions. I had a discussion recently with Hunter Campbell where we're trying to figure out a way to blow up all the weight classes and make people fight out what their actual weight is. But you would have to, like, show up in camp, like, you know, get

[Ari Shaffir]

to the right exact right weight, weigh them a pound or two below for safety.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it would have to be random. Like they couldn't know you were coming.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh. Like the whole way through. It has to be at that weight.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Just show up. What do you weigh? Get on the scale. 185, bro. You're supposed to be fighting at 155. How the fuck are you 185?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's dumb because you're not actually. You're. You're. It's like having field goals decide, like an NFL game. It's like, this is not. This is like a minor part of the sport.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

So that's like you're having a 185 or fight against a 160 pound. So you're not actually.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, that's your class in the elite levels. They're all doing it. So it's. Everybody's cheating. It's sanctioned cheating. It's not cheating because it's legal, but

[Ari Shaffir]

it's rewarding guys who know how to cut better than guys who don't. And as a casual fan, that's not. We're into.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's also very biological. So some people can cut weight very easily, and some people. It's a fucking grind. And it's way more of a grind for women. Women hold on to that water weight a lot harder than men do. So when a woman has to lose, like a woman has to cut like 20, it's. Yeah, man, they cut weight, but apparently it's way more brutal for them.

[Ari Shaffir]

Interesting.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, it's terrible. They should. They should. It should have never been in there in the first place. And they should figure out a way to get. What are they doing?

[Ari Shaffir]

High school wrestling, when people fight like 112, that's just your weight or do

[Jamie Kilstein]

you weigh in the day? Right, the way in the day up, but it's still. You're still cutting weight. I. I weighed. I used to wrestle at 128 and then I wrestled 28 for a grown man.

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, a high school. Oh, okay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And then 134. And then I. Because I couldn't really make 128 anymore. And then when I started fighting in taekwondo, I fought. My first fights were at 140. That was when I was like 15, 16. And then by my last fight at 140, I was 17 and I was not 140 and I was starving myself and I was cutting a bunch of water weight. And then I would fight dehydrated like fighters. But I only did it one year. I only did it one year. And then I went up to 155, which was much better. That was easy because I didn't have to cut any weight and I was way better then. But that thing where they do in wrestling, you're not getting hit in the head in wrestling. Right. So it will deplete you. And so you have to make a decision, like muscles. How much am I going to be depleted and want to be the. The size bully and have a bigger frame and utilize it, but have depleted performance? Like, how much. How good a shape would I have to be in where that depletion only takes out a certain percentage of my ability. And so it's like this calculated thing. Like Kurt Angle, for instance. Kurt Angle, when he was an Olympic gold medalist, he didn't cut any weight and he was a phenomenal wrestler. Kurt Angle was a fucking monster. And he was beating guys way bigger than him, but he had so much energy because he didn't cut weight. And so he was wrestling against guys that did cut weight and he was dominating them. Yeah, because he was full strength.

[Ari Shaffir]

They were bigger than him.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They were bigger than him, but he had incredible skill. Also strong as anyway, and had no depletion of his resources. Like, his body was working at full capacity.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like Greg Fitzsimmon is in the prime. He would just fight anybody. He would just fight anybody. Oh, tiny little man, anybody.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He got attacked on stage at Stitches and attacked him. And they fucking. Some brawl broke out and they. The bouncers got in, they take the guy away. And then Greg gets on the microphone. Didn't even end the show. Gets on the microphone, he goes, anybody else want some of this? And then laughing. It was great. He finished his set.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He finished his great composure, Kept it together, finished his set. Fucking fun, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, but they should. They really should ban weight cutting. But the only way they're really ever going to be able to do that is to make more weight classes. There's not enough weight classes.

[Ari Shaffir]

And that's. Then you'll have the what? But I don't understand.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think boxing has.

[Ari Shaffir]

Boxing. You have.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Don't you have 18 weight classes?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Don't you have, like, some, like, who cares? Weight classes?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, so there's sorta.

[Ari Shaffir]

And if you really want to get known, you gotta move up or down to one of the majors.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, you know what's weird? Like 160 is a huge weight class. 147 welterweight, huge weight class, Big giant fights, cruiserweight, which is like between light heavyweight and heavyweight. No one gives a fuck about now.

[Ari Shaffir]

Why?

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's weird. It's just weird. Like, nobody gives a. About the cruiserweight champion. Like Usyk, before he became the heavyweight champion, was the cruiserweight champion. And people cared about him just because he was so skillful, but he had to go up to heavyweight before people cared. But if he was a light heavyweight, he would have been here. It's weird. Very weird. But I think boxing. How many weight classes does boxing have? Professional boxing? I want to say there's 18, whereas in the UFC there's only 18 weight. It's a big difference.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a big difference. You can. And you can follow champions better.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. But it's also.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like, even when Mighty Mouse came in, it was like, you have this dominant guy coming in.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Huh.

[Ari Shaffir]

To. To really launch the weight class. But people are like, we don't know this weight class, so we're less interested in you than we should be.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, the people have a thing about tiny people. They look at a small guy who's like 5:3 and weighs 125 pounds, they're like, Nah, we don't care.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

17 here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

17.

[Ari Shaffir]

Red Ben said the 135ers and 125ers, they should have to come into the Octagon. On little mini horses and ride around a couple times.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's so rude. So what was also interesting is like flyweight women like Valentina Shevchenko. It's one of the premier weight classes in the women's division because that's heavy for a woman. It's like normal size.125 is like a normal weight. It's like a man fighting at 160 or, you know, 170. It's normal. Weird. Yeah, it's weird. But there's not enough weight classes and they should have fixed that a long time ago. There's, there's giant gaps, like the gap between 185, which is middleweight, and then 205, which is light heavyweight. That's crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Big one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's a giant leap.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then everything else.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, not even. That's what's even stupider. You get to heavyweight at 265. That's the cutoff for heavyweight. So you have to weigh 265 or under.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's my favorite weigh ins because they're still wearing their jeans. Like they don't really. They're like, I'm inside a range.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, they don't give a. But the, the so ceremonial weigh ins is what we have now. So when someone weighs in now, they've already weighed in in the morning in an official scale in front of, you know, doctors and state reps.

[Ari Shaffir]

They give them a chance to come back.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The athletic commission checks them out. And so then they just suck a bunch of water down and electrolytes and they slowly rehydrate over the four peanut butter hours. Yeah, they have to do it slow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Science is so crazy behind it.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

The heavyweight division is older than the United states.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Officially 1738.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Whoa.

[Ari Shaffir]

Weighing as much as they want.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Whoa.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Is that real?

[Jamie Kilstein]

So heavyweight was weight they weighed 160 plus. Since the division has no 60 plus. Yeah. People were tiny back then.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You know, Rocky Marshall was like one of the great heavyweights of all time. He weighed 185 pounds. So Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight champ in the world, one of the greatest of all time, weighed 15 pounds less than me.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Isn't that nuts?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's so different. If you ever look back at a fat guy from like Chris Farley types or whatever, and you're like, you're not even. You're just a little big.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, it's like normal fat.

[Ari Shaffir]

Steve Simone body.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look at these guys back then where they wore diapers and shit. Like, what's that? What are you wearing? What's that thing around your waist, what is that?

[Ari Shaffir]

To wipe up blood.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And they all fought bare knuckle back then, too quick fights. Well, they just broke their hands a lot. They had a. They threw a lot of punches to the body back then because they didn't want to break their hands on people's heads.

[Ari Shaffir]

That was the biggest defense back then, the Brian Dennehy thing. Make a punch you on the head

[Jamie Kilstein]

and break slower your head. And they all boxed like this too, where they would throw their knuckles out like that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because if you just blast someone. You could blast someone like that if you have gloves on and hand wraps.

[Ari Shaffir]

Stockton slap would have gone a long way back then.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah. They would have been legendary. Slapped him. Yeah, it's. It's funny how things change and then how they go back to it. Because now bare knuckle boxing is making a huge comeback.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. See, chess boxing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Beat the out of each other and

[Ari Shaffir]

then play five minutes.

[Jamie Kilstein]

If you're a good boxer, like, you have a massive advantage. The guy just got a concussion. He doesn't even know what the knight does.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's like. Like, you can't move that. Like, ah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I wonder whose idea that was.

[Ari Shaffir]

What kind of psychopath who wants to combine those things.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, it has to be people that aren't that good at boxing and aren't that good at chess. Because if somebody flatlines you and sends you to the hospital, you're not playing chess afterwards.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So it has to be people that kind of suck at boxing.

[Ari Shaffir]

Kind of suck at boxing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because if you really like Mike Tyson, somebody, you KO them and they have to get carried out in a stretcher. Well, then you, by fault, one by default, won the chest as well. Because they can't even play.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, just dusty boards.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You have to take them to the hospital. How are they gonna play chess?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't even understand the rules there.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

You have to have a minimum of 1800 in chess to be a competitor.

[Ari Shaffir]

What is that? What's 1800?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

I would imagine pretty good.

[Ari Shaffir]

Is that a score? What does that mean?

[Jamie Kilstein]

There's scores and chess, like a golf handicap?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, it's something like that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So what is like Magnus Carlson, the guy that was on the podcast, what does he have? What's his rating?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Let's see. I just typed it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Plays poker too, does he?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

You'd be in the top five.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Super smart dude. Yeah, he's one of those dudes. You talk to him like there's some guys you talk to him like, oh, there's a lot working on behind those eyes. It's like if you were high around that guy, he'd probably get weirded out. You're an alien.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

He's a 2840.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow. Way better.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What is the highest ranked chess player alive?

[Ari Shaffir]

Good question. Joe?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

That'd be him.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, really?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, he peaked at 2882, the highest in history.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's crazy. That is crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow, what about that schizo Jew turned Arab, whatever his name is.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Which guy? Which?

[Ari Shaffir]

The boy. The boy went schizo.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Schizo Jew turned Arab? Yeah. Wasn't there some Bobby Fischer. Translated? Oh yeah. He became like very anti Semitic, right?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Very close. 2785 5.

[Ari Shaffir]

So Magnus is better than him?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, I mean if Magnus is the best ever.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, ever.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, okay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He's a super genius. So what happened with Bobby Fischer?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

This actually has them rated maybe one point below Magnus's peak 2881 one year performance.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It says Bobby Fisher.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, it's based off of like who you're playing when you're playing them and how like, you know, how good they are at the time.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like golf. It's like who's in the tournament.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, yeah, but that happens. Like pool has ratings. They have a Fargo rating and they, they also do it per game. Like I was. There's this guy, he just died recently, Chang Young Lin. And he's this dude from, from Taiwan. And he played at a thousand. A thousand was his for one game.

[Ari Shaffir]

He couldn't get it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But not for one game. Excuse me, for like one match.

[Ari Shaffir]

What would he have to give to you or to me?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, it would be pointless. He just detroit us just as soon as you. He never missed.

[Ari Shaffir]

That means you make a ball and you win.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There's another guy, this guy who's also from Taiwan, Ko Ping Chung. And he played an entire match where he never missed a ball. He won 11 to nothing against another

[Ari Shaffir]

world class who lost a coin flip to start.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He lost their lag. The lag. And I think that's it.

[Ari Shaffir]

The guy didn't touch the.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He broke and left a long shot on the one ball. And the guy missed that and he never made a ball. Not. He didn't make one ball the entire.

[Ari Shaffir]

There was a winner goes first. Winner goes first.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, there was a couple winner breaks. So every time he broke and he was making the one ball inside, like every game. And every time he didn't have a shot, he would just play a lockup safety. And the guy Would kick and then leave a shot and then he would run out again. He just, he got, just got in the zone. So he played at a 1000 Fargo for the entire match. That's crazy. That means he never missed a ball on four inch pockets.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Tiny little pockets.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's people that are like, it's amazing how big pool is too, across the world and billiards too.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh yeah. In Asia it's huge.

[Ari Shaffir]

Asia, do you find people with just an overhang just so it doesn't get wet and they're all out there playing and just like flip flops and.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, we're losing a lot of the top Taiwanese and Chinese players to a game that they play in China now where it's like a snooker table. It doesn't look like, like a pool table. Like the, the pockets aren't cut the same way, they're rounded but they're playing nine ball and they're playing with like purses for like top, top purses. Like $600,000 for a tournament. 700,000. Wow. So they're all going over there and playing in that. Because you can make millions in a year instead of a couple hundred grand, which is like what the best players make in America.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's why women were going to Russia to play basketball. All right, until now.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Until now. Well, just don't bring weed, you know,

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, it's just, I mean, just don't bring weed.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The thing is like.

[Ari Shaffir]

But also I think they were all doing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's basketball. A lot apparent. I'm not a basketball player clearly. But you couldn't keep score. Me and Mugsy Bogue.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, all right, that's a good reference.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, nice. But weed apparently is phenomenal for basketball players. Like they all talk about it. Like I've talked to basketball players about weed. They say I can play way better when I'm high.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, they had the feel it, collective bargaining, not a late one, but like 20 years ago. And they're like, we can test for drugs. But they fought back, they go, not weed. So if you get caught with weed, sure, you can suspend us, but you can't test for it because why we're all doing it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, they're all doing it. And it helps the game. Like it helps their, their feet, it helps pool for sure.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's poker for sure, for sure.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, I'd imagine you read people's tells.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

According to World Snooker Tour figures, more than 24.5 million unique viewers watched the third session of the final alone. China. And during the whole 2025 tournament added a cumulative audience of 180 million in national broadcasters compared. That's.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

That's like an NFL playoff.

[Ari Shaffir]

24 million watch the finals of this. What's, what's. It's like a billion for super bowl, right? Yeah, but like a playoff game.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But that's snooker. Or like the English call it snooker. So snooker is very different. And it's on a 12 foot table. It's a huge table and the balls are very small and they don't have numbers on them. It's just like red and yellow, black, pink. It's mostly red, this red that's in the stack. And then you have black, pink, brown. And I think there's another. I've never played the game. I around with it. When I was in Scotland they had a table and I was like shooting balls on it. It's interesting.

[Ari Shaffir]

In Colombia they all play this thing

[Jamie Kilstein]

and it's three cushion billiards.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. And it's the take their cue and move a thing over, like a scorer over and they keep playing and move one over and they're all playing it and they're just kind of casual bars. But it's like 20 tables and they're everywhere.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And this is where there's no holes in the table, right? Yeah. That's called three cushion billiards.

[Ari Shaffir]

I sit there and it's a fun game.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know how to play it really well.

[Ari Shaffir]

Strategy. Well, it's hella strategy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's really under. It is definitely strategy, but it's really understanding angles, it's understanding how to kick and how to like by. When I say kick, what I mean is like go off a rail and hit another rail and then collide with the ball. So three cushion billiards is you have three balls on the table. That's it. And so you have the, the whole table. It's like a big ass pool table, but there's no pockets and you have three balls. And so what you have to do is hit one ball and then go three rails, at least three cushions and then hit the second ball.

[Ari Shaffir]

Another ball.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yes. But also put yourself in a position where then you can make another shot afterwards.

[Ari Shaffir]

Right. Or play safety.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's a complicated game and it's different because it's a lot of it spin. And the harder you hit it, the shorter the angle is. And if you hit it with English, it spins out wider or shorter depending upon what you're trying to do with it. And it's a. But if you get good at it, it really will Help your pool game because you'll really have a much more deep understanding of how the ball moves around the table with different speed and side spin and all that kind of. I've. I've only around with it, though, and then not in a long time. I. We. We had a table at Executive Billiards and White Plains. We used to have a 13 cushion table they would around on.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just play football for. For laughs.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I couldn't do it. Just. I want to see the balls go away.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's nice.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I want to see. When I fire a ball in, I want to see it go down that hole. Bye. Bye. I want to clear it out. I don't want balls lingering, just staring at me like, do it again.

[Ari Shaffir]

Do it again. Do it again.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'm still here. Do it again.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's funny that that became a bar sport. It's really just darts and that became the sports at bars.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Sure.

[Ari Shaffir]

And. And the table takes up a lot more space.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The dart board. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dartboard, sure. But that pool table, you need like some actual space.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. And that space is totally not usable other than that.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's where it is. Unless a girl's dancing on it.

[Ari Shaffir]

I went to. I went to a. This is like pool hall slash, like samba place in. In. In somewhere in Brazil.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What? Pool and samba? Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like daily it's a pool hall, but then at night it turns into samba. And like the highest level guys come in their capital and their music capital. It's so fun. But these guys don't stop playing pool. And so everyone's dancing. It's so packed and crowded. Excuse me. And you're like, the etiquette is. You just know when you're a bar, like, all right, all right. But you get. You want to be like, bro. Not just. It's packed. You can't play pool here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. You can't play pool there.

[Ari Shaffir]

But they were doing it well.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There's a place in the Bronx that is this Dominican pool room where they gamble. Big money. Big money. And they stream some of the matches on YouTube and it's fucking bananas because people are just talking constantly. They're yelling at each other in Spanish. And you know, Dominican people are having fun.

[Ari Shaffir]

They're having fun.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There's all these Spanish speaking and they're yelling, and they're all very flamboyant and having a good time. And they get people to go over there and play like pros, and they get so rattled because they're not used to that. Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow. Play on this Turf.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. Not only that, but the guys can play. And they're accustomed to that culture, so they're accustomed to all the yelling and all the craziness and guys standing in front of the hole while you're shooting at it, which is a no, no in regular.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, that's like high school.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Do it, then. Do it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They don't do it that bad. It's not that bad, but there's plenty of guys moving around the table. They're all talking. Everyone's yelling. The tables next to you are yelling. They don't care if you're betting $30,000 on a set.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dominicans are having so much fun, they're allowed to use the N word. Blacks are like, you know what? They kind of rule. Give it to them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Just a dark.

[Ari Shaffir]

Enough.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Let it go. Let it go. But it's really interesting because I've watched guys who are like top pros go over there and lose to guys that they're not supposed to lose to. And the reason why they're losing is because they're just rattled by the environment. And so what a lot of these guys will do, they'll put AirPods on. So they'll put AirPods in with the noise canceling. So to try to take away some of the. The sound and just focus. But you're really going to be playing at, like, 60% of your capacity because there's just too much chaos going around. If you play in a real legit pool tournament, everything's dead quiet while the guy's down on the ball. And then they clap when someone makes the ball. Well, then he moves the next shot, they stop clapping. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Too respectful.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yes.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But not these pool. And these guys are playing for big money. They're playing for tens of thousands of dollars, and they're just getting sharks and

[Ari Shaffir]

rattles stealing their blood.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I watch guys like, I watched this guy, Oscar Dominguez play. This dude. Oscar's a top pro. He was on the Moscone cup up. He was on the Moscone team for the US and he was over there playing this dude. I was like, how did they get him to go there?

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I talked to my friend Jeremy Jones.

[Ari Shaffir]

Rep, too. It's like the guys who do burning man, the DJs, like, I'll play for free. It's just like. It's a rep thing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, I don't think. I think it's the money. Well, Oscar loves to gamble, and he's going to a place where someone's willing to gamble him from a lot of Money.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, you say this thing about Joe Jones, I'm gonna listen while I go to piss.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Okay, we'll pause. We'll pause. We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not gonna stay the whole things. We'll pause.

[Ari Shaffir]

We're back, folks.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We're back. So I was saying is my friend Jeremy Jones, who was a US Open champion, he said he went to that pool hall once and he said, I'm never going back.

[Ari Shaffir]

Too much.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's too much. Too much. And he's also said that the neighborhood is like, dank. Things can go sideways. Yeah. It's. It's a neighborhood where like, hey, you might go there three nights in a row and you have a good time. Fourth night, four people get shot. You know what I mean?

[Ari Shaffir]

That was always the problem with underground pool. I mean, poker rooms. You play. Play a commerce or a place, like it's legit. It's fine. You go underground. Like, that's not. Not as a guard there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. And you're walking out with a lot of money. I remember when you were struggling in the early days of comedy when we kind of first met.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And you were making your money by winning pool, tournament or poker tournaments.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. You would go to the least.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. You would go to these casinos and make. And you would play it like a job. You'd be like, super serious.

[Ari Shaffir]

I read books on it. Yeah. The best book of all that. There's tells and there's strategy. The best. My favorite book is this guy Mike Caro. Is a book called Mike Caro's Book of Poker Tells. Yeah. I managed to use one of them once in a World Series event that if this is the one where it goes, if someone looks at your chips, it's because they have a killer hand and they think those chips are theirs. And it's just like, you know, when you lie, you look away a little bit. That's like a tell we all kind of know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So you look at the chips.

[Ari Shaffir]

You look at it just for a second, you're like. Cause you're like, those are my. You're not worried about your chips. Cuz you know, your chips are staying. You got a full house. You know, those are safe. But you're looking at those like, how much of that can I extract? So I was throwing a bluff down against a pro at the World Series. It was like, whatever. And I. I was like, I think he must have read this book. And so I'm banking on that. So I'm holding my bluff nothing hand, and I just Kind of do a very subtly. Just do one little. And he goes, yeah, right. He chucked his hand away. Wow. Yeah. He thought he had me read. But the best thing about Mike Carol's poker, you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You double cross.

[Ari Shaffir]

I double crossed. I double crossed.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Thank you for recognizing that. Love that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Love a double cross.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I love that. That's so cool. That's the cool thing about poker that it's like a lot of it's. You're bullshitting, you know, you're bluffing.

[Ari Shaffir]

The best thing about the poker tales, it was written the 70s and there's a bunch of raced race based tells.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Really?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Like if a.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Which ethnicities. All. All of them.

[Ari Shaffir]

If an older white man re. Raises, you get out. That guy doesn't bluff. He's just trying to play. You know, his wife died years ago. He's just trying to understand. They're like, if you're playing, it's a Mexican. Find out when payday is and if it was this Friday. They're bluffing. They're just throwing in anything. They just want to play. They're gonna part with their monies. There's a whole thing on blacks. I forget exactly what they were saying on that, but it was like, very interesting.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What year was this written?

[Ari Shaffir]

I think in the 70s.

[Jamie Kilstein]

70s, interesting. Back when you could be honest.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. And he was like, I don't know. I'm just telling you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

All in the family days.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You get away with a lot of like honest observations about different cultures.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Mike Carroll's book of poker tells Orientals.

[Ari Shaffir]

Orientals either very skillful or very luck oriented.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think it says it now. Asian Americans. Like, why? What happened to oriental?

[Ari Shaffir]

What happened to oriental?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Someone told me that oriental is like

[Ari Shaffir]

a slur now, but it's actually the right word.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is it the Orient?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's people or goods from the Orient. You know what the opposite is? What you and I, Occidental people or goods from. I guess not the Orient. Really.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We're occidentals. You know what's also interesting? It's like Asian. Asian is so much of the world.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like Asian includes India, which is Asian.

[Ari Shaffir]

Nah, If I was president, executive order.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's.

[Ari Shaffir]

No, no, that's not who we're talking about. That's not who we're talking about.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Pakistan in Asia.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, right. That's Middle East. Off, off, you know. Oh, Israel is also Asia, by the way.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's also like the Philippines is Asia.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's Asia.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'll give you that. Okay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it's way over there.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's way over there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And then you got China and then you got Japan. And then you got Korea and South Korea and North Korea.

[Ari Shaffir]

Okay, wait, let's be real. China, Japan are the obvious ones. Yes, that's Asia.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Those are the big ones.

[Ari Shaffir]

The further you get Korea.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Korea is also Korea.

[Ari Shaffir]

Okay. Vietnam, you're still in the gold. Mongolia, I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, they're almost Russian.

[Ari Shaffir]

Saudi Arabia is Asia off. We're talking about China and their subsidiaries.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look how big Asia is.

[Ari Shaffir]

Cambodia. Okay, sure. All the jungles. Wow. How many have I been.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So Russia's technically Asia. That's Asian Russia.

[Ari Shaffir]

Israel is the craziest one.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, we cut off right here because European Russia, too.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, okay. So there's Asian Russia. So that would be Siberia. Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

The Maldives are.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But that would be like Mongolia for sure. Kazakhstan is Asia. Wow. Yeah, But Mongolia. But a lot of the Kazakhstan guys look Asian. Like this guy, Shopkot Ragmanov, who fights in the ufc.

[Ari Shaffir]

A Mongolian accent is crazy because it really is. If it sounds like half Chinese, half Russian, you know, they look Chinese speaking like the Russian accent.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Hard people, bro. Hard people. Kazakhstan, India, Iran. Iran is Asia.

[Ari Shaffir]

Israel's Asia. Israel's Asia is just the edge.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah. Basically everything. That's

[Jamie Kilstein]

all those people are oriented Orientals.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'm gonna. Next time I go to Jerusalem, I'm gonna call them all Orientals.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look how close Yemen is to Ethiopia. It feels like you could swim there.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You really were motivated.

[Ari Shaffir]

Damn. Yeah. If you want to, you just go to a pool.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Also, you don't really have to look where is. No worries. Look where Israel is.

[Ari Shaffir]

Maps are so interesting. And see how they split up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Israel is like. That's what's nuts. You ever see the border between Egypt and Palestine? That border is nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

What do you mean?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, my God. It's the most fortified border you've ever seen in your life. You think the border between Israel and Palestine is rough?

[Ari Shaffir]

Really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

The bo. Yeah, the border between Egypt and Palestine is way harder.

[Ari Shaffir]

They do not want those people.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They do not want those people over there. You ever seen it? Rolls of barbed wire. It's crazy. Yeah, look at that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Was that just catch a baby being thrown over.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Click on that one, please. The one that says the Arab Weekly on. On the top. Yeah, right there. Look at that. Look at that. Wow. Like you ain't getting through that.

[Ari Shaffir]

What a nice place to stroll for those two guys.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Just a relaxing afternoon near the Gaza wall. Look at that. That's crazy. Sad times. Oh, the saddest

[Ari Shaffir]

the saddest peace in the Middle East.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Good luck. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Throwing nuts.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it's even more nuts now. Look what's happening in Lebanon. Now they're bombing Lebanon, too.

[Ari Shaffir]

Really?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Any of this, Israel's bombing the. Out of southern Lebanon.

[Ari Shaffir]

Lebanon?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. I was reading about this. Ryan Grimm was covering this Lebanon reporter. This reporter in Lebanon that Israel killed. They followed her with drones. They bombed a car in front of her. She ran into an abandoned building, and then they bombed the. Out of the building. And this took hours. And all the while, she was contacting, like, whoever runs Lebanon, and they were contacting Israel and saying, hey, this is. This is a reporter. And so then they got text messages between, like, she. This someone from the IDF had been saying to them, we're going to kill you. And then they got the number from her phone and contacted the person from the idf and they're saying, hey, she works for Hezbollah. And, you know, you. And you're naive. It's. It's crazy. Like, they're just openly killing journalists.

[Ari Shaffir]

You know, they did a good job. And when I was traveling is. They got it more than up here is separating Israel from Jew. They really were like, we don't have any problem with Jews, but they were like, be very staunchly, like, anti Israel. Yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, if you live in Israel, you have to do military service, right? So everyone who lives in military in Israel is a part of the military in their eyes. Like, everyone who lives in Israel has served in the military.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's interesting, though. It's like a lot of those kids and then turned into adults are, like, very against what they're doing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like an uncovered. I think, like, part of it. Like, yeah, we don't like this. I mean, half this country or more even, didn't vote for Trump, didn't vote for Biden. So they're like, well, I didn't. I don't like this. But then you still, like, you have to, like, be pro everything about this thing, even though, like, you can not like, certain things.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. The idea that, like, all Israelis have a. A single hive mind.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's crazy. That's not the case in any country ever.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's not the same in any crowd,

[Jamie Kilstein]

especially a democracy, because Israel's, like, literally the only democracy over there. Really?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. And they have parliament, too, so you have a lot of choices.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And they're trying to, like, prosecute Netanyahu while all this is going on.

[Ari Shaffir]

Who is The Israelis.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I mean, this was one of the things that most people aren't aware of, but that before October 7, there was hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in Israel protesting Netanyahu. We talked about it the other day

[Ari Shaffir]

because it's hard to protest.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They were trying to expand, but this was before the war, so they were trying to expand what they can do in terms of like, with their constitution. We talked about it. What was the exact. Jamie, do you remember the exact thing that they were disputing over? But it was expanding the power that the government has. And so people were protesting that and then all of a sudden October 7th pops off power. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then, you know, it's happened here at 9, 11. It became like, if you say anything bad now, you're like a, a traitor. Instead of just like. Well, I was already saying they have issues with, you know, police overstepping or whatever. You're like. But now you can't say that for about three years.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah, yeah. So before October 7th, Israel experienced nine months of massive, sustained protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, largely driven by opposition to proposed judicial reform. These demonstrations included hundreds of thousands of participants accused the right wing coalition of undermining democracy, weakening the Supreme Court, and attempting to interfere with Netanyahu's ongoing corruption.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, and so that's the same as here where it's not about like, are you pro gay marriage or not? Or are you pro like peace with Palestine or not? That's just people taking power. Right. And so that goes beyond the right or left and just go, no, no, that's an overstep.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, yeah, it's. But anyway, it's because it's not gonna get any better.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's not.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And they've destroyed Gaza. Gaza is just a wasteland now. I mean, someone posted recent video of Gaza, like what it looked like now, like right now they sent a drone or something to get video footage of what Gaza looks like. And it's crazy. It's crazy. It looks like they dropped a new nuke. They just did it slowly instead of dropping one nuke. They did thousands of conventional bombs and did the kind of destruction.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's interesting if you ask people how touts like polarizing. Everybody got it polarized that you couldn't just be like, any suffering's wrong, but like, yeah, I could show you a dead baby and a lot of people will go, well, what, I gotta know what their last name is first before I can tell you if I feel bad or not. Right, yeah. Instead of just like, that's. I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's really wrong about it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This is so dark. And then if you talk about like what's happening in Gaza, people say, well, October 7th shouldn't happen. Like, okay, you're right, it shouldn't have. But guess what? Those kids that live in Gaza, they didn't do October 7th. They didn't do it.

[Ari Shaffir]

So like, well done, their team. It's like what we did to Iran.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What if Iran nukes New York City? Those kids that live in the Bronx, they had nothing to do with what happened in Iran. So like, is that okay? Like, what are we talking about?

[Ari Shaffir]

This is a mess.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's nuts. It's tribal. Warfare is bananas that it's still going on.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, I was talking to people when I knew, like cousins and stuff in the military and they would have just gotten out and they were like, we're all, now this is before October 7th. It's a few years before, maybe 2018. They're like, we're talking now because we have the Internet now and we're like, this isn't sustainable and we don't want to keep doing this. We gotta start figuring out a peace thing. And then that's all, that's all gone now.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's all gone.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Not only is it all gone, but now that they've started bombing Lebanon, everybody's really terrified because they're like, well, where is this going? Cuz they're bombing Christian villages in Lebanon and there, there's video of them destroying these solar panels that these Christian villages have in Lebanon where they're just plowing over and using like tractors to take down these solar panels. Part of me goes to like, this isn't the military. Like, what are you doing?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, it still goes back to like Wesley Clark, if I got that right, where the seven countries and Iran was on there and we just hadn't gotten there yet. Oh, yeah, but that was always like, that's not a new thing. That was just in the works for a couple decades, just waiting for the time is right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, they wanted to do it within five years. It took 25.

[Ari Shaffir]

Took long. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The Wesley Clark thing is funny because you know, Dave Smith had a debate, debate with Coleman Hughes about that. And Coleman Hughes is like, like, But Wesley Clark never said he read the memo. He said someone told him about the memo. He goes, any historian would not even be able to use that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, I thought they said they had. They.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't think so. I think the way Coleman was describing it, but the reality is, okay, you. Yeah, you might be right. Maybe because he hadn't read it. Any historian would not have been able to use it in the book. But the fact that it all took place exactly how the memo stated that seems relevant.

[Ari Shaffir]

And that came out before. So you're like, hey, we're going to Iran soon. And then it's like, they did Syria. They kept trying. Syria was the best to me because when Obama was doing it, and I don't care who's in charge, they're all doing the same shit to me. But they go, we got to go in there to overthrow this dictator. And then people would just come off the whole, like, Middle Eastern war, like, no, we're done. And so they couldn't justify it. And then they go, hey, this is insurgent group, and they're going to get you out of hand. We got to go in and control them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Them.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then it's like, wait, you want to go fight the guy who's fighting against Assad? And then that ended and they go, no, we got to take down Assad. And it's like, you really seem like you guys want to go into Syria looking for any sort of excuse.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's all crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, politics is stupid. Let's move on. It's like, it is gross. Yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Your perspective is probably the healthiest. Stay out of it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Stay out of it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Leave me alone. You live my life. But the thing is, like. Like, some of it does affect your life, like this psychedelic drugs thing.

[Ari Shaffir]

Okay, so in that moment where you got maybe, hopefully shrooms legalized, you know, in an ideal world is a very rare case of someone who can actually accomplish change. And you're very higher level than most people in terms of influence, both personally

[Jamie Kilstein]

and, like, broadly, but also the individual, like him. Most people wouldn't do it that way. If I was friends with Obama, there's not a fucking chance in hell I could have gone to Obama and said, hey, dude, you know, it'd be cool if you got ibogaine legalized. It would keep all these people that are addicted. He could have done that decades ago. Everyone could have done that. They've known about ibogaine forever, and they've also known about the pill crisis forever. So all this stuff was common knowledge amongst plenty of people. I mean, John Hopkins has been doing these studies.

[Ari Shaffir]

John Hopkins has a playlist for shrooms and mdma. They make a playlist for you. They do that. You can, like, this is a good MDMA or I forget which one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Shoes playlist is it like John Hopkins, like, sanctioned it or someone who.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, no, someone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, no, no.

[Ari Shaffir]

A professor or something like that. In the research they're doing. In the psilocybin research, it was all psilocybin. Right. And not.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I think. Yeah, Hopkins was still. John Hopkins was also.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, they all kind of led the way. They have a playlist you can. You can get. It's on sp or whatever.

[Jamie Kilstein]

People have been aware of it for so long, you know, inside the John Hopkins psilocybin playlist. Wow. This is 2020, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'm always amazed when my memory turns out to not be false.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look at that guy. He looks like he's tripping. He looks like he trips. He's like an old dude's trip.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just hug people.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look at his smile. That guy's not working for insurance company.

[Ari Shaffir]

Loosen his tie.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Bill Richards. Look, he's tripped. Psychologist and researcher. They should put researcher in quote.

[Ari Shaffir]

Psychologist, researcher and former deadhead.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, I think as non verbal. A non verbal support system. Sort of like a net for a trapeze artist. If all's going well, you're not even aware the net is there. You don't even hear the music. But if you start getting anxious or if you need it, it's immediately there to provide a structure. Oh, Bill, you trip hard.

[Ari Shaffir]

When I was doing ayahuasca, this guy was like, this shaman guy was like beating a drum very lightly. And when you come out of it, whatever the slow, like, it would kind of like pull you back into it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

7 hour and 40 minute playlist. Boy, those guys go.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, I'll make sure. Put that on.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Hey, don't do that. Don't give me sorrowful songs while I'm tripping.

[Ari Shaffir]

Trying to have a bad time.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, I want to hear.

[Ari Shaffir]

I want to hear grandmother's death. Death. No, not grandma. People always ask me about mushrooms. Like, is it gonna be this emotional, like. Like spiritual thing? I'm like, that's get. That gets hyped more. You're gonna laugh with your friends. Yeah, that's the main thing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There's gonna be. I mean, it depends on the dose, right? Like a heavy dose will bring you to a very strange place.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dude, I had a best mushroom trip of all time on this trip.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Of all time.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe the first one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The Muhammad Ali of mushroom triple. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It wasn't like. It was crazy hard. It was just. They were fresh and it was just like the thoughts and it was just in places where nobody really gave a. So you didn't feel like you're like a drug addict and just like. Yeah, just seeing everything so clear. Mushrooms rule. You just see everything so clear. It kills the.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You in your brain where it kills the part.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. And so you go, like, look at this behavior. And it's same as analyzing someone else's behavior or your own. There's the same. Same.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's a part of. One of the problems that comes with living a stressful life is you get really wrapped up in yourself. Like, you're managing yourself, you're managing your thoughts, you're managing your whatever you're trying to do. And you think so much about you that a thing like that can take you out of that. And you go, oh, what am I wasting my thoughts on this for? Why am I wasting my energy on this? It's so pointless. It's not helping me at all.

[Ari Shaffir]

And you see people. I saw my father for, like, who he really is now, just like a loving, caring granddad. And they're like, oh, what a cool guy that I always saw is like, this guy I grew up with. And then just like, man. Yeah. And just like, realizing, like, I'm doing the same stuff he did, like, going, you know, starting a new life. He did the same coming to America. And it's like, wow, what a. Look at it separately from your father. Like, that's a cool guy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You talked about having your father come on this podcast to talk about his experience as a Holocaust survivor.

[Ari Shaffir]

He would.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How old is he now?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's about to be 90. Still with it, though. He's not like a feeble.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Would he do it?

[Ari Shaffir]

He would do it. He loves getting the word out.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How old was he when he was in camps?

[Ari Shaffir]

Young, single digits and maybe up to, I think, maybe released at 12. Yeah, he would do it. He would love it because he works at the Holocaust Memorial as a docent or something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And he has a tattoo and everything thing. Does he have a tattoo?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't think so. No. He wasn't in a death camp. He was in a work camp. His. I believe this is all. I believe his. My grandfather, his dad was in. Was liberated from a death camp. But, yeah, you should talk to him. He would actually love it. He loved getting the word. I've seen him make speeches before, and there's all these inner city kids from, like, Kansas City, you know, and then when they hear him talk, it's just this moment you realize, like, oh, this isn't a story. This is like, his life. Yeah. It's a Real thing like a till of the Hun. You're like. That seems like a fictional character.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Cuz they're so removed from it. And this is just at the borderline of that dude. He would. He. Yeah, you should do it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I would do it. I'd love to have him on, talk to him. It's. It's a weird time with. It's a weird time with anything that has anything to do with people being Jewish because. Yeah, they conflate Jewish people with the Israeli government, the Netanyahu government, and what they're doing in Gaza and what they're doing all the other places. And it's also, it's like there's a weird time now where people, people are enjoying questioning the numbers of people that died in the Holocaust.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's an Internet.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just kind of like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But just like, but there is some weirdness to it. And one of the weirdness to it is like there's some photos of like Auschwitz and a lot of these other. That they took after the camps were liberated and they had people, people go there and they took photos of them lot like pretending that these people were at the camps and they weren't. They were done after the fact.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But there's also tons.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was only 1 million, so. So that's okay. Somehow you want to justify it in your head.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, it's. That's where it's weird.

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know. But it's 600 people. I'd be like, right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it's, it's clearly there was a lot of people. It was. I don't know what the number is, is. But if it was 6 million or if it was 1 million or 3 million, it's like to catch people like no, no, you, you guys said it was six. Like they're also. The thing is like it's 1930s, 40s,

[Ari Shaffir]

so it's like I don't know how to. And we're, we're guessing. We don't have the, we don't have the wherewithal. And you asked somebody in the Holocaust. I go, I was only in my one camp. I can't tell you what was going on. Bergen Belsen.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But there's people that are like equally sure that it was 6 million. And then there's people that are equally sure that it was like, like 300,000 or 600,000 or whatever the they think it was. And it's like this weird argument back and forth.

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, you have to see how many Jews were in Europe before and after.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

And There should be more. It's funny, you see, like, if you have a stat like that, like separated from this, like in, as in Peru, we're hiking to Machachu. Machu, me and o'. Neal.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, we got to talk about that.

[Ari Shaffir]

And, and, and they're like, it's pouring rain. And everybody there, they're not liberal or conservative. They just go, it's been raining earlier than it should be. And they don't know about the word climate change. They just go, we're told November 1st is when you plant. After that, you're in a risk. Now this is mid October, and I don't know what's up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, there's going to be climate change. Whether human beings are here or not, that's the reality of the earth. The Earth's temperature and climate has never been static. And the real problem with climate change is not recognizing that human beings are having an adverse effect on the planet, because we certainly are in terms of pollution in particular, it release. But that people like Al Gore and a lot of these, these greenies, they're profiting off of this concept of climate change and then also using it to clamp down on people's rights.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's that too. Like, we talked about people taking money from a good cause and just like. So it's like, Exactly. For every good thing, they'll be like, somebody's going to misuse it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

100 gets conflated. But then it becomes a thing where like, like, you know, when I had Bernie Sanders on the podcast, he was like talking about, I was like. And I said to him, I go, problem with climate change is not just that the climate is changing because it always has, but people are having effect on it, because they definitely are, but it's that there's a lot of money in this whole concept of climate change.

[Ari Shaffir]

Fake recycling that was never done.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Good ground landfills and then landfills.

[Ari Shaffir]

But it's better than nothing. Like, no, it's equal to nothing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it's all. Not only that, but you made people feel like they were doing good by throwing their water bottles.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's such an odd. It's just, it's. It's all kind of crazy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But we're gross.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, people are gross. But it was cool to see people's perspectives that were like, away from political and just their observations about stuff.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Recognize that things change.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Sub Saharan Africa used to be lush Greenlands. I mean, they find, they find whale bones in sub Saharan Africa in the desert. In the desert. They find whale skeletons in the desert. Desert Way before there were cars. Right, okay. Way before there were plastic and power plants. So the, the Earth's climate has never been static. But the, the, the Machu Picchu thing is I, I really want to go there. My friend Luke Caverns, he's been on the podcast before. He's, he's studied husband three times. Has he really?

[Ari Shaffir]

But as a kid. That's what I meant, like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

So they're like it's a one hour flight from Liam Cinema and then just take the train. But like. Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty wild. So you're saying it wasn't even the Aztecs? Is that what you told me?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well that's, yeah, well that's the Incas. Yeah. It wasn't. They, they don't think it was. They think the initial monolithic structures were, or megalithic structures were an earlier, previously unknown civilization. Because the size and scope of their structure, the way they build it, and Graham Hancock has gone over this as well, is so much different than the stuff that's on top of it. So what happens is you have this old stuff that's enormous stones that are cut like jigsaws, right?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And almost like it's melted. Like the way it looks, it almost

[Ari Shaffir]

like put a piece of paper through it after 200 years of like breakdowns.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Way more than 200 years. It's thousands of years. But the thing that's really nutty about it is that design is because when they have earthquakes that way it won't fall off. Right. So it disperses the energy better as opposed to just stacking stuff on top of each other, that stuff falls. But when it's all interlocked in these weird forms like that, that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. So Che Guevara talks about a little bit where he goes, so ever Cusco is the gem of, of South America. It was the, it was the border of, of the Andes where people would come in and do trade and everything. And you see this and the, the Christians would come in, take over and build like facades on it and put a cross on top, top to be like, look what we did. We're more dominant than these people. And then an earthquake could come, facade would fall and this would just remain

[Jamie Kilstein]

over and over and over again and over again.

[Ari Shaffir]

These aren't even squares. Look at that. It's a Tetris.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, it's so cool. And that was on purpose. They did that because that what would survive. But if you look at the stuff above it, that's the stuff that the Incas made. So the Incas made this stuff. It's like it's all just stacked. It's not as sophisticated and also not as large because they didn't have the technology. Whatever the. These people had, that was how big that rock is. Huge. I mean, hundreds and thousands of tons. I mean, these things are enormous. The really crazy one is the Lebanon ones. In Lebanon.

[Ari Shaffir]

I've been there. Wait, no, have you. I'm Jordan. Jordan I'm talking about is the.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So in Lebanon they have these massive stone. What are they called, Jamie? The trilithon stones. So there's these stones that are like more than a thousand tons and they're like several meters above the ground place. And then on top of them you have these Roman structures.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So if you see like there, like that click that where you had your cursor. Yeah. Look at the size of that guy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And look at the size of that stone. Like. And then you see the stuff on top of it is smaller. It's not as sophisticated. And then you had the Roman. Now the thing about the Romans is Romans had meticulous record keepers keeping and they talked about all the construction of all the different things they had. They don't even mention those stones. So they don't mention how they meet. No, I don't think it was them. I think it was a previous civilization. Look at that thing.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, bro, I'm about to. You know NASCAR lines.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yes.

[Ari Shaffir]

Okay. Oh, yeah, I saw him.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, did you?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Flew over them, bro.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How weird is that?

[Ari Shaffir]

They're so big. You can't. The pictures won't do it justice because you'll see like a road they didn't know because from the ground level you can't see any of it. And so they just build these roads through the desert.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Desert.

[Ari Shaffir]

And so you can see a car sometimes. Like, so that's for perspective. And you're like, it's this dot on this giant monkey in the middle of the desert, Right. For however many hundreds of years.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. They don't even know how long.

[Ari Shaffir]

They're crazy weird. And they're all like signals to something. There's all these theories on what it is.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The sky. You have to see him from above.

[Ari Shaffir]

You can only see him from above.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

Pilots would go over there and then somebody's like, what's that? I go, oh, yeah, we don't know. We just kind of go over.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, they found a bunch of them now because of AI, you know, they've like scanned the areas and found a bunch of previously undiscovered nascal lines.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. And the weird thing about is that's also the place where they find these people with elongated skulls. They find like these weird skulls that have additional capacity. So they have like 30 more capacity. And they, they don't have the same lines in their skulls that we have. Like when we're babies, you know, we have these. What are they called? Sagittal. I forget what the lines are called called sagittal. These lines that we have in our skull, you know, like your skull's not just one piece, Right. It's like there's a bunch of pieces.

[Ari Shaffir]

You tie them off so they get longer as a sign of like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, but some of these skulls don't have the same structure as ours. They're human skulls, but they're longer, they have more capacity, the 30 larger capacity. And they don't have those lines that we have have. So it's like, what was that? Were there different kinds of humans back then? Because I doubt were there. Were they flying around? Were they flying around and making these structures? Were they responsible for Saxe Juaman and Machu Picchu and all these other places? And they just died off. And all we have left is like some skulls that we can't totally explain.

[Ari Shaffir]

We don't have the means to explain it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. Because if it was 20,000 years ago or 30,000 years ago, whatever it was was that these people were ruling back then, what would be left? Nothing. Nothing. Very little.

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, you look at Anor Wat where it's like, that's crazy. Yeah. If you didn't see it, it's shocking any of it remained.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, well, Ankor Wat's crazy. And how about that other one in India where the entire temple's carved out of one stone?

[Ari Shaffir]

Or, or the one in, in Jordan? The. See, where's the. What is those? Play the Indiana Jones one. What's that called? That's where I went with my brother.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. What is that called?

[Ari Shaffir]

See, what is it, Jimmy?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Petra.

[Ari Shaffir]

Petra.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Petra.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's. It's nuts. You come through this canyon and it's just in a mountain. A giant three story temple that is just carved out of the mountain. It wasn't added to. Right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And where's the stone? Where you what you put the stones. What you do?

[Ari Shaffir]

That view coming out of the middle one. Coming out of that cavern and seeing it after about an hour hike.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's crazy. Crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

They don't even. You have to see a human. See how small that person is in the middle.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That is so crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

So, like, what?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. Have you ever heard of Darren Kuyu?

[Ari Shaffir]

No.

[Jamie Kilstein]

In Turkey. This is crazy. You want to hear this one?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a place or a person?

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's. It's a place. So I think they found this because someone was doing, like, construction on a house.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And they found a path. Oh, so this is what it was. So a guy kept losing his chickens. They would go through a hole, and they would never come out. So this guy was like, well, where the fuck are these chickens going? So they broke down the wall to figure out where the chickens go, and they found an underground city that can hold 20,000 people.

[Ari Shaffir]

Turkey.

[Jamie Kilstein]

With many, many levels. Like, many levels deep into the ground. Wow. It's bananas. Wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I watched a documentary. Now you see.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, we see the way where you. Could you please go back to that one image with the houses? Yeah, like that. Like. So this guy. It was, like, behind a wall in the house. So these chickens would go into the hole and they would just disappear here. So he's like, where's my chickens? So the guy starts digging around to try to figure out where the chickens go. And they found this. And I want to say they found this in, like, the 20th century.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Like, I think it's the 20s. I just saw 1920s, like, 29, maybe.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

So, no, they forgot.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nobody knew about it. Nobody knew who made it. There was no record of it. And it. It's so big, it can house 20,000 people in there.

[Ari Shaffir]

What was it for?

[Jamie Kilstein]

No one knows, right? No one knows when. No one knows who. No one knows nothing. There's other ones they found in China. They found this insane one in China that also has no records. It's enormous, like, enormous caverns with giant columns. It's all carved out of the stone.

[Ari Shaffir]

They.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They moved millions of tons of rocks out of there. No record. No one knows where the stone went.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'm staying with the Lacondans. Mayans, whatever. And we were on a hike, and there was this little, like, abandoned temple just the size of this room. And so the guide was like, so now there's a tunnel in here to, like, the main temple. It's about a mile and a half away. And there's a tunnel where you can go through it. It takes a couple hours to walk. And he goes, my brother, once, he goes, I'll never go back. It's so frightening. And there's pumas around, and you don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Puma's in the tunnel.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. You're like, you can't see shit. He goes, it's a bad place. But it's this long underground tunnel that was made however long ago. What?

[Jamie Kilstein]

This is the one in China, one of the caves. So this is one of these caves in China, by the way. No record, no historical record of when it was created or who created it. And this is another one that they found in 1992. They found it. Four farmers and Longyou found the caves and they drained the water from five small ponds in their village. The ponds turned out to be five large man made caverns. Caverns. Further investigation revealed 19 more caverns nearby. They've been determined to be more than 2,000 years old. And their construction is not recorded in any historical documents. Like look. How crazy. Please show some of those images.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Yeah, it's the only one on this page.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Bananas. So they're just guessing that it's 2,000 years old. They don't know.

[Ari Shaffir]

Right, right. They're just like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Because there's no record, there's no record of it. But it's bananas. And they've also those carvings they think are post.

[Ari Shaffir]

Later people came in post discovery. That's their way of doing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Because you see how like those lines on the walls, that's how everything looks. It's just those carved straight lines. And it looks like the other stuff was like more modern that they think

[Ari Shaffir]

those lines are so that the erosion wouldn't hurt it as much.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know. I mean that might have been how they did it. They might have had some sort of a device that they carved the stone out with. But the thing is it's like where's

[Ari Shaffir]

this on a map? Show me where, where long you is on a map. Yeah, I want to visit a lot of China. There's some, a lot of places in there that I'm like don't know about.

[Jamie Kilstein]

China's a big ass.

[Ari Shaffir]

Back out, back out. China's so big.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Long new caverns.

[Ari Shaffir]

Keep going back, keep going back. Context. Oh my God. That's pretty deep in there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Good luck.

[Ari Shaffir]

Good luck.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's near Wuhan, look.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Take a train to Wuhan. Catch a, catch a bug.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, go eat some armadillo pangolin. That's how you got leprosy, eating armadillo and pangolin. Really not supposed to eat those things.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Go back to the images, please. The images are nuts, man. It's like what, what were these people doing? Like why, who, who made this?

[Ari Shaffir]

I love standing in a place like that and just like you just instantly get connected to the, to the history of it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Could you imagine it's 1992. And you're just draining a pond. You're a farmer and then you drain the pond and you go, oh, there's like a cave in here.

[Ari Shaffir]

Hop to find some nickels.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And you go, and you see this ship and no one knows who made it. No. And China again, China has extensive historical records because China has existed for thousands and thousands of years. It's one of the few countries that's essentially been just China for 5,000 plus years. Bananas, man.

[Ari Shaffir]

Aquarium for real dragons.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Keep it somewhere.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, I mean who made it and how did they make it? Like how did they do that?

[Ari Shaffir]

What purpose?

[Jamie Kilstein]

How did they make that 2,000 plus years? And by saying 2,000 it's like you're just 2,000 means.

[Ari Shaffir]

So there's a, there's a Joan Didion or a piece on, on El Salvador from a long time ago. And she goes, they don't use numbers the way we use numbers. They say 50. It means a bunch.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, like 72 virgins.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, I mean just a bunch.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like bro, he, he went there a million times.

[Ari Shaffir]

Tons of tons of like what is a ton that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh bro, I smoke tons of joints.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Break it down.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So Perplexity, our AI sponsor says no one knows for certain who created the Longu Caves. Archaeologists agree they are man made and probably over 2000 years old. But there's no record of their builders or patrons. That's crazy, dude. That is so crazy. Oh. Pottery and other finds inside date roughly to the late Quinn or Western han period, around 200 BCE. They were excavated at or before that time. But the thing is that potter but that pottery could have been someone who just left pottery later. Like thou. It's like if you leave behind a cell phone in Egypt and 5,000 years from now people say, oh well this is an iPhone 16. This must be from.

[Ari Shaffir]

That means it has to be at least that old or older.

[Jamie Kilstein]

At least that old or older. So it's at least 2,000 plus years old. But how crazy is that? There's no known records.

[Ari Shaffir]

Should go in quick and just bury some like from a long time ago, get some artifacts and just leave it in there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How much like that is still out there in other parts of the world where they don't know about it?

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, it's like no one's tunnel that the Mayan guy said he was like, yeah, no one knows. No one. He goes, me and my, my friends know about it. So it's just like everywhere.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, we were talking about the Aztecs, about how the Aztecs and this Is another thing that I found out through perplexity when I was just. I was writing this thing about Mexico and about how crazy the history of Mexico is. And you know that the Spaniards came over with essentially like 12 muskets and took over the whole country. But when they, when the Aztecs were living in these temples, they didn't build them. They called them the place where the gods were born. So they found them. So there's a previous civilization that like Teochetlan and all these other beautiful pyramids and temples. They don't know who fucking made them.

[Ari Shaffir]

Okay?

[Jamie Kilstein]

So they don't know who made them.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

That cave in Vietnam was found in 1991.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, the. I saw the 60 Minutes thing on that. Did you see that?

[Ari Shaffir]

Look at that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That dude from 60 Minutes, like a dude and a lady from 60 Minutes went and visited this cave and I was like, that looks haunted. As one cool thing about something like 60 Minutes that they would do something like that. Cuz it's a long journey.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You have to fly in, drive a long distance, then hike along.

[Ari Shaffir]

Aren't any. Nothing's there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You can fit skyscrapers. Inside of these caves they have their own ecosystems. Like there's clouds in there, it probably rains inside the cave.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's insects. There's animals that live in these caves that have over time lost their ability to see cuz they didn't need it. So their, their hearing goes up, their sight goes down there like bugs in like Thailand and like Sapong and places like that where it's like, oh yeah. These places, these, these animals only exist here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They hear you breathe.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

There's a salad man. And Barton Creek Springs.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Special salamander. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Really? It only lives there.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Hippie salamander that got mixed with weird people swimming in the creek.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

They survive on chicks with arm hair. There's always been able to survive here.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Hippie menstrual cycles.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I was doing bottom of the barrel last night and somebody brought up that there's like, there's nude beaches at Lake Travis. And I'm like, what is it like Barton Springs? No, no, no, no.

[Ari Shaffir]

Martin's topless.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

When you take a. Well, maybe, but yeah. Is it when you take one of

[Jamie Kilstein]

those boat rides out, they show the bro.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's noise.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Noise.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, noise. It's noise.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Hippie tits.

[Ari Shaffir]

Hippie. Some of them were gross hippie tits, but some of them were like real tits. Dude.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Real ones.

[Ari Shaffir]

Influencers go there too.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh. Like girls have dude too much ayahuasca and they wear wooden Beads and they want their tits out, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

So I was in. I was in Patagonia where I was

[Jamie Kilstein]

Me Hollow Park, 4.6 stars. That's a lot.

[Ari Shaffir]

I was asking people. It was a. It was a rafting thing. And I was like, who's the worst? Worst? I always try to do this, especially at comedy clubs too. Who's the worst person you've ever had here?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right?

[Ari Shaffir]

So there's like, which country? Which people are the worst? And they go, I don't know. I'm like, listen, I'm from Jews, so you can. It's Jews, right? I mean, they want freebies for sure, but like, we're trying to get which. Which country source. He goes, well, the worst overall, though, is influencers. And they have no country, but they make everything about them. They make you pause too long to take their shots. They make you get out of their shot. Oh, yeah, we're all just trying to raft. They think they were there for this. Them. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

One of the influences got arrested in Korea, Johnny Somali. Do you know who that guy is? He was in Korea and apparently they have some statue that is about. I think it's something about sex slavery or something like that. So he was like kissing the statue and being rude to people and they just sentenced him to. He did a bunch of. Over there. They sent him to six months of hard labor.

[Ari Shaffir]

Wow.

[Jamie Kilstein]

In Korea.

[Ari Shaffir]

We need some of that here for influencers. Quit doing selfie talking on the. While you're walking. You're not a black lady. You don't get to talk to your phone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Black ladies get to talk to their phone.

[Ari Shaffir]

They love speakerphone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Why do they?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It used to.

[Ari Shaffir]

Black ladies, like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And it's like, why do you think they like that?

[Ari Shaffir]

Why did they like it? They want everyone to hear that conversation. Maybe because their nails will cut up their face if they bring it too close. I'm trying to think of possible reasons

[Jamie Kilstein]

is weird where like certain cultures gravitate towards certain behavior and activities.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's new racism. It's fun because it's like, this isn't in the books. This is a brand new observation.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Speakerphone is like. I remember being outside of Roscoe's chicken and Waffles and saying like, how many. How come so many black guys are on speakerphone? And people like, that's racist. I'm like, no, it's not.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's an embrace. Observation.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Observing.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'm not mad at them.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, I don't care.

[Ari Shaffir]

Why.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, why is it worse that I hear both sides of the conversation versus one side. Like, if someone's just talking on the phone, why is that less offensive than someone talking?

[Ari Shaffir]

Why do the Hidic Jews always talk on flip phones all the time? And you're like, there's something up or what? Yeah, there's some where it's like, why did the people used to ask me that when I would do Jew? And as when I was doing the Jew hour, Building it so they ask questions, doing a check drops. I'd be like, ask questions and I'll build my material that way.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, that's smart.

[Ari Shaffir]

But one of them was like, why do they all wear matching clothes? Their daughters? Or like, if the one's 10, one's 8, why do they wear match watching stuff? That's the only one I couldn't figure out until I finally figured it out. It's two for one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Sales United threatens to kick off passengers who don't use headphones.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, well, that's because people are, like, listening to, like, loud YouTube videos. Right next, bro.

[Ari Shaffir]

All over South America, it is scroll Instagram videos loudly. There's no even thought. We were on an overnight bus once, and there was a guy listening to, like, best Hollywood screaming. And it was like, dude, we're sleeping.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, God.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's. It's crazy. They just don't do it. And you want to be like, be quiet. But they're like, why? It's not part of our culture.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's like the Dominican pool hall.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, exactly. This is how we do it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That is used to the chaos. It is weird that, like, people get used to a certain amount of chaos,

[Ari Shaffir]

you know, and that's just normal.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

New York is a normal. Jackhammers, like, right. Nothing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. If you live in New York, you're totally accustomed to. Oh, that was what I wanted to send you, Jamie.

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Maybe I did send it to you the other day. Day. About where they figured out that there's a part of your brain that recognizes when birds aren't chirping.

[Ari Shaffir]

Ooh.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And you. You kind of freak out.

[Ari Shaffir]

Like, your brain should be some background noise.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, if birds aren't chirping, it generally means that predators are nearby.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, got it. Their brain has a circuit. Doesn't know you live in a city. Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing right now in this room.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's on the circuit. Predates primates. What?

[Ari Shaffir]

Whoa.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continually as a predator detection system for roughly 200 million years. Birds stop singing when something larger moves. Through their territory. For most the mammalian history, the forest full of song meant that no large predator was nearby. And the cessation of sound was the warning your nervous system never updated.

[Ari Shaffir]

This software allowed quiet like thumbs up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants. Six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size. 6 minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same. The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no regular contact with nature. The brain still ran the check.

[Ari Shaffir]

I listen, I'm a hippie, I live in New York and it's like, I gotta get to nature once in a while or I'll go crazy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's why we have to protect the parks.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's why we have to protect the parks.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We have to. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we're protecting the park.

[Ari Shaffir]

Tomorrow we are.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yes. It's back.

[Ari Shaffir]

This new guy, listen, I'm a one issue voter. I'm not a voter at all. But yeah, and it's, it's this, we saved another park. Elizabeth Street Gardens, classic old park. And they go, no, the other guy was like, we got to tear this down for low income housing. And then Lower east side in the East Village, that's a community oriented place they take care of on the own. Always have. They made the, it's a parks district because they were like these buildings collapsed and they're just like, let's build it into parks. And then the city when it came back, they're like, let's take those back. Like no, no, no, that we made these. East River Park's massive but illiterate gardens is tiny. And the other guy, the black guy, whatever his name was, Eric Adams. He goes, I'm going to protect that park and I'm going to protect all the park. Parks got nicer. They, they redid them all and they painted all the pension, I like them. And, and he goes, okay, so this community goes, we will find you another place to build low income housing. And they did, they had this whole platform and they go, we can do it on this block down the street there and there. It's actually more houses than you were planning on building. Okay. And now this new guy goes, no, we're, we're gonna raise that to the ground. And like no, no, we did it. We found another place.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I thought he was for.

[Ari Shaffir]

They keep trying to get him to like just say you're gonna protect it. And he's pretty much like, I to want. I won't, I won't. Elizabeth Street Gardens Is fucking gone if I have my say. Really? Yeah. And I'm like, dude, come on. You're supposed to be of the people. What is the end single issue voter. I don't know about the rest. You got to protect that park.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So do you think that there's some sort of a financial interest someone's getting.

[Ari Shaffir]

Someone's always getting this. Someone's always getting that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But you would not think it would be him. He's the democratic socialist.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's a non capitalist reason why green spaces are important. Important.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It doesn't bring in money to try to up with this Central Park. They try to this one up Zilker. Yeah. With underground like garages and stuff and like totally redoing it. The people won. So it didn't happen. But like there is a thing that helps all of our level of life level.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Central park is a great idea.

[Ari Shaffir]

It would never do that now if it wasn't already done.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, I would. We were talking about this with Brian Simpson. I was like, if I lived in New York City, if something happened and I had to do Jre from New York City.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I would have to live near the park because I would have to have my dog. I'm not going to get rid of my dog.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So if I'd have to take. I just have to like have a place where I 100% were able to take. I'd have a routine where I'm taking him to the park every day.

[Ari Shaffir]

Social park rules. And you see somebody playing saxophone and you feel like you're in a Woody Allen movie, bro.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Central Park's incredible. It's so big too. When you stay in a hotel that like looks over the park, you really get a sense of the scope. This, the size of the it fly over scale of it is incredible. It's so. And by the way, they would love to sell that off.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And just start stacking it up. Make it look like China, you know, like one of those big cities that they have spaces.

[Ari Shaffir]

They are important to our way of life.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. It's good for your dome. Obviously it's good for the mind.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's healthy. But even Central park, it's like it's not as good as like real wheels.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Central park will buy me two days of central sanity. I gotta get to the actual woods and then I get a week or two.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Central park will balance you out. Yeah, it'll balance you out. Like it's way better than no. And it seems like people are cooler there. Like every time I've Been in Central park, people seem, like, a little nicer. Like. Like, if you run into people on Broadway, they don't seem as nice as people that you run into in Central Park.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's not this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's also that thing with, like, hey, no smoking in here. Like, I'm really sorry. And then you put it on. I'll light it up as soon as you're gone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But, like, you can't smoke in Central Park.

[Ari Shaffir]

Nothing really. You do but weed. But cigarettes, I get more mad at. But also, like, yeah, if I got a cigar and I'm with a friend, I'm smoking.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. I could see how that would annoy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Sure. But also chill.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But you can walk down the street in New York and smoke a cigarette, right?

[Ari Shaffir]

Or joint.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, right.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Still weird to me when I see a black guy on a stoop rolling a joint, and I'm like, what are you doing? That's legal? You're gonna go to jail. But it's. Right. I know. It's totally.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, now it's different. Different nationwide because Trump just changed it to schedule three again. This is something that Obama could have done, Biden could have done. Trump done it, Trump one could have done it. Yeah. And now it's schedule three, which is still not good. I mean, it should be moving on, just like alcohol, but at least it's getting close. It's getting close.

[Ari Shaffir]

Did I had moments out there of nature where, like, you're in the middle of nowhere and you really do feel rejuvenated like that, where you're like, you're not even. It's not even hiking culture, so. So it's like you're not passing anyone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

For hours and hours and hours.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You're at peace.

[Ari Shaffir]

You're just at peace.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And whatever that thing is that they've just discovered about birds, there's a similar thing that your body recognizes when you're actually in real nature. It feels different. There's no cell phone signal.

[Ari Shaffir]

You know anything about grounding?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yes.

[Ari Shaffir]

What's your take on it?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, Huberman believes it's a real thing. And so I always trust Huberman because he's very objective about all the skills.

[Ari Shaffir]

Electromagnetic waves coming off the ground that you need to get touch with. It does feel good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

When I take the dogs out in the yard and I walk around barefoot, it feels good. I mean, I'm just judging it based on how it makes me feel.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's like that word tree hugger got a bad rap, but it's like it comes from, like, touch that they're in the ground. So you're connected to the.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Probably comes from people that were tripping balls. Cuz if you're tripping balls, those trees hug you back.

[Ari Shaffir]

I've been there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, those trees hug you back. They talk to you, put your face. Hello, Ari.

[Ari Shaffir]

You could feel the cells.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I am in Oak tree. I've been here for 300 years. I've been here before this was America.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, it's pretty wild when I go

[Jamie Kilstein]

to the mountains, when especially like the elk hunting mountains, because it's so. It's so hard to get there. When you get there, there's no cell phone service. And when you're up there, you feel different. You just feel different. You feel better.

[Ari Shaffir]

You really do feel more relaxed. My brain was firing in a way that it hadn't fired in so long. Long. It was just like all the. The holding you down just like pulled off. And after not very much time, it was like just thoughts, creative thoughts were just like pouring out of me.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So you, in the six months you were gone, no social media.

[Ari Shaffir]

No, no social media. I took. I took YMH's on a piece of paper, a couple people from YMH's emails. I got two months ahead on my ads and my podcast. Podcast on youn Be Tripping. So I'm like, you guys are set for two months. You don't need me. And then after.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So did you record a bunch of episodes in advance a year?

[Ari Shaffir]

I did my work.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, my God, that's crazy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, they're all evergreen episodes.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How did you do that?

[Ari Shaffir]

Worked. I, 1 worked hard. 2 loved hearing about travel. I love it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

So, like, it wasn't much work for me to come in and be like, tell me about Cambodia. Cambodia. Tell me about Thailand. Tell me about Taiwan. Tell me about. Right, you know, Uruguay.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, that's how I feel about podcasting in general.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, you like it? You'll have here or there. Like, this guy was sucked. I wish I should have stayed home. But yeah, generally, like, that's really interesting.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

So I love it and I just got way ahead. It's funny, when I like Danny Polishek, I put out an episode, he goes, did we do it like two years ago? Like, I wasn't time yet. I don't know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Or I'll save it for if a comic has a special. Like, let's just record it now. In nine months, you'll have a special.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How many do you have?

[Ari Shaffir]

Ben tanked through July still.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Whoa.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, that's great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So how many did you do a week?

[Ari Shaffir]

Sometimes none. Sometimes. Sometimes like six or seven. I was very.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, really?

[Ari Shaffir]

You'd be tripping, dude.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I was.

[Ari Shaffir]

I. I see every mistake I made for the skeptic tank, and I was like, let's avoid that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, what kind of mistakes are you making?

[Ari Shaffir]

So, like, minimum of effort on my part technologically. So I. YMH is my Jamie.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right?

[Ari Shaffir]

Here's the footage handle, by the way.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Settle down. Because they're not.

[Ari Shaffir]

They're my version of James.

[Jamie Kilstein]

This is the only. This is the goat.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, I have 15 people doing one Jamie job.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, that's the problem. Like, when people talk about, like, who should I hire? I'm like, well, I have one guy. I don't know what to tell you. You need a guy on the spectrum.

[Ari Shaffir]

But. Yeah, but I did. I did that. I just kept. Sometimes I'd be like, do two a day for four straight days. And any comic who goes, hey, I'm sorry, I'm busy. I'm like, buddy, let's reschedule. This isn't supposed to be stressful, right? Let's do it. When you have time. There's no chill, no big deal.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's what it is. Do it.

[Ari Shaffir]

And. And when you're ahead, you can afford a week with nothing. And it wasn't like, I gotta find someone. We gotta do this now. Ah, that's out. Yeah, that's out. All the music choices I used to make, I'm like, that's a lot of work for.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, well, the music thing is. The problem is, like, you get flagged now. Like, you used. We used to be able to play music on YouTube all the time, and now everything gets flagged. You got to be real careful. We used to play songs almost every episode.

[Ari Shaffir]

Full song. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

When there was nothing. When. When the show made zero Wild West.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was so fun. You're actually making a fun thing. It was so out.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Blah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's a little more corporate now, which is sad, but also fine. It helps people a lot more now. But, man, podcasting was just do whatever the you want.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, we were at the early, early days. Like, when I started this thing, it was 2009. It's almost 20 years old, which is so nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

Have you figured out a way to monetize it yet?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Not yet. I'm working on it. I was. I think I'm going to sell rubber.

[Ari Shaffir]

You were for a bit. You were for a bit bit. And you're like, that was my first only sponsor. I don't need another one. We're good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It Was funny because Sam Harris was like, one of the. His requests when he first did my podcast. Wouldn't. Wouldn't let me do an ad for the Fleshlight. I said, okay, okay, it doesn't matter. Like, it's not like it's paying a lot of money. It was just fun. More than anything.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. But so I would. I would wait. So after two months, I go, hey, I need the next months of ads. And I would say one day I would just do all the ads on the bumper. Like, this guy's got a new special. Here's his tour dates. I'd find a waterfall or something, and I would do it in a fun place.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. I'm just like, let's do it fun. If I can do remote, let's be remote. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

How did you do it? Do you do it video as well?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. IPhone. So just Jamie told me this a lot. My first trip to South Southeast Asia. I was like, hey, I need a pocket camera. Like, what's the best? And he was like, bro, you're not going to hear this. It's the iPhone.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's the best one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Or a galaxy. Like any modern cell phone.

[Ari Shaffir]

But.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, any modern cell phone. The video is fucking incredible.

[Ari Shaffir]

And stabilizers.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. The video stabilization is amazing. And all you do is you set it up on a little tripod and it'll go for fucking hours.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. So I'll put it on a tree far away. I did one for a Danny Brown episode in, like, Sucre, Bolivia, in front of the statue of Sucre. Oh, wow. And it's just like, you guys were in Bolivia. That was everywhere.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Dude, I was. I saw an inauguration for the first president they had in 20 years. Where? In Sucre, in Bolivia.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Whoa.

[Ari Shaffir]

They had the old guy who was

[Jamie Kilstein]

running things for 20 years.

[Ari Shaffir]

Years, okay? A crazy dude that everyone hated. He said, farming is more important than industry here. So we should give the farmers two votes per person, and the cities get one. Now, they also run the media there. So everyone in the. In the farmlands, in the. In the, you know, the heartland, they didn't see any of the problems.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

City. So they'll go, I don't know. Everything on the radio says, the guy's doing a great job. Let's vote him in again. He's doing great. I listen to the radio, the guy's doing a great job, and everyone in the city is like, oh, no, he's lying. So everything went to shit. 20 years. Like, well, let's turn on the radio again. Let's turn on like Trump. Trump news and see what Trump is saying about Trump. It's going to be pretty good, right? Oh, yeah, there I am.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is this the video? Oh, wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

I pretend to be talking my cell phone because it's so embarrassing. So I pretend to be talking my phone, but I just have a, a cordless mic.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Is Danny still sober?

[Ari Shaffir]

I think he's back on we. But like, yeah, he's off. He's off.

[Jamie Kilstein]

The alcohol was the issue.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Last time we did a podcast, he got obliterated.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's, he's, he's sober.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Good for him.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's doing great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Bolivia. What is there like, it was always Bolivian marching powder was what When I was a kid, what do people would call cocaine.

[Ari Shaffir]

Interesting. The salt flats were really cool there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just like miles and miles of salt floor fields. Oh, there's me and o' Neill in Peru.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Look at you guys with your stupid hats on.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. I would just try to find weird spots and like, I don't know. Let's just film something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Why are you wearing those hats?

[Ari Shaffir]

Where's Peru? Those are the alpaca hats that keep you warm.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, I, I went hunting my first time hunting. I wore those hats.

[Ari Shaffir]

They're great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And Steve Ranella was saying, that's a very left, left wing hat. I'm like, why, why? Why is it left wing? It's warm.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. What?

[Jamie Kilstein]

So I don't know about your hat. Like, what's wrong with back up. Leave it alone. I'm about to kill something.

[Ari Shaffir]

Steve, chill. I'm about to murder something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I killed that deer with that, my left wing hat on.

[Ari Shaffir]

But that's all I would do. I just weigh in once in a while, get my months worth of stuff and then go back to disappearing. And I'm telling you, buddy, my brain was so alive. I, I would just like. You just don't realize what you're dealing with responsibility wise all the time. And then when you have none, it's like you could just kind of be yourself. I came up with this whole, my storytelling shows out. I came with this whole, like how to frame it all, how to do everything. I had a vision of like this prologue that I want to bridge the gap. It's called the End. It's out now.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And this is. And then did you film all that with your mom's house studios as well?

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They might be the only group like that that's actually good.

[Ari Shaffir]

Tom was like, how much do you have, Mike? I have about 80% of it. He goes, I'll put in the rest. I'll supply all the. All the people you need to make it happen. And then he's not a network. He's Saga, and he's a dirtbag. So he's like, say whatever you want. There's no censoring when it's Segura, you know?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, it's also like, Tom has made so much money that he's out. You know what I mean? He'll do whatever the he wants.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You can't stop him. He's going to do whatever he wants now.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, nice. Look at all these episodes. Ms. Pat the Stephano. Look at that.

[Ari Shaffir]

Duncan did a great one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

Bobby Shane.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Shane Bobby Kelly. Big J. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

We made the show again. And then this prologue, it's something. I had a vision of this on that mushroom trip.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

About how to frame, like, what happened to this not happening? And what is this thing now? And how to, like, go through it? And then. Then I talked to a bunch of artists while I was gone, and some made pictures. And this guy. This guy, William Child, he actually did a Danny Brown video. I don't want to ruin this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Where'd you film these?

[Ari Shaffir]

The box in New York City. Place where Chappelle would have his comedian ball.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Let's get that gay outfit.

[Ari Shaffir]

The gay outfit Joe is from. Do you remember a show called this Is Not Happening? Yes. Completely legally unrelated to this new show. You can say whatever you want, but I cannot. But that was a comedian telling stories in a strip club. This is a strip club with comedian telling stories. The first year, they go, hey, you gotta wear the same outfit every day. And I go, no, that's fake. They go, no, but we gotta mix and match days, so we gotta do it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, why is anybody gonna tune out? Because they see.

[Ari Shaffir]

No, it'll be like, it's weird, or suddenly you're hosting a different thing. So I'd start wearing ridiculous suits I made in Hong Kong, you know?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then my final year, I had this Indian outfit picked out that I went and sourced in LA and had this cool Indian outfit.

[Jamie Kilstein]

All right, now it's cool. I thought it was gay, and I

[Ari Shaffir]

saved it for seven or eight years. That show got taken away from me. I was like, I'm sa. If I ever do this again, I'm wearing this outfit out of respect to. To overcoming.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Those days were very fascinating. The. The. The days where Comedy Central is trying to force you into doing a Comedy Central special, but you had a deal with Netflix, and even though it was completely Legal and contractually legal for you to do a comedy special with Netflix. Netflix. Comedy Central was strong arming you into doing it on Comedy Central and canceled your show because you wouldn't do a special with them. So you had a successful show on what? People want to know how gross Hollywood can get.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Ari had a successful show that was doing very well on Comedy Central, and they canceled it because he wouldn't do a comedy special.

[Ari Shaffir]

Because I made. Paid for my. It was one of the early ones. Paid for my own special. And then so I got to figure out where it's going. Going. And they go, it should be here. And I go, no, no, I don't think it should. It's also. It was a double special, and it was like, it needs to be on a streamer more than a network. And then I was like, no, I'm going to Netflix. And. Yeah. And then they were like, let's go blackmail then. It's crazy. I get it from their perspective.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, I don't.

[Ari Shaffir]

They're like, hey, we can't be losing power. And they never really. They always thought it was an open mic, but it's.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It was not losing power because the reality is that would just bring more people to the common Central.

[Ari Shaffir]

And Netflix back then was so much bigger to do a special. When I did that 2017 special on Netflix, I was the mayor of New York for, like, three weeks. Everywhere I go, I bike at a red light. Three people would recognize you. It was a different time for specials then. And of course, that was the biggest thing. I'm gonna do that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Well, there's. It's still pretty big. Netflix is.

[Ari Shaffir]

It's still pretty big, but not Jew comic specials. They picked it up.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, that's right. They picked up Jew.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. It's on Netflix right now.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

But. Yeah. And so people ask me with this show, like, why don't you go to Netflix? Or like, I'm like, dude, networks killed me.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Not only that, I don't want to. Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Just go straight to the people on this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Why do it? It's like, there's no reason to at this point. Especially, like, Comedy Central doesn't even exist anymore. That's what's nuts.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was a wild time. You said you would host for free.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

I was on the phone with you crying. I was, like, hearing it that they're taking.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Tell them I will host it for free. Because you were going to take out a loan to pay off all this, all the credit crew, because all the crew had signed on for, you know, X amount of episodes. And it was going to cost them money. And you like, I'm trying to figure out a way to keep this on the air. I go tell Comedy Central I will host it for free.

[Ari Shaffir]

You were already. It was 2017. This podcast was already going.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, yeah, it was huge by then. But it was number one in 2019 is when it started being number one. But it was probably.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was pretty big.

[Jamie Kilstein]

4. You were.

[Ari Shaffir]

Had pedigree on the show. You've done two stories, one you liked, one you hated, but the one you liked was a great story.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's a great.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's a great story. Dotham, Alabama.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And I was like, oh, he's part of the show. This kind of goes, if someone's got to do it, let's. And he'll do it for free. You're saving money and getting a much bigger host.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They just wanted to you.

[Ari Shaffir]

They.

[Jamie Kilstein]

They just wanted to anyone.

[Ari Shaffir]

I suggested. They said no. I said, Ali Siddiq should do it. They said no.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. At least they went with Roy. Roy was really good, but.

[Ari Shaffir]

Roy was great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But it only lasted like it was.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was over after that.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But that show could have gone on a long time. It was such a great idea. It was great execution. It was fun.

[Ari Shaffir]

Enjoyed it in a moment where alt comedy and the ironic distance was getting bigger.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

This was a more real thing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

And people responded to it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And I listen, but it just shows you the grossness of the business. Sometimes when these people who are just

[Ari Shaffir]

gatekeeping, executive gatekeepers, they're really saying, are you not on the list?

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. And they don't exist anymore. That's what's. That's what's most.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, that's the cool thing. You can go to Tom. You can go to a guy like that or whatever, and he goes, no, I love the show. It made me. It made me bigger. Let's get it going again.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And it's also like nine years later, like, the Internet has completely taken over. Like, it is drowned out all of those comedy networks. They don't exist anymore. Anymore.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, you need a. Some level of curation or you're lost in a sea of content sometimes. But there's people you can trust. You know, if. If you want meditation. That guy, Sam Harris, is that the meditation guy? You know, whatever he's going to say, you're probably going to believe it. Meditation wise. You know, if you need some to. To hear an MMA fighter, like, really speaking, this is a great source for that, this podcast. She needs some curator, but I mean, like, I'm the guy. I'm that for the show. I'll make it quality. I'll make it look right. You can always trust me to do that. So come to me for that show was the coolest stand up show of all time.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It was a fun show. It was a really good show. And it was a show that I remember you created from scratch. I remember when you were doing it at the lab, at the improv, that tiny little room, you were doing it for free. And I was like, what are you doing? Basically the same way that you were talking about to me about my podcast. Like, what are you doing?

[Ari Shaffir]

That's what you were saying. What are you doing? Do show for 20 people.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'm like, this is so weird. I'm like, AR's telling stories. But I thought about. I was like, it's probably a good idea to develop material that way.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I. A lot of people was like, hey, we're doing a show. It's about heartbreak this week or it's this month, or it's about drugs, whatever. And they go, all right, let me, Let me. I have a story. Let me get all my thoughts down. You know, all the metaphors and stuff, the stuff, flowery stuff you put on them that Jay is so good at and stuff. But, like, then they became a lot of people's, like, that's my closure and my special. I had no bit. I thought of it. Cause of this. It became, you know, the biggest thing I had in my act.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Isn't that nuts?

[Ari Shaffir]

It's nuts, yeah. Because I love giving people an excuse to, like, write something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It was also such a fun show because it was comedy outside of, like, regular standup. It was like another avenue. And it was a really fun thing to do, you know, and the thing about, like, the gatekeeping of it is, like, those people had nothing to do with it. And they had all the power.

[Ari Shaffir]

They had all the power.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And by just exercising it in that way and then everybody talking about how gross it was, nobody ever trusted them again.

[Ari Shaffir]

And the thing is, some of the stuff they do, though, like, we need some diversity. And. And it'd be like, I don't think you're wrong. I think you don't want it to be all the same thing. But there's something me and Eric Abrams came up with is it's a diversity of experience.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Is bigger. Two white dudes is not what we're talking about. If it's like Ali Siddiq's life closer to Gary Owen's life than mine. You know, Gary Owens and Ali are closer to each other than me or Gary, you know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right, right, right.

[Ari Shaffir]

So that's what I want. Different. Whatever. And they have these checklists you would go to in la. Here are the gays. Get one of these seven. Here are the black. And it was like, well, I'm not gonna fuck up my product. No way.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You. At the end of the day, it has to be a meritocracy.

[Ari Shaffir]

So. So then we would just work harder, which a lot of people aren't willing to do. And it's like, well, there's a great black woman in Indianapolis. She's not in LA or New York, but let's get her. She has great stories. Ms. Pat.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's a great black comic in Houston and he has these great stories about prison. Let's get him. They're not on these lists. Yeah, you just got to work a little harder to make your. You know, it's like Seinfeld letting everybody else shine.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right. But it's like forced diversity without the merit, without good quality comedy. Yeah, yeah. But it's just gatekeepers themselves, really. Because now that we don't need them anymore, like, they, they're. What do those people do? Well, people that were running Comedy Central, what do they do now? There's no jobs.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, the thing is with like, with like cabs overstepping, that made Uber possible. Yeah. You know, so let's focus on the positive of this.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And then the Uber people kept robbing and murdering people.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So they, they just got way more chemos.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, exactly. They'll be gone too. Take advantage. Yep, yep. How many coke addicts do you need driving? You're like, bro, that's a red light. Please stop.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That mean they barely vet those people.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. But the cool thing is because it's easier to film and because I have friends that are billionaires, you know, it's like I. We can actually get it done now. It's a. It's a golden age for this. It is to be able to make a TV show show level thing on our own.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, look at even movies. Like, Theo and David Spade made a movie on their own, self financed it, and it's doing well.

[Ari Shaffir]

They go, we know how much it's gonna cost. We'll do it. We're rich.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's incredible. Yeah, it's a cool time.

[Ari Shaffir]

I mean, we made our budget back day one.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome.

[Ari Shaffir]

On a massive project, flying in 23 comics, you know, putting them all up, paying them all. They're Cutting in on the shares. We've never done that before.

[Jamie Kilstein]

So are you gonna do that in the next season as well?

[Ari Shaffir]

I don't know. A lot of this was just a. There was a hole in my. In my resume where this show didn't end on the terms it should have ended on.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And that's why it's called the end.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. Yeah. To play on words for story titles too, you know, like the end.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But, like, I like.

[Ari Shaffir]

So I just had to get it done. Right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Nice, nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

And then all these huge comp, like Shane Gibson, Phyllis, who, when he was an open micr, was like, all these guys, like, I want to eventually do that show.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

The show went away. In the interim, he's like, supplanting the Philadelphia 76ers so he could do comedy, you know, but he's like, I'd love to do that show, dude. I had four people take private jets to go to come do the show.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, it was. It was. I'm so happy with it. It came out right. Everyone who's seen it is like, oh, this is like, not just something you did is like a TV show. Yeah, we. It's like, I'm so happy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I love it. I'm so happy to hear that, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

And that prologue that. That guy did. You should.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'll.

[Ari Shaffir]

I'll send you. I'll send you $2 off.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I'll just pay.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. We said we had to figure out a way. Me and o' Neal and Abrams, we all like writing it. We're like, I have to figure out a way to bridge the gap of this not happening to the end and what happened and everything without being too woe as me. And so we got this claymation guy who's like, yeah, let's just fill it with punch lines so it doesn't become that, like, I love Schultz, but a little like, they couldn't keep us down. Like, I don't want to do any of that. I don't want to be earnest. Right. So let's bridge the gap without. Without ever being serious.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, nice.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

So it's like a three minute prologue you get for free. Yeah. Yeah. That's William. That's Tim Keys video.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, wow. How did they do that? Did they use real claymation?

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, yeah, dude. In a time of AI where everyone's doing the easy stuff. He is. Painstakingly, it takes him a day to build each one of those characters. That's three day work. And then the backdrop takes another day or two.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And how long does it take to actually do the animation?

[Ari Shaffir]

A long time. All day long. So if you have notes, you're like, dude, I need those notes before I start filming. Filming this. This is click move, click move, click move.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

You gotta go back and erase the stuff that. You know, the wires and, too.

[Ari Shaffir]

Are they wires or.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

I mean, some of it has to be held up because clay would fall.

[Ari Shaffir]

Right, right, right.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, there's wires in the arms. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't necessarily have to have wires, like, to make it stand. What is going on with his tits?

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Well, you know, it's music video.

[Jamie Kilstein]

What's in that bowl? Ew.

[Ari Shaffir]

He's making a. This. The.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Like, a turd.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Even get locked into that.

[Ari Shaffir]

He did a trippy red video. That's really good.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's cool that people are still doing stuff like that. Like the old school, the way they did King Kong.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, here's what I noticed, too, when you start talking to some of these artists, you know, like some of my stage designs and stuff like that, like, for America. Sweetheart. What. What I had was, like, this idea that, like, what if we left society? How long till nature would just take back over? And, like, let's do that with plants. And then the first one are, like, so expensive. They're like, oh, I can't. Okay, I got to rethink.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I can't.

[Ari Shaffir]

That's far, far out of the. I'll spend a lot, but not that much out of the budget. But then you tell these people, like, well, here's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say. You say the whole thing. Like, here's what I'm trying to get across. Here's what I'm trying to say. Like, we're too caught up in the news and stuff, and if we all just like, whatever. And then they go, dude, that's a good. Okay, we can do it at cost. And then him, Anthony Shepard, they were both like, these great artists. They were like, they stole your show from you. Hold on. That's. I can bring my cost way down. Let's. We can do this. Still very expensive. But they're like, I want to be part of something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's dope.

[Ari Shaffir]

You know, if Tarantino was like, you want to hold a boom mic? I'm like, yes, I would do that for you to be part of something.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah, there we go. That's dope.

[Podcast Guest/Researcher]

Dude account.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's what William Child. That's his Instagram Account.

[Ari Shaffir]

Whoa, that's me. Look at delivering me a message. Oh, you're an K. You know that is. Tell me that I was a dude. That's real.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I don't know.

[Ari Shaffir]

February 18, 2010, the show was born. Third most vapid city in America. Me and six comedians telling stories about psychedelic drugs. Only 13 people showed up. But God damn, it was the best show I had ever seen. February, that's awesome. A lot of hard work, completely on my own with help from no one. I got a TV deal. And that helped launch the careers of so many great comics. Fat ones who lost weight, fat ones who somehow keep getting fat. Influence elections, go on to normalize childhood. And then with a lot of heart and ending.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome.

[Ari Shaffir]

The irony sicken me. Wait, wait, watch this part.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You're in it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Hold on. I mean, that might have been the drugs out the in ending the wait rush right after this hold up play. I mean it might have been the drugs.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wait, I think there's nothing. There's only clips of it.

[Ari Shaffir]

I guess there's a. There's the moment where I have to. I go, I realized it had to be a man, and not just a man who would go on to tap Shane Gillis twice with witnesses, by the way. And it's you and Norman raising your hand. It's like I witnessed it. I'm like, let's just have some fun, dude. Let's have some fun. Fun. I got Duncan to do a theme song on the way out of his episode.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Oh, really?

[Ari Shaffir]

His story was about taking his kids to a Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift concert film. And how awful is. He thinks she's a 15,000 year old vampire. He has this long song, goes. You can see it. She's feeding off them. She gets bigger as they start cheering. It's so funny. And it's Duncan, he's so out there. And I'm like, hey, Duncan. He does this like song. He breaks down every one of her songs. He goes, it's just this. I was like, you know those crazy garage band songs you've making for 25 plus years? You want to do the theme song just for that episode. Just the. And he goes, yeah, 100. So it's this like demonic song about being a 15,000-year-old vampire. It's a Taylor Swift original song and you don't have to. Okay. With a network. You're like, let's just do it. I was like, what do you use your credit? He made up some crazy credit for his band.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome. Awesome. That's amazing. Nobody's embraced, like, that kind of AI technology more than Duncan. He's always sending me things that he's working on, like, always. All day long.

[Ari Shaffir]

Those garage band songs you used to make. It wasn't it. It was just him.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I know.

[Ari Shaffir]

Crazy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

A long time ago.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. The sunset days.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

It was like, oh, my God. Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome, dude. Okay, so that's. It's available on arishafir.com each episode. What happened to Ari the Great?

[Ari Shaffir]

That went away. People didn't know how to find it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

But if. Is it still there? Like, if you go to arthegreat.com. does it take you to arishafir.com?

[Ari Shaffir]

i know anything about me, there's no way I'm going to pay those fees every year. If I know anything about me and my people. I doubt I still have that, but.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

I like the YMH staff. I had a production card. You know, you need a production card at the end. One of them says, ymh. Then Eric Abrams, director. It's his. And I was like, the one I was using was just a still frame from this not happening, happening. Just my dick pixelated. And I was like, put my thing on that I hate. You have the. I'm not a producer. Whatever.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Right.

[Ari Shaffir]

And I didn't have it. And then we couldn't use anything with this not happening. So it's like, don't. And I was like, I need another one. I'm off in the jungle. So I told ymh. I was like, guys, you guys are all fucking idiots. Make me whatever production card you want and I will use it. And then they were like, we're gonna make seven. I was like, all right. And I've seen a few of them and they're all. So one of them being a giant coin out of giant nose. It's just so. I love working with people I like.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Tom's awesome. It's nice having a guy like that that's like, really just acquired an enormous amount of funds.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And does whatever the he wants.

[Ari Shaffir]

Fun funs.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah. Yeah. And his Netflix show is great.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, it's so out there.

[Jamie Kilstein]

It's so crazy. But it's, like, perfect for him. It's like his mind. All right, let's wrap this up tomorrow.

[Ari Shaffir]

Protect our parks First Protection parks in quite some time. Dude. I would get recognized here or there when I was traveling. Not much. I'll tell you a couple things. I saw one. People know Shane Gillis's name, except in Brazil and Then they only know Rafi Bastos's name. Oh, really? That's the only comic they've ever heard.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Big. He's a big comic over there. Yeah, I had him on the show.

[Ari Shaffir]

Really? Yeah, he great.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Good dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

But I'll tell you this, though. There's a lot of business and that gets caught up in this. Who's interviewing which politician and what? Oh, this guy's doing this. Or he's friends with this guy guy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

And.

[Ari Shaffir]

And all the money and everything. And like, am I doing well enough? People tried to do that. Keep up game. This guy's getting more views on his clips. I should start doing shorter stuff. Anyone I told that didn't recognize me when it came up what my job was first, I try to avoid it. But if they kept like, no, no, no, for real, what do you do? I'm like, all right, well, I'm a. I'm a standup comedian. I mean, this is 10 for 10 countries. Everybody would be like, what? What do you think mean? I'm like, I'm a standup comedian. And they go like, as a hobby. I'm like, no, as a living. They're like, what, Grandma, come here. This guy just stand up. Like, what do you mean? With a microphone. I'm like, yeah. He goes, that's so cool. That's so cool. I'm like, where? Just in New York. I'm like, in the country and the world. Really? Like, what, you pay your rent on this? I'm like, yeah. And then some, like, no way. They couldn't get over how cool it was. And they didn't know if I'm successful or not. They just know, I do this, bro. We have the coolest job. And I've tested this in the world. There's no cooler job. You could tell people that. They'll be like, that reaction. They start smiling just at the idea of the job can actually exist.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Wow.

[Ari Shaffir]

And that's what we do. And the high level ones and the low level, we're all doing the same. We're all just coming up with a better dick joke to just entertain some strangers.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Even gay Ian sucking.

[Ari Shaffir]

Even gay hole in the wall, blowing a dude. And they go, oh, I just got an idea for a bit. That's great. Cool. Let me. Hold on, I gotta write this down. Hold on. I'll jerk you while I write it down.

[Jamie Kilstein]

That's awesome. Yeah, it's an amazing job. It's kind of incredible. We live a very blessed life. For sure.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah. It's just. Yeah, it's just. I Don't know. I mean, yeah, it's fun to just focus on some positives and realize the negatives are nothing compared to the positive.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Keeping up with the Joneses stuff and the paying attention to the numbers. I mean, obviously that's easy for me to say that you shouldn't do it it. But you shouldn't do it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, there's this thing.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Just concentrate on what you're doing and enjoy it.

[Ari Shaffir]

I was talking to Maddie Weiners, really funny comic, and she was like, you know, all these people and everybody really like, she's going to be a star. And she's like, all these people are getting clips. These crowd works. I don't do crowd work. And it was like, well, then you shouldn't do those clips. Your road's just going to be a little longer than them. But don't think about it like that. Like, just do the. You're good at.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

You know, and then eventually you'll get found out.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I mean, just do whatever you do

[Ari Shaffir]

whatever you want to do, but don't let them decide. Oh, I need to write an under 60 second bit. It's got to have a punchline at 59 seconds or I can't put it on YouTube shorts. Like, that's a dumb way to be building your stuff.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Absolutely.

[Ari Shaffir]

Big J does kind of crowd work that no one's ever done long form crowd work with. Like, but it's.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He's also been doing it for so long and he has that kind of personality and like, easygoing style that makes it. It makes it.

[Ari Shaffir]

You see Big J at. At like when somebody heckles him. Like an angry heckle. Not just like a, I'm gonna be part of it. Like, you suck. He doesn't. I get worked up. He just goes, oh, what? What was it that you don't like? Like, almost as if he's on mushrooms. He's like, yeah, no, yeah, I could see that. But what specifically? I just want to know.

[Jamie Kilstein]

He's an easygoing guy.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, he's just like, let's mine this for laughs.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

I might get caught up screaming.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Well, he's also done so many shows in New York where that must happen so often. You develop strategies.

[Ari Shaffir]

Yeah, you're. You got practice at it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

Yeah.

[Ari Shaffir]

Big J, my co host of Legion of Skanks.

[Jamie Kilstein]

All right. That's right. You're back. Legion just ganks.

[Ari Shaffir]

You're.

[Jamie Kilstein]

You're running it now that Dave Smith has decided to be a political commentator.

[Ari Shaffir]

Well, it's three for life. I'm not running it. I'm just part of it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

No, no, you're running it.

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, print it, joke world.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I heard you were the leader of the Legion of Skanks.

[Ari Shaffir]

I am the leader of skanks. Well, I'm the president.

[Jamie Kilstein]

In the past, you already, like, you ran for president. I think you won.

[Ari Shaffir]

I think. Yeah, I won. Dude, one day on one of these podcasts, we got to talk about the. The presidential election Legion. It was a three month process of just non stop creativity and stupidity.

[Jamie Kilstein]

We'll talk about it tomorrow, okay?

[Ari Shaffir]

Oh, Shane was involved? Yeah, Shane's my vice president.

[Jamie Kilstein]

There you go. All right, let's wrap this up.

[Ari Shaffir]

I love you.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I love you too. It's great to see you back. Civilization, dude.

[Ari Shaffir]

There's a bunch of times where I thought about you out there where I'm like, you would love NASCAR lines. Was him like, Joe Rogan would love the Mayan temples. You would love it.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I. I went to Chichen once, way back in the early days.

[Ari Shaffir]

El Salvador. You would have loved, I'm sure, just with like, for the stuff you're into. There was so much. All right, anyway, I love you, buddy.

[Jamie Kilstein]

I love you too, Jamie, everybody. We love you, Jamie. Bye. It.