Duncan Trussell Family Hour - (((Tim Heidecker)))

Episode Date: June 16, 2016

Comedic powerhouse (((TIM HEIDECKER))), (Tim and Eric, Decker) returns to the DTFH to talk about his new album "In Glendale" and the upcoming season of DECKER.

Hurry in! Forginoff Backyard Stores by More Safe More Sale is here! Shop the largest selection of high-quality patio furniture online and in a store near you! And save $500, $750, and even $1,000 with a qualifying purchase! Refresh your entire outdoor space for less and pay overtime today with our 48-month zero-interest financing! The more you buy, the more you save at Forginoff Backyard Stores by More Safe More Sale! Happening now! So now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH one of my favorite comedians living today. This guy is truly one of the funniest people I've ever met. He's co-created some of my favorite shows including the Tim and Eric show and check it out with Dr. Steve Broul. Most recently,

he has created a show called Decker which is part of his show on cinema that he produces with Greg Turkington and I was really excited to actually interview him for once instead of doing what we've done in past episodes which is like weird angry style interactions which I think are pretty funny but it was cool to actually have a real one-on-one interview style conversation with him because he's a truly interesting human being. Alright everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast the wonderful Tim Heidecker! Tim, welcome back! Yo! Man, I gotta tell you man, this new season of Decker coming up, I've watched the preview probably five times now. It's so funny. I'm so excited about it.

Really? Yeah. Oh, thank you Dunkin'. Yeah, man. It's just the tip of the iceberg, you know. We're not gonna give all the spoils away in the trailer. When is it coming out? It's June 17th. Yeah, that's one of the, of all the characters you've created that I'm aware of. That is the funniest of them I think and for me. But did you, did you ever read Rena Williams, The Destroyer Books? No, I, no, let me write this down. Rena, Rena Williams. It's Rena Williams, The Destroyer. There was a cheesy movie that came out based on these books but when, when I was growing up, my dad was into these and there, it was one of these series where there's like 250 books and, oh wow, and it's written by a right wing, whoever, I can't remember who the author is. I think it was

two people but they're both like hardcore right wing people and it's, and it's about a cop who basically they fake his death, his past is erased and he becomes an assassin for a right wing organization called Cure and he trains under this martial artist and basically he just gets sent to like kill hippies. Every episode is a different version of him going to, just killing, you know, people selling pot, killing Hari Krishnas, killing, what's that? Right. And it's unironically just like this was the point of view of the author. Absolutely unironically and, and, and, and, because the, because the country's out of control man and, and, and you know, the normal mechanisms aren't working anymore so we've got to come up with a cure for this, you know,

these commies. Like Remo Williams would be sent to kill someone who was like a, like a Bernie Sanders supporter that had gotten too powerful. Right. And, and they would look like those mad magazine portraits of hippies with flies flying around their heads and stuff like the granny, the granny glasses on and, and everything. Exactly man. And I thought when I, when I've, from what I've seen of Decker, I thought, oh shit, I bet he was inspired a little bit by these books, but now I hope you'll go and read them. I will. No, I mean, you know, Decker comes out of, of course, the on cinema universe that Greg Turkington and I have been building for years now. And it's at this, at the core, it's, you know, my character on on cinema is this vile piece of

shit with, with just bad ideas and, you know, major narcissistic personality disorder. And, you know, at some point he decides that he could make content better than these movies they're reviewing. So he starts making this Decker show. And of course, if he's going to be a vile pig, he's going to lean towards, you know, the, the right and he's going to be, he's going to be like a Trump head and all these things. So that's sort of natural for him. And, and that's just been a fun little playground for us to, to play around in, because I don't really get into very, you know, political humor very much in my other work. So to be able to kind of play around with like that, that AM talk radio sensibility through the voice of a action hero is surprisingly

something like I haven't seen very much of that, which is good for me. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I have seen that man. And it, and you really have captured the spirit of who, who's the name of that, that awful guy who shot the kid in the hoodie? What's that guy's name? He sold his gun. He sold his gun. Boy, that's weird. That's, I'm blanking on his name. He had a Latino sounding name. Yes. Heard, not Hernandez, but George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman. He didn't have a Hispanic sounding name at all. I don't know why I thought so too. Yeah. But Zimmerman, he's got that kind of like, you know, Zimmerman is like this dangerous being that is murderous and has the same kind of feeling to him that like a anything that, that is dumb and kills has like a, it's

that kind of, it's dumb brutality or something that. Well, it's very, it's a very simple-minded view of the world, right? It's very black and white and stark and unapologetic and simple, like a simple-minded view of the world, incapable of processing nuance and complexities, history, just, I'm right, you're wrong. I mean, I listened to all this talk radio and there was this guy, Wilco, Wilco report, you know this? No. Okay. So his motto or his low, like what he says before he goes to break is, we're right, they're wrong. We'll be right back. Like that's it. That's like literally his perspective and the message he's trying to get across to his audience. And it's like, I mean, I guess we all get trapped up in that a little bit too, but

when it's so stark like that, it's a fun, certainly fun to play that kind of person. Well, it's, yeah, and it's intoxicating. I mean, you could, I don't know, I don't know if you ever do this, but do you ever try to put yourself into the mindset of somebody who would like, who'd really like Trump? Do you ever do that? Like try to see what's good about him? Try to get into like, okay, here's why he's so appealing to so many people. Yeah. Yes, I do. I mean, I can, I can identify or I can sympathize with that desire to sort of succumb to the strong man to submit to that. Like somebody is going to just take over and solve our problems. And, you know, there, he speaks in such simple terms that it's very intoxicating and this promise,

and he's, you know, he's a brilliant communicator in that way where he's able to make problems seem very identifiable, very simple, very solvable. And, but I think when you step away from that and really look at the, look at information and, and study these issues, they're much more complex and much more nuanced and are not as easily solvable as building a wall or, or, you know, doing any of those things that he's talking about. You know his, how he's going to fund that wall. Did you read how he said he's going to do that? Well, some kind of, I don't really understand it, but some kind of forcing the Mexicans to pay for it because of the trade deficit that exists. I mean, threat, what, saying we're not

going to trade with you unless you build the wall? No, it's, it's a, well, I mean, maybe that's part of it, but it's, he, the idea, so you have all of these Mexicans who are living here and they send money to their families. And so his idea is to shut down, to make it illegal for people to send any money into Mexico. So, and this is, this would crush their economy, apparently, because so much money comes in from the United States into Mexico, that it holds up their economy. And then to, to end the embargo, they would have to agree to build this wall. That's his plan. Well, that doesn't sound like a good plan. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like there's also a lot of like free market principles that gets, that gets stomp old,

that gets stomp old. That's not a word. Stomp old is a great word. Trampled and stomped on is a combination that get trampled in, in, in trying to regulate the exchange of currency between countries. I mean, I'm sure there is, there is regulation regarding that, but it would be, seems like a slippery slope. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I wish I understood it. See, this is what, this is why I, you know, once a friend of mine played, I can't remember it, Vlad, like Norwegian death metal to me when I was really stoned. And he said the creepiest thing he said, do you feel the pull? And as I'm sitting there listening to this kind of hypnotic, droney music that is somehow worse than satanic, I could feel it,

you know, like it pulling you in a little bit, right? Yeah. And that's how it feels with Trump is this weird suction in his direction and the less information you have, the more powerful that suction becomes. And you're probably a guy, I mean, and I'm a guy like this too, that feels like a dissatisfaction with the establishment. And there's certain qualities about him that if it wasn't him, might be interesting, right? Yes. Yes, that's right. Yeah. If it was somebody else that was sort of saying half of the things he's saying, some Western version of Trudeau or something like that, it was, yeah, or, I mean, I don't know anybody that's got like, if it was, I don't know, Bill Gates or something, like somebody really from the outside of government who, but was a genius

or was really, you know, altruistically, be able to hover over the country and see how it could work better. Yeah. And say like, I'm going to put everything I have into getting all these coalitions together and, and findings common solutions, you know, solutions that benefit everyone. Yeah. You know, I'm dying for that. And I keep saying this to my friends, as we sit around the table and argue about politics, is if there was some innovation or some innovator, some, you know, next level thinking, the kind of thinking that gave us the modern Republic, the modern democracy we have now, you know, that can be applied to the current technology and information that we have access to, like, where are those thinkers? And maybe they're out there, but they're not, they're

seemingly are not influencing our political process enough. They're not there. And did you happen to go, I know you voted today, did you happen to flip through the bios or whatever you call it, that describing all the different people running? No, and you sent that to me, I didn't get really to look at it. But what's going on there? No, it's, well, this is like, just, I thought, you know, I better, I'm going to, I'm going to vote. So I better read this, I better read what these people are saying about what they're going to do, pick somebody based on these things. So this is, I'll just read it to you. I can't remember her name, but she did put her cell phone number on. And what is she, what is she running for? Senate. So the Senate. Yeah, for the Senate. So this is

what this is buried in her description is this. My can is my candidacy represents expanding the 13th amendment to explicitly include electromagnetic human behavior and cognitive control parentheses, mind control is a form of human slavery. What freedom is there? I ask if there is not the freedom to think one's own thoughts free from interference, such as that from voice to skull V2K, mind control technology, to be able to hold one's own beliefs, to decide when to sleep or not to sleep, to dreams one, one owns one's own dream state dreams. That's a person who made it into the flyer in, in to run for Senate, which is wild man, you know, did you read any of the out that you didn't read any of them there? Yeah, so and if you continue to read these descriptions,

some of them read exactly like one of those Nigerian email scams, right? Like an obvious, complete disconnect from normal grammar and also one of them was just a series of ones and zeros. Well, what's that about? I mean, how, how do you account for that? Like, what's, I don't get it. Well, I guess that, I mean, I guess that so after realizing that something like half of these descriptions were from crazy people, and that kind of makes sense that crazy people would want to run to get into office. That does make sense that it, but so doesn't it cost money to do that? Like, can anyone, I mean, how do you get, don't you need signatures? Like, shouldn't there be some, like, you know, barriers to anyone just showing up on the ballot?

So it's, I looked it up and it's, there's some really stringent deadlines for all of this stuff that you have to report. So every, like, couple of times a month, by a certain deadline, you have to send how much money you're spending on your campaign and fill out all these forms. It's a very complex, it's described as a very complex series of forms that you have to fill out, which is supposed to act as the firewall between people who aren't serious, but it doesn't keep crazy people out. I see. Because they like to fill out these forms. So they get off on filling out the form. Yeah, it makes them feel like they're doing something. And this woman, you know, obviously, this is, I looked up V2K technology to see if it's a real

thing. And it is, there's a, there is a, an actual type of technology that a project that they're working on to try to make it so that if you're, that they can beam the sound of a voice into your head, which of, and so this for schizophrenics is the ultimate way to rationalize their schizophrenia is that they're getting voices beamed in from the government. And so this woman is a schizophrenic who's running and thinks that the government has been changing her dreams. And she wants to get into Senate as a desperate attempt to stop the voices in her head. Jeez. I mean, all the best. It's crazy. But hey, you know, I mean, maybe she's right. I don't know. Probably not. But the, the, what you're saying, which is, I think what a lot

of us are feeling is like, where, where are we? How come we're not in this? Like, where, right? Do you feel, do you feel unrepresented? Yeah, I don't feel very connected to, to really anybody, anybody running right now. When I, when I see, I don't mean to keep going back to Trudeau, but when I see somebody like that, who seems like young and smart and, and he's like, just a very brilliant person who legalized marijuana in Canada and is doing just a lot of incredible things that I would feel representative of a person like that was floating around. But it's hard to feel represented by people who aren't from our generation who have, I don't know. I mean, I get, you know, Bernie Sanders is

people seem to really like him, but I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's when it struck me because I'm listening to Bernie Sanders earlier in the year, probably maybe late last year, maybe it was probably early, it was like in January, I saw him in one of the debates. And I'm like, I really want to like this guy. I want to, you know, I feel him, you know, he seems like an honest guy, seems like a passionate guy. But the ideas that he's talking about are old, our 20th century ideas. They're, they're, they're not exciting. They're not, you know, they're rooted in, in a, in a, in an economic and government and political system that, that has been around for a while and work sometimes doesn't work sometimes. And I would

just be so excited to hear just a different, like a, just a completely different take on, on, you know, basic systems of how to run large societies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I looked at that. It's fenced in, in isms that have been around for a while. I looked at the guy who had the ones and zeros in his description and cause I was curious what he was about. And it, I don't, again, it was a very confusing webpage. His webpage is very confusing, but it did seem like one of his main platforms is digitizing the voting process. And that's, oh, that, so the idea is like, you turn the voting process into something like Reddit,

you know, where people are upvoting ideas and instead of this sort of laborious, terrible, easily corruptible process that we currently have. Well, I kind of look at it a little differently because I, I don't think I want to spend my time to making all these decisions. Like I, I don't like that all the propositions and, you know, that I don't want to be that engaged with the decision making process of things like, you know, water bonds and, you know, whether or not to build a highway or this and that, I want to, that's the idea of representative government. You elect people that are going to get together, debate the issues, vote on them and enact them, you know, and, and I think I'd rather do that than,

I mean, overdemocratization and it puts a lot of questionable brains into the decision making process that I just think that we've gotten ourselves into a place where the people that are getting into office are not necessarily, you know, very often do not have our, you know, the better the good of the country in mind. That's for sure. Yeah. And did you, when you voted, you, you actually drove to a place to vote. You didn't do mail-in votes. I drove to a place to vote. Yes. I went to my neighborhood polling. I like that. You know, I like put, you know, doing, pushing the buttons and stuff. Yeah, me too. It is cool. But, and you just, it's like a very civic friendly experience, you know, it's like people are nice and, you know,

you just feel like you've done something. Do you ever consider like getting, do you ever feel like getting more involved in your community or do you ever get that feeling that you want to like just, I don't know, now that you're sort of a, you're in a community, you've got, you've got you're a kid, do you ever think about that like, shit, I'm at the point now where I actually, as a, it's kind of my responsibility to take on more of a leadership role. It's not a bad thought. I don't think about it too much. It has occurred to me. I am very passionate about the, about things. And I feel like I've, I come from a logical place a lot of the time. I was sort of a practical, pragmatic approach to things. And that's something to consider, Duncan.

I mean, I'm a very busy guy. I don't know when I'd fit that in. You are, you are a very busy guy. You are so, you are really such an ambitious and talented human being. You just released an album. This is, what, how many albums have you released so far? Well, with, with myself and other people, this is probably the fourth or fifth record, depending on what you count. And, and this is called In Glendale. And, but what's interesting about this is that this appears to, appears to be a serious album. And it seems right. And that's the weird, that's to me, one of the like, very confusing things about you is that I think a lot of us can never tell when you're being serious. And is that something

that you consider to be an intentional aspect of the art you're putting out into the world? Or does it become frustrating? Because if you want to put out something that isn't necessarily comedy, people are like looking at it as some kind of ironic joke. I think up until this record, it hadn't been really a big deal. I think generally I put out, I mean, we should just acknowledge like every time I've done your podcast, there, it's been sort of with tongue firmly in cheek. Yes. I mean, we, people ask me about doing your podcast all the time. And people don't know if we're being sincere on there. And there's like, it's, it's like a total mind fuck, I guess, or not, you know, it's not that big of a

deal. But I'll be honest, Tim, I'm, I'm, I'm a little scared of you. And, and I think a lot of people are because you're, you're, you're really funny. And you're, you're the kind of funny that makes people feel bad because you're so funny, man. And, and so like, I think those earlier podcasts were my attempt at like, okay, I'm going to try to meet him at his place. Right. And I, and, and, and I think that I like, I like the way those turned out. But, but you're a scary guy, man, because you're like, you know, when I did a, because I was broke and I was designing Jeff Garland's website, he let me be on a curb your enthusiasm. And I got to be around Larry David. And it was terrifying, because he's so funny that anything he says to you in a negative way is

going to echo through your mind forever, because it's Larry David. And I think in a weird way, you have that same effect on people, because you've sort of, you know, created this comedy empire that is so fucking funny that we get scared of you. Do you sense that from people that they're a little nervous around you? Certain people, I think so, you know, I do my best to disarm people of that when I can. I mean, with you, I feel like when I see you, it's, I feel you as a, as a comedic brother. So I feel like I can fuck around with you or joke around with you because you're, you get it or enjoy it. But I don't know, maybe you don't, but maybe it's intimidating. I think I've mellowed a little bit too, you know, I mean, I've just kind of mellowed out a little bit.

You think you were, so you think in the past that you were, how would you describe that? You were kind of like, what, more fiery or something? How would you describe it? I guess I don't think about it too much. So, but yeah, I mean, I could be pretty quick, I guess, and pretty biting. And I guess when the wrong people, that doesn't sit well. But I'm always, I mean, I see myself very differently than everybody else does. I mean, I see myself as all sorts of negative things, you know? Really? You know, yes, just like not, not being, I don't know, you know, not being productive or, or not, not successful and, you know, all kinds of negative, negative opinions of my own self. Well, yeah, it seems like you just have a hardcore work ethic, just a basic

hardcore work ethic. And the result of that has been all this amazing stuff. But talking about in Glendale. So yes, I mean, another side of me is that I like to write music and I've always written music and I've always played music and sing and, you know, goof around on, on, on my computer making songs. And usually that manifests itself in comedy music, sort of, I guess, I mean, but I always, but I write from the heart, you know, and that can be, that can end up being just not funny. It can be kind of funny. So anyways, I had these songs that were not really that funny, but they weren't, and they weren't really in any kind of a character voice or anything. So I got encouragement from people in the music world who are just sort of like,

you're a really great, you're a talented musician and whatever, I'm not a really great musician. I'm just, you're a pretty talented musician, man. You do whip stuff together really quick. And whenever you've come over and there's a piano nearby or something, you like, you're, you are, you're not an untalented musician. No, but I don't want to say great, because that's, that should be reserved for great musicians. Okay, sure. But whatever. Very quickly, where, where did that start? Like, did you, when you were a kid, you started taking piano lessons? Or how did that, where did you learn to do it? I took my, you know, my grandmother played piano by ear, so she could just hear a song and sit there and play it. And she, you know, that was very inspiring

to me. And so I took some piano lessons and guitar lessons, but it was mostly just like being able to hear music and being able to kind of try to copy it and, and emulate it. And, and then just forming groups and bands and playing with friends. What was the name of your first band? It's, you know, I have a string of bad title band names. The Time and Other Things was one. That was my first band. And, you know, I mean, these are decisions you make when you're 15 years old. So they're not something that I stand by. When you were 15, was it funny? Were you funny then? Did you? I thought I was probably funny. I think the mute, I didn't think about combining that with music necessarily. The music was very serious, like, you know, Pink Floyd and, you know, like

I was laughing about this the other day, because all those Pink Floyd songs were, you know, we'd write songs that were like all about us losing our minds and being trapped in the chamber of insanity. What were we talking about? What connection to any of that that we have? But anyways, so yeah, I've always done that. And were you, when you were listening to Pink Floyd, were you taking psychedelics at all or? Some later in high school, I was in, like my last year of high school, I would, I experimented with that stuff for a little bit. Was that the 90s that you were in high school? Yeah, 94. Yeah, see, that was the LSD, but there was an LSD boom. Oh, really? In the 90s. Yeah, there was an LSD boom. And because somewhere in

the 90s, the people manufacturing something like 80% of the LSD in the country, there was this massive bust. You've probably heard of it. They were living in a missile silo. They, oh, it's amazing. There's a great vice article or documentary on it. But yeah, there were these, it's really interesting about what went down in the 90s, because all of us, LSD was very easy, good LSD, was relatively easy to obtain. It seems like there's been a resurgence of that, but there was a vanished for a while. And this was because of these people who had manufactured, and then it would be distributed, one major way it was distributed was through the touring of the Grateful Dead. Oh boy. Isn't that wild? So the Grateful Dead was sort of come rolling through,

and then they would just leave this wake of acid, which would float into the high schools, which is what we took. Right. And it was being manufactured in a missile silo, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I did that. I mean, it was a very small period of time that I played around with that stuff. And they were mostly very positive experiences. And then I had like one bad experience, upon reflection, I've figured out, I've done some rethinking about it over the years. Yes. And very quickly, I mean, we did it, we did it during Lollapalooza. I don't know if it was the first, it was one of the, I don't think it was the first year, it was one of the, it was, it was the big headliners were the Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins. Okay, cool. So that was

huge, right? Yeah. This was at their prime too, like, you know, hot, like 94. And we did the acid and, and it was a great day. I couldn't tell you, like, I think it was a very positive day, out in the mud, and just like being very hippie kid kind of attitude. But then right before the Beastie Boys played, we were pretty far back. I took a joint from somebody in the, in the crowd, who I don't, was a stranger. Okay. So who knows what I'd smoke. Right. But there, rolling. And the Beastie Boys started playing, you know, which is not my favorite kind of music. It's very intense and aggressive. And the, the, the, there was a lot of mashing going on up front. And somebody in the band asked everybody to just take a few steps back because people are getting

crushed. And a wave of people started coming our way. And, you know, like everything in my brain, like just folded on top of each other. And I got extreme anxiety, extreme disconnect the kind of floaty feeling, you know, yes, really, really intense negative feeling, really scary feeling that really stayed with me for the next few hours. And I had to go sit down and kept, you know, get my bearings back. And it was very negative, very scary. And like I said, I've thought about it for the over the years. And I really think it might have had more to do with the the joint than anything else. And, but whatever, it's, it kept me away from doing LSD for years and years and years. How long did the feeling last? I feel like it lasted for hours. You know, it's

certainly stuck with me in smaller, in sort of, it reverberated later on. And I mean, I came out of it, of course, and it wasn't, it was very internal. It wasn't like I was foaming at the mouth or anything. But anyways, that, that was that for me. And I've always said like, and I think it's for the best, I just want to, I don't, I think the older you get, the less space you have in your brain for that kind of stuff. Well, you can't, that, that, you know, what we all did, which was just this incredibly irresponsible consumption of one of the most powerful psychoactive chemicals on earth. And the weird idea that this is like a party drug that you go to a concert and take, it's,

yeah, that is, that is not, that's not where you want to be on really good acid and marijuana. The, the, I've done interviews with this guy, Doblin, Rick Doblin, who runs the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic studies. And they're the guys who are getting MDMA studied as a prescription medication for people with PTSD, and they're doing very serious studies. And the way he describes how they do these is like, you're with two therapists, and you're, you, you're, you're told, you can, for part of the trip, you can talk, but for a lot of it, they like you to just be quiet. You're listening to classical music, and you're, you're wearing a blindfold. So it's purely internal. And there's people with you who are there to, you know,

if you start having that experience that you had, which who knows what it was, but if you were in the presence of trained clinicians, they could probably have used that as a way to like, you know, get, open up some part of you that you weren't aware of, who knows. But that's the way to take a psychedelic, which I think back then nobody knew, because there was no internet. And if there, if it was one internet, it was a very rudimentary internet. And none of us had any idea about what, you know, the right way to do that stuff. But I do disagree with you on the idea that the adult psychedelics aren't for adults. Or once you get past a certain age, there's no room. It's actually, I actually took LSD, I don't know, I guess it was, I've taken it a few times over the last few

years, but I was, I had the same terror of it. And I thought, oh, shit, I'm too old. I've had too much shit go down in my life. I'm going to be tormented by demons of my past. And I took it at this vineyard up in Solving. And it was amazing. It was beautiful and great. But marijuana, marijuana will fuck with you. Marijuana is a far more brutal substance than LSD, I think. Okay, folks, we've time traveled. My Skype wasn't working. So I got lucky enough to have Tim come over in person. Yeah, you're in the studio. He's in the studio a lot sort of live. That was, yeah, we were talking on the Skype and it crabbed out. I said, well, we just realized we lived 10 minutes away from each other. We didn't even know that. I didn't realize you were that close. Yeah,

all back roads, no highways. Let's hear that Alex Jones impression. Okay. Do you want to do it on, you don't have to run? Yeah, I've been working on it. I've been doing this show on Facebook live when I can called Face, office hours. Okay, yes. And it's like, you should come on. I'd love to. You have to come on. And it's just a call in radio show, which I'm able to do with Skype and Facebook live. It's pretty great. Like, I mean, it's, I don't know how it is to listen to, but it's really fun. You don't really take calls on your show. Not yet. I'm working on getting that in here. But it's, yeah, it's great. I mean, everyone that you can do it worldwide, international, you know, calling in from all over the place and people are, it's, it's live. Yeah, because I'm broadcasting it

on my Facebook page. Okay. But then I'm, but then on my laptop, it's confusing. And I rigged it myself. So it's really weird. But my phone is broadcasting Facebook live. Okay. My laptop is on Skype. Okay. And I've got everything running through a mixer into my phone so that I can have a rate of a microphone. I have a mixer and everything. Wow. And I just did it. I just did it for fun, you know. And I'm talking and I'm just taking calls. I'm just hitting, you know, people are, I broadcast my Skype name on the, you know, on the video. You see this, this title card that says the name. Anyways, so every morning, not every morning, but when I have the time, I go live for live office hours live and people call in and we talk about whatever they want to talk about.

How do you model? How do you moderate callers? I don't. I just bail on them if they're lame or if they're trouble. But mostly people are really, the weird, it's, it's a little, it might be boring to listen to because it's a lot of people calling in and being like, wow, I can't believe I'm talking to you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, so I've been doing it on office hours. Folks, folks, we're, we are, we are standing on a precipice. We are at the edge and we are standing in front of a road and the global snow, they're looking down at us. They're wondering, they're looking down at us and saying, well, we can't have these people. We can't have the press

reporting the news. That's why he does podcasts. He does that. He goes on so many tangents that you don't remember what he's talking about. But the point is we are ready. The invasions began. I mean, the invasions began and we are under attack by the reptilians and the globalist forces, the, the Bilderberg group and the people that are influencing our water supply. They are here now among us. And all it takes is Hillary to get into office for her to open the gates. And then the gates are going to be open, folks. And then it's game over. Okay. It's game over. Game over. Do you, you, aren't you a little bit of a conspiracy theorist or sort of? I really am not at all. No. I used to be maybe, you know, it's, it's, it's, and it's fun to think

about who really knows. How do you define a conspiracy theorist or a conspiracy theory? What's your definition of it? Well, you have to believe that there's an organized power structure that sets events up to happen a certain way to affect the, you know, international affairs. Right. And that there's a group and they sit around and they plot. Right. And they, and they have conspirators who, who, you know, who enact plans. Yeah. I generally think that people are too stupid and unorganized and selfish for any of that to ever come together in a real way, you know. Well, you have like, you've seen Century of the Self that show up. Yeah. So you do have organized groups of people trying to sell products in a kind of subversive way. And it would,

sure. That can be considered a conspiracy. I mean, any, any group that gets together to, to put forth a plan that isn't necessarily forthright, I guess you can consider a conspiracy, but. Yeah. And we're like, even for like, God, that crazy cycling shit where they put silent engines in the bikes. Have you heard about this? Oh, no. It's just like tour de France. Yeah. And that seems all corrupt. I mean, there certainly seems to be corruption all over the place. Yeah. People lie and people are just, you know, I think you call Hillary Clinton a liar. It's like, well, yeah, they're all liars. Right. Because you can't say, you can't tell the truth because the truth is complicated and confusing, nuanced and people are stupid. Well, see, that's

where, that's where I, that's where I think there could be something. Because if you look at every other level of society, the most mundane, unsure there's conspiracies that happen at people who work at fast food chains. I'm sure there's little conspiracies that happen that you serve a manager or something. And so it would make sense that in the highest levels of power, there would be cobbles of people with a, with, with. An agenda. An agenda that they can't tell the world because it only serves them. Yeah. I guess, but I don't know. I think there, there's policies, there's plans that, that are unknown to us that affect the way the economy, the world economy works. But I don't know if we need to, people have the capacity to understand it anyways or know about

it. So you're just not an Illuminati believer. No, I don't think I am. No. But you know, the thing about that, that I was thinking about, because I love thinking about this stuff. Sure. And it's also like, you know, you for the theories that these kind of general conspiracy theories, they satisfy certain part of our brain. No, I haven't heard this. Yeah. Well, they, they make it so we are, they explain the world in a, in a not tidy way. You know, they, they fill in the blanks. They, they, they, they organize the world. Can I stop you for a second? I'm getting. Two, one. Okay. So guys, we just had, of course, whenever you talk about the Illuminati, there's always a technical error. And the bugs come in. But I'll tell you, man, with, with the

if you look at what smart people tend to do, is they group together. Smart things tend to group together and really smart people tend to group together. And also it seems like really intelligent people recognize the danger of uninformed people or people who are superstitious or whatever. And they know that those people are the ones and eventually they learned that those people tend to, they're the ones who set the witches on fire. So it would kind of make sense from an evolutionary perspective that like a subset of the species would sort of move away. And that, that's where you imagine shit. Maybe there are secret groups of really intelligent people who just, who tried at one point to put all their information out into the world and realize

every time you do that, they arrest you. You say that the, the earth, oh shit, the earth seems to go around the sun. It's not the center of the universe and they arrest you. So people eventually, maybe they went into hiding or they came up with a secret way to sort of be there, but not be there. It's possible. I mean, the other side of that is that the world, the modern world is a very complex, complicated, amazing place where people are flying all over the place and sewages being treated and waters being drunk and foods being grown and no, there's no mass starvation. You know, I mean, there are those famines and stuff in the, in the parts of the world that aren't developed as well. But it's this incredibly complex, complicated system that we've created

that for the most part is, you know, you can argue is terrible, but at the same time it's better than, than the cavemen. You know, it's like, we're not dying in childbirth. We're not, well, this, okay. So this thing that you're saying, I agree with you. And maybe that's, maybe if, if there is some kind of, you know, Illuminati or whatever you want to call it, some people that are running the show, so to speak, well, they're doing pretty good. You know, there have been lots of people alive. They're making lots of people happy about maybe meaningless things, but whatever. Well, yeah, that, that's, that's for sure. And the point you just made, which I tend to agree with, I have a guest in the podcast, this guy, Chris Ryan, he just wrote a book,

Civilized to Death. And he says the idea of the caveman suffering dying in childbirth, this is not true. That people who live prior to the agrarian revolution had very good lives, compared to what happened when we became localized, stayed in one place. That's when the disease is started. And that this is sort of the end result of a malfunction, which is an idea that, I guess you call them like, anarcho primitivists, you ever heard that before? No. So that's the idea that society started falling apart. The moment we began to use our society, our species started falling apart when we started using symbols to represent reality. In the moment we started doing that, we disconnected from reality and this gulf between us and what is actually the

flow of life's got bigger and bigger and bigger. And now we exist in a time where no one knows what the truth is or no one knows what's really happening because every symbol that we see, it has a ulterior motive, whatever it may be, everything's for some other reason that it seems to say it is. Right. But most people, I would think, at least American people, you know, are happy when they can get some ice cream. Right. And that's, and their favorite shows on. And that doesn't seem to leave people too miserable at the end of their life as they pass on, surrounded by family and, you know, a good song. You mean as opposed to like being ripped apart by the Mongol horde or a bear or something? I'm reading this book about the Comanches and

I think it's called The Comanches and the author talks about their existence and they were really living as essentially as cavemen. Right. If you want to just, whatever, there's probably a more sophisticated name for that. Indigenous. Yeah, but to a very undeveloped, unsophisticated, I know these are all trigger words. Hunter-gatherers? Yeah, but like, you know, really living off the land. Yes. No, I mean, some language, but not a lot of roots. Right. And it's, it was generally a very, very horrible life for them. You know, it was very full of, of, there was disease and I mean, if you got a cut, if you're walking to the next little area where the buffalo were, and you got a cut on your leg from some brush, you know, you were going to have a really hard time

for a long time. People weren't, you know, life, life didn't have a lot of value, I don't think. So this is, according to this book, you know, I mean, who knows? Well, we, I mean, we don't know that my friend, his version of it is really beautiful. It's like a Garden of Eden style life where you're wandering and you're harvest gathering food and you're connected to your, your, your brothers and sisters and there's no monogamy. Everybody's just banging and hunting. But then there's the other version, which you're talking about, which is no, it wasn't like that at all. If you, there's no antibiotics. When the cold, when the cold winter comes, you've got nothing, like the skin off the

buffalo that you just ripped off. And yeah, I like this life. I'm really enjoying being alive right now. And if there was the option to travel back no way in time, I wouldn't take it. I really love, love this time a lot, but some people, they don't, they just think this is an, an abomination, like the final festering. Well, yeah. And I think we've always, there's been that idea around for a long time. Everyone thinks they're living in the final days, right? Yes. Yes. So eventually it will end. Yeah. Because folks, but the, yes, the sun will eventually burn out. You know, I mean, life will be become impossible to exist on the planet. Well, no, that doesn't mean we can't travel through space to other dimensions.

And it's interesting how all of these luminaries are really throwing out the simulation theory idea more these days. You're hearing all of these different ways of describing the same concept, which is that the universe we're in appears to be some form of simulation or a holographic universe. Elon Musk just came out and said that. And there's different, like, super quantum physicists who talk about some kind of hard to understand thing called super string theory and something called God, supersymmetry, which seems to imply a kind of order to the universe that maybe isn't an accidental order, but people get really mad when you say that because they think it's just a new way of saying, doing creationism through

math that you don't understand. But I don't know, I feel like there is the potential for us to. Well, the prime directive of the DNA is to survive. And that's what that would be, what would be pushing us towards other planets and other, you know, as long as you just this, this life can go on for forever, as long as it keeps bouncing around. Well, this is, you know, Timothy Leary's circuits of consciousness idea that no, so it's, it's like, we're, you know, you, you see the turtles in the egg under the sand, the egg hatches, the turtle runs into the ocean, the ones that survive grow into big turtles, and then they lay more eggs. So the idea is that the earth is like the part of the beach where the turtle has laid the eggs. And humans

have a natural inclination to go into space. And the reason that when astronauts have that experience when they look down at the earth, this, they all talk about the psychedelic experience of gazing at the earth is because they're activating levels of their consciousness that can't be activated when you're trapped in the gravitational well of the planet. And so it's pretty cool. It's a really cool idea, which is that, that's where we belong out in space. That's how do you think that we belong out in space? Yeah. Yeah, that we're, we are the, the, the, the move out of Africa theory, the movement around the planet is the, is the big, or the, the, that innate desire to explore Minecraft as weird as that sounds, that desire, that weird feeling you get

even in Minecraft, that that is built into us to try to push us into the infinite expanse of space. Yeah. Well, maybe it's even simpler that it's just to get to places where the things that let, let us survive are. So if we have a sense in ourselves that the, the environment around us is not going to be around forever, we better start looking out right into the stars and looking for those places. Cause you can just keep hopping around planets eventually if you get the technology, right? Yeah, or you can, the, the, or, or ideally that, that you're just floating in space. Your consciousness, somehow the idea is that everything is computer code and that if we had an advanced enough system, then we could in some way download our consciousness or the essence of what we are,

disembodied ourselves so that we could safely travel through space or teleport. Have you ever heard of directed panspermia? Do you know what this is? No, this is, I come here to learn folks. folks. Directed very quickly. I'm sorry if I seem luxury. I don't know. I'm doing this. There's so many things I want to ask you. Yeah, we can wrap this part of the conversation up after this, this, this lesson here. Directed panspermia is Francis Crick's idea who was one of the co-discoverers of DNA. They actually stole the idea from someone else supposedly, but basically the idea is that the DNA helix is too advanced based on the amount of time that we've been on the planet for it to have gotten where it's at. It doesn't make sense that the DNA helix is where it's at. So directed

panspermia means that some other civilization seeded the universe with the precursors to DNA. And whenever it finds a habitable place, it grows into some life form that eventually becomes technological and theoretically could just, I don't know, go back into space and seed some more something. Directed panspermia. I looked into that. I mean, it doesn't do me any good. Well, no. But it's exciting, right? It's exciting. That's all the idea that there's something more to this. I agree. I mean, my philosophy, if there is one of life in the universe, is, and the afterlife, is that, again, the prime purpose of DNA is to continue to exist. And we've evolved to a place where it's used its intelligence to survive, for the most part, right?

It doesn't have the body. It doesn't have the strength. It doesn't have the teeth, right? It has the brain to figure things out, to solve problems. The downside of that is that intelligence creates awareness, creates self-awareness, it creates awareness of the universe, the world around you. It brings up a lot of junk, right? So it creates questions, creates existential questions, and then the brain very cleverly constructs answers for those questions. And you have ideas of what the stars are and what, that there's a creator, and it creates stories that help people process their environment. And if we didn't have that, it's hard to find a reason to survive. It's hard to find a reason to keep going.

So you're saying we're like a kind of, it's built into us to delude ourselves so that we could continue to find a reason to exist without blowing our brains out. That's right. Man, that's a dire outlook. On one level, that is a very dire outlook. This is the idea that this is like almost a catastrophic effect of the development of the neocortex. We became too aware. We know we're going to die. Background to foreground to deal with the horror of the void. We make up bullshit until we die. Wow, man, that's nuts. I had no idea. So you're kind of like a scientific materialist. You're an atheist materialist. I suppose. Wow. So, but do you, as you're doing throughout the day in the back of your mind, is there a piece of

that's like, this is just- No, because that's so strong in your brain that it's so, even with my acknowledgement of it, I can still, there's something in my hormones and in my, you know, in the very depths of me that doesn't mind that that's true. Well, finally, I can ask you the question that everyone wants to know. Have you ever tried prayer? Folks, I'm praying for this country right now. I'm on my knees praying for it. No, really, have you ever tried it? I mean, I was a Catholic boy, so I prayed for my first 15, 20 years. Okay, okay, got it. So you were raised, you were raised, oh, shit. So you had to put on the outfit. Got diddled. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't have any of those experiences. But you had to carry the incense up and down,

and you had to go through the- Carry the wafer around. And back then, you probably believed, oh, yeah, there is prayer, there is God. I mean, for a very short period of time, I would think, for up until my, you know, junior high or something, then it just got flushed out. How? There were questions, and I think I do remember my, I had questions, you know, I think the big question that, the first big question that comes into everyone's mind, I think, if you're reasonably curious and intelligent is, hell, like, what is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? What do you talk about? Wait a minute, let's back up, because now I'm a little, now I have a sense of the world a little bit, and you're telling me that if I did this bad thing, maybe it isn't even that bad,

you know, it's like, it's something stupid. Yeah. Mistake. You're not baptized. That's one. One of those things. Or you're just like, I called my mom a bitch or something, you know, whatever it is. And I know Catholics could say there's all kinds of different kinds of sin and everything, but, or if I don't believe in Jesus or something, I don't call him my savior, that I'm going to be sent to hell, sent to this horrible place, this fire poking into my asshole. Yeah. For, for when, for how long? Ever. Forever. For eternity. Yeah. So that's the one like crack when you're like, that doesn't make any sense. Yes. That doesn't make any sense. And then my dad, who was a very open-minded thinker, and they, you know, I went to Catholic school mostly because

of the school was better. Right. That is maybe, I don't know, it's hard. It was better than the public school. Anyways, my dad said, what do you think of that? What do you think of hell? Do you believe that? And I go, I don't know. He goes, yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. Once that crack happened, you know, once that, that part of it, which is a big part. Yes. Then you, then you just can start really looking into it and thinking about it and saying, this doesn't really check out. Most of this stuff. But do you think understanding the obvious insanity in one form of religion invalidates the idea of there being some kind of higher intelligence in the universe outside of human beings? Not necessarily. And I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I would just say,

I don't know. Don't know. Agnostic. Don't care. Don't care. Don't really care. No. Well, I mean, clearly it doesn't matter because you're making incredibly funny stuff and there it doesn't need to be like whatever your process is, it doesn't have to involve some kind of extra dimensional. Yeah. And I hope I'm a guy that I also hope when I go, I hope it's not for a while, but when I go, I hope that's it. I don't want to have any kind of consciousness beyond my life. You know, like, I don't, what, because what would that be? It's me worrying about the fucking, you know, taxes. I mean, what is that? What is my consciousness? But the, the collection of experiences I've had, which I don't necessarily want to relive or think about forever. Well, you want, that's your version

of heaven. And this is why Prabhupada, the guy who started the heart of Christians, he said a lot of smart stuff. One of the things he said is, and I know you're saying you're not an atheist, but one of the things he said is death is God for the atheist. So, so really, we've got a big question mark floating out here. And so some people look at that question mark, the idea that, oh, shit, it's going to be an internal like nothingness. Richard Dawkins says, look at death as a form of anesthesia to save you from the torture of eternity. It really is a cool way to put it. Yeah. But also the other way of thinking about it, I think Roger Ebert said this of all people, but was, I was perfectly fine before I was born. Yeah, that's a great way of thinking too. Yeah.

Like I didn't have any, there was no me before I was born that I know about. Well, there's so many, I mean, the problem with the eternal non-existence theory, which is, and I'm glad that you recognize how incredibly wonderful that will be if that is the case. But the problem with that is it really is just another version of heaven. And really, we don't know. And the idea that suddenly, even though you've never experienced nothingness, you've never experienced nothingness. You go to sleep, you wake up, but you don't experience that blankness of being asleep. You get put under, you come to. So we've never experienced nothingness. So the idea that upon the extinguishment of the human body, suddenly we will be given this incredibly impossible thing, which doesn't exist

anywhere. We can't identify nothingness, can't measure it, weigh it. There's nowhere to find it. It's, I think it's a little bit of a pipe dream to imagine that nothing happens. And I don't say that out of some desperate desire for the continuation of my soul. I have a terror that what actually happens is that reincarnation isn't that you die, you go to some place, crystals everywhere, you decide to be a paraplegic boy or a lizard or whatever. And you, I think that what really frightens me is that you die and you just sort of wake come to as like a taxi driver who was having a weird little deja vu. There's no break. It's just eternal, perpetual, never ending. But if you're that taxi driver, are you still Duncan? Did you know that?

So then who would care? You have the moment. So the idea is that in Buddhism, which is in some forms of Buddhism, it's pure, it's like, you could almost say it's worse than atheism, though they wouldn't like the term worse in the sense that an atheist says there's no God, whereas some Buddhists say exactly, there's definitely no God, but there's also no you. You're not a thing at all. You're just a, you're a, you're sort of a delusion wrapped around nothingness. And that's, that's the essential nature of things. But the idea that they have is that, so you have a momentum right now in your life and you can feel that momentum when you stop. So whenever, you know, when you go on vacation and you're still freaked out, I don't know if,

you know, like for me, if I go on vacation, I still like, oh, I gotta do that. So you can feel the momentum of your entire life in the moments of stillness. So they say when you die, whatever that is, that little bit of momentum carries on into the next thing. So maybe for this theoretical taxi driver that you incarnate as, it's just, you start having a shittier day. If you had a, you know what I mean? You just have a weird deja vu and then a sense of like sadness or whatever. And that's the essence of what you are. But that thing travels through eternity on and on and on and on and on. You never can escape it. Maybe I just would say that since that all these theories have been around for thousands of years

and then in our lifetime, technology has, for the first time ever in all this existence, has it been able to actually see what's going on through science, been able to see what's happening in the brain, what the brain is made of, what, you know, all this knowledge has come about, about how the body works, how the brain works. And those might be the boring answers for all these big, giant prayer. They're not even boring because then when you look at that idea, which is that the human body is a hive, I heard it described, it's like a tree with mushrooms growing at the base of it, vines swirling around it with flowers growing out of the vines. That's the human self. So the stuff they're finding out right now about the gut biome, being responsible

for a lot of human motivation, the stuff about toxoplasmosis from cat litter, giving people behavioral changes. When you start realizing that your very idea of autonomy and free will could be being dictated by colonies. Yes. Yes. So it really is, I mean, I feel that science is not suddenly making all of this make sense. It's making it seem weirder than anything that we thought. That's kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. But man, I didn't mean to get, I really want to talk to you for a second about your new album, because I'm interested in it from a lot of different perspectives. But mainly you are known as a comedian and you're known as the creator of some of the newest, funniest shows. Co-creator. Co-creator, of course. So I just want to talk

a little bit about, does it feel weird to have this role of this incredibly funny, ironic, angry sometimes sarcastic being, and then suddenly, but you also want to make music that's just music that isn't based on that. Do you feel burdened by that or trapped? I feel there's, it limits the amount of people that are going to accept it. A, first of all, it's the kind of music that a lot of people don't want to hear. It's not popular music. Right. It's not whatever is popular right now. Doesn't sound like that. Right. So I'm already way out of my numbers that would need to be successful. If you were the term that a lot of people, younger people right now are ahistorical, have you heard that? My friend says that.

So whereas when you make music, you know the roots of the music that you're drawing from. A lot of people, when they hear something that maybe was inspired by Pink Floyd or, I don't know, Crosby Stills and Nash or I don't know, whatever. They don't know that. Right. They don't know the context. I just get called Dad Rock. And I was like, well, I don't even know what that is. But whatever. It's an easy thing for journalists to write. Anyway, so there's that aspect. I know I'm not making popular music. There are people that like this kind of music. They're enjoying it. I think they've told me they are. I know that my career has been about trying to be about surprise and about expectations, changing

expectations or presenting things that people aren't expecting. So this move feels in line with that in a way. In a way that this is an area that I think some of my fans know I'm capable of and are interested in. I'm not just one guy that you see on TV. I'm a collection of ideas and thoughts and that it would be a more interesting career to look at later if it had all these sort of side roads and side steps. Do you feel when you release something like that, do you feel scared? Do you have trepidation? Because you're like, you do always put yourself on the line, man. Like a lot of the stuff that you put out is, I mean, it's such a cliche thing to say, but it takes a lot of courage. Like that video of you, I don't know when it's from, where

you're like doing some kind of weird, sexy model thing, licking an ax and like, yeah, but a lot of these things that you're putting out there, they take a kind of weird ability to overcome your ego and did not care what people say about it. So when you put out this album, did you feel like shit, man? Well, I felt like, yes, a bit. I'm going to get a lot of pithy, sarcastic crap from the internet. Right. I know I'm going to get that. I'm going to get people going like, stick to being funny. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I like you better when you're funny. That this isn't funny. What is this a joke? That that I know I'm going to get it does bother me. I'm not going to say it doesn't bother me. Yeah. The idea that negative comments don't bother me or don't bother people

is not true. Right. Because from the very beginning, all we've ever tried to do is make stuff that makes you laugh, makes us laugh, or makes you whatever if it's music makes you sing it the next day, you know, or, or let make your drive seem quicker, whatever it does, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've never, we've almost never tried to intentionally antagonize an audience and try to try to push an audience away. Right. You know, that's, we're not anti comedy. You know, I always hear me say this is not, not anti entertainment. Right. We're trying to make you laugh in a different kind of way. Right. We're trying to make you think about things in different kind of way. I've always been saying that. Did you see, did you hear Steve Martin on Stern?

Okay, it's the greatest, greatest thing. And it totally unlocked an issue that I was having with talking about my work. And I think there's connections to his early work with our stuff. And I was such a fan, but what so he said to digress a bit, but I think it really answers a question for me is he was starting to do stand up comedy and he was analyzing it and he was watching comedians. And he was watching how they do a setup in a punchline setup in a punchline. And he was, and this was back in the 60s, you know, it was very traditional stuff. And he was kind of unsatisfied by that. He was kind of annoyed and questioning that there's a, there's, there's no surprise in it. And there's no, the audience knows what they're supposed to do. They know they're

supposed to laugh at a certain point. Right. There's a, there's a rhythm to it that's very expected and designed. And he said, I wanted to get to the, I want to do the kind of comedy that the kind of laughs you get when it's just you and your friends in a room. And maybe you've been smoking or maybe you've had a few drinks or there's a connection between you guys, you've old friends, you're laughing and you're laughing. You don't even know why you're laughing anymore and you're crying and tears are coming down your face and you're rolling around on the ground and it's so stupid and so personal. And it's, and you know, so he's like, I want to try to get there with my comedy. And I think to my, for me and Eric and Greg or whoever I'm working with, that's always

the place where we're trying to get to, which is there's not a lot of convention to this. There's not a lot of rules. I mean, there are some rules that we have, but we want to get to that place. I don't know why I'm laughing. I don't know, I don't know what about this is funny. Why is this, but it is, and it's like hitting me hard in the gut. And it's, and so he started doing his weird stuff and his weird character stuff. It's like really hard to place like, you know, where's the punchline? What is funny about this? Why is this funny? Yeah. And when you start analyzing it, you can figure it out. But when you're just passively taking it in, you should be sort of giggling and laughing and just, so anyways, I heard that and I said, uh, that's,

we're all in this world. I'm on the same path as him. Yeah, it's kind of neat. That's cool, man. It's not anti-comedy. It's not intentionally making stuff to be bad to say. Anti-comedy is so, is shit. And it's imitative usually. And it's just crap. But I have, yeah, it is when you're watching, when I watch some of your stuff and I'm laughing really hard. And then I, my comedic brain analyzes it. It is. It's like, what the fuck is happening here? That this is incredibly hilarious. And it's cool to hear how it doesn't feel very planned out. There's something really nice about that. There's a lot of gut and there's a lot of instinct and collaboration and feeling, you know, I mean, I'm always working

with the best people I want to work with. I'm like working with really strong people that have really great ideas. There's a lot of feeding back and forth. So there's, it's a very positive environment. And also what's really cool about what you guys did over absolutely is you sort of, you created a weird kind of comedy farm or academy or something. And you got the people that you started or that started with you, everyone's evolving. Like when you look at the everyone's work coming out of there, like Doug, Jesus Christ. And you see like this, oh shit, everyone's kind of like evolving their own way. And yet it does seem to kind of circle around this central, I don't know, sensibility or something, which is really cool, man. That must be exciting for you.

Yeah. And you know, I mean, we, like with this new season of Decker, we're doing, which we just screened the other last night in LA, I'm watching it and watching with this audience. And it is a little more traditional because there are these, it's very clear what's funny about the show. Yeah, sure. It's even a weirdly broad kind of thing. It's like this bad idiot. It's great. Making an action show. But there's just, there's reaction shots. There's things, there's comedy in that show that I think Eric and I, you know, and our team kind of developed and, and sent out into the world for years now that become like a language. It comes like a, like a, a set of rules or something that, that audience that's, that's keyed into that

are going to see a reaction shot of some guy with a big goofy smile on his face. And it's kind of, What comes to mind when you say that is when they announced that the pilot's been shot and you cut to one of the funniest reaction shots just in the preview that I've seen, which is the exact wrong way you would look. It's really good, but it's really subtle too. It's not, it's not like airplane or something. It's not slapstick. It's really cool, which how do you do very quickly? I know we've gone over a little bit. How do you direct, you guys have such a specific group of extras that you use? How do you direct them? How do you get those reaction shots? Well, it's, it's, you shoot a lot. Luckily, you know, we shoot digital. So you just get a lot,

right? Cover a lot. You try to shoot when people may not be paying attention as well as they and you just, you know, you don't, I don't know. It sounds mean, but you go for the, you go for the bottom of the pile. First of all, with the, with the camera, the headshots, right? You don't, you just look for interesting faces and interesting, like you guys own that now. You own that form of casting. No one can do that form of casting anymore without people thinking, oh yeah, that's Tim and Eric. And all we're doing is really throwing up people on the screen that don't generally get a lot of screen time. Right. And you know, we do, we have auditions and things like that. And you see about 80% of people come in and they look like their trajectory

in life was to be an actor. Right. You know, and it's boring because you've seen that 90% of everything on TV. Yes. And then somebody will stumble in and they're like, off. And they're like, wow, this guy is, well, how did, why is he even pursuing this? You know, like, yeah. But anyways, do you feel guilty about that? Like, do you feel, is there a party that feels that's a little exploitive or, you know, sometimes for sure, there's no question about it. And I, but it's, it really is like a low stakes thing. Like the people that are, there's never been anybody that's like, I don't like the way I was portrayed in your work. Right. You know, no one's ever said that the people that generally do are come back over and over again. They're bugging us about

when are we doing it again? They're having a blast. We're paying them. It's not over. You know, there's no secret, there's no hidden cameras. And it's all fairly, just like I've always said, it just serves the weirdness as a holistic thing. Right. And it's there, I think, I do think that over the years, there's times that we've taken it too far. And it's a struggle in some ways. But I think it's like, you know, it's a sin that I'm comfortable living with. I don't think anyone's really getting hurt. I think people are generally love seeing themselves on TV. And yeah, if you're laughing at it, then you're part of the problem. And you're fulfilling their dreams, man. And that's a thing like if people who do get mad at your, and call that kind of casting exploitive, really

what they're saying is these people, let's take their work away from it. They don't deserve it. So let's just make them unemployed, which is, you know, you're just taking what they are and putting it on. I don't think, I think it's fine. And it's hilarious. I understand that it's a gray area. I've dealt, I've struggled with it from time to time. It is what it is. It's, it, it certainly makes a lot of people happy. Yeah, it certainly makes the people in it. They are fine with it. They couldn't be happier. And sometimes people may not be as aware as they should be when they're coming in with us. But, but generally, we're never dishonest. We're never, you know, misleading about what it is that we're doing. Right. So you just put Decker out. What's next?

Vacation. That's it, huh? No, I think, yeah, I think, well, I think Eric and I are going to make more bedtime stories, which is very exciting. We've got six, half hour episodes that we're working on now that are, that's a very fun, different kind of show to make for us. It's very cinematic. And we get to be kind of artsy and, you know, cinematic and, and work with some good actors. And that's really fun. And I will probably do more Decker because it feels really like it just tapped, scratched the surface on something that there can be a lot of. You sure it did, man. And I don't mind that. Like when you, it's fun to work with a narrative that has characters that are going to do the same thing every single week,

you know? And this is out now. Decker just came out the first episode. June 17th. Oh, June 17th. Yeah. Cool, man. Tim, thank you so much for coming up here. I'm so happy to talk to you. Great to talk to you too, man. And where can people find you? Where can people... At Tim Heidecker. Okay. And the record in Glendale is available everywhere. Cool. Get on iTunes and Spotify. Maybe I can play a track. Can I play a track? Thanks for listening, everybody. Big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode and to Tim Heidecker for coming over so I could interview him. And mostly a giant thanks to you for listening to this podcast. All right, folks. Here's a track from Tim Heidecker's new album

in Glendale. It's called Work From Home. I'll see you next week. And I hope you have the greatest day in all of human history. I don't think I'm getting out of bed today. I want one of those nights. One in a million. One too many drinks, I guess you'd say. So I'm gonna work from home. Call if you need me. I don't think I'd be much use anyway. Yeah, I'm gonna stay in bed. Stare at the ceiling. Wait for the sickness to just go away. I know it's happened before.

I guess you could say it's a trend. And so I'll take today to figure out how to make it. So I'm gonna work from home. Call if you need me. I don't think I'd be much use anyway. I am gonna stay in bed. Promise to heaven that I know this ain't no way. No way to behave. I understand if you have no simple thing for me. I understand if you want to talk me for the day. I'm gonna make it up to you. This I swear. Oh yes I do.

So I'm gonna work from home. Call if you need me. I don't think I'd be much use anyway. I'm gonna stay in bed. Stare at the ceiling. Wait for the sickness to just go away. I'm gonna take today to figure out how to make it up to you. I don't think I'd be much use anyway. I'm gonna stay in bed. I'm gonna make it up to you. I'm gonna take today to figure out how to make it up to you. I'm gonna take today to figure out how to make it up to you.