The Milk Carton Kids

Summary

"You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes" — Milk Carton Kids (Kenneth Pattengale & Joey Ryan)

Date: November 27, 2024
Episode Theme:
An unfiltered, rollicking conversation with Milk Carton Kids duo Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, mixing irreverent banter, deep thoughts, personal stories, and the mechanics behind musical and comedic collaboration. The episode also touches on their new Christmas album, "Christmas in a Minor Key," their career highlights, existential musings, and a generous dose of Milk Carton Kids–style back-and-forths.

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Episode Overview

Pete Holmes hosts Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan together for the first time on "You Made It Weird," delivering a signature episode of disarming humor, friendship dynamics, and surprising philosophical depth. The episode covers topics from the oddities of human experience (including bathroom humor), music and collaboration, the influence of the Coen Brothers, existential questions, spiritual inquiry, and the existential weight of Fig Newtons. Expect delightfully weird stories and inside jokes—and a thoughtful riff on spirituality, meaning, and what it means to "be here now."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Milk Carton Kids: Banter, Bit Crafting, and the Art of Duo Comedy

• Opening Roasts and Dynamics:

  • Pete and Kenneth roast Joey (who arrives late) with comical metaphors:
    • "He looks like what God would start with and then make it into a person." – Pete (04:29)
    • Longstanding joke comparing Joey to a Fig Newton—a cookie that's "an acquired taste" and important for the digestive career.
  • The banter about pooping and Fig Newtons morphs into a surprisingly deep consideration of the longevity of basic human acts (06:05+).

• Duo Rules for On-stage Banter:

  • Joey explains: "You can't run the bit by Kenneth in advance. It ruins the freshness." (15:20)
  • Kenneth adds: "It ruins our ability to actually perform." (15:28)
  • Both discuss the necessity for spontaneity in their stage bits, drawing a comparison to Jackie Gleason's approach on "The Honeymooners"—some performers are better without rehearsal (15:40-16:10).

• Crafting Live Interplay:

  • The value of keeping comedy feeling "in the air" and not scripted.
  • Pete relates: "If I run a bit by somebody in the green room, it's dead. You should have run it out there. That's why you're there." (16:30)

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2. Comedy, Collaboration, and Influence

• About Performing Bits and Giving Notes:

  • Joey’s penchant for doing entire bits by other comedians—often in their voices—much to Kenneth’s mix of annoyance and admiration (20:08).
  • Pete, Kenneth, and Joey share inside stories about being asked to "give notes"—leading to cross-wired showbiz misunderstandings (50:04 onward; 55:29).

• Coen Brothers Connections:

  • The Milk Carton Kids' involvement in the Coen Brothers/T-Bone Burnett event, "Another Day, Another Time," propelled their career—serving as an example of effortless, authentic interaction leading to big breaks (27:21-28:53).
  • Friendship with Joel and Ethan Coen explained—how writers (in film and music) work and joke about being in the top director lists (29:16-30:14).
  • The pair’s comedy bit in the Showtime documentary: "We’ve never heard of Simon and Garfunkel ... we’ve heard of Simon and Garfield"—highlighting both their comedic and self-effacing side (33:41).

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3. Existential Riffs: Religion, Spirituality, and "Be Here Now"

• Philosophy of Not Knowing:

  • Extended exploration of how and why existential questions often lead to an experience of "so what," a surrender to the present, and the limits of seeking (118:17+).

• Enlightenment & Spiritual Humor:

  • Pete: "You can settle down and let the sediment of your mind relax ... the mind doesn't get to ever say, 'I am enlightened.' It doesn't ever get that satisfaction." (120:18)
  • Joey: "All of this ... has totally led me to a place of just ... a be here now kind of ... Chop wood, carry water." (122:19)
  • Paradox of seeking ecstasy or enlightenment—it's not a "good feeling that just never goes away." (123:14)

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4. Peak Stories & Sky-High Weirdness

• Ghosts, UFOs, and the Boundaries of Experience:
  • Kenneth’s striking story of encountering a glowing orb in the snowy woods near Yosemite (110:59–112:04).
    • "This nondescript white orb just emanating energy ... hovering above the snow." (111:29)
  • Lively exchange on whether phenomena are ghosts or UFOs—offering their competing pet theories and calling out human folly in "drawing the distinction" on mysteries we can’t explain (113:06–115:00).

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5. Health, Addiction, Change & Mortality

• Kenneth’s Cancer and Addictions:

  • Kenneth opens up about having thyroid cancer, giving up cigarettes and drinking, and how the surgery flipped a switch in his brain—"In a moment, it was turned off" (82:48).
  • Discussion of how trauma or intense experience (even surgery) can "rewire the brain"—and Pete’s parallel to old-school Tony Robbins smoking cessation methods (83:24-84:18).

• Career Lessons:

  • The Milk Carton Kids discuss their relationship with musical instruments—Kenneth’s collection, Roy Huskey Jr.'s legendary bass compulsion, and the mythic status certain life choices can have (64:16+).
  • Songwriting camp stories: "If we were bad people, we could start a cult." (87:48)

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6. The Importance of Not Taking Things Too Seriously

• Faith, Atheism, and Indifference:

  • Joey and Kenneth’s differing spiritual backgrounds—Joey raised Jewish, Kenneth less concerned: "Actually my religion is just that I don't care." (131:30)
  • Pete: "If there is something called God ... its greatest creation would be someone who's like, 'There might be something like that. I don't care.'" (131:53)

• Making Music Beyond Meaning:

  • Singing religious lyrics—or even nonsense Simlish language for The Sims video game—is just about making beauty, regardless of 'meaning'. "To me [singing Jesus-y Christmas lyrics] was a lot like singing the Simlish lyrics." (133:41)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On how being unfiltered helps creativity:
  "When I realized my parents would never listen to this podcast, then I was like, I can be free." — Pete (10:19)

• On creative rules:
  "You can't run the bit by Kenneth in advance ... Kenneth is way better if he doesn't know the bit on the ride down." — Joey (15:05)

• On Coen Brothers dialogue:
  "I don't see a lot of money here ... To me, it's so much meaner ... he's taking him as his entire..." — Joey (26:31)

• On what draws people to enlightenment or transformation:
  "You can't see white snow through orange-tinted glasses." — Pete (123:57)

• On transcendence and not-knowing:
  "All of this ... has totally led me to a place of just ... be here now ... Chop wood, carry water." — Joey (122:24)

• On ghosts and weirdness:
  "Somewhere in our mountain cabin there's a stack of like 20 different versions, first person accounts of this orb that we saw." — Kenneth (111:54)

• On being content:
  "I'm not wanting for anything anymore. Which is ... I think what everybody's after." — Kenneth (68:17)

• On their approach to meaning and music:
  "My experience of singing the ... very churchy, Jesus-y Christmas songs ... was a lot like singing the Simlish lyrics." — Joey (133:41)

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Memorable Bits & In-Jokes

• Running Gags:

  • Pete, Kenneth, and Joey's endless riffing on Seinfeld, impressions, and comedy theory ("Rear-view mirror—All mirrors are rear-view!")
  • Banter on Fig Newtons and the health/fiber virtues of childhood snacks (04:29–06:04)
  • Joking about Joey’s lateness and "face types"—early face, late face, gatekeeper to the city of beautiful women (02:53–09:11)
  • The phrase "calling in your chips" and dozens of malapropisms, manufacturing inside jokes in real time (56:58, 58:16, 140:13)

• Meta-moments:

  • "I think podcasting is the lowest form of art." — Kenneth (106:53)
  • Discussion of stand-up, podcasting, and the value of art & editing (107:04–108:08)

• Songwriting Oddities:

  • The story of recording their track in Simlish for The Sims, with Pete riffing about how it sounds "racist" (129:34)
  • Closing questions about reincarnation—Kenneth’s wish "to come back as a song," Pete as a "big wave," Joey expressing preference for "something completely different" next time (139:22–140:55)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Riffing on Joey, lateness, and friendship — 02:32–09:11
• Rules of Milk Carton Kids Comedy/Banter — 14:21–16:45
• Coen Brothers' influence, Inside Llewyn Davis — 21:44–28:48
• Joey’s story about giving notes for Pete's show — 55:29–57:10
• Kenneth's story: giving feedback on a Coen cut — 50:04–53:09
• Ghost sighting—Yosemite glowing orb — 110:59–112:04
• Philosophy, contentment, and addiction — 68:02–76:21
• Existential wrap-up, enlightenment, spiritual surrender — 118:16–123:44
• Simlish/Michigan in The Sims; Christmas music & belief — 127:38–134:48

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers all the promises of "You Made It Weird": catching the elusive weirdness in all things—fame, family, poop, philosophy, nostalgia, and the physics-defying craft of writing, performing, and living as a team. Pete, Joey, and Kenneth spiral through bits, insights, and existential digressions with effortless warmth, showing—perhaps most essentially—that meaning is forged not just in big moments, but in all the weird, winding tangents we take together.

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Listen if you like:

• Musical comedy and behind-the-scenes stories;
• Irreverent but earnest exploration of meaning and mindfulness;
• Inside music industry tales;
• Roasts that turn into genuine life advice;
• The Milk Carton Kids' songwriting, humor, and brotherly dynamic;
• Pete Holmes’ blend of silliness and sincerity.

Transcript

[Pete Holmes]

You made it with. You made it weird. You made it with. Oh, yeah, you made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird with Pete Holmes. What's happening, weirdos? This is a very, very exciting episode because it is. We've had Joey Ryan on the show before, but this is Kenneth Pattenale and Joey Ryan together for most of the episode. You'll see at the beginning, it's me and Kenneth, and then Joey joins late, which is quite funny. But they are the Milk Carton Kids, one of my favorite duos, but also just favorite groups of all time. Who cares if there's two or five? They're incredible. You got to listen to them. The Milk Carton Kids. One of the. One of the bands I've never regretted putting on. And everybody is always like, who is this? I love this. Or they're like, oh, my God. You love the Milk Carton Kids because they're amazing and everyone loves them. They have a new album. It's called Christmas in a Minor Key. And I'm gonna say it, thank God, because we're rolling into the holidays. If you're like our house Christmas music starts before. Before Thanksgiving. So I'm glad we have some new ones to mix it up. Christmas in A Minor key. We're gonna listen to a track. I think it'll just set the mood, give you a sense of how incredible these people are, because not only are they hilarious and deeply interesting, but they also do this. Let's listen to what child does this from Christmas in a Minor Key. Not the whole song, just a taste. Here's a taste. What child is this?

[Joey Ryan]

Who lay to rest On Mary's lap is sleeping Whom angels grieve with anthem sweet While shepherds watch our keeping.

[Pete Holmes]

All right, everybody. So glad you're here. This is the Milk Carton Kids. Oh, yeah. I guess I should say I'm on the road. Petehomes.com yeah, I'll say that. Petehomes.com I really want to sell out Portland because we're filming that for my next Special that's on December 20th. I believe there's tickets to the late show still the night before. I'll be in Seattle. We also have my Largo here in Los Angeles on December 11th. Why am I going reverse. Indianapolis is on December 5th. And then I'm also going to be in Salt Lake City coming back to you guys in January and Phoenix, Arizona. So go to PeteHomes.com for all of those and go see the Milk Carton Kids, also on the road at the Milk Carton Kids dot com. All right, get into it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

There's no harm in just walking down the driveway. I feel like he's going to be on time today because he has a child obligation.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

On the back end of it. And he knows.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, I think he finally growed up. Growed up.

[Pete Holmes]

He growed it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He growed it. Wherein. Because Joey was perennially late. We've been together for 15 years now.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, he was a late.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He's so late.

[Pete Holmes]

He's got early face. Oh, you have late face.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's weird because you were the opposite.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I know you, so I actually would consider you to be an early person.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You do have more of a laid back vibe. And he has sort of like. He looks like he's into Shakespeare. He looks like he loves the Globe Theater and getting there very early.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But see, when I see Joey though, it doesn't look like he sought out Shakespeare. It's that somebody brought Shakespeare around and he went and then got interested.

[Pete Holmes]

Maybe he was too inactive to seek it out.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Definitely. Somebody brought Shakespeare to his doorstep and.

[Pete Holmes]

Then he's the guy that goes around. Have you heard about this Bill? Bill Shakespeare guy? He looks like he belongs in a billowing shirt, I'll say that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like if I came to his and he had like the crisscrossing black string and it's open. Yeah. We wrote so many Joey Roast jokes when he was on Crashing. I think my favorite was that he looked like a jab. A high end Japanese sex robot. I love there's something naughty about doing these without him.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, it's great. It's great.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, enjoy it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I do it on stage from time to time.

[Pete Holmes]

You can have that line if you want. I mean, not that you need the help.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

My favorite one that I ad libbed, I think in Nashville one time was that he looked like a pencil with hair.

[Pete Holmes]

He does look like a pencil. There's a pencil quality. I. Sorry I didn't laugh. My full laugh because I was also trying to think of new ones. Full disclosure, he looks like what God would start with and then make it into a person. Like there's something kind of neutral and like, well, this is. We're starting with this, but we'll add stuff.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, but they didn't. Yeah, it's kind of like a newt shape.

[Pete Holmes]

That newt, which is great because he's kind of a Fig Newton of a person. Like if Joey were a cookie. Original Fig Newton. True, right? Yeah, very good. But it's a fruit cookie.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Also an Acquired taste. I love a Fig Newton, but they're very polarizing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. People don't like them. I think if you liked Fig Newton's, you were a hungry kid.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Now hang on.

[Pete Holmes]

Because it's the sandwich of cookies.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Fair enough. If you end up in a discussion with a person who doesn't like a Fig Newton.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's true that 100% of the time you're going to try to tout the health benefits of the Fig Newton as well. Right.

[Pete Holmes]

I love this.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The, the.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm going to be honest with you. Oh, the, the high fiber content.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I've never, I've never noticed or remembered that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, I'm sorry that I spoiled it because I feel like if you did end up in this situation.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You would actually discover it naturally. You would be grasping.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. So much that you would scream fiber. Yes. Or knowing me an hour after the debate, fiber. And then I'd be like, God damn it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You would realize when we were kids.

[Pete Holmes]

We were pooping huge, massive fiber induced poops and we didn't know what fiber was. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, not to be weird, but I had a. I said out loud, best of my career this morning. And then I was like. I traced it back to what I had been eating. Sorry, everybody. I'm sorry. But when I was a kid, that would happen. You'd have like an epic apocalyptic and you'd have no guests.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

No cause and effect.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is this our longest career?

[Pete Holmes]

Is this our longest career?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The career you just referenced?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, our poop career. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is that man and woman's longest career?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Prostitution is not the oldest job.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I don't.

[Pete Holmes]

It's been pooping. And we all know you're either paid or penalized based on how it's going. And there's. It's not a zero sum game. Some days start and you're like, I am the king. And some start where you're like, fuck, I'm in a meat suit and none of this has any design and it's a mistake and I can't control myself. It's a shame bath. Is that everybody or is that just us? Might just be us. Well, we're mad how you are. You're a young face. You're young fat chat.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

42.

[Pete Holmes]

42. So we're similar. 45. Yeah. I think PF post 40, your. Your interest in BMS goes through the roof or down through the floor. Really? Yeah. Sending it through the floor.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's up in our vernacular.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Amazing. But I'd Never thought of it. That is. But that is the longest.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Thing that we've been tied to. The thing that has.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh my God.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Lorded over our lives.

[Pete Holmes]

You're so right. It's the thing. It's not like the funny thing would be like, well, I've been masturbating my. No, you haven't. There were for some people, decades, at least a decade where you weren't doing that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

A significant portion of my life.

[Pete Holmes]

Hundreds of poops happened. Oh, hundreds.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And right from the start.

[Pete Holmes]

And when you're Little Squirt play D'oh. Fun Factory and it's someone else's problem. That's the best part. It's a consequence free experience.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

I love that Joey's gonna walk in now, it seems like. And we're just talking poops. Yes, go.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no, it went blank.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I saw yet another Joey Byrne.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He does look like the man in front of the gate to the like ethereal land of all women. You know what I mean?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He's the gatekeeper.

[Pete Holmes]

He's like in a toga, kind of like a heaven scenario. And it's like the Wonder Woman planet. It's all these beautiful women in toga. He doesn't go in, but he's the man that greets you and tests your virtue to see if you get access.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And my question is, is it that he's not allowed in or just. It didn't occur to him?

[Pete Holmes]

I really am proud of this because he's definitely not allowed in and he definitely tries to downplay that. That's the arrangement. Like, he's like, I. I've been in. I've been in there, I've been in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's no big deal. Yeah, yeah. I just opted to help. Right? Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Don't. Don't talk to Sheila.

[Joey Ryan]

You guys thought it funny to disable the doorbell and then start without me.

[Pete Holmes]

The email set. Joey.

[Joey Ryan]

That was a. This is a fun hug.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm sorry. I regret not getting up. I regret not getting up, but I did like a low. I, like. I had a couple short people riffs and I dropped it. I'm not going down for that. You know what I mean? I'm not going down for that.

[Joey Ryan]

You can't risk it.

[Pete Holmes]

Not. It's not worth it. That's the math you have to do these days. You go. It's like if you. No, you forecast what the laugh would be, you assess the risk and you make a choice.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Do you know what I find most interesting about My friend and colleague and partner. Yes.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, I'm right here.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We did a lot of Joey riffs, but they're all kind of about how.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You'Re attractive even without saying it. This is the thing I found most interesting. Without teasing him.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

There's no scenario in which he goes and listens to the first 10 minutes of this show.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I tell you something?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That it opened a world of possibilities. When I realized my parents would never listen to this podcast, then I was like, I can be free. Let's not even talk about it. I don't want to look directly at that deer in the woods. Because it's a special thing. You want to be free. You don't want to be thinking, like, what would Mother say? Literally, what Freud. Freud would be like, that's keeping you back.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, it is. My mother listens.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, she'll listen to this.

[Joey Ryan]

She does. Yeah. Kind of sweet if. Yeah. If she finds out about it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

She might not be in the information ecosystem to find out about it.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't want.

[Joey Ryan]

I can only hope.

[Pete Holmes]

I'll text her. It's like a vague, I'm having sex with your mom kind of joke. I'll text her. I don't like it. I didn't like it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I did those for years, and that.

[Pete Holmes]

Was, like, one of your moves.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So much so that he had to have a word.

[Pete Holmes]

You pulled him aside.

[Joey Ryan]

We were in the van for 10 years, sitting next to each other. I didn't need to pull him aside.

[Pete Holmes]

Anyway, we had plenty of time.

[Joey Ryan]

He was right there.

[Pete Holmes]

All the time in the world to kill. That's what that song's about, right? Telling Kenneth to stop insinuating. How did you preach that?

[Joey Ryan]

What?

[Pete Holmes]

How did you preach that? Hey, can you stop saying you're having sex with my.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, I think I probably said something like ate. I think we're. I think that's over now. I think.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, because I think I would do it in interviews and things.

[Pete Holmes]

Intercourse. Let's run. It's intercourse. You do it in interviews?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, I would say it publicly.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I see.

[Joey Ryan]

That's true.

[Pete Holmes]

It may be. Good morning, New York.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Just a bit like me and Joey's mom, Debbie. We're very close.

[Pete Holmes]

We have a special relationship.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

A special relationship.

[Joey Ryan]

Decided to reprise that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

This has been an. It's been an embargo for so long.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a request. You have to play it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. You reopened the door.

[Joey Ryan]

This is not meta now. It's not an excuse. You can't. It's still embargoed.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But I am kind of like my dog. Because you just cracked the door and I've got my head in it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wiggly.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm. You know, it's my fault. I did it, Joey. Yeah. But we did have a lot of riffs. My favorite was that you're the man in front of the holy city of beautiful women who lets other people in or out. And he doesn't. You know, you're like the gatekeeper, but you're not allowed in the city of beautiful women. And you really downplay that. I thought that was in your voice. That's like your comedy. You could make that very funny. That people are like, do you ever go in there and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. It's just not. You know, I do my shift out here. How long's your shift? Eternity. It's been. It's been all of time. Thank you for going with that.

[Joey Ryan]

It has been.

[Pete Holmes]

Cause that's a very long setup to. Not a lot of fruit at the end of the Newton, if you know what I mean.

[Joey Ryan]

No, but you gotta. I respect that you have to go all the way down the road to sometimes.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, can I say that that's part of our relationship?

[Joey Ryan]

It is.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that you, Joey, specifically both you, but mostly Joey, will champion a bit of mine and be like, you have to. And you know what the opening line of my new hour is that I'm about to film. I don't have sex with my wife after shows. That this is the performance.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. Oh, that's the best.

[Pete Holmes]

And you told me that that was your favorite line. And it doesn't really work. But I was like, it doesn't matter. It's so good you're. I mean, because you.

[Joey Ryan]

Wait.

[Pete Holmes]

It doesn't work. It works okay. But when you said I liked it, it emboldened the bit. And now I do with confidence.

[Joey Ryan]

That means so much to me because it really works for. For me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And sometimes that's all that matters is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right for a silent laugh.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. A folk. A folky laugh. Like an appreciative.

[Joey Ryan]

Well done.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know what you guys have done. What is the new. It doesn't matter. I am curious. Talking about you telling him we're done with the sex with my mom jokes because you're a duo and this is a very interviewy question. So we can keep talking about Fig Newtons and bms, but I genuinely am curious.

[Joey Ryan]

I miss the good stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

We're going to get to it. I want to know your thoughts. On both of those things. But how do you go about crafting a bit? Let's say, Joey, you had an idea that you thought it would be funny to go on and on and on about someone you lost. And then at the end, maybe Kenneth says something. Do you, like, prep him with that? Because the risk that he's gonna jump into early or tip it or what. How do you. How do you craft the comedy part of your act? I'll take my answer off air because I have to take my jacket off.

[Joey Ryan]

The. The main. Back the main. We have a lot of rules for each other. Some are spoken, some are unspoken rules. Yeah, yeah. For, like, you know, for the banter.

[Pete Holmes]

What are these rules?

[Joey Ryan]

Some are. The early rules are kind of a little, like, trite now, but. But they're still valid. But one that I have developed, which has remained unspoken until now, is you can't run the bit by Kenneth in advance.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. Because it ruins the freshness. It ruins the fun.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. Kenneth is. Well, a lot of reasons.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's not that it ruins any experience for us. It ruins our ability to actually perform.

[Pete Holmes]

This is weird.

[Joey Ryan]

Kenneth is way better if he doesn't know the bit on the ride down.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a weird synchronicity, but it's just for me, so I don't expect it to be a big deal for you. I was. I just had an audition. I didn't have time to rehearse, and it went very well. Then I was thinking about. And I've mentioned this before, but Jackie Gleason on the Honeymooners famously said, I'm not good enough to rehearse. If I rehearse, it won't be good. And I was thinking about that type of talent that has to be outside for lack of a better way. So I was thinking about that for, like, 10 minutes this morning. And you're saying that's the dynamic here.

[Joey Ryan]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Which I'm more.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm worse, too. If I've told him in advance, because then. Then I have some.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

All the beats are wrong.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Joey Ryan]

I have an expectation of what I want from him. Then if I've told him in advance.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And it's better to just go in with a little kernel and then see how it bounces off of him.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And then I'm better, too.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna join that by saying, specifically at Largo, because I'm usually at my happiest and I feel comfortable and there are other comedians there. If I run a bit by somebody in the green room, it's dead. Yeah, you should have run it out there.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. That's why you're there.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why you're there. What are you doing? It's like masturbating before an orgy. Just go to the orgy. Oh, just a little for me. And that's why it's unholy. It curses it. It's like, you're not. Don't eat anything before Thanksgiving before we're all seated. You know what I'm saying?

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. You need them to really tell you to be the first ones to tell you if it was good or not.

[Pete Holmes]

The. That's right. Because if you tell me it was good, then I go out. Now I'm doing it like a guy who thinks it's good.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

See, I think that we're thinking about this like men, though, and that actually, the thing that we're digging at, the universal truth, is that maybe there's an inherent folly to either preparation or thinking that we can control the moment. And you are a person in a profession that has mastered controlling the moment, which I think is maybe a result of repetition and. And, like, finding a rhythm and then channeling it. And then there's other super freaks that can manipulate that. But, yeah, the way that we connect to an audience and I think the large part of the way your lot connects to an audience is it's in that moment. It's in the air between people, and there's only so much that you can actually control about it and so much you can actually influence about.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Isn't that kind of what you're. This isn't false, but the two ness of you guys, that manufactures a little bit of that X factor, you're talking about.

[Joey Ryan]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

Like you alone, the song. And literally, Kenneth, you're kind of. When I say disrupting it, I don't mean it in the bad way, but you're sort of keeping it from being just a gcd, good old time at the campfire.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And he's keeping.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not saying that's what you would do. I'm saying either of you. Without the album.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He's keeping me from being just a wandering toddler noodling on the guitar with nothing, no rhyme or reason.

[Pete Holmes]

That also occurred to me. It's always just right, the Patton Gale of it. And yet that must be a subtle thing. Are there moments. Are you close enough that you can say, keep it simple. Splashy, which is from Anchorman. Like, can you. Will it hurt your feelings if he goes. It's just. What is. What is this?

[Joey Ryan]

When we're when we're recording. When we're recording, if we don't get something live, if he's like doing his guitar afterwards or whatever. Yeah, the. The way that I say that is there's. There's a lot of good ideas that you're finding in there and I think once you. Once you decide on them, it's going to be great.

[Pete Holmes]

That's good. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But even in that moment, he can't be direct.

[Pete Holmes]

Just. You would prefer. Keep it simple.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Splashy in that one. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Because you're in the studio.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But really, time is money and there's no. Literally on the TikTok.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He doesn't need a bedside manner. We met this for.

[Joey Ryan]

But I don't mean it passive aggressively. I mean that very precisely. Like, I'm listening closely and there's a lot of really good ideas in there and they're. You know, once they like. It's like a sculpture. Yeah, yeah, it's in there and you just got to shave away all the excess, all the stuff that isn't hearing it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And I would actually disagree because it doesn't. Like. I edited one of my specials with a friend of mine.

[Joey Ryan]

You edited it? Hey, if you're going to throw our own lyrics at us, I'm going to throw your own bits back at you.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What's the bit? Wait, this is my favorite thing. Hold on, I'm just going to this right here.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Because Joey's greatest pastime in life, and it's been consistent for many, many years, is we'll be sitting in the car yet again for eight hours, driving from one place to another, and he'll go, hey, guys, did you ever hear the one George Carlin did about. And then he won't let anybody answer. He'll do a five minute, just verbatim comedy, obscure comedy bit, expecting us to laugh, which.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, no. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's never funny because now it's in. It's a translation through a guy with a. Like a.

[Joey Ryan]

It's always funny. It's good for a quiet laugh.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The best ones, which I respect and I'll be careful how I say this. I respect, but usually he does his best to put it in the voice of said comedian. He'll do an impression, never mind their gender ethnicity.

[Pete Holmes]

He'll do a prior.

[Joey Ryan]

Kenneth was horrified because for. I can probably do. And I won't do it, but I can do most of the original Kings of Comedy dvd.

[Pete Holmes]

No.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. Got really into that for a while.

[Pete Holmes]

I would say I just Watched Earthquake on Netflix. If I were to try and get you to understand an earthquake joke, I would have to be in the ballpark of the cadence. It's not true. It's not. And Mitch Hedberg. I was gonna say it's not Mitch hedberg. Mitch hedberg2 as well.

[Joey Ryan]

If you're quoting Mitch Hedberg, you naturally do the cadence.

[Pete Holmes]

And every writer's room I've ever been in. And this is the horror of many actors. The writers pitch the jokes. As the actor, you have to really, or it won't get in. You know, you have to be like, or maybe this guy, or maybe this. So you're in good company. Just not.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm not a just.

[Pete Holmes]

Kenneth hates it.

[Joey Ryan]

He doesn't hate it because he's. You're simultaneously, I think, annoyed and impressed.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, I'm very impressed.

[Joey Ryan]

I, like, flatter myself.

[Pete Holmes]

I love it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's not. It's. It transcends that even. He's that way with movies, too. Just.

[Joey Ryan]

It's one of our other great dichotomies is that Kenneth doesn't know the words to our own songs. And I have the weird thing where, like, if I watch a movie once, then I'm, you know, I'll be quoting it the next day.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, then, can I ask you with 10 out of 10 urgency? I was listening. I told Kenneth that I was listening to you on Phil Rosenthal, the wonderful Phil Rosenthal's podcast, and you were talking about Inside Llewyn Davis, and he talks about the scene where he plays for the record producer F. Murray Abraham, and then he got the line wrong. Do you remember this? It doesn't matter.

[Joey Ryan]

You probably did the podcast years ago.

[Pete Holmes]

No, Phil. Shots fired. Philly boy.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, he quoted.

[Pete Holmes]

He goes, this is amazing. This is amazing line. I didn't even know that he was doing. There's Oscar Isaac. He plays this. And then at the end of the line, and Murray Abraham goes, there's no money in that. I'm like, that's not the line. He goes, I'm not hearing a lot of money here. It's a different line. So I thought. I didn't think. I wouldn't have brought that up unless I thought that you also were burning with an intense Coen Brothers.

[Joey Ryan]

I might have been. I forget.

[Pete Holmes]

Now there also might be somebody listening. Katie, would you Google that line for us, please? What does F. Murray Abraham say to Oscar Isaac? Because if I'm wrong, someone's having the experience that I had.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Listening to that podcast. That. Listening to this one.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You got to get Ahead of that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I do.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, that I love that part of human nature. That there's things.

[Pete Holmes]

The foibles.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Are those. Yeah. I don't. Foibles.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a great for it if you make a mistake. I was. I was giving a talk the other night. It was like a mediating a thing. And I was talking about how the root of humble and human is the same root. And it. It's. It means low to the ground. It means in the soil. So it's like get low and get kind of natural and kind of get dead a little bit anyway. And then the other person I was talking to was like. Like hummus. And I swear they said that. And I was like, hummus. And Val is still laughing that I thought the root of the word hummus. What's the. What?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You know, I can't find the exact line. I just find a bunch of interviews with Mary Abraham talking about. See, but that's chat.

[Pete Holmes]

GPT. This is what we need her for.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But this also taps into exactly the part that delights. Is that Phil.

[Pete Holmes]

It doesn't matter.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Despite misquoting the movie. Like he got the sentiment. He clearly.

[Pete Holmes]

He did.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Did all the math and that's important to him. And frankly, that's probably why the scene lands and why the writing works. And it's such.

[Pete Holmes]

I actually agree firmly. Sorry to interrupt. I think great art can be summarized by a knucklehead. Very wrong, but also completely correct. I'm not calling Phil a knucklehead. I'm just saying he sort of turned it into a street joke. There's no money in that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Totally.

[Pete Holmes]

He looks to the guy and he goes, I don't. There's no money in this. Like that is unfortunately, Joel and Ethan. That is the line. Even if it's not the line. But that is the line.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But actually, this is the funniest thing. If that were the line in the movie, there's a chance that it wouldn't land the way that the very well written one.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Connects all the dots and plants in.

[Pete Holmes]

Your heart and also includes the snobs like me that if it was. There's no money in that. I'd go like, well, that's bullshit. Right. But you tricked me into laughing at. There's no money in that. Because I'm the kind of guy that needs it to be called a latte. Yeah. I don't want drip coffee. Like, I'm. I'm just another kind of idiot.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And I'm surprised he doesn't know the line because, dude, John Goodman and oh, Brother were at, though. See a lot of money here.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't see a lot of money here.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I don't.

[Pete Holmes]

I change it to I don't hear a lot of money here. Because I'm very literal.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Thank you, Katie. I don't see a lot of money here. Yeah. And now I'm a dork in a coffee shop going, like, it's so much better than there's no money in.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But watch.

[Joey Ryan]

There's no money.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Go, go. I just start, you know.

[Joey Ryan]

Okay, but hold on, cuz.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, come on. You're out of your element. Donnie, what's happening right now?

[Joey Ryan]

That. That's. Is that what. The one you wanted?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, that's basically. You can do that one. Did he get it right or wrong?

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, the. The Cyclops.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

In O Brother.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, wow.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Go for it. Just start in.

[Joey Ryan]

No.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Come on.

[Joey Ryan]

No, because. But I want to say something about Joel and Ethan.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Because that line, I don't see a lot of money here.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

To me is so much meaner.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Than I don't hear a lot of money here. Because he's taking him as his entire.

[Pete Holmes]

I agree. Being C includes here, but here doesn't include C. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Here is like, you're great. But the song. It could be the song. He's saying, I don't. The whole thing.

[Pete Holmes]

The whole thing.

[Joey Ryan]

Nothing.

[Pete Holmes]

And C even includes feel.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

C includes all of it.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He's.

[Joey Ryan]

He's envisioning the whole future for Oscar Isaac.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

For Lewyn Davis. And he doesn't. There's nothing.

[Pete Holmes]

I completely agree. I love this stupid to say. I love this kind of dissection, but I really do. Were you as surprised as I was? I know it's an old movie that Oscar Isaac was good. I mean, do you think he was good, or do you have different ears than I do? You have music.

[Joey Ryan]

You know, we were involved in the. That concert that they put on to promote the movie before it came out. Another day, another time. This was the biggest thing that happened to us in our career, actually was. Was when we got invited to be on this crazy variety show that the Coen brothers and T Bone Burnett put on at Town hall in New York with everybody.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Smith, Joan Baez, Jack White, Gillian Welch, Elvis Costello, all these.

[Joey Ryan]

Mumford Avetz.

[Pete Holmes]

Did he bring his sons and they bring their brothers? Oh, yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

The brothers and the sons were all there. It was everybody. And we, us and Punch Brothers and, like, Ran and Giddens and Secret Sisters were like the unknown, like young folk bands that Were on the bottom of the bill. And then they made a movie. It went on Showtime. They showed it every day on Showtime. And the Coen brothers put us in it for, like, seven minutes, making jokes and playing two songs. And it, like, everything we did sold out after, like, for like, three years after that really was the biggest moment in our career.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Perfect example of the. Had we known, we would have messed. Botched the moment. Because at some point during this insane 36 hours, somebody pulled us aside for a talking head. And.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. We didn't take it seriously at all. And using all of it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. They use. And it's like, the best. Yeah. Comedy goal. It's seven. Literally all these people that flew from around the world, like, were dying to get that much air time in this movie.

[Pete Holmes]

And the two guys.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. There's some superstars that were cut out of it, like, erased from.

[Pete Holmes]

And you're, like, turning from a urinal.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's the thing about a low B string.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. We were sitting in the stairwell and we made fun of Simon and Garfunkel is.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Joey Ryan]

And they put. They sent us the cut of it to, like, see if we would approve it. And they just. And they just put the whole thing in.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, but what people. I. One of the most.

[Joey Ryan]

We can get back to why this is an answer to your question.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Pleasant for me. Geek asides of our job that that became is our relationship with Joel and Ethan, who now are friends, like, many years relationship with those two guys. Which is so funny because arguably top five filmmakers of.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not trying to fluff their nuts because they're not doing this show. They're in my top three.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

For sure. And it's just a fancy way of saying they're my third favorite directors.

[Joey Ryan]

That's what we both know.

[Pete Holmes]

That's.

[Joey Ryan]

We both know favorite bits, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, whatever. Someone's ranked.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

He'll say they're in the top. Where he'll be like, this guy. That guy's top 13 in the world.

[Pete Holmes]

So funny. I used to have a bit about that because people used to say to me all the time, you were in my top three. And I would go, just say I'm your favorite.

[Joey Ryan]

Top three is really funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know if they're the third. They might be number two. But Paul Thomas Anderson, who cares? Keep going.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Whatever.

[Pete Holmes]

They would love that answer. They would be like, at least I'm not getting knocked off by who's a bad director real quick.

[Joey Ryan]

Michael Bay.

[Pete Holmes]

Michael Bay. Oh, no. I'm up for Transformers. Oh, no. This riff isn't worth it financially. Just kidding.

[Joey Ryan]

Are you really up for transformation?

[Pete Holmes]

No. And then I transform into a briefcase full of cash. Who knows? Love you, bae. I called you BAE when you pulled up.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Did you?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I said, hey, bae. And I was like, that's weird. But then I was like, people call each other bae. Keep going.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm the host that interrupts the show. I ruin the flow. Keep going.

[Joey Ryan]

Okay.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I've had a flow ruiner attached to me for 15 years.

[Pete Holmes]

Joey and I are relate as both flow ruiners.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I'm also flow ruiner. I ruin his flow.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

A large part of the Coen brothers writing is passive aggressively digging the audience for their literateness. It's a common theme through everything.

[Pete Holmes]

Tell me what you mean, because I couldn't be more interested. And we were talking about making fun of Simon and Garfunkel just to keep you on it, because I am a host as well. Hard wink.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oftentimes I won't be able to call out a specific character, but oftentimes even the Jeffrey Lebowski characters will make, like, a passive aggressive dig at somebody not being well read enough or.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That the truth of existence and of life itself is handed down. The wisdom's handed down through the great literates. It's. I. I think they're making fun of that. No, I think their body of work is devoted to that idea. And the way that I've internalized it as an outsider is that I think they're not only incredible writers, but they're writers first. And that's where I agree the great filmmaking comes from. With that said.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. This whole time, I've been wanting to say the parlance of our time, man. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I just wanted to do it absolutely the whole time.

[Joey Ryan]

It's really good.

[Pete Holmes]

I. Yeah, man. I love the milk garden kids. They're doing his 90th birthday in 10 years.

[Joey Ryan]

I didn't know that you put the. Your tongue in the side of your mouth. What he's doing.

[Pete Holmes]

He always has a hunk of sandwich in there, man.

[Joey Ryan]

Wow. Oh, my God.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I'm in.

[Joey Ryan]

Aw, I'm so jealous.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That is so jealous. He doesn't do that voice when he does those lines.

[Pete Holmes]

You could. Now you know the trick.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I learned it from Josh Rubin. He does the best one ever. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm not good at impressions, but he.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Does try Bernie Mac. What people don't realize is the next thing that the Coen brothers are incredible at. Almost as important as the Writing is the editing. They edit their films. It's also why it's so good. And so when Joey and I do this talking head in the basement of Town hall and we're doing our usual thing and it takes 15 minutes when we watch it on Showtime two months later and Joey, like, is direct into a camera and says, People tell us we sound like Simon and Garfunkel. And then what did you say?

[Joey Ryan]

We never heard of them.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We've never heard of Simon and Garfunkel. Then they cut to the start of.

[Joey Ryan]

Our song, which sounds exactly like Simon and Garfunkel.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And then six seconds, and it cuts right back to us. And Joey goes, we've heard of Simon and Garfield. You're like, oh, yes. They watched this thing with all these musicians.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, they edited it.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a bit of mine. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I thought, huh?

[Joey Ryan]

It's Pete Holmes bit.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, do it.

[Pete Holmes]

I was gonna ask you, Kenneth, to guess what the bid is. If you know that the punchline is. Edited it. You're pretty. You have 70 of it. Oh, God.

[Joey Ryan]

Because I can't even.

[Pete Holmes]

I can't.

[Joey Ryan]

Isn't it just that we up sometimes we fuck up when we make.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Word. Yeah. I don't know how you guys feel about writing, but a good way into a joke is so essential. It's like, I'm not. I'm not trying to pander here, but it's like the pre chorus that sets the table for the chorus. And I can't think of what the line is because I know it's funny to say edited it.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But I don't remember how I got into it. And that's kind of the whole thing. But I do remember it goes like, that's too we up. It's too many. Did it.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like a handful of marbles going down a wooden staircase. I go. And words aren't for just for silly times. They're for serious times too. I go, so you're breaking up with someone? And you're like, I did, Julie. I edited it. I don't know who's breaking up because of a questionable edit, but I edited it. And then it's mostly screaming.

[Joey Ryan]

Did you edit it?

[Pete Holmes]

I did. I added it. It's just the fun. Okay, keep going.

[Joey Ryan]

So by the time. By the time we saw the movie Inside Llewyn Davis, we had already done that concert and seen Oscar Isaac do it for real.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, wow.

[Joey Ryan]

In rehearsals and a town hall. So we knew he was legit.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Real deal.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, this is the best ending to the story. Because I didn't want to take Oskie Eyes down a peg.

[Joey Ryan]

No. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But there is.

[Joey Ryan]

You asked if we were, I think, surprised to, like, buy it, but. And so we didn't know, like, nobody really knew who he was at the time, and we hadn't seen the movie. He. He was just there, and he. We knew he was the star of the movie. And then he was this incredible. The guitar parts that he does on Green. Green Rocky Road or whatever, he does Dave Van Ronk version, and it's really complex and really and hard, and he just totally nails it. He had been a musician and. But a lot of actors had. And. And he. But he's fantastic.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. I didn't know that. I thought we knew that he was learned, and I didn't think he was playing the guitar.

[Joey Ryan]

He did do. He was playing the guitar. He did do a full, like, T bone boot camp to get up to speed on the specific part. But he was. He was, you know.

[Pete Holmes]

Sounds so good. It's not.

[Joey Ryan]

And then I saw him in his play Sidney Burstein's Window, and he plays the banjo on Broadway live.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, really?

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Huh.

[Joey Ryan]

Guy can do anything.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. And he has guy who can do anything face. You're saying you have late face, but you're early. You have early face, but you're late. Deal with that.

[Joey Ryan]

So anyway, I have early face, but I have kids.

[Pete Holmes]

Yay.

[Joey Ryan]

Kids make me late. Like today, someone was supposed to pick up our kid, and then their kid was sick, so they couldn't go. So then I had to go pick up our kid.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Kids are the Kramer to the world.

[Joey Ryan]

Seinfeld.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? They complicate the story, but they make it a lot funnier. But they're why things are getting weird. We all have Kramers. Some of us have Kramers.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I don't. We decided not to have a Kramer.

[Joey Ryan]

No Kramers, I feel like.

[Pete Holmes]

But you did get married.

[Joey Ryan]

This is my friend, Bob Sacramento. My friend Bob Sacramento is Kramer's Kramer.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I don't know anything about that show, but I know that cadence he takes on when he's about to do somebody else's bit.

[Pete Holmes]

He's doing it. I see it, too. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

It's one of the most fun public appearances we ever made was on what was the podcast called, PR's.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wait, wait, don't tell.

[Joey Ryan]

No, it wasn't. Wait, Wait, don't tell me. Oh, ask me another.

[Pete Holmes]

This is funny because you were trying to figure it out, and you're like, wait, wait, don't tell me. It wasn't. Wait, wait, don't tell me. No, it was. Give me a second. Give me a second. I'll think of it. It wasn't. Give me a second. I'll think of it. It was. Hold on, Kenneth. Hold on. That was the name of the show, was it?

[Joey Ryan]

It was. I think I know this one.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is it that great NPR show? Oh, I forgot again.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, it was. Ask me another.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, I do. That one out of Idaho.

[Joey Ryan]

And they made. They. They devised the perfect game show for me and Kenneth, which was. They gave me a car. No, they gave Kenneth a note card on it with, like, a catchphrase from Seinfeld or, like, a Seinfeld reference. And so he has no idea.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Six minutes.

[Joey Ryan]

He has no idea what, like, sponge worthy means, for example. So then he has to get me in, like. Like the.

[Pete Holmes]

Because we did this quiz show now.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You know, they handed me flashcards, and I had to get Joey to say the word on it. And I was like, what the hell is sponge worthy?

[Joey Ryan]

And everyone in the audience knows, because everybody. It means when he says, like, this is someone who's, like, deserving of an absorptive pad.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And everyone just immediately cracks up because they know it's sponge worthy. And he has no idea what he's saying. That was one of the most fun.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, that was good.

[Pete Holmes]

I love that. So why didn't they put you in Llewyn Davis? Let's put them on blast.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You couldn't have just. Instead of, oh, let's help out Timberlake. That's what they thought.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Instead of getting the folk duo, let's teach the pop sensation folk.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I will manifest.

[Pete Holmes]

And Adam Driver.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I will manifest this.

[Pete Holmes]

You're practically Adam Driver. You're so close to Adam. You couldn't have gone elder. You couldn't have done that. You couldn't have pretended to be in the army.

[Joey Ryan]

He's a genius, don't you think? Adam Driver. He's incredible.

[Pete Holmes]

I do. I might. It doesn't matter.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I will manifest this. Now, the reason that they didn't is that they didn't know us from Adam, not Driver. Literally, from Adam.

[Pete Holmes]

They didn't know you from Adam Driver, man.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

They found out about us six months later from T Bone. Well, actually, a manager that worked on the show. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and the guy said, how about the milk carton? Kids showed up and saved the day.

[Pete Holmes]

That's where you guys are, down at the bottom.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So they didn't know us. But I do happen to think that the Cohens have this, like, 12 to 15 year cycle of.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Things that they revisit. Yes, whatever.

[Pete Holmes]

And there's only so many things to get obsessed with.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, you're right. And I think that's gonna have it.

[Pete Holmes]

Was bluegrass. Got a time, folks. Coming back.

[Joey Ryan]

That's right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Can I tell my most. It might be my most shameful story as an adult that has to do with this.

[Pete Holmes]

Can't wait.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is that one time. So you've heard a lot about our close and personal friendship with the Coen brothers.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And that involved. There was one time I went to Joel and Francis's apartment on the Upper west side at a small dinner party. This was back when I was drank a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember this. And they gave you their cat and you lost it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, it's worse than that. The other guest was Peter Dinklage. It was me and my girlfriend, Francis.

[Pete Holmes]

Have to say that's a synchronicity, because the joke I didn't make was, I'll give you a Dinklage hug.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Ah.

[Pete Holmes]

I just. But then I was just. I wasn't making fun of him. I was just saying, like, I'm. I'm. There's a height discrepancy, but that's the one that I said wasn't worth it. But now it's worth mentioning because that's weird. Yeah, keep going.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Anyway, I spent that dinner. I got a little drunk, and he was gluten free, and I spent all dinner trying to bully him into eating bread.

[Pete Holmes]

Dinklage.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Can't bully Dinklage.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know. It was shameful.

[Pete Holmes]

You kept telling Peter Dinklage to eat bread. To eat bread.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, what was your. What was your approach like with Fig Newton's. The fiber angle? How are you selling American treasure, Peter Dinklage bread.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I would, like, grab a piece of bread from the basket, and he was here, and I was here, and Fran was here, and I'd bite the brag. Fran, the bread's so good. Pete. Oh, no, you don't eat bread. And I put it down, and I just did that for a couple hours. I ran into him at a play.

[Pete Holmes]

Alcohol is a hell of a drunk.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I ran into him at a play in the Village a few weeks after that in the bathroom. I was like, oh, Peter. And he looked at me as if we had never met. We had spent three hours having dinner together.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, so he deleted it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That was a select all delete right there. He's gonna delete the bread guy. That's good. Yeah, but that's good.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well deserved.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, he edited it out. I also like that you were pretending that you saw him in the bathroom and you went, oh, Peter. Because Peter means ding dong. Never forget. I won't. Peter means ding dong. In the 70s.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I've told the story before that, but in. Sorry. 32nd aside, in junior high, the teacher of our sex ed class, you know, light, light stuff. It was probably third, fourth grade. They're like, all right, before we even talk about how babies are made, let's get it out of our system. Say all the names, you know, for the body parts. And we started with the women. Boobies, titties, all that stuff. We get to the penis. Every name, you know, for the penis, they're like, dick Peckerwood. All that stuff. I know. I'm sweating. I'm in a puddle of my own sweat. Because I know we're drawing closer to Peter.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm dying because my name is Peter. I'm the only one.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I thought your name was Peter.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why we're talking about Peter.

[Joey Ryan]

That's what we're talking about.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why I shortened it. Shorten my cock too. What am I doing? That's an old Steve Martin joke. Anyway, I'm sitting there and I'm waiting. My heart is beating out of my chest. And he goes, all right. This saint goes, we got them all. Closes the book, puts him down. Nobody said Peter. Everyone leaves. They leave the class. I'm curious. I opened the book. We didn't have the book. Check the list. Peter's on the list. Wow. He made a call.

[Joey Ryan]

Nice guy.

[Pete Holmes]

Nice guy.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What was this hero's name?

[Pete Holmes]

Dick.

[Joey Ryan]

Dick.

[Pete Holmes]

Dick Testy Balls. I think so. He knew how it felt.

[Joey Ryan]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

Dick Tessie Balls. Didn't want me to.

[Joey Ryan]

People have names like that.

[Pete Holmes]

I know Dick Tessie Balls.

[Joey Ryan]

I know a guy. Richard Hoare. Richard Hoare goes by Dick.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean double down.

[Joey Ryan]

You gotta double down.

[Pete Holmes]

Double down on a Dinklage dip. That's the bread. Double down on a dick whore.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We had a drummer called Jamie Dick. He was in our band.

[Pete Holmes]

And Jamie means I love. Oh, Jimmy.

[Joey Ryan]

True.

[Pete Holmes]

I love Dick.

[Joey Ryan]

Month in the bus. We never thought of that.

[Pete Holmes]

Month in the bus. You guys gotta get. I've been telling you, I need to come in for, like, one leg. Just be like, what? What's the kind of stuff you're working with?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, pitch some stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Get out of the next city.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, Jamie was too busy telling us all jokes for us to do any of the joke.

[Pete Holmes]

Jamie's A funny.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, Jamie got married after. After he was on the road with us. And his wife's name, Allie. Wonderful Ally. Their wedding slogan on the invitations, the card, the whole thing was Allie takes the dick.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. Ally takes the dick. Putting. Getting dick in an alley. Something. I'm just workshopping. It's already happened, but I feel like there's something about like, meet me in that alley for some dick. His was better. His was better. But this is why I feel like I'm better. Like dead serious.

[Joey Ryan]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No. I think that's their orgy invitation.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the orgy invitation.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. We're back to second orgy. Ref.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Dinklage abounds. Orgies abound. This episode is brought to us by our friends at Arm Rock Colostrum. You guys know I am obsessed with ways to strengthen my immunity as well as gut, health, fitness, endurance, metabolism and hair and skin radiance. I like to say this like an old 80s commercial. Imagine if there was one product that did all of that. But there is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

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[Pete Holmes]

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[Kenneth Pattengale]

But back to my most shameful moment is that then I was in New York. I was living in Asheville. I went to New York, and Ethan knew I was in New York. We had dinner and.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I just interject and say I thought the Dinklage thing was. That's why I didn't pursue it gets worse.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. I mean, that was just bad human behavior. I was a dick to Peter Dinklage. No good excuse.

[Joey Ryan]

I knew that was your number one host. Shame.

[Pete Holmes]

Apologies to Dink Lydge.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, the most embarrassing. Just on a holistic level.

[Pete Holmes]

A good name to shorten.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

This is a more serious offense.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And a humble brag is Ethan calls me up. He says, when are you leaving New York? I say, Wednesday. He goes, can you leave Thursday? He said, why? He says, I just finished a movie. I want you to come see it. Be at this screening room in. Wherever it was in the Village this time. On Wednesday afternoon. And I go down.

[Pete Holmes]

Did you say, I got a question? Milk Duds. Like some weird ask. Yeah, we can get Milk Duds. You get Milk Duds, I'll be there, bitch. And then you hang up.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, but actually, I'm just putting this together. This is the first time after the Peter Dinklage dinner that I had seen Joel and that had been a year or two.

[Pete Holmes]

The dinled.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I walked, trying to do a Game of Thrones with something with bread. This whole time.

[Joey Ryan]

This whole time, you're not even paying attention.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm here, but Photoshop is open in the background and all I'm doing is Game of Buns.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I get why it's. You made it weird now because just the entire time you're trying to do jokes while people are trying to have serious conversations, that makes it weird.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a million ways to make it weird that I've discovered, but this is certainly my favorite. Keep going. So he says, come to the screening room.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And I'm late. And I show up to the screen room in the village. And I walk in and there's Ethan, and there's a seat for me. And I see Joel in the back. And I still have guilt for having bullied Peter Dinklage. I wave at Joel and I misinterpret his. His, like, serious scowl for, like, oh, he hates me. And I sit down and I watch. They had just finished, literally, the night before editing the Ballad of Buster Scruggs. And they're showing a. Like, us a screening before the visual effects. Anything.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And I sit down and I'm like, for an hour and a half, just pinching myself. Ethan Cohen calls me to come watch this, like, early version of a Cohen. Like, where am I? What is this world?

[Pete Holmes]

And Joel Cohen is apparently mad at me. I got one mad at me. I got one in love with me.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But. So I sit there and I watch the movie. And I have a. I have a. I don't know if it's an unusual brain. I have a really bad memory. I can't remember important things that happened to me. I can't remember important feelings I've had. If there's documentation of it, I can remember it, but I just.

[Pete Holmes]

Same.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's a.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's an impression of me. Like, I'll be telling a story to Joey, and then I'll go, oh, you were the guy next to me. You were the nameless, not me guy.

[Joey Ryan]

That was next to me.

[Pete Holmes]

I hate it. I do it to Val, and she's such a I know people throw around Saint, but she never gets mad that. She's like, I was next to you when that happened. And I'm like, it's hard. It's lonely in here sometimes. Keep going.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But. So I'm watching the movie going, this is absolutely surreal.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I've been, like, asked into the, you know, behind the curtain.

[Pete Holmes]

You won't get this reference, but. George. Into the nightclub full of ladies.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yes. The lights come up. Ethan looks at me and he goes, what'd you think? Oh, I really enjoyed it. It was great. And he goes, that's it. And I'm like, yeah, it was great. Like, that was awesome. I'm so happy.

[Pete Holmes]

He wanted, like, a. He said, treaties.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He said, I invited you here to, like, give me notes on the picture. Like, is there anything that doesn't work for it? Like, what?

[Pete Holmes]

And I'm like, you've watched the movie.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I just went and enjoyed a movie with my friend and thrown in popular milk, fear.

[Pete Holmes]

You're smoking a cigar, laughing your ass off, but no notes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But it was more than that. It's that my filmmaking hero wanted my input, and I had no input to give.

[Pete Holmes]

Because you couldn't. You probably. Are you. Am I hearing you right? You probably couldn't even really remember it that well.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I tried to come up with some criticism of the Tom Waits, like, short story.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Because there was one line that didn't work for me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That I remembered. I was like, oh, he shouldn't have said that. And I was. And so then I'm telling this to Ethan. I was like, there's a Tom Waits line that he's like, well, what was it? I gotta know. What was the line that did what?

[Joey Ryan]

I go.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What does he say when he's at the top of the.

[Pete Holmes]

Really hurting my feelings. I hate this story.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know.

[Joey Ryan]

Can I tell you?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's why I said it's one of my most embarrassing.

[Joey Ryan]

Can I.

[Pete Holmes]

Does he know what happened? Well, because now, years later, you could say, I didn't know. I thought you were like, come watch it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

This is the other weird thing. I don't know if you have people that are close to you this way. Like, he's not a human being. Like, the rest of it. Like, he. Yes. To go back to our beginning of this podcast, I think, like, all of us, his longest story is also with his bms. Like, I mean, I don't mean to Saint.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I don't mean to grant him, like, sainthood in that way.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But, like, if I tried to Reminisce about that with Ethan Cohen. I think his brain's not interested. And we'd be on a different part of the conversation a second later. And I. I could probably be like, no, I want to talk about this, but there's no right. It's not necessary for him.

[Pete Holmes]

Somebody said this, and I changed my brain. They were like, when people say, if I could have lunch with anybody, sometimes they pick like, Steve Jobs. And he's like, don't you realize that all Steve Jobs would be doing is workshopping his ideas on you? Right. Like, he doesn't. That's not to say he's a sociopath or doesn't care, but he'd just be like, so you're saying you would like a watch, like with a touchscreen. How big? How big is this? Too big.

[Joey Ryan]

I said, I'm the one who said that to you.

[Pete Holmes]

You are not. I would have believed it. It's. This is sort of the defense of the seemingly self centered. And I do mean seemingly self centered.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm so self conscious about this. I know whenever I do it, I'm like, oh, I'm awful.

[Pete Holmes]

But I tried and I have explained it, Devel, where I'm like, you can't believe how impersonal it is. How. How not indicative. Indicative of how I feel about you. It is, right? Because I'll forget my. I'm obsessed with my daughter. And we were. Our friends from New Mexico were visiting us, and I was trying to remember if Lela had ever been to New Mexico. Mexico. The answer is yes, but I need jogging. And then I see them, the images. But I'm like, what I'm doing in that panic is I'm picturing a place in New Mexico. And then like. Like an animation cell. I'm putting Leela there and going, is that better or worse? Or worse? Was that real or is this real? Was she there? And I'm just like. Then I'm fluttered with panic. And then. You ever realize you're not even trying to solve the problem, you're just thinking about your own panic, and then you're off to the race.

[Joey Ryan]

Well, tell me what this says. Tell me what this says about me, because I have the. I have the same story as Kenneth in reverse. And I may have never told you this, Pete.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my goodness.

[Joey Ryan]

But some years ago, when I got a message from our manager and they said they want you to come to a table read of Pete Holmes show crashing.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Joey Ryan]

They did not say why. And I could not figure out why.

[Pete Holmes]

Are you real right now?

[Joey Ryan]

I swear to God, nowhere in the.

[Pete Holmes]

Email it said to read the part of. Wasn't your character's name Joey?

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. Eventually I got the script, and that's when I found out why you just.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Thought you were going to kibitz like.

[Joey Ryan]

A. I thought I was going to give notes like you were supposed to do at the Coen Brothers.

[Pete Holmes]

And you were ready.

[Joey Ryan]

I watched the whole show, all the. I had everything. I was ready.

[Pete Holmes]

Ready with notes.

[Joey Ryan]

And then I got the script, and it was like, Ted, a Joey Ryan like, character. And I was like, okay, I'm reading.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm reading. Ted. Yeah. No, we wrote that for you. I wrote that for you.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, but. So. I don't know why somebody didn't tell me that. But, like, when I. Up until almost the moment that I showed up, I had no.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, this goes back. This conversation really is in my.

[Joey Ryan]

Why do they want me to be there?

[Pete Holmes]

I swear to you guys, yesterday I had an email that said, do you want to meet with the producers on this show? And it said in the email, I'm not making this up. This is not an audition. You don't need to know the lines. It's just a meeting. It said. It. I go into the meeting, they're like, are you ready? And I was like, luckily, I. This isn't. I. I had a. I was like, there's a 15 chance we're gonna do the scene. So I did look at them, and I had them printed out. But other. I. I was ready to just shoot the bridge.

[Joey Ryan]

They just jumped right into it.

[Pete Holmes]

And then I. But this is stupid, but the story's almost over. I was like, glad we did it, because what are we gonna do? Just talk. It would be like, let's hear a song, boys. You know what I mean? Like, please play a tune.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

With that in mind, let's hear the milk carton. I'm just kidding.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, but it's.

[Joey Ryan]

So I did bring my guitar. Did you bring your guitar?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I am so embarrassed. And I tried.

[Pete Holmes]

You didn't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I tried.

[Pete Holmes]

No, you tried. How do you try to bring a guitar?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no, the story is that I forgot the guitar and I was already 12 minutes down the hill, but then I remembered there's a guy who borrowed a guitar from me whose studio is between my house and your studio. And I called him to try to pull in the chip, and he said an expression.

[Pete Holmes]

Pull in the chip.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Call in a chip.

[Pete Holmes]

Call in a chip. No, just pull in a chip.

[Joey Ryan]

Cash.

[Pete Holmes]

You cash in a chip, you pull in a fish, and you Favor.

[Joey Ryan]

Call in a.

[Pete Holmes]

Call in a favor. You call in a favor, you cash in a chip, and you pull up.

[Joey Ryan]

This is one of the great.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, no, there's a chip thing my.

[Joey Ryan]

Wife and I that I said.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's totally valid.

[Pete Holmes]

You chip. You wanted to chip away his patience.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I called in a chip. That's what I said.

[Joey Ryan]

That's what you said. Yeah, but that's not it. Where's my say?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You guys chat?

[Pete Holmes]

I do want to say. Oh, we're going to check. You texted it. You said, can I check? Can I pull up your fish? I do want you to know I almost texted you guitars, question mark. But then I was like, I had the Ava brothers on my podcast, and I'll never forget it.

[Joey Ryan]

They brought their guitars, I bet.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, we were in their studio and I said, do you guys want to play a song? And look. No, no, I'm not.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Excuse me. Quote, call in.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know if they want to.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Quote is an idiom that means to use your social connections or influence to gain an advantage over others.

[Joey Ryan]

No, it's not calling a chip. That's AI.

[Pete Holmes]

Did you ask AI? I was just gonna say, did you ask AI? Well, I mean, I need. I need Google. That's the news.

[Joey Ryan]

Tells you what you want to hear.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but that's an AI overview. I believe it.

[Joey Ryan]

Some cash in your chips.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Call in your I. Call in your chips. It's. Here's the Collins dictionary.

[Pete Holmes]

Gemini just told Valerie that Oreos were gluten free, and her stomach ache said, fuck you, AI. So we got to be careful with that. It's real.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wait, that couldn't be the sugar. The copious amounts of sugar and chemicals.

[Pete Holmes]

I wish I could go back in time and smoke a cigarette and be like, yeah, you don't think it's the sugar? How's your. How's your marriage going? How long have you been married? It's new, right?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Five years.

[Pete Holmes]

That's newish.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's newish shape.

[Pete Holmes]

It's new.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

How long have you been married?

[Pete Holmes]

We've been together for 12 years, but we've been married for seven, so it's not new, now that I think about it. How long you been together, though?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, long. Seven years. Eight years. Seven years.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. All right. You went new. You went right for the marriage.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, we got married.

[Joey Ryan]

This is all very cute.

[Pete Holmes]

What? This story.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We got married because my wife's grandpa died.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh. There's a lot of riffs I have right now, but I'm not gonna do them.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He died in Canada.

[Pete Holmes]

That doesn't do anything. That doesn't give me more information to riff inappropriately.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It was during COVID So we got married so I could cross the border.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, you had to be married to go to the funeral? Yeah. Whoa.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. So we. I propose.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, how bad do you want to go to a funeral? This guy's gonna give half of his possessions to a woman, and he'll be like, at least I got to go to that funeral.

[Joey Ryan]

This guy loves it.

[Pete Holmes]

How good is the finger food? Open casket. And he is handsome as hell. You're not gonna believe how good looking this grandpa was.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wait, is this a Seinfeld voice? Because it's a Seinfeld bit, or are you improvising in a Seinfeld voice?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm improvising in a Seinfeld voice. Great jokes, but it's also to distance that it's me doing it. It's like, I'm not saying this. Seinfeld thought you were giving away your life to go to a funeral.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I love it, though, because those jokes, I feel like we're in the Seinfeld vernacular.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. Seinfeld's one of my favorites.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You're number one.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, to do bits as right. And I think I've said this before, but when Comedians in Cars was on, I would rehearse what I would say and be like, rear view mirror. No, all mirrors are rear view. If you look in a mirror and you see in the front, brother, that's a window. That's a front view window. I was so ready to go and never asked.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He would laugh at that too, eh.

[Pete Holmes]

If I did in his voice. Well, this is also kind of a synchronicity, because Seinfeld put out a book called Is that any? Is this anything?

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, yeah. Have it.

[Pete Holmes]

And years before, I found out that he was a fan of new material. Seinfeld, this thing we did on the old Pete Holmes show, and that was.

[Joey Ryan]

Wait, is that also, like, a Twitter account or something? It might have been modern Seinfeld.

[Pete Holmes]

No, that's not.

[Joey Ryan]

That's different.

[Pete Holmes]

That's not us. We would write Seinfeld bits, and then a puppet would try them. And the one that I remember is Nate Fernald. I'm pretty sure it was Nate Fernald. It might have Joe derosa. It might have been Jamie Lee. They all work together, but they were like, why does macaroni have the clear front? It's the only box that has that. Once you see inside of it. Cereal's the headliner. He's in the dark. Why's pasta. Get a room with a view. And I died. And then Neil Brennan did a commercial with Seinfeld and said that he was talking about it and how we would do the bits and then go, is that anything? And then on the ride to this podcast, I was like, wait a minute. I think he called his book is this anything? Because of new material.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Sign.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. I can't confirm.

[Joey Ryan]

It obviously doesn't say that. That's not something everybody says.

[Pete Holmes]

It is something everybody says, but because he pointed out that that was the funniest part, which it is. The funniest part is that an insecure puppet is like, is that anything? Number two pencils. We already have a thing that's number two. And, brother, you can't erase it. P. Looks like a number one.

[Joey Ryan]

The best one is the mirrors. The best one.

[Pete Holmes]

Rear view mirror.

[Joey Ryan]

Rear view mirror is amazing.

[Pete Holmes]

That is the most. Seinfeld. How. How is that? Not one of his bits.

[Joey Ryan]

Not one of his bits.

[Pete Holmes]

Rear view mirror.

[Joey Ryan]

All mirrors are.

[Pete Holmes]

Or do it as Mitch Hedberg. Rear view mirror. All mirrors are rear view. Sorry to switch. If you look through a mirror and you see forward, that's a window. All right. Not as easy to do. It's not as easy to do. All right. Somehow I made this about me.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What about Norm MacDonald? Dude is Norm MacDonald.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Rear view Mirror. I'm just doing Mark Norman. Mark. Norm MacDonald. Okay, so where are we? You didn't bring your guitar?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah. I. So I couldn't call in the chip.

[Pete Holmes]

In time, as is the parlance of our time, you know?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And you know what? That reminds. This is a complete digression. Not even a digression, because we have not been in this territory. This is a complete aside. But there. There was this very seminal bass player in the country. Yeah. The history of country music. Doghouse bass player called Roy Husky Jr. That played the most important instrument, the bass, on some of the most important recordings that shaped American culture.

[Pete Holmes]

Take a walk on the wild.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Probably not that, but come as you are. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Just kidding.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, I know if I said yes.

[Pete Holmes]

We'D move on the riff. And the riff ends. If you say yes. Yeah. Yes. Longview.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely. Anyway, the coolest story I ever heard about rusk, Roy Husky Jr. Was at his funeral. These people. All these people showed up at his funeral, and like, 30 of them showed up with upright basses, which are not a small instrument.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And gave them to his wife. And as each one gave the base to his wife, his wife realized that years before when she told Roy Huskey Jr. Stop buying bases. He would. He never stopped. He would just buy bases and give them to his friends. And so at his funeral, just. People descended upon his funeral, giving back the bases that Roy Husky Jr. Bought himself.

[Pete Holmes]

And they're like, it's time to quit freebasing.

[Joey Ryan]

She does not. Oh, she's unfazed.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, no.

[Pete Holmes]

I was mugging to the camera. I was very proud of that. So they were freebasing and they gave him back.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

They were freebasing. But I.

[Joey Ryan]

So, I mean, this is a person, like, in our circles and stuff, so I don't mean to be mean or anything, but when he died, his wife just found out that he had been, like, deceiving her for base deceit for, like, all those years.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely. The two things that come to mind are, one, I found out.

[Joey Ryan]

Good story.

[Pete Holmes]

But then she found out, like, that's why all the base in debt. But then now I'm also. What I was thinking was, now she has 30 upright bases.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know. What a way to smile. Spite your wife for just saying, like, you know, cut it with the buying of the basics.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, you think it was to Spider?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Not to Spider, but he unintentionally spat her.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Spited her.

[Pete Holmes]

Spite was happening. Yeah. Unintentional spine.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But the thing, the big take on for me is that that was clearly a part of Roy Husky Jr. That could not be helped.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, because also, if it were little pins or something, I would. But, like, the largess of the base, I would make the argument that this was not, like, intentional spite. There was a compulsion. This guy was a. What? His entire life was defined by this instrument. And.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And he couldn't escape it.

[Pete Holmes]

Buying Catcher in the Ride. Like, he had to do it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He had to do it.

[Pete Holmes]

He had to do it. That is, I. This isn't. I really do want to know. Do you have that with guitars?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I was going to say it seems like you might.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's a problem.

[Joey Ryan]

Kenneth has that with guitars. But you haven't bought guitars in a while.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Well, you know, it's fun.

[Joey Ryan]

Our studio looks like a vintage guitar shop.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

The guitars are the. Lining the walls into two rows, one above the other.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna take a stab. Is it because when you were a kid, you were like, imagine having all these guitars. Are you fulfilling a child?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No. I don't know. The only thing that I know is this could change tomorrow.

[Pete Holmes]

It could be right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, I get the sneaking suspicion that I'm happy in life now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, I'm content.

[Joey Ryan]

You finally got enough guitars.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no, not the guitars, just everything. I'm 42.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I'm nevermind. In generally good health. I was in poor health and came. That's probably what contextualized it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But I'm not wanting for anything anymore. Which is a. I think what everybody's after.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. To put an end to seeking and resisting. Yes. You're bringing us right into the Buddhist.

[Joey Ryan]

Kenneth, if you didn't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yes, but.

[Pete Holmes]

So that's what happiness is. Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Except I'm going to Europe on Saturday and I don't want to go. Like this is some people's dreams to like go to a different city in Europe for 30 days and. And experience cultural and history, whatever. Like fuck. Not again.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, we going on to. You're going to work?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, I'm working for my wife and so it's not really work. Like if it were just a job, I would turn.

[Joey Ryan]

You're not going on vacation.

[Pete Holmes]

You're. You playing with your wife?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, actually, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Not in that way. You mean it's a bit of it. Are you saying it's been.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, I'm happy.

[Pete Holmes]

Dry times.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's all fine.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, it's fine.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Everything's good.

[Pete Holmes]

Being sexless.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Being sexless is fine. You're a religious guy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right. We talk about when we started masturbating.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's right. After poop.

[Pete Holmes]

But you mean you're.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You started masturbating after pooping?

[Pete Holmes]

We did poop. Then jerking. Yes. Which is how you want to do it. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's the only way to do it.

[Pete Holmes]

Shave, shower, stroke.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Stroke, shave, shower.

[Joey Ryan]

Boy. I really missed a long few minutes of the beginning of this podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

It was long and fruitful.

[Joey Ryan]

I was only two minutes late.

[Pete Holmes]

You weren't even late. We just thought it couldn't be funnier to start without you. I don't know why. Anyway, wait.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

In N Out Burger. Does it give you the shits or does it constipate you?

[Pete Holmes]

I don't eat it, so I wouldn't know. But I know you double lettuce. Yeah, I have.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And you don't remember. It was.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't remember. It didn't give me shits. Yeah. I took that moment to be like, I don't eat that. But I could have just been like, I have eaten it. But I went right to the victory line. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I don't eat that. Yeah. I actually have a. In my mind. It's not a famous story, but. But I did mushrooms and earlier in the day I had eaten In N Out Burger because I was with a girl that I was trying to impress and I didn't eat meat at the time, but she was eating in and out. So I was like, I'll have in and out. Then I had the worst mushroom trip of my life, obviously. And the, the punchline when I told the story was the drug that I did that day was In N Out Burger. It wasn't psilocybin. I ate thousands of ground up, factory farmed, horrible hormone cows and cheese. And then I had a horrible trip. No fucking shit, dude. You just ate like an orc prison. It was horrible. You guys do drugs?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He does.

[Pete Holmes]

You do? Are you. So be noodles.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

Still on the booze? Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

So be noodles.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I'll have a drink like once every two months and then it'll give me a headache.

[Pete Holmes]

Really? Yeah. So you didn't have the allergy, you were just doing it too much?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I mean, no disrespect to the people who have a disease and have the allergy.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, you're like, I don't think that's a real thing.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, on the contrary. Not only do I think it's a real thing, I probably had it. And for some reason I had an easier pass of giving it up than other. Like, yeah, like that there doesn't need to be a full stop for me to have changed, a entirely changed relationship with it. Whereas quite literally decades of my life. We're looking forward to the proverbial like 5:00pm, which sometimes was 2:00pm or so. Like, we don't have a. I don't have a job. I've never had a job.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So sometimes that could be 11:00am if you wanted, without any shame or red flags or whatever.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And I drank a lot for many, many years.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But then, well, it's like, also I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day for 18 years.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, wow.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But I had thyroid cancer, which was unrelated. But I went under the knife.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't think the carbon monoxide had a say?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Just because it wasn't the lung doesn't mean the body wasn't taking tolls.

[Joey Ryan]

I was an alcoholic and a chain smoker for two decades and then I had thyroid cancer. Unrelated.

[Pete Holmes]

It had to do with my lack of jogging. Too many frosted flakes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, it was most likely genetics or radiation exposure. I mean, if you believe science, it could be the smoking and drinking. Anyway, it wasn't.

[Joey Ryan]

But what were you getting all the radiation from?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no, that's one of the things have you ever been to a thyroid cancer doctor? It's a hilariously simple job. We could all learn how to do it in about a 45 minute seminar.

[Pete Holmes]

You read the letter.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I think even easier.

[Pete Holmes]

Really?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, no, there's a flyer. They give you a flyer.

[Joey Ryan]

I have to be so much higher than everybody else. The pharmacist, That's a Seinfeld bed.

[Pete Holmes]

You stay down there. I'm counting pills.

[Joey Ryan]

Can't be down there with you people.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, because they have a little platform.

[Pete Holmes]

It used to be. Yeah, yeah, that's so the 80s.

[Joey Ryan]

I think he got that taken care of.

[Pete Holmes]

They were like, they're onto us. But it's the same reason why we stand when a judge comes in the room. We need theater to believe this guy knows how to lower my cholesterol.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wait, but that. That. If you were a real smart therapist, you'd give. You'd dig a trough and you'd hand the medicine up to the people. Yeah, you would never really get complaints.

[Pete Holmes]

You'd say, this is hummus from the earth. Yes, exactly. So keep going. Oh, so thyroid cancer because of your radiation.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We'll skip the part about thyroid doctrine being easy.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I want to know why it's easy.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, because when you get thyroid cancer, they basically give you a pamphlet because this has been happening for so long. There's like a. There's like. It's like a choose your own adventure book, except you're not choosing the adventure.

[Pete Holmes]

It's just a book then. No, just a regular novel.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's not what I mean to say. I mean to say there's a point of departure and then there's a few different paths that could go, depending on if the cancer is malignant or it's not malignant.

[Pete Holmes]

It is like a choose your own.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Adventure, but you're not choosing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but even in choose your own adventure, were you choosing? You're rolling the dice. It might be a very short page, if you know what I mean.

[Joey Ryan]

And then you go back, and then.

[Pete Holmes]

You got to keep a finger in there anyway. If you're not keeping a finger in there, you deserve to fall off the cliff.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So there's about three different paths that could eventually become.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And then on those paths, there are various things that could happen. And if you're a thyroid doctor, if you learn like those 14 facts. Yes, you could answer any question that comes up in the appointment, because is.

[Pete Holmes]

Does that mean it's kind of a grim situation? It's not like.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, quite the opposite. It hasn't killed anybody. In like 60 years, they've got a.

[Pete Holmes]

Handle on, like, but you still get full the mystique.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So much so that Joey and our former manager wanted to hinge our entire publicity campaign for our fourth record to Kenneth's cancer story.

[Joey Ryan]

Not only that, we wanted to make a whole TV show about it.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. We almost did. We almost, the three of us almost made a TV show, which I still think about. Keep going and I think would have been great.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The TV show would be great. But the point is it's. No, it's a. I learned emotionally that it's not a lesser cancer. But if you do all the math.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, but it was still the brain.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And the heart is not discerning. They take it seriously. But as rational, like upright walking, email writing people, we can do the math and be like, oh, that's not as dangerous as stage four metastasized breast cancer. Like, these are two different things.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And that's how I got myself through a lot of it.

[Joey Ryan]

And then.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And then I received my comeuppance, which is that my body and my being did not discern between like a mildly life threatening.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Scenario and like a aggressive life threatening scenario to join you. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

When you. When your wife leaves you, as mine did, and people go, well, you didn't have kids. Like that is rationally true. But it doesn't help. Like, you're still devastated. So even though you knew rationally your body and, you know, metaphorically your heart was still devastated. Is that so? It was rough, yes. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Interestingly unrelated to that whole bit, I went under the knife to get my thyroid removed.

[Pete Holmes]

And this was before every expression you use, I question, under the knife. I'm sorry. Well, how is the knife. The ceiling in that room.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But. So we did that at a moment where we didn't know if it was cancer or not. I was under. They were going to take the thyroid. I'd do the pathology. If it was cancer, they'd take the rest out. If not. This is one of the things you'd learn if you became a thyroid doctor.

[Pete Holmes]

Under the knife, under anesthesia. Take it out. He's over it.

[Joey Ryan]

The cancer's deep enough in there. At that point, the knife's under you.

[Pete Holmes]

Classic. Classic.

[Joey Ryan]

That's the helmet bit. That's skydiving.

[Pete Holmes]

The helmet's wearing you for protection. I loved it. I heard this, the music of it, but I couldn't place it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

This is Seinfeld.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

Why are you wearing a helmet when you're skydiving? If the shoot doesn't open. The helmet's now wearing you for protection. That is very good.

[Joey Ryan]

That's common health and helmet safety protocol. Never jump out of a plane without a human strapped underneath you.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very good. It's also in the larger helmet bit where it's like human beings, instead of stopping their head cracking activities, developed tiny plastic hats. Now we can keep doing our head cracking activities.

[Joey Ryan]

The thing I love is the idea of a brain. That's the helmet laws. The helmet law, yeah. The purpose of which is to protect a brain which is functioning so poorly it's not even trying to protect the cracking of the head that it's in.

[Pete Holmes]

You did. You ended that like, like tar, like the movie tar. You're like in the. It is beautiful. Sometimes listeners ask me what is the easiest and fastest and quickest and honestly, kind of cheapest way to support our show. And I always tell them Living Libations because you can get something small or you can get something big. What we did in our house, we did a complete overhaul of our medicine cabinet, our beauty cabinet, our sunblocks, our baby care, our skin care, our teeth care, our eye care, and we redid it. We got a replacement from Living Libations because they have natural, incredible, powerful, effective, but also real, real ingredients that you will recognize that feel great on your skin and get into your body and feel great. Unlike toxic stuff that you get in a pressurized can at 7:11. That's blue goo that you shouldn't be shaving with. I use their best. Their best shave ever. I'm sorry, that's not. It's called Zen shave and I use their best skin ever moisturizer at night. Everything, everything on there. If you want to support the show or you want to get a gift for somebody that you know that has skin, eyes, teeth, nails, hair or has a baby, get them something from Living Libations. It's beautifully packaged. The containers are like beautiful, like frosted glass with like wooden tops. So it's like a high end, nice looking gift idea, but also a gift that you can give yourself to not fill your body with chemicals that get absorbed into your skin. I'm talking about shaving, I'm talking about moisturizing, I'm talking about under eye, I'm talking about your gums, I'm talking about your teeth, everything. They have a high end, natural, real replacement at Living Libations because that stuff ends up in your body and that toxicity level was never intended for humans. And it's also incredibly effective. Their exfoliating Scrub. The ginger exfoliating scrub is what it's called, is the most effective badass exfoliant I've ever used in my life. So it's not like some kind of like, you know, soft candy butt version. That's natural. It's the best and it's natural. It's a wonderful gift idea and it's a wonderful way to support your body and to support the show. Get 15% off by going to living libations.com weird that's living libations.com weird for 15% off. Support your body, support the show. We're also brought to us by our friends at Magic Mind. Of course you see us drinking it on the show. Of course, you probably see me on social media talking about it. This is how it goes. It's right here on my desk. I found Magic mind. It blew me away. Then I reached out to partner up with them. So this is the most auth. All of the Pete's. Pete's picks are this way. They're authentic in that manner. But Magic mind is no exception. It is nootropics, adaptogens and caffeine from matcha tea. So it's like green tea from matcha. Adaptogens that help you feel calm and relaxed and centered and grounded and also nootropics that help you focus and dial in. So it's like creator aid, like Gatorade for athletes, creator aid for creators. It is flow state in a bottle. It elevates your mood. It dials you in, gets you ready to create. I absolutely swear by it. I take it before I do stand up. I keep it in a little travel bag. They also have gummies now, by the way, speaking of traveling, the gummies are incredible and they're caffeine free, so I believe you can give them to children. I believe it might be eight or nine years older, which is awesome. So now we have like a chemical free way to help kids focus as well. Absolute game changer. Go to magic mind.com or magic mind code slash weird and use my discount code at checkout. Weird. For a limited 20 off your first order. Flow state fights off procrastination, brain fog, fatigue and some ADD symptoms. You get dialed in, it doesn't get you jacked. It gets you dialed in. Absolute game changer. You know, I love it. So support it. Try support the show. Support your brain. Try it. Help the show. Maybe give it to a friend this holiday. Magic mind.com weird. Use weird@ checkout. All right, everybody, back to the show. Okay, so I guess My cancer story, not that interesting. I knew it back to the.

[Joey Ryan]

What did you call it? A lesser cancer. It was not a lesser cancer.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a lesser cancer. But his body didn't know.

[Joey Ryan]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So I was classically addicted to nicotine.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I mean, in the deepest sense. And they. I had that surgery and I bought a few packs of cigarettes before the surgery and stashed them away, said, okay, I'm gonna take a week and a half off back to the smoking. And I woke up off the table and have never, since that day, have never had a craving for nicotine or. It's like they turned a thing off in my brain. This was somebody who. I mean, he. He endured it for many years. I would just chain smoke. I couldn't have enough. It, like, the impulse ruled my life.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And in a moment, it was turned off.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not surprised. I. I don't understand it, but I remember there's something about trauma or, like, flooding the senses are, like, really shaking you up. That is an opportunity to, like, rewire the brain. And the way that Tony Robbins would get people to quit smoking, which I don't think he stands by anymore, but he used to have them go into a room and smoke cigarettes, and when they lit up, he would start yelling at them, like, berating them.

[Joey Ryan]

And you had to keep conditioning.

[Pete Holmes]

Exactly. So you make this association. And he. But first he'd say, like, why do you. Why do you smoke? Right. And then be like, because it relaxes me. Oh, can you smoke one? And then so he goes, do you feel relaxed? You feel relaxed now?

[Joey Ryan]

Not now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, exactly. And like, he would make them. It was very old school. Like, he'd forced them to continue smoking and they really didn't want to.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So you make a new association. So you somehow, I think, physiologically got.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Some sort, by the way, because that's as bad as, like. I mean, that's definitely cancelable behavior. Right.

[Joey Ryan]

Don't say what you were going to say.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, what? As bad as.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, no, not as bad as.

[Joey Ryan]

What were you going to say? Don't say, no.

[Pete Holmes]

No.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's on the same continuum as, like, conversion.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. I knew you were going to say that. Not worth it. Well, you were.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Think that's why I stopped myself and didn't say as bad. I'm not equating the two. But, like, you're just taking somebody and yet giving them new trauma to associate with a behavior like, that's not going to fix anything.

[Pete Holmes]

I think that's safe. Yeah. I mean, you're Saying both.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, ones are hideous, horrendous. You can't treat other humans like that.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Even if you're.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's why I think.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Pretending to help them.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep. I think Toro has denounced that. And that was. That was the height of science at the time.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Do we like Tony Robbins?

[Pete Holmes]

Tony Robbins has changed my life. And I. I'm sort of not. I wouldn't say I'm off him, but.

[Joey Ryan]

I don't know anything about Tony Robbins.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, is there. Hold on. Before we get Joey up to speed. Like, is there any human.

[Pete Holmes]

The rest of the podcast is just a dry explanation of the Wikipedia of Tony Robbins. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is there any human on Earth that possesses that kind of charisma, gathers that kind of power, and is not corrupted by it?

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, JRR Tolkien is that you. Can human beings handle that much money and power? I mean, the answer seems to be in. I'm not even putting Tony on blast. I'm just saying in general.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, yeah. That's.

[Pete Holmes]

Someone has $300 million, they're not a chill. I'm just saying.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We started. Joey and I started a songwriting camp. We go to the Catskills every summer, and we have 60 people. 60 people. Small potatoes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But we do a thing.

[Pete Holmes]

Finger small potatoes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I got a real fingerling crowd.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's a fingerling crowd near the Finger Lakes.

[Pete Holmes]

And you're teaching fingering.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Whoa. What if I really was blown away by that? Whoa. I start crying. So you get 60 people.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We create a safe space for people who are interested in what we do to write songs, and the whole thing unfolds like a magic trick, and at the end of it, we've done nothing. But we have this power over people because they think that we're responsible for this experience that they just had.

[Joey Ryan]

Not my experience of our songwriting camp at all.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well.

[Pete Holmes]

But it could be interpreted that way. You're saying you just allowed for it to happen, and sometimes people misappropriate. Oh, you made me write a song.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

My point is this. No. Is that we're engaging earnestly in a thing. I like. Everybody's there for a defined experience, but the thing that happens is a really emotionally charged thing because you're helping somebody tap into a deep, like, desire that they have for. They show up ostensibly as non professionals trying to do a magic trick. This, like, yes. Deep, emotional magic trick. And we help them do it and the power that we help give them, which I think that we're frauds, because we just kind of get out of the way we set an example, and then human beings do what they do, and it's a magical thing. But at the end of that, you can look at those 60 people. And I remember the first year we left, it was like, oh, if me and Joey were bad people, we could take a lot of money and we could start a cult. Like, just.

[Pete Holmes]

It would be corrupt.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Because there was. We stumbled into this one certain side of this power dynamic thing that just naturally, I think, comes out of human interaction.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And my point being, like, I don't even know. I. I don't. I know just a tiny bit more than he does about Tony Robbins. I just. Every time I catch it, it's like, there's no way that that guy, in his bad moments, doesn't take advantage of the way that people look at him and want from him.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not saying this to defend him. I have a feeling he is Ernest. I've listened to hundreds of ads. It would be awesome. But I'm also gonna concede your point to be suspicious of mass gatherings and power and money. You kind of can't really go wrong. I don't know how that might take shape in different instances. I do want to take.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Especially a yeller. A guy that yells. That's also a red flag.

[Joey Ryan]

So if I may, I have such a different experience of our. Of our little songwriting camp there.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Like the. I. I bet you that what I contradict the things that I've seen of Tony Robbins and other, like, highly charismatic, kind of culty leader type people with, like, followers is they're very sort of authoritarian and domineering in their style, and. And they want to take credit for the progress that they're, you know, that people have made.

[Pete Holmes]

Now, I have, for example, his is a little very Tony to be. Be like, I am not doing anything. I'm just pointing you to something in you that's like.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The similarity is that if on Wednesday.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't mean to interrupt.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

If on Wednesday at 2pm at our songwriting.

[Pete Holmes]

So good.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

If on Wednesday at 2pm at our songwriting camp, we wanted to do the firewalk, everybody would do the firewalk.

[Pete Holmes]

See, you're not wrong. I mean, there's something going on, and I. I do think he's tapping into that. Go ahead, Joey. Go ahead.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You don't think they'd do the firewalk?

[Joey Ryan]

No, because the point is to get every. The point is to have to help other people write a song of their own.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know, but if you know anything about the firewalk, the entire Point of the firewalk is that you can do it on your own.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And that you're the person that's helping embolden them by saying, I don't know what the firework.

[Joey Ryan]

I don't know anything about Tony Robinson. I don't know anything about the fireworks. I feel a little out of my.

[Pete Holmes]

Out of your element?

[Joey Ryan]

Out of my element.

[Pete Holmes]

Would it make you feel better to walk across the coals? Katie, light the flame. I want to say this, though. The way that you guys are kind of toe rowing it, Tony Robbins ing it is. It's not just that you set an example. You play some songs, you maybe talk about them and then get out of the way. Because human beings don't do. Don't transform with just that. That's. That's the stage. But the true setting is now they're under observation. So it's like. It's a little bit like to be fancy. The Heisenberg principle. They behave completely differently because they know you're there. It's the same phenomenon. As a deadline. It's the same phenomenon. If I told you guys I'm going to write a song and play it for you on Friday, we need that pressure.

[Joey Ryan]

I just don't feel any degree. Maybe this is just more. It says more about me, but I don't feel any degree of power over, you know, people that come to our camp or people that come to our shows or anything like that. I've never. I've never really been pointing. Begin with sync with that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

If we were bad people, we would acknowledge the power. If you were worse people, take advantage of it.

[Pete Holmes]

Hey, Jeff Tweedy wrote a book called how to Write One Song, Guys. It's right there. How to Write Two Songs. Not only is that a great idea, but it's sort of in your tone.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a big book. You write a book called how to Write Two Songs and then just go see.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Mine would have been how to Write One Song Better than Jeff Tweedy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's good. How to Write One Song, but better. Yeah. How to Write One Good Song. We're workshopping now. I didn't know you did a songwriting camp. I do have to imagine that people, power dynamics aside, are transformed by that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely. As are we. Yeah, it's the best. Literally the best experience of the year.

[Pete Holmes]

Really Makes you grow.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, it's. It's soul nourishing. That's a phrase.

[Pete Holmes]

It is so nourishing, I imagine.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. Teaching.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

The. The. This camp started in 2019, and it was like, definitely Transformative for us to be on the other side of the equation where, like, the whole time, you know, for 10 years, we've been performing, you know, and all the. You turn all the lights out, except for the one spotlight on us, and everyone else has to be quiet and we get a microphone. And, like, the whole thing is to make. Is to be the center of attention. And so the idea to me of teaching or the experience of teaching was like, so. So the opposite of that. And it was just a different way to interact with music and the. Our. Our career and our own creativity. And then, like, also the people that. The people that like our music, especially since we're like a small band, then they all have this weird thing in common, which is that they like this band that nobody knows about.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Joey Ryan]

Except the Coen Brothers.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Textbook Tony Robbins over here. Why is. He's, like, hypnotizing. I couldn't go that long without being interrupted. He's just.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I say that because we started early, I felt a little more protective of Joey, feeling included.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, you're just letting me go.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, no, I. I didn't feel like I was letting you go then, but I was a little bit more, like, sensitive to the fact that you might not feel as folded in.

[Joey Ryan]

Sensitive. Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

See the blank look on his face? It was unnecessary.

[Pete Holmes]

I hope so.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He was. He was unaware.

[Joey Ryan]

Do you think that the psychedelics are doing the. The sort of trauma scrambling thing and giving. That's what's going on with the healing via psychedelics?

[Pete Holmes]

It very well could be. Yeah. Because going back to. I had a riff, by the way. Do you think maybe it was your cancer that was smoking because they took it out and you just. You were never a smoker. It was your thyroid cancer. It was like, I do two packs a day, and then they got it out. But there is something. And I'll. I'll. I'll speak out both sides of my mouth. I think one of the things that's happening is an overwhelming experience wherein change can happen. Like, so you're having a psychedelic experience, which isn't just visual. It's. It's, you know, centrally very exotic, overwhelming. And you can go in and go, like, I've been so mad at my mother, I have to drop that. Because you're being.

[Joey Ryan]

You do the therapy in conjunction with the psychedelics, or are you just.

[Pete Holmes]

I haven't yet, but I'm interested in trying that. Yeah. Because, you know, the difference in efficacy. I believe it's 20% for PTSD. It's 20% is talk therapy. And you add MDMA, which the kids like. You know, vermin, like, you would know that as ecstasy or E. Yeah. You guys know E?

[Joey Ryan]

Sure do.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Molly.

[Pete Holmes]

You know my friend Molly? Yeah, I bet you do. Suddenly being Danny McBride. I don't know what I'm doing. If you add MDMA, it goes up to 80%.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's insane. And there's something about the way our brain's relationship to adrenaline. It's linked to memory. I've said this a million times. If you're trying to remember something, they did the study where you're reading a book every 15 minutes, some college kids would put their arms in a bucket of ice water, like, and hold it there for 30 seconds and take it out. The people that did that retained, like, I don't want to make up a statistic, but they retained a lot more. This is why we have a hard time forgetting traumatic experiences in our life, because there's something about that state that you hit save more. So there's something going on about the spotlight of intense experience that gives the brain an opportunity to change.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Your theory about paranormal activity, is that right? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

If only you were on a podcast that absolutely loves stuff like that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Know that, like, often, ghosts, ghostly apparitions, are a physical representation that we're able to perceive of a place that has a lot of energetic trauma. Trauma will have happened there. And it actually physically changed the space, the space, the makeup of the universe in that tiny little place in a way that we could perceive.

[Pete Holmes]

Sometimes I'll say, as someone who just visited my parents. Spaces, spaces, beholden, memories, guys. Yes. Like, it's, fuck ghosts. Because I'll just say I haven't had experience with a ghost, but I have walked into a house and been like, jesus, it's in the walls.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, it's like, who's the person that's came up with if these walls could talk?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Idiot.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that an excuse?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

They definitely can talk.

[Joey Ryan]

Idiot.

[Pete Holmes]

Idiot.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What an idiot that person was.

[Pete Holmes]

Have you ever seen a ghost? I ask everybody. So it's not just off of that.

[Joey Ryan]

I did.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I saw a ghost one.

[Pete Holmes]

Where?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, it was up.

[Pete Holmes]

Was it in a banjo shop? Because that seems like ground zero. Banjo seems like an invoking instrument. There's something unholy, especially if it's a little out of tune. You know what I mean?

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Definitely.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Keep going.

[Joey Ryan]

Well, I can't start our banjo song without our. Our stage bit about the banjo songs, which are that it's impossible to write a song on the banjo. Where Nobody dies in the song. And then you start the song and it just sounds like, yes, somebody will die.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, tell them about when you started writing it. Tell them when you started writing that song. I was trying to team up for the top of the bit was he says, I started writing my first song on the banjo.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, the bit. Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Real professional.

[Pete Holmes]

The bit is any Seinfeld bit, though. He's ready to go. He's picking him up like grounders on game six. You started writing the bit?

[Joey Ryan]

No, it said this. This. This song wasn't. This song was supposed to be a love song. I got to the third verse, I said, holy shit, I think this person's gonna die.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Imagine how much funnier that would have been if he seamless made you believe that he was just. Just saying that off the C. I.

[Pete Holmes]

Did like it as a craftsman, you know what I mean?

[Joey Ryan]

I can see the I like bits being bits.

[Pete Holmes]

Let the bed be a bit comedy president. I say not everyone gets a 30 second light. Not half price on the chicken wings. Full price off free. Full price. Okay.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

JFK is releasing the.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay, cool. Yeah. Why not? Why do comedy. People say it's too hard to do stand up. I say we do it because it is hard. We will put a man on the Comedy Store stage.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Hopefully a woman.

[Pete Holmes]

And hopefully. Has there been a lady on the moon?

[Joey Ryan]

On the moon?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Good question.

[Joey Ryan]

Good question.

[Pete Holmes]

We don't all.

[Joey Ryan]

I see not that many people on the moon.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Only a few people.

[Pete Holmes]

They stop handful.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, many have gone close, but only a few have gone down.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. And they disappointed to go all that way.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like driving by your mom's house. Just pop in, you're there.

[Joey Ryan]

I don't think they went to the moon that many.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But also they let a monkey do it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, monkey got to do it. And he doesn't even know what happened. No, he was like, I was in the place with the bananas. And then I was in a place with no bananas. And now I seem to be back with the bananas. Everyone's real happy about where I went, but all I remember was no bananas.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Never mind the zero gravity.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. He didn't notice that?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

He was just like, are there bananas in the floating place? Where are the bananas? These are hot ribs. I feel like Mulaney could run with that. What were we saying, though? Have there been any ladies on the moon?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No.

[Joey Ryan]

In space, yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But crude is like missions.

[Joey Ryan]

Six crude missions to the moon.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

How many? How many landed on, like, walked on the moon?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, C. R E W E D. But not all.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And one extra refined mission to the moon.

[Pete Holmes]

One crass landing. So it's a crash landing. Imagine going up and just looking at the moon, you dork.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Did you ever watch, like, my wife.

[Pete Holmes]

Get out of the plane?

[Joey Ryan]

That was.

[Pete Holmes]

It's the kid that stays in the car with his Game Boy when you're at the St. Louis Arch.

[Joey Ryan]

They had to.

[Pete Holmes]

I know there's one.

[Joey Ryan]

At least one person on every one of those that went all the way there and didn't get to get out.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

They knew that was.

[Joey Ryan]

I know they stay. Yeah. The third guy in the. In the main one with Armstrong and Aldridge. Another guy.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You don't even know his name.

[Joey Ryan]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

That's like Moses never get into the land of milk and honey. That's the way it goes.

[Joey Ryan]

That's what got to see it.

[Pete Holmes]

He only got to see it.

[Joey Ryan]

But Moses went down in Seinfeld and the Old Testament.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Moses got his stories.

[Pete Holmes]

Most people think Moses got in. It's a Bible fun fact to be like, Moses never got in and Moses killed a guy. A lot of murderers in the Bible, famous murderers.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And who do you impress with that? That's like.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, I actually hear what you're saying. It does sound like you're with me. No, no, but you're not.

[Joey Ryan]

Whom do you impress with that?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right? Whom do you impress? No, because, like, up. Probably it's just somebody who's between 12 and 13 and like, @ a specific point in their Bible learning knowledge.

[Pete Holmes]

I keep those BFFs, Bible fun facts at the, like. You know how rock climbers have that open bag of talc? Yeah, I keep it in an open bag of talc in case I'm ever in a discussion with a fervently religious person.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Who wants to say, like, why should we go to that church? He had an affair. And I'd say, well, why did we listen to Paul? He was a murderer.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

That's pretty good.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, that's good.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. But when my pastor has affair, the church went away. President Bartlett, I can't believe you said that. Because that scene means so much to me. It's Western.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I hate that show.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, season one Sorkin season.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know, but it's. Isn't that the epitome of American exceptionalism? That's like. That's like the face of it. That represents all of the. All of the discord we have in. In my.

[Pete Holmes]

Is the. Is the Band Aid over the problem?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The West Wing is like deep, deep pornography for. For the American.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

For the American ideal.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's why when in 2016, I watched it because I was like, it was America porn to have a guy be like, I know I could take a grape, but I will not take it without paying for it. And he weighed it. I owe you 11 cents, madam. And you're just like, yeah. I also had a joke about West Wing is I'm like, I need JB Smoove in every show. Yeah. Because JB helps you make sure you understand. So I'm watching West Wing. I just want JB Smooth to be there, to be like, what's a caucus? What is a filibuster? What do you mean when you say he's gonna filibuster? What exactly does that mean? Hat. Beautiful hat. What does that mean? Because I'm watching. I don't know what the fuck they're saying.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

See, that's good. I want a different thing from every dramatic program ever. Like, my wife's never seen Mad Men, and I did. We're re watching it.

[Pete Holmes]

Nice.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What sees you on right at the beginning, season two. But there's a moment where a disillusioned Betty Draper steps out of the bed and cuts herself on a broken wine glass of her own debauchery. You know, like, obviously a very specific metaphor and scripted moment in a serious show. But I always wanted. Because there's these kinds of things that happen in every story. I would love if at that moment, just that incidental cut became gangrene and they had to cut her foot off. And all of a sudden, Mad Men was about an entirely different thing. It was about, like, a convalescing, like, I really want somebody. You know, it. It was the first time when they lopped what's his name's head off at the beginning of Game of Thrones. Spoiler alert.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Seeing Bean.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, that one. That was the first time it ever happened for me in. In real. Where I was like, I got so invested in this character.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And now they're going to take us in entirely different direction.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna do you one better. I believe it's called Executive Decision was billed as a Steven Seagal movie. And he dies. Minute 15. Oh, amazing. And the rest of the movie is a Kurt Russell movie, which, looking back, we should have known. But, like, when Steven Seagal dies, we were like, you. You wouldn't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But I wouldn't.

[Joey Ryan]

Like, a Wire's pretty good. The Wire is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

It's a different.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But I'm hoping, like, a guy like Paul Thomas Anderson could Do it with genre. Even, like, at the first 15 minutes is like an action movie, and then somebody gets stung by a mosquito, and all of a sudden it's like.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. You know, a Slow Dusk till Dawn.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Have you seen that?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The Robert Rodriguez.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Movie. Not in so many years.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, but it, you know, it swaps. It does.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I've forgotten.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Maybe I can just go back there.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm with you. But Betty does get her comeuppance later. Yeah, but Donnie does.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Spoiler alert.

[Pete Holmes]

Donnie doesn't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Do we think anybody's still listening?

[Pete Holmes]

There's. There's a man under a stack of magazines. Like, he was cleaning, and there was a very small earthquake. A stack of Life magazines is pinned to the ground.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You made it weird.

[Pete Holmes]

He had it on. On a radio, so he can't reach. He's got the broom. He's trying to knock his iPhone onto the ground.

[Joey Ryan]

He's not even trying to get out from under the stack anymore.

[Pete Holmes]

No.

[Joey Ryan]

He just wants to die in peace.

[Pete Holmes]

But we know he's like, it can't be three hours. He keeps going. Hey, Siri. Hey, Siri. Imagine being thwarted by. Siri's in attendance. Yeah. Yeah. I do think people are listening. You were just about to tell a ghost story.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

It's all just interrupting us. But there's. There's. You know, I got my finger on the pulse.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

My ghost story in the page.

[Pete Holmes]

You like to choose your own adventure. I got my finger in the page. That's my interview. Style is choose your own adventure, but keep a finger in the page.

[Joey Ryan]

You hit the end of the path. Come back to the fort.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. In fact, if I were to ever give earnest podcasting advice, which is funny on an episode that has been slapdash, but I absolutely love it, is you do want one thing. Because people worry about blanking, so you always keep one. You know, in Tetris, you have the next box. Always just have something in the next box. That's all Podcasting. The difference between a real conversation and a podcast is I know the next thing I want to.

[Joey Ryan]

You know who will not listen to this podcast is my wife, because she hates.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

This is all. Every conversation I ever have. I love tangents.

[Pete Holmes]

Me, too.

[Joey Ryan]

And I can. I can keep my finger on the page, and I want to come back to it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And she. She. If she's telling a story. If I try to ask a question in the middle of the story. Please hold your questions.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Till the End well, she's right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I think podcasting is the lowest form of art.

[Joey Ryan]

You're the same.

[Pete Holmes]

That's very funny. And I mean, who am I to disagree? But she would like Stand Up. Stand up is Shut the up. I'm telling the story.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, yeah, she'd like it.

[Joey Ryan]

She loves Stand up and she'd love to do it. And she loves Seinfeld. And Seinfeld, as far as I know, hates podcasts because he goes, the world could use more editing.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, this is my point.

[Joey Ryan]

Right, never mind.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I've figured this out empirically. I don't think Shots Fired Jerry and Joey and I are on the right side of history here. Filmmaking among one of the highest forms of art, as far as I can tell, painting even more. Let me tell you why people will dedicate years of their life, spend their hard earned time to making 90 minutes count. Yes, and we just wasted more of your time without giving it any more than just real time thought.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's like saying every meal has to be a five star Michelin restaurant. You ever go to one of those? And afterwards you go to a Shake Shack. Welcome to Shake Shack.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But you don't have to eat podcasts to stay alive.

[Pete Holmes]

You do have to listen to podcasts to simulate community.

[Joey Ryan]

No, I mean, this is. We're. Now we're right back where we started when you asked us if we. If we talk about the bit. If we write the bit. Yeah, because we don't talk about the bit. But that's to get the bit off the ground. That's to get it going. But it does then eventually coalesce into, oftentimes into a highly scripted word for word, beat for beat, extended.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Joey Ryan]

Bit, which will deliver night after night.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Now, we have never written something like that in advance, but we have those. And so the podcast is improvisational.

[Pete Holmes]

I just want to interrupt to prove to Kenneth that I do interrupt you.

[Joey Ryan]

Okay, great.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

There was a time where Joey started to try to write those. And it was. Oh, yeah, because I'd show up, you know, it'd be. At the time I lived in New York and then Nashville, be a little while since we'd seen each other. And then I'd see him all of a sudden three times in three days. And he'd kept trying to start, have this one conversation. And then you felt I'd be like, oh, he's trying to get something going. But it's like a, you know, it's like a stupid.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Self referential, reflexive sign. You know, like he'd start Asking a Seinfeld question. Yeah, I'd be like, they always tell.

[Pete Holmes]

You when the Ubers coming to get you. Yeah. But after it drops you off it, no more updates. Where'd that guy go? That's not bad for like a. Under the gun in between. Song worthy, you know you didn't have.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

One on deck, Pete.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't have one on deck for that, but I got two on where we're going. Where are we going?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah, Ghost. My ghost story. My family has a mountain cabin right on the edge of Yosemite. So across the street is 300 miles of wilderness, of ancient wilderness.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Very loaded, energetic land. One time we were up there, this was now 25 years ago. My immediate family and a group of friends. We were all in our teenage years, maybe early 20s, so there was a little bit of inebriation going, but not me. I was on the younger side. Deep winter, five feet of snow out in the outside of the cabin. One of the things you do out there is in that deep snow, you get bundled up in sleeping bags and you stare at the night sky because it's unlike anything you've ever witnessed, especially if you grew up in Southern California. So there were about 15 of us looking at the night sky. And one of my older brother's friends sort of like broke into this ultra calm, pristine moment with a what the fuck is that? And everybody's like, what, Dave? And we all turned around and off in the forest was just this glowing white orb. And everybody was like, what is that? And so probably about a half an hour of group think slowly moving towards it. Somebody getting brave, trying to go even further, like, wait, it's sustained. It just stood there hovering above the snow, probably 2 meters, this sort of nondescript white orb just emanating energy. And everybody was transfixed by 2 meters.

[Joey Ryan]

About 6ft off the ground.

[Pete Holmes]

Thank you, American.

[Joey Ryan]

You bet.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And nobody could really dissect it to the point where when we all decided to go inside, somebody had the idea that everybody like render their own artistic version of the thing. So somewhere in our mountain cabin there's a stack of like 20 different versions. First person accounts of this orb that we saw.

[Pete Holmes]

That's fantastic. That's one of the greatest stories I've ever heard in my life.

[Joey Ryan]

How do you decide? How did you decide that that's a ghost story and not a ufo?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it could be a UFO story, but guess what? My story, when they say no to the ghost ufo, they say, you ever see a ufo? So you just got them both but yeah, it sounds like a ufo. It sounds like a UFO is in the woods. Assuming it's freezing out. No, one's not suitable for human entertainment. And then it starts, like, doing what it's doing and then a bunch of kids start looking at it. And it was awkward. It was like, see? But what can't just leave right away. When did it leave?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What I love about humans. I don't recall. I'd have to ask my mom. What I find most wonderful here is that us as humans in this iteration, you and Joey have. I don't know if it's arrogance or audacity, but like that. You're drawing the distinction between ghost and ufo. Something that we know so little about. How could we like, deign to have such a strong opinion? Like it just feels like it's more of a ufo. These are like.

[Pete Holmes]

I know what you're saying.

[Joey Ryan]

Otherworldly. Do have a little pet peeve about ghosts and UFOs in particular.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Here it comes. Buzz kill.

[Pete Holmes]

BK.

[Joey Ryan]

Well, ghosts are like metaphysical paranormal phenomena.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Says you.

[Joey Ryan]

I mean, I think. Isn't that.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm like your lawyer. No, we agree. We agree. We still agree.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I know, but now see what he's going to say about the UFOs.

[Joey Ryan]

Well, the UFO is like. It's not at all in this realm thing. Yeah. It's not even supposed to be.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not metaphysics.

[Joey Ryan]

Some sort of a technological anomaly device.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Okay. Two wildly different explanations for things that present as a. In very similar phenomena.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, but it's.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Who are we to say that they're not actually one thing and we're perceiving them as two different. I'm just saying that we don't know about it.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, but ghosts.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

The whole fascination is because we don't know nothing.

[Joey Ryan]

Ghost theology, you know, ghosts and God are different from UFOs says.

[Pete Holmes]

I know what you mean. I know. What is the word? Ethereal or.

[Joey Ryan]

Beyond metaphysical.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not like far away. A UFO is something far, far away. Yeah. Yeah. Holy. Something from not here is here now.

[Joey Ryan]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

But I. To join you in your theory. A ghost could be like the collapse of. Of space. Meaning like it's happening in outer space, but you're seeing it in your kitchen. You know what I mean?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like whatever that is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But also I told this story yesterday.

[Joey Ryan]

So you want it to be. You want it to be like physical. You want it to be grounded in some sort of physical.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

This is my point is you're the person that wants it to be something, whereas the entire thing is that we don't know what it is, and we're obviously fascinated by it. But I think, like.

[Joey Ryan]

But you said you were saying it's like energy or something.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That was like, my wife's uncle died and I wrote a song about my wife's uncle, and he and I were close and also a troubled guy and whatever. And then we played a concert at Red rocks in Colorado. 10,000 people. I played the song for Uncle Peter, and right at the double chorus, the longest, most vibrant shooting star, like five seconds over 10, I'm looking at 10,000. Nobody saw it because I'm sitting there singing to the sky. And Uncle Peter decided to, you know, fire up the engine and take a lap around just to say hello. Like, that guy was pretty extraterrestrial at that point.

[Joey Ryan]

Are you saying that was a UFO or that was a ghost?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

He doesn't get it.

[Joey Ryan]

Or that was a shooting star? My point had meaning.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

My point exactly. Pete talks a lot about some pretty enlightened stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I'll join you in the parlor. And it's going to be hard to talk about.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Come on.

[Pete Holmes]

But ghost, human, alien, if this is all the dream of one consciousness, what's the difference? It's all made of the same thing and it's all expressing itself however it can. So Uncle Peter could have been a star or whatever you want him to be?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's fucking cool. That's really cool.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Like, that is the greatest mystery. The fact that we have, like, concerned ourselves with writing an email and deciding on a time to show up and talk today, that has to be things that plague us of this world.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

You mean emails and scheduling.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. Like, when you and I are no longer in our earthly bodies, are we going to have to make polite email replies?

[Pete Holmes]

Hell no. Or hell yes, if you're in hell yes. Hell is mostly planning.

[Joey Ryan]

That's what hell is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

See, I'd like to take the form of just staying in one fixed place for the rest of eternity and scare people.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, there's a lot of. If that is your Uncle Peter. Yeah, what a bummer that now he's still in outer space. Yeah. Waiting for you guys to get welcome.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Or Joey. Joey's gonna turn into a clanking pipe.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, right. See, my theory is further out.

[Joey Ryan]

Meaning, like, metaphysical assumptions in that question.

[Pete Holmes]

If our true identity is the screen of the movie, who cares what's on the screen? Meaning Joey and a pipe are the same thing. They're both made of the knowing of it. So, like, that's where I'm trying to join you in the oneness of all things.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's wonderfully aspirational.

[Pete Holmes]

Joey, please. You can. You can say. I dare tune down to a B on this one. Is.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I have a serious question for you.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm. I'm completely enamored with, you know, all of that type of.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I have a Can I.

[Joey Ryan]

Thinking. Which, by the way, is not. Is not foreign to my own, like, theological leanings. Well, more like upbringing in Judaism. You know, they got a. Got a lot of Eastern metaphysics in Judaism. And. And. But I. I think I came to a point in my life at some point, like as an adult, maybe after having kids, actually.

[Pete Holmes]

Your Kramers.

[Joey Ryan]

What? My little Kramers. Where I used to be obsessed with talking about spiritual questions, metaphysical questions, theological questions. And so many times, for me, the sort of conclusion of any of those discussions. Not a conclusion, but, like, it would lead me to a point of being of. Like that the concept that the question or any possible answer was inconsequential. There was always a so what? At the end of every avenue of the. Choose your own adventure.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

I think that's. I think.

[Joey Ryan]

Which was frustrating to me. Oh, I got frustrated by that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Do you want my opinion or an explanation? It's what? It's his happy place.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I would say that the. The frustrating thing. And I'm going to separate you. The spacious field of awareness that you are, that is aware of your thoughts, is aware of your feelings, everything you're sensing. So that spaciousness being your true self, and then your mind being an aspect of that, but you are not your thoughts, that's something you observe. They appear in your consciousness. So you are the consciousness. Thoughts appear in it. The frustrating thing is we live long enough that we start to confuse our identity with our thoughts and our feelings, our relationships, even though all of those things, use that word again, are ethereal. So. But we want, as egos, as separate selves, to bring that illusory collection, that mosaic of Joey Ryan that doesn't really exist. We want to bring him to ultimate truth, when really what you are. The spacious field of awareness is ultimate truth. But the mind isn't invited to the party. Jesus would say, you're kicked out of the wedding feast because you're wearing the wrong clothes. So you can't know it. You can be it. I've made this point a million times. You can settle down and let the sediment of your mind relax. That's kind of what meditation is. You can also do it in your waking state. And Be wise. But the mind doesn't get to ever say, I am enlightened. It doesn't ever get that satisfaction.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Are you saying Jesus was a sartorial snob?

[Pete Holmes]

A sartorial. What does that mean?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Sartorial is with regard to clothing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. He would boot people out of his.

[Joey Ryan]

Wedding so, you know, not to bring it back down to earth stubbornly. Always.

[Pete Holmes]

Please.

[Joey Ryan]

But so where. But. And so where does that lead you? I mean, that's.

[Pete Holmes]

No, that's.

[Joey Ryan]

That's so fun to think about and talk about.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's why I like.

[Joey Ryan]

You're right. And I've come to that conclusion, you know.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

As well.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And I still got to go pick up my kids.

[Pete Holmes]

No, that's why I like your. That's what I. I like that surrender and that sort of like, there is no satisfaction.

[Joey Ryan]

Lead me to a sense of a bit of surrender.

[Pete Holmes]

The ecosystem ego doesn't seek and resist, which is what you're doing. You're seeking closure and you're resisting mystery. It doesn't just seek and resist. It is seeking and resisting. It has no identity unto itself. This is Rupert's Pirate, by the way. It is the activity of seeking and resisting. Rupert's Pirate.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I've never heard that before.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is he a sweet guy or little.

[Pete Holmes]

Ruffle on the edges? No, Rupert's Pirate. He did all of Rupert's dirty work. He'd make people walk the flag. He'd say, shiver me timbers, when it wasn't cold.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Eye patch, gold earrings.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, it's funny. Sorry. What? We're. We're almost out of time and we're getting a little bit of a flavor from you. I. I would say. To put a pin on that. I would say the job is then to surrender. But I actually heard in your answer, like, I gotta pick up my kids.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Just live your life.

[Joey Ryan]

I guess. I guess it has. Maybe I just already did surrender.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. But that's what I thought you were saying is like knowing that you won't know and you can't know leads to, I would hope, ideally, just more spaciousness and more just dropping into what is.

[Joey Ryan]

And 100.

[Pete Holmes]

Whatever the answer is has to be here right now. That's what I would say. Sorry. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

All of the. All of this thought, thinking over and experiencing through psychedelics and everything through all the years has totally led me to a place of just. Of, you know, of a be here now kind of A chop would carry water. Chop wood, carry water.

[Pete Holmes]

Chop would carry water before enlightenment. Chop would carry water after enlightenment Chop would carry water.

[Joey Ryan]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

That's after the Ecstasy, the laundry. That's what it is.

[Joey Ryan]

What's after the Ecstasy?

[Pete Holmes]

It's a Jack Kornfield book. It's making the same point. It's like you have these rapturous moments. You have these great but.

[Joey Ryan]

But also seeking those. Those transcendent rapturous moments where you can be sort of phenomenologically in touch with that. Truth is super pleasurable all the time. You know, it is.

[Pete Holmes]

But I think the great disappointment of enlightenment or self realization is that it's not a good feeling that just never goes away.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. That sucks. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

But it's good. It's good to. But it's. Well, because feelings, the. You know, those are. What I like to say about the brain is that it's a. It's the ultimate get used to machine.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

It's main. Its main function is to get used to whatever is happening.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. That's brilliant. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And so you definitely, by definition, you can't have ecstasy. Well, you just said it all the time.

[Pete Holmes]

In a world of duality, of right, wrong. I get it. I don't get it. It never happens. So you just have to. It's not going to happen here.

[Joey Ryan]

Right. That is the state of the.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, Rupert's Pirate would say that's why.

[Joey Ryan]

I came here to get some enlightenment.

[Pete Holmes]

You can't see orange. You can't see white snow through orange tinted glasses. So the mind is the perceiving instrument of this reality and it imposes its own limitations on it. So as long as you think I, Joey, need to achieve enlightenment or achieve peace or get. That's that seeking and resisting. And paradoxically, it's in the cessation of that effort where you realize, like, we could tell this room that it is not the four walls, that it's the space. And this space is the same and only space of the entire universe. You know what I mean? And then maybe after it realizes that, that it would just go back to being my studio. You know what I mean? But in reality, there's only one space, and it's it, it's it, it's it. Nothing happens. Nothing happens to the room. The space was already enlightened. Nothing happens to you. Your awareness already was divine or God or one, or whatever you want to say. But what's frustrating to us, as the characters in the movie, the characters in the movie never realize they're the screen. Let's do some ketamine. Kenneth, you go, please. We only have hysterically 7 minutes for you to give us your thoughts on the meaning of life. Joey, I could talk to you.

[Joey Ryan]

So much of this for me, comes from. From drugs.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, well, ketamine is a great way to.

[Joey Ryan]

Really?

[Pete Holmes]

You've never had a good experience.

[Joey Ryan]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

I love that you're dipping into Kenneth's time. No, no, I love it because it's sort of a restoration of the justice of us, starting without you.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's true.

[Pete Holmes]

Feel free. But yeah, Kenneth, you. Now you have.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, no, I already said it earlier. I'm pretty. It's. I'm pretty happy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

And that's as. That's his deep. As I'm interested in going.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, great. I could expound on that. But I love it and I won't touch it. So, Joe, you now have six minutes. Oh, this is like the presidential debate. Oh, who won, by the way?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Don't give him six minutes.

[Joey Ryan]

Who won what?

[Pete Holmes]

Who won the election?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, Biden. Biden won.

[Pete Holmes]

No way.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Everybody stopped.

[Pete Holmes]

He came down.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, he's still there.

[Pete Holmes]

He's still there. And they're just.

[Joey Ryan]

That is a funny thing that I haven't heard any. Like, every now and then I remember, like, this whole time he's been the president.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But they stopped talking about him or picking on him.

[Pete Holmes]

You do forget. And the joke would be. Sometimes he forgets. That's the old joke, the standard joke. I got the text that was like, congratulations, your mail in ballot was counted and here's your reference number. And I wanted to reply, who won? Who won? Did it go? Did it go my way? You can read it. Did it go my way?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's good. You're trying to entertain a robot.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. Well, they need love to. And they visit us sometimes in the woods.

[Joey Ryan]

No, sometimes those texts are from people.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's true.

[Joey Ryan]

They are.

[Pete Holmes]

I think that's true.

[Joey Ryan]

They are.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Sometimes Joey really wants to believe that. That's.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, in closing, how. How would you ever sing Michigan's Up My Butthole Now? Would you sing that as earnestly as you sing it? And could you? I'm not even saying. I'm not even really asking you to do it. Well, do you think you could?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, well, we. We have a pretty standard band response to that.

[Pete Holmes]

You've gotten this question before.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Variations of it.

[Pete Holmes]

Really? Yeah, like a parody version of it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, the question is just how. How much?

[Joey Ryan]

Greg Hess and Holly Laurent and they have their podcast Mega.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, yeah, we did that one for free, but we recorded it in simlish for thousands of dollars.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yeah, that's Simlish?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

What's that?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You know, the.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, the Sims language?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, are you in the game?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah, we're singing Michigan.

[Joey Ryan]

Michigan is like one of the songs you can. That plays when you're playing Sims, when.

[Pete Holmes]

You practice guitar or when you listen to the radio. It's got to be the radio.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I'm unfamiliar with the game.

[Pete Holmes]

I am. I am familiar enough so I don't.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Know that you do things in the game.

[Pete Holmes]

Like social meter is through the roof from this chat but my hunger and bladder are getting lower and lower.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I've got a ham sandwich. You want one?

[Pete Holmes]

I am a ham sandwich. I've winked at you a lot today, Joey.

[Joey Ryan]

Oh, really?

[Pete Holmes]

I've been throwing you.

[Joey Ryan]

Honestly, like Kenneth was the recipient of more winks.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't think I winked again. That's a Joel Cohen. You thought I was mad at you, like Joel Cohen style. All right, here it is. Michigan for the game. The Sims.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

I can't wait. It's a long intro.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

No, it sounds exactly like this. The master.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, in the song, by modern standards, it's too long.

[Joey Ryan]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, this is Taylor's version. You just re recorded it.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We had to. Contractual obligation.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh yeah. They own those? Yeah. My God.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That means Michigan's up the butt now is what it translates up my bipolar now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

They sent us a whole like transliteration.

[Pete Holmes]

Wait, it's a real language.

[Joey Ryan]

It's my understanding.

[Pete Holmes]

I wonder if the Minion language is real. Here we go. Where it's. Both of you. Pre chorus.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It sounds racist.

[Pete Holmes]

Eh, no, there's something off about it. I'll say that like it's not English. It's not English.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Right.

[Joey Ryan]

It's.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's the question. What's Michigan?

[Joey Ryan]

You know what's interesting? I realized listening to this. So we. The reason why we're here. Three hours later. The reason why we're here is because we just made a Christmas album.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I thought this was for I only see the moon. No, I only see Santa. No.

[Joey Ryan]

We talked about so much Jesus. We made a Christmas album. Which we'll have to send you, actually.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, please. I just listened to the moon one, which I have been listening to. But that's what I thought we were talking about. Yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It doesn't matter.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you did it. Go ahead.

[Joey Ryan]

So my experience of singing the. We did like a lot of the very churchy, Jesusy Christmas songs.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

I'm Jewish, he's atheist, I guess.

[Pete Holmes]

Jew atheist.

[Joey Ryan]

And like we saying, you know, Christ the Lord a lot.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

And I realized, like, that's our baby.

[Pete Holmes]

Baby.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Also, I'm not atheist. I'll reclaim some of my minutes.

[Joey Ryan]

You're not?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Well, I don't know what the definition is actually. There's a, the, you know how we waste so much of our time staring at this thing like a baby being pacified.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

One of the things that comes up on it is a really distorted Pete Holmes face. And half the time he's making a jack off joke and then the other half of the time he's talking about something, some Buddhist philosophy. But Pete has some extended bit that I must have watched once while taking a shit.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Wherein he took down the atheists or the agnostics with some cute little turn of like, how dare you? How could you know we're all going to turn into dust anyway. Or something. Which I take totally to heart is fully fair game.

[Pete Holmes]

Whatever.

[Joey Ryan]

He converted you from your atheism. No.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Maybe he just clarified my thought, which is actually my religion is just that I don't care.

[Pete Holmes]

I like that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's not that. I, I just, I'm not gonna say. I know something.

[Pete Holmes]

I just, Can I say something?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Everything's pretty chill.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I say.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

If there is one or God just means origin. Right. It's just the origin, the first thing.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's that spawned into everything. And if there is something called God that willed this world, its greatest creation would be someone who's like, there might be something like that. I don't care. That would be a literal masterpiece.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That would be the masterpiece.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's what it is. It's peekaboo.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But that's what I mean to fact check. He's Jewish. I'm, I don't care.

[Pete Holmes]

I understand. I didn't think you were atheist based on how you were known.

[Joey Ryan]

My friend, my friend from college, 3pm my friend from college. When we have, in our family, we reference this all the time. His father was a pastor and he was over at our house one time and my parents asked him if he was, you know, religious still or what.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You know, also we just go along with him pretending that he had a friend in college. Oh, carry on.

[Pete Holmes]

Hilarious.

[Joey Ryan]

And he said, he said, I think one of the great, one of the great quotes of all time. He said, I, I, he goes, I don't, I don't go to church that much anymore. And they're like, oh, you know what's what? Why not? And he goes, I just feel like I don't really need God in my life right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, wow, that's Great. Staggeringly.

[Joey Ryan]

Like there is. So he believed that there was something that willed the. All of existence in and. And probably, like, was available to him in a. In a Christian sense to have, like, a personal relationship.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

With. But he was like, pass. Not right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Hard pass. Divine reality. Hard pass.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

But, you know, I think he was talking about something different.

[Pete Holmes]

I would.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah. But if you think. If you actually. If you think.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I think he did the.

[Joey Ryan]

If you think the real thing to just say I don't care is really funny.

[Pete Holmes]

I agree.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. If it's all one, which means it's you and you made that and it doesn't believe in itself. That's very funny. That's the definition of comedy.

[Joey Ryan]

But singing the Christian lyrics.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

To me was a lot like singing the simlish lyrics where, like, it's just like music works with. Across languages. It's just. It sounds.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

The sounds can be made pretty. It was hard and simlish to make the sounds pretty. Some of them are not.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

But you're right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

You can't exactly change the lyric. Christ was born.

[Joey Ryan]

Right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah. That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

People might raise an eyebrow if you do.

[Joey Ryan]

Right. But it's.

[Pete Holmes]

That guy was born.

[Joey Ryan]

And it has meaning like. Like so many different songs. Ones that we've written and. Or not. Like, it has different meanings for different people. Yeah. But the songs themselves, the melodies of these Christmas songs that we all know and are nostalgic for, and the words, like, literally just the sounds of the vowels are so, so beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

It speaks to the power of music.

[Joey Ryan]

It really does.

[Pete Holmes]

Because Christianity nailed it. Who did that? That's a movie that I'd love to like. How did they get 12 bangers? You know what I mean, for a holiday. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. Guys. I'm just like.

[Joey Ryan]

I know. Can't compare.

[Pete Holmes]

It's. I mean, unless you want to get.

[Joey Ryan]

Everyone, like, you know, a lot of the Christmas songs written by Juice.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that true?

[Joey Ryan]

Well, the. The, like the Hollywood ones, you know, White Christmas and. And Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

[Pete Holmes]

I knew one. I went to a very progressive school, so I know more Hanukkah songs. Do you know this one? I know. I. I won't even sing it. I know you do.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, please. Please.

[Joey Ryan]

I know all of them.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Come on.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Please sing us.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't know these.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Please.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Please.

[Pete Holmes]

We're saying you definitely know these songs.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

How much?

[Joey Ryan]

I'll be shocked if there's a Hanukkah song. I haven't.

[Pete Holmes]

Window where you can see the glow of my Menorah. A newly formed.

[Joey Ryan]

That's not a real song.

[Pete Holmes]

Eight Little candles on this, the first night of Hanukkah.

[Joey Ryan]

Okay, can I tell you something?

[Pete Holmes]

Michigan's up my butthole now. He was ready.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

That Hanukkah song you just sang that I've never heard is the best Hanukkah song I've ever heard.

[Pete Holmes]

It was like in A minor. It's. It's eerie.

[Joey Ryan]

It's pretty Christmassy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

It's just set in. They've got snow.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Is it like written by one of the kids parents?

[Pete Holmes]

No, it was in Rise up singing. It was our songbook. I know another one. There's a light. The Menorah. Let the candle shine on these fine nights.

[Joey Ryan]

That sound like a Christopher Guest.

[Pete Holmes]

The Menorah let. Sound like a Christopher Guest. Eugene Levy. Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

White.

[Pete Holmes]

The Menorah. Let the candle shine on these fine nights of Hanukkah. Like that. It has a real.

[Joey Ryan]

See, that's my problem with most Hanukkah songs is they sound like they're taking the piss out of Hanukkah song. They sound like they legit sound anti Semitic to me. Like they're making fun of Hanukkah songs.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel does.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, it's a dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel.

[Joey Ryan]

I made it out of clay. And they all sound so explicitly like Semitic in the melodies.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, very kind of Russian.

[Joey Ryan]

Y Ashkenazi.

[Pete Holmes]

And you sing them in like a classic New York Jewish guy, like dreidel, dreidel. Why am I doing it? Why did I choose to do it? We all knew what I meant.

[Joey Ryan]

Not worth it.

[Pete Holmes]

Full circle. You have to go. Joey305.

[Joey Ryan]

I know.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm free for the next two hours, so be clear.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, well, we'll just carry on.

[Joey Ryan]

It's literally another pick up my kid situation.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, let's not be late. Yeah, well, thank you, guys. The new album is called the Milk Carton Christmas.

[Joey Ryan]

Christmas in A minor key.

[Pete Holmes]

Christmas in a minor key. The Eggnog Kids. Oh.

[Joey Ryan]

Why? See, we need to workshop every idea with.

[Pete Holmes]

Can we come up with to break it to you?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That one was already made in the Instagram comments.

[Joey Ryan]

Eggnog Kids.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, the Eggnog Kids. Is there anyone? Katie, do you have. No, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, not that.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, no.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a Game of Thrones bread pun. Is there a Game of Thrones bread pun?

[Joey Ryan]

Game, Scones.

[Pete Holmes]

Game of Scones.

[Joey Ryan]

I've never Never seen the show.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't need to.

[Joey Ryan]

We're just going off the game of scones.

[Pete Holmes]

So an hour and 15 later. Take that, dinglage. Take. Guys, Would you say, keep it crispy? And then Michigan's up my butthole. Just kidding. Just keep it crispy.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Keep it crispy.

[Joey Ryan]

Keep it crispy.

[Pete Holmes]

Thanks, guys. Up the butthole now. Keep your hands where I can see them.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Keep the scones where I can see them.

[Pete Holmes]

Double chorus. And you reference another song that has a double chorus, which I thought was your rule, but here they are.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We thought it was our second Michigan.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, so you really went for it and then it didn't work.

[Joey Ryan]

Came over to the dark side.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. You kind of lifted up your skirt a little bit, and it still didn't work. Oh, no. You know what I mean.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

It's a beloved song.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. It's a beloved. Yeah, yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

I mean, it hasn't hit the Michigan numbers, but, you know, we live in a very small sliver of human history.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

We don't know what it will do. The beauty about songs is that you write them. And as this Christmas album shows you, like, actually, I know we ended the podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

This is still the podcast.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

If you believed in reincarnation, what would you want to come back as?

[Pete Holmes]

Me?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Yeah.

[Joey Ryan]

I think in the Jewish tradition, you come. Oh. Back always as people.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, I'd like to come back as a song.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, so you knew where he was going because you were like, you can't be a song.

[Joey Ryan]

You can't be keeping a song.

[Pete Holmes]

I'd love to be a big wave for, like, a quick incarnation wave. And I'm just like. By the time I realized I'm a wave, I'm already sizzling on the sand.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Oh, no. But what if you're one of those big waves that hurts a surfer? You know, the.

[Pete Holmes]

How intimate to have someone die in you.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

That's true. You'd be honored.

[Pete Holmes]

And we look at each other and I'm like, sorry, dude, I'm a wave. What about you, Joseph?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

This question stresses him out.

[Pete Holmes]

Me too.

[Joey Ryan]

Paralysis by analysis. So many choices.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's all say keep it crispy.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

What's that from? I know that you didn't come up with that on your own. It went too fast. Paralysis.

[Pete Holmes]

That's real. It's like compare and despair for this one.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

So now you guys are just letting the phrases fly loose after criticizing me for the ones.

[Pete Holmes]

What was the one that you said?

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Calling your chips.

[Pete Holmes]

Calling your chips.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Illiterate bastards.

[Joey Ryan]

I know this sounds like I'm being a wet blanket. But I don't think I want to be reincarnated because I'm very excited for whatever the next thing is that's not, like, right back here.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Rejecting the fun little hypothetical conversation that was meant to just bring us closer and deeper our understanding of each other, to mark out your own.

[Joey Ryan]

No, no.

[Pete Holmes]

I think I like that answer. Because you want it. Like, let's see what five dimensions is like. Let's see what a different way of experiencing time is like, why he wants.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

To graduate to sniff and smell.

[Pete Holmes]

Or two dimensions. Scratch fewer dimensions.

[Joey Ryan]

Yeah, I want to. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

All right.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Maybe if you call in your chips, you'll be able to get that.

[Pete Holmes]

That was a callback.

[Kenneth Pattengale]

Calling your chips with the big guy.

[Pete Holmes]

I liked it. Yeah. All right, we're out of here. Go get your kids. Thank you, guys. It.