This Past Weekend - E442 Rainn Wilson

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Starting point is 00:01:49 That embankment gang color, you know it. Check these out along with the new windbreaker at TheoVonStore.com and thank you for your support. Today's guest is a multi-talented man. He's a buffet of talent. He's the meat. He's the salad. He's the pudding. He's the tots. He's got it all. He's an actor. He's a creator. You may know him from his iconic role on The Office. He has a new book out called Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. He also has a new travel show that'll be coming out soon. You can check that out called The Geography of Bliss. He made me laugh and just made me happy so many times in my life. I'm grateful to sit and talk with him today. Today's guest is Rainn Wilson.

Starting point is 00:03:06 I think I look pretty nice here. I think I look great. I look great. I've got a lot of beverages. Am I okay to have this on camera? Will they sue you? Nope, you'll be fine. Hey man, in all truth, it's such a pleasure to meet you and I've been just dying at your stuff for years. I know you get this all the time, but in all truth, it was so surprised. TheoVon wants you in the show like, what? I'm a huge, huge fan. Really? Oh man, I have just chortled at your ridiculous brain for many years and for real. Wow, man, that's awesome, bro. Now for real? No, I'm honestly trying to genuinely drop in and hear that. Yeah, it's really nice to say. I just did Burt Kreischer's the other day and it's like you

Starting point is 00:04:06 and Burt and Tom, that whole gang you got going on have cornered this whole section of comedy and social media. I'm a huge fan anyways. It's a universe, man. It's a real little universe. That's really nice of you to say, man. Obviously, you've made people laugh. You almost have to take a second when you sit with you to get to just be with you, to get past like the… You see a lot of Dwight going on or something like that? No, no, I'm seeing you, I feel like, but I think there's just, you have to let kind of like the, you just have to let the premonitions fall by the wayside a bit. The fog that's in before you that you can't even help of like just because of your life and your talent and

Starting point is 00:04:56 how visible you've been. I think there's a little bit of it sometimes with people probably. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like I'm just sitting here with you. All right, cool. Yeah, cool. Awesome. And thanks, man. I read the first 50 pages of your book. Damn, that's pretty good. Thank you. I thought I figured… It's a hell of a lot better than Burt Kreischer. He didn't read page one. Oh, man. Yeah, I bet if you'd have written it on the inside of a 12-pack, he'd have read it. No, he would have. No, he would have. Oh, he's going to read his own epitaph soon, dude.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Wow, let's talk about premonitions. That got a little dark. That got a little cold. Sorry, Burt. I want you to be alive. But I thought it was interesting. I thought it was just, it was kind of a perfect reflection of like, where a lot of people are at in their lives right now, I think just as a society, as a species, in like this kind of, not only a quest maybe for spirituality, but an examination of spirituality, what spirituality means, all kind of stuff like that. So I thought it was, and we can get into it, but yeah, I know you said that it's hard for people, why do they lock up the pissers in the

Starting point is 00:06:07 office buildings was interesting? Why they lock them? So do you want to go from my book on spirituality to like, to locking up restrooms? Is that the transition? Yeah, I do and everything at once kind of. Okay. Yeah, so I have this problem and I think it's a problem. I don't know that it exists in other cities, but in LA, it's this kind of thing where every single bathroom needs a key. And like, what the hell? Like, just let them be open. Like, I understand if you got a building like on Skid Row downtown, like, maybe you just don't want someone setting up a tent in there and moving in or something like that. Like, I get that. But you'd be like, we're out here in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. What do they think? Like, someone's going to wander into this building off

Starting point is 00:06:52 the street and like, come in and like, do something nefarious, shoot up drugs in the restroom? Why do you need keys? Yeah. Well, they should give you a certain if you do well enough, you should get a general key to at least so many bathrooms. That's a good idea. There could be like an app. You unlock it. It's like a game. It's like Candy Crush and you play it enough. You're a responsible enough citizen with your app, you get into bathrooms, wherever you could take a shit, wherever you're like, oh, I'm going down the valley. I'm not going to name what's stopped off the one on one, your app, but you know, you're down the one on one, like, oh, man, I really need to go. And like, you have an app. It's like, when you have an app that searches for, you know, charging stations

Starting point is 00:07:36 for your electric car, you know, you've got an app with a little map on it. And then this allows you to come in and yeah, take a dookie. Yeah, you're privileged. Yeah, I can shit off a victory boulevard now. And it opens up. I don't know, because some of the key thing is got to it's a very LA thing. I don't imagine they do that in Cincinnati. I imagine in Cincinnati, like, you just park and you can just go in and like, take a crap somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And people recognize that people have to take craps. I think it's like, here, they almost want to pretend like, oh, God, you weirdo have with your bodily with your bowels in your old fashioned, your rethra or whatever, you have to go and do urine or whatever, like, oh, you peasant, come get a key, like, they almost make it like

Starting point is 00:08:23 it's an outhouse, but it's inside kind of right, right. It's it's elitist. LA is so elitist. Even the bathrooms are elitist. Yeah, you got to go. Sometimes you know what it's like. Sometimes you got appointments around town and you got really got to go. What are you going to do? Like Starbucks is really the only place that's open. Grocery stores are pretty good. You notice that? Yeah. There's always a bathroom in a grocery store. You never think that that's like the land of accessible bathrooms. It's a long hike. You got to get back in there. I'm not going to I'm not going to lie. You get you pull into a Ralph's or an A&P. You got to you got to traverse a couple hundred yards before you get back to that thing. And the frozen food aisle, you notice if you

Starting point is 00:09:02 traverse down that one, it feels longer than the other aisles for some reason. Does it really? Yeah, I think so. It feels because there's it just feels brighter and like kind of vibe or like someone could have had to do be doing a party in a couple hours. That is that it's also maybe an optical illusion. Yeah. And it's kind of like Luke Skywalker flying the TIE fighter through. Yes. Down those long alleys. Yeah, you're right. It all feels the same. So I think there's this weird thing in your head where it doesn't feel new for a few seconds. So it's just like, am I stuck in a corridor? Whereas on a regular aisle, it's like, these are the red chips. These are the brown, you know, little cookies. So it keeps changing. And it's like, do you ever go back in the back

Starting point is 00:09:40 of a grocery store and like you got to use the bathroom and then you go through the employees swinging doors like employees only, but you have to go back there. There's a whole world back there. It's a magical world back there. Well, there's usually somebody's kind of crying a little bit. Somebody has a hair net, right? Sure. When you see that out of the gate, you know. And then somebody has their hands on somebody else's back and they're consoling them, but the hands are covered with potato salad. Blood. Where are you going with this? I don't know. No. Those plastic. The plastic gloves. Yeah. The deli gloves. But then potato salad and blood on the outside of those. So there was obviously. Why do grocery stores always have the same things

Starting point is 00:10:24 in the deli section? Do you ever notice that? You go in, you go shopping. It's like coleslaw, potato salad, like a broccoli salad, just smothered in mayonnaise. Yeah. You got your deli meats and cheeses, but then like it's like a shrimp salad. You don't know how old it is against smothered in mayonnaise. Yes. Why don't they mix it up back there in the deli cases of grocery stores? You know what I mean? It's 2023, Theo. I think it would create a little bit of novelty if you thought I'm going to go see what new they have there. Yeah. Let those chefs in the hair nets with the plastic gloves, like let them. Let them be creative. Let them be creative. Let them be, let them be the artists that they are, the artisans. They don't do that. You don't feel a

Starting point is 00:11:10 lot of creativity when you wander into that area of the store. Yeah. It's, that's the saddest section of any grocery store. Yeah. Cause it's cold to you. Like, oh, why'd they put that? You know, they could at least give them some heat. That's right. That's right. And the guy, everybody looks like non-binary kind of because of the hair nets. I think everybody has sort of this, you know what? Everybody is running a meat slicer. It's, it does a lot going on. It's very Game of Thrones-y right there. Yeah. You think so? There's a lot of like, do you mean it in terms of like people killing each other or? It has an archaic sort of guillotine-y kind of. Cause you're talking about the slicer. Yeah. With the slicer. And then there's sometimes

Starting point is 00:11:53 there's like a meat hanging, you know? Yeah. It's like a one, like wiener of meat, like hanging it from the thing. That's true. There can be a wiener chain. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, yeah, I think that makes you, if you're a kid and your mom takes you by there, you're like, oh, this isn't for us. Yeah. It's where an appetite goes to die really, you know. And you don't really need to get the meats sliced. And they have like a nice like head of like pastrami or whatever. And then you say, I want a pound of that. Yeah. But they don't open that one up. They've got another old one that's already been pre-opened and they slice that one up. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of pick out the orphan you want, but they bring in the other orphan, you know? Oh, here's a little Ricky,

Starting point is 00:12:34 you know? He's got shangles, but he's just as good as his brother. And you're like, oh, come on. You'll never know the difference. Yeah. You know, I worked at a grocery. Did you ever work at one? I never worked at a grocery store. I did have a lot of shitty jobs in my day, but never worked in a grocery store. Yeah. What was that like? Did you stock shelves? Or bag? Yep. I did stocking and I got promoted up to eventually the cashier. I was associate cashier and then cashier. What's an associate cashier? I didn't know that was, that was a position. Yeah. You just stand by the cashier bagging. Oh, okay. But they called us associate cashier. It's a bag. It's a bag boy. It was. Yeah. It was dude. And you didn't, at the first like two weeks, you're like, oh,

Starting point is 00:13:13 but then you realize you're not even doing it, you know, you're a bag boy. So you went from stock room to associate cashier and you're like, oh, I'm an associate cashier. And then it's like, I want you to just put the groceries in the bag and you're like, wow. Yeah. Like, all right. You see the truth. That's one of the tough things about life, sometimes is seeing the truths, you know, it's one of the tough things about moving to Los Angeles. You know, you love your favorite TV shows. You love highway to heaven. You love Michael Landon. You get out here, you realize it's, you know, it just, they filmed it, you know, right outside of Burbank somewhere. I don't know what highway to heaven is. And I see that box over your head.

Starting point is 00:13:49 Oh yeah. Well, I've never even heard of it before. Is that a TV show? It was a Michael Landon TV show. Yeah. Where he helped people get to heaven. It was like he showed up and was it like touched by an angel only with a dude? Yeah. And Victor French was in it. Oh, you brought, you brought it up on the, uh, wait, yeah, who's that? Who's that guy? That's Victor French right there. If you click on the one with him and Victor on it. Yeah. Now, is it, um, is it, I don't mean this in any derogatory way, but he looks very Jewish. Did they, did they want to kind of have a Jewish presence since it's about like angels? Let me see if he was jaded up or not. Let's look up Victor French and see if Victor French, if you can get a wiki on him.

Starting point is 00:14:29 Wait, was this a nineties thing? Oh, he does look Jewish. I didn't realize that. Yeah. He was also in Little House of the Prairies. They work together a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They had a kind of a thing going. Oh yeah. He was in Little House of the Prairies. He was awesome. Uh, did they say early life, maybe early career? Doesn't specify. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess he does look kind of, yeah, he does look a little bit Jewish, huh? Victor Edwin. And nothing wrong with that. No, not at all. We're just saying, oh, look, there he is. His spouse was named Shenz. So he might have married a Jewish woman, it sounds like. And what decade this, were you talking about nineties here? Yeah, eighties, eighties in early

Starting point is 00:15:07 nineties. Um, but anyway, I was a huge fan. But yeah, you should do a podcast where you watch episodes and like kind of like office ladies, only highway to heaven, bros. Is office ladies watching your, watching the office? Yeah, that's like a top 10 podcast. They get like two million downloads a week and they just watch office episodes and comment on them. And they're like, oh, it was really funny in this episode that, you know, Dwight fell down the stairs and I remember when we were filming that, that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, they're lovely and delightful Jenna and Angela, but it's huge. But those, those watching shows, watching fan shows are good. You could do a highway to heaven. Yeah, I could do David Spade and Dana Carvey do one where they

Starting point is 00:15:46 talk to people that came on SNL. Oh yeah. And they have a Sopranos one. You know, that one. Yeah. Something like that could be interesting. I would do, you read the first part of my book. So I would do Kung Fu. Yeah. I love, I love you could tell that you did. Yeah. You could tell you watched all three seasons you said in there. Oh man, multiple, multiple times. And bring that up Kung Fu with KCC. He was the leader in it. Oh, he was the quite chen cane. Yeah. Yeah. It's a 1970s with it. Sorry, go ahead. 1973 seasons. The original idea for Kung Fu was created by Bruce Lee. He tried to sell it. They were too racist to have there it is. Yeah, there's David Carradine. So they got a white guy to play a Chinese guy,

Starting point is 00:16:35 David Carradine. And he was brilliant, but it was a very racist choice by the, by the TV networks. Was it racist at the time? Well, you shouldn't have a white guy playing a Chinese guy. Like, I don't care what decade it's in. Like it's right. And it was more done back then. I mean, they would have like black stunt guys that would have white stunt guys wearing blackface. Wow. You can see movies where, you know. Because sometimes, you know what it could have been too? Sometimes the audience wouldn't accept if it was an Asian guy. They went out to watch it as much, but maybe not, huh? I think that was their fear. That's their fear, right? Their fear would be that people wouldn't watch it. But anyways, it's a brilliant show. He is studying Kung Fu in a

Starting point is 00:17:19 Shaolin monastery in China. And, you know, he's the master there. We see a couple of his Kung Fu masters teaching him the wisdom of the East and as well as some martial arts, sick martial arts moves. And then he gets kicked out of the monastery and goes to the old West in the 1880s. He's wandering around the cowboy lands and fighting, fighting crime, not really fighting crime, writing wrongs, you know, we say, but bringing his benevolent Eastern wisdom to bear on every interaction that he has. They encounter a lot of racist cowboys out there. Oh, yeah. Oh, you China man. You know, spit like, and then of course, there's a couple fights. This chopsticks got bullets in it, stuff like that. That would have been good. They didn't have lines that quite that smart,

Starting point is 00:18:13 but that would have worked. But anyways, I talk about it in my book because I feel like it's a metaphor for spirituality because in spirituality, we're walking around the crazy chaotic old West that's aggressive and violent, and we're bringing to bear our wisdom and our, you know, our vision. We're trying to create peace, bring people together. He's always got really beautiful, wise things to say, to try and heal people. But there's always like some drunken racist cowboy there that you got up at the end of the day. You got to pony up, you know, but I'm gonna make orange chicken out of you or something like that. That's good. That's good. You should have been on this. You should have been a staff writer for them. Maybe that could have

Starting point is 00:19:03 been good. Yeah. But uh, yeah, well, like, but so go on. So you think so. It's like, it's kind of like we need that now. We can use that. I mean, we can use that always. But that's what I kind of derived from the beginning of your book. I think I read like 23% of it maybe. But that we, how do we get to where we start to look at ourselves? You want us to look at more as ourselves as a group and not just as individuals? Well, that's, see that, and that's the point. I bring up kung fu because to me, a lot of people, when they think about spirituality, they think about something. I mean, there's, there's folks that think of spirituality as synonymous with church, right? So they like to go to church on Sunday and that's where they get their spirituality and

Starting point is 00:19:53 they hear a sermon. But I'm talking about like, many people feel like spirituality is something that, you know, they pray or they meditate or they read a spiritual book or the Bible or, or a philosopher or something like that. And are they go to the yoga class or something like that? But that, that spirituality is something internal that we kind of process and develop inside of ourselves. And I bring up kung fu because I compare and contrast it to Star Trek, which is for me, a different way of looking at spirituality because Star Trek is about the journey of humanity itself, like the bigger picture. Now, true Star Trek is more about like technology and whatnot, but it's in the planet on Star Trek, humanity has had a big war. This is before the original

Starting point is 00:20:46 series starts. We've overcome racism out of that war. We were getting along. Everyone's getting along. We've solved like sexism. We've solved income inequality. There's like, you know, great peace and justice and tranquility on planet earth, which allows us to build all these spaceships and go flying around the universe, seeking out strange new life and new civilizations and whatnot. But there's, there's a, there is a spiritual maturity. There's a progression of humanity right toward this mature spiritual. And so I bring, I contrast those two because I think that sometimes people lose sight of the fact that there can be a spiritual transformation and maturation of us, 7 billion of us on the planet. And I mean, that's just something important to talk about and think

Starting point is 00:21:40 about. Because it doesn't get, it doesn't really get brought up or discussed that much. It doesn't, a lot of things focus on the now we get a little bit further out when we look at things like, like our own lives and stuff like that, like the limitation of our own lives, what will happen in our lifetime? But rarely do you start to think, what can I, if there's an overall goal that there's like a destination as a people or a populace, that isn't that, and isn't that Theo, isn't that world peace really? Like, do you remember, I mean, you're a lot younger than me, but you're no spring chicken. You've been around the block. Do you remember when people used to talk about world peace? Like as, as a thing as like, yeah, dude. Yeah. I mean, I remember Ronald Reagan.

Starting point is 00:22:30 Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. I remember Ronald Reagan, man. But yeah, I remember world peace. We are the world. I remember people were excited about it. They were like, we're mailing hams to Africa where everything's going to change. We got this, you know, David Bowie, I think was doing it. They should mail all those deli meats and cheeses and the potato salad and shrimp salad. Yeah. No one, no one's eating that crap, bro. It's by the way, it's. Yeah. I agree. The jelly goods. If you don't love swallowing pills, if you're not a pill, baby, you're not a pill, pill woman, pillar. If you're not a pill person, pill popper, that's where blue chew helps out. Blue chews chewable tablets, combat all forms of E.D. That's erectile dysfunction and can help men

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Starting point is 00:25:09 business does. Well, we want to give you a deal over there. Go to shipstation.com and use code Theo today and sign up for your free 60 day trial. That's 60 days of ship stationing. That's shipstation.com code Theo. Get a 60 day free trial at www.shipstation.com slash Theo. Thanks to ship station for sponsoring this show. You know, it's, yeah, it's like, well, this is one thing I thought about when I was kind of delving into your, um, into your work was that, yeah, it's like you feel this, do you feel compelled to kind of look at this? Like, I guess you're saying it's a nice, somebody needs to bring this to the forefront of conversation that, Hey, we're all here. Is there some bigger reason why we're all here?

Starting point is 00:26:03 Can we all start to look at that again? Like, yeah, um, that we can have a goal as a species that may be, you know, mother nature and father time have a goal for us. And we've gotten very off track with our own society. Sometimes I think American society, we may a thousand years from now look back and be like, man, what a detour we took with a lot of the directions we had. Oh my God. I think it's such a crazy, I, I, I've been saying that to my friend Aaron the other day, like, we're just in this, um, time, I think that 50, 100 years from now, I'll look back and be like, man, what a crazy fucked up time we were in. Like, first of all, here's what we did as we created these mini computers, right? With, uh, any distraction you could possibly think of every

Starting point is 00:26:51 game, unlimited porn, social media, you can connect with anyone you can download any piece of information you'd ever possibly want. And we just sprinkle it out like candy among the citizenry, you know, just like here, here y'all go, you know, have these devices that and then you've got kids growing up and they're, they're never, well, I remember when I was young, like, you remember being bored. Yeah. I was bored so much as a kid. I was, my, my dad was like, you're coming with me. Why? I have to go to the dentist. Why do I need to go? Well, I don't want you sitting at home. You know, it's, it's gonna take a couple hours and I gotta swing by the hardware store or whatever. Yeah. So I'll get you, I'll get you two feet of rope or something. Like, all right, I mean,

Starting point is 00:27:40 exactly, you know, I'll get you a candy. We'll stop by the bank. My mom would say, you know, stop by the bank and you get the little candy at the, at the end of the aisle. All right, I'll go. Okay. So I brought a comic book and like, you just sit there and like, you'd hear, he'd be in the dentist and you're just in the waiting room and there's like a people magazine or maybe you brought your comic book, but you've already read it. She read it again and you're just a lot of sitting around. Now kids aren't getting bored, but I'm getting off track. No, you're not. Because it's all part of the same thing. I think your general disposition, your general thought is like, I mean, we can talk about boredom. I talk about the moment

Starting point is 00:28:16 doesn't exist anymore. I talk about my niece thought imagination was an app on your phone. You said like, use your imagination and she's like, where is that? I don't have that downloaded. Yeah. Wow. And it blew my mind. I was like, yeah, because boredom was a chance like, that's where you came up with your, that's where your journey came from. You know, that's where your, yes, that's where your brain showed its balls off. You know, it was like, that's where like your, uh, that's where Bob, uh, who's the guy with the curly hair that did all the painting. Bob Ross. That's where Bob Ross showed up, you know, out of the nowhere and your freaking amygdala or whatever, you know, Bob Ross. Yeah. And you had to like, you go up to the

Starting point is 00:29:01 counter, your dad's in the back getting drilled on and you like peek over the counter at the lady working right there. And you're like, you have no idea. Like that used to be an email. And you used to, and you think like, what's her life like? Yeah. Yeah. Does she have any chocolate? I wonder, I wonder what she goes home to. Yeah. Yeah. It was, what's she wearing under that nurses outfit? Yeah, dude. Yeah. And one time or one lady used to give me her shoe, dude, and let me, uh, just play around with it in the lobby right there, dude. Like, um, you had a shoe as a toy? Yeah. My mom would take me to this place. I think it was like a haircutter or something. The lady in the front would give me her heels and let me kind

Starting point is 00:29:38 of think she was, you know, open to people being whoever they wanted to be or whatever at that time. And she let me walk around in her heels in the lobby of the, uh, it's called the looking glass. It was like the hair salon in our town. What town was that? Covington, Louisiana. Okay. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, I remember that. And you don't have, I went to college with a guy from Covington, Louisiana. Did you? Yeah. Jed Diamond is his name. He's an acting teacher now in Tennessee. Oh, yeah. Jed Diamond. Yeah. Does he teach in Nashville? Knoxville. Knoxville. Okay. He might work with the university too or no? Yeah. Yeah. He teaches at the university. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know him, which is, because it's kind of a small.

Starting point is 00:30:17 The diamonds, uh, they had a big clan, but he was, there he is. Look at that. I love that. We used to, uh, I played Hamlet in acting school and he played Horatio next to my Hamlet. Yeah. That's a handsome photo. That's, he's not as good looking in real life as that photo. It's looking those piercing blue eyes. Really nice guy. Very nice guy. Very smart guy. Jed Diamond out of Covington, Louisiana. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. We had, uh, we actually had the tallest statue of Ronald Reagan in our town. Oh, that's nice. Which is interesting. Yeah. And, um, um, yeah, that's about it. But the, the Harvey Oswald went to our middle school for a little while. Oh, that's, that's good. All right. So you would hear that growing up, things like that,

Starting point is 00:30:58 like small town lore and stuff. Yeah. I love that growing up. But yeah, boredom. You didn't have it. So your brain got to think and contemplate. You felt like you needed a wish into the air if you wanted anything to happen. Like you had to have some connection with the world because you needed to like set the, all your hopes on the scales of time and that you would, whatever your dreams were, you were going to make them happen somehow when you felt it inside of you. And now all of so much of that and like, uh, our praying, our moments, our peace, our, it all gets, there's an app for that. And it gets, yeah, it gets appified. Um, and it gets sucked in and comedy too. Like I'm not a comedian. Like I wouldn't know how to

Starting point is 00:31:46 write an hour and a half worth of jokes and stories. Like I just wouldn't know how to hire someone for that, I guess, um, if you're available, but we spent so much time bored together too. So, and my friend John and I, especially we would play kung fu, we would act out scenes from kung fu. We love that. But then you're just like walking home from the school bus. You're not checking your phones. You're throwing pine cones at each other and at the passing cars. And then, you know, you see a robin, take a shit. And then you talk about like, oh, birds shit, I guess, you know, how much, I'm wondering how much birds shit. And you just muse on that for 45 minutes. Yeah. So you can catch a bird shit you try for an hour.

Starting point is 00:32:27 Yeah. Yeah. Throw a pine cone, try and catch it right as it's shitting. So, and then you go home and, but that's a little cauldron. It's a little Petri dish of comedy because you're just observing things and bumping up into each other. And, and I think it must be harder for, for young folks these days, because my son is 18 years old and he gets together with his friends. And they just mostly just look at their phones the whole time they're together. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I sound like a grumpy old man. I don't think you do. I think you sound, it's, I mean, it's the same thing that I think it's like, is that that I, we're becoming grumpy

Starting point is 00:33:10 old men or is it that we have some concern for the intrinsic value of what it seems like to us, what it means to be human, you know? And I don't know if we are like, or does nature and the gods, do they have some longer destiny for us to end up as robots? And these are like the shell. We are like just the snails before they get the shell. You know, it's like, we don't know where we are in the chain of time, you know? Sure. There was a book, a science fiction book I read. I used to read a lot of science fiction. It was called City by Clifford DC Mack. And it, it, every section of the book took you through eons and earth's development. And like there's after the humans expired on planet earth, then it was the

Starting point is 00:34:02 dogs. So then it's like a whole chapter about dogs ruling the earth. And then it's, and then it's the ants, and then the ants ruled the earth. And then I think at the end it's like the dolphins or something like that. So it's stories, you know, set thousands of years apart. And the dogs are living in the ruins of humanity. So there's these shells of these cities, but they're these talking dogs and they're talking about life and love and stuff like that. So yeah, maybe this is just one just pit stop on the way of the development of planet earth. What do you think? It makes, I don't know if it makes me, I think there's some part of me that laments that or makes me feel sad about it because I think in some ego way, I want to feel more important

Starting point is 00:34:45 than that. Or I want my time period to feel more important than that. I often feel like it's very, even though I feel like I'm aware of some of the things that you kind of think about and the things that you talk about in your book, I feel like I still struggle to combat those, even though I try to use things like prayer, meditation, um, you know, I'm in recovery. So I go to those. Yeah, me too. So I'm a part of that group. So, which promotes a lot of that sort of stuff. So I'm an ear for brothers that are, that struggle with stuff sometimes and, um, but even then it's like, it's really hard to not feel like you're just, uh, on the conveyor belt sometimes, but that you, maybe we used to have a, we used to dance on the conveyor belt and like whistle and do

Starting point is 00:35:34 marshmallows and stuff. And now we're just kind of like sitting on the conveyor belt on our phones, you know? I don't know. I don't want to sound too dour. What's your biggest struggle? My struggle was, um, what is your biggest struggle now? Probably affection. Probably love and affection, that type of stuff. I want to hug you right now. Well, I wouldn't. Okay. Thank you though. I mean, I'll, I'll take it to go. I'll take it to go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait till the end of the podcast. I'll give you a big one. Some guy said in a meeting one day, he goes, you know what, man, you're hard to pet.

Starting point is 00:36:14 Hard to pet? Yeah. And I kind of, I valued that. It kind of taught me something about myself, like, you know, you're right, man. I am hard to pet. I don't, it's hard for me to let people pet me. Hmm. That's a, that's a great way of putting it. It was just an interesting insight. With affection, you, do you mean like intimacy? Like, yeah, I think like that with good friends and with like relationships and girlfriends and whatnot. Yeah. I think probably like commitment like that kind of stuff, intimacy, like really dropping into connecting with somebody. I think it's kind of tough. I know it's kind of tough for me. Yeah. You know, but I don't want to talk too much about myself, you know? Okay. What about yourself?

Starting point is 00:37:03 Um, I mean, obviously a lot in your book and a lot in your show, you know, that you're searched, you're in a searching space. Yeah. I, you know, I'm in recovery. I have a lot of anxiety. I've dealt with a lot of depression before a lot of loneliness. I've been through some really dark times. Um, and, uh, you know, so for me, like part of this spiritual search and why I'm writing about it and talking about it and thinking about it so much as I need tools to help me cope with my anxiety and help me find, uh, peace and, and serenity. And, and as I undertake that journey, so I view kind of my anxiety disorder as something almost akin to diabetes where you have friends with diabetes and every day they got to take their blood, right? Monitor. Give my

Starting point is 00:38:01 apple or something. They fall over. Right. Exactly. Shovel some applesauce in their mouth real quick. And yeah, we had this one day, we'd always fricking just put one of them twix in him, bro. Analy. Uh-uh. I mean, I never did that. Give her an anal twix. I have him, but they kind of shape perfectly, right? Uh, so, but I have to do the same thing with anxiety. Like, I have to, uh, I have to not nothing is not anal, but I have to monitor it every day and I can live with it and I do okay, but I do have to, I have to meditate. I have to work out. I have to pray. I have to surrender. I have to stay connected with people. I can isolate pretty easily. Yeah. So, um, um, but that has led me on, on the search. So I, I would say my biggest struggle is with

Starting point is 00:38:46 my own, is with my anxiety and with my ego too. Hmm. You know, yeah. Ego is so scary, isn't it? I must be, I mean, I've been at it for a long time and I struggled a lot more with ego like early on in the success of the office and stuff, but it must be hard for you. Like you were, you're toiling away in obscurity doing like chuckles comedy hut in Oklahoma city and then all of a sudden like just in the last like four years, like you've just like blown up and like you're practically going to be put on Mount Rushmore. I mean, it's a crazy amount of fame for a, you know, a itchy hillbilly, such as yourself. You're right, dude. That's a good call. Yeah, I think, uh, oh, well, it scared me. That has to have been a, that has to be a struggle too.

Starting point is 00:39:34 Oh, it's the first thing was a sheer fear. I thought this was a, this was crazy. I thought God has some, this was the worst part that happened. I thought God has some special purpose for me and that there's something special that he needs me to do, but he does. And that may be true. But he has that for everyone, I think. Right. Yeah. But I now you have a platform and so, you know, I feel like I'm some response with increased power comes increased responsibility. Yeah. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, bro. Yeah. And you almost wearing the podcast crown. Yeah. Well, they called me the rat king, you know, and I didn't even pick it out, you know, it was just the king of rats. But, um, but that was real scary. Ant-Man, you can order rats around.

Starting point is 00:40:16 Do you have a psychic connection to rats? By the way, I think like, think about Ant-Man, like that pitch meeting at Marvel, like, all right. Okay. Ant-Man, what's his power? Yeah. He can turn tiny. You picture them like, that's pretty good. I mean, that could be fun. We don't have a shrinking guy, but it's not quite enough. We need something more. Um, he has a psychic power to be able to call ants to help him out. Also, he can shrink and communicate with ants. We'll call him Ant-Man, but the two powers really aren't related at all. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think it's great. Superman's power is, he has strength and he can fly and he can also read books backwards. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't, right, right. And he can also weigh a Christmas hand with his

Starting point is 00:41:10 eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. I think, I don't know if, well, I think Hollywood has done a, they've done a disservice to imagination because it's been, now, I think it used to be a novel place where more people came, they came out in their wagons from Kalamazoo with their bag of ideas on their back. Yep. And now I think it's just, you know, someone's so son or grandson, they're in the seventh generation of their studio or film. They haven't had a new idea that isn't based on an algorithm walking the door in 12 years and they wouldn't know something novel and unique unless it beat them upside the head. I think a lot of times. Now, that might be a very narrow view of Hollywood. But, by, why you guys like Bert and you and Tom,

Starting point is 00:42:03 I'm sure there's others, but those are the main three that I watched. Like you don't have, you don't have to pitch anything. You can just make your own shit and hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people are going to watch it and you get to do your own. Like Bert's got a whole enterprise over there. He's got movies going and Oh yeah. He's got a family cooking show. Me and David Spade just wrote a movie together who was my one of my childhood heroes. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And you didn't need to go into Sony and like pitch it or anything. Like you just kind of did it and it'll sell. But is it Joe Dirt 2? I wish it was damn Joe Dirt 7. They made Joe Dirt 2. I didn't know either. I didn't know that.

Starting point is 00:42:43 I mean, I knew, but I didn't want, you know, nobody was saying that they knew. But it was something like this one's about bus boys, like the last bus boys. And we think if we become waiters and everything in our life will change, you know, but we just, it's just a misguided thought. Isn't that so true? I remember I was very, I always struggling as an actor and then like, oh, once I get on the TV show, then I'll be happy. And guess what? I'm on the office and then it was just like, well, how do I get to be a movie star? Now I'm a TV star and like the second I'm TV star, I can't even like enjoy it. Yeah, like a month. I'm on to like, like, how do I get to, how do I get to be a movie star? And guess what? It didn't work out so well for me.

Starting point is 00:43:35 Trying to do movies, you mean? Yeah, the movies move. My movies never, people never really liked or saw my movies very much. One day you'll probably make a really neat movie that people will say. Well, I think a lot of them were neat. And and people tell me they like them now, like the rocker and stuff like that. But like that was my big, I don't know if you remember that movie, The Rocker, so you don't even know it existed. Yeah, I'm sorry. You know about it. I saw it in theaters. You saw it in the theater? Hell yeah. Bro. Thanks, Zach, for holding the team together. Wow. That was 14 years ago. How old were you? Must have been 16 or something like that. There he is. There it is. And Bradley Cooper and the oh yeah, I remember seeing the average. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:15 Oh, I thought this was John. What's his name? Barry. Bill Hader. Yeah. Yeah, I used to kind of look like Bill Hader when I was a little better looking and younger. You still seem like a handsome guy. Oh, you stop you. But anyways, this was like, oh, I'm putting all my eggs in this basket, The Rocker. This is my chance, my starring role in a comedy movie. And it was one of the biggest bombs in Fox history. Yeah. It opened on like, there's this thing called purse screen average. I mean, truth be told, they moved the launch date like five times. They pushed it to a release after like Labor Day, like literally like the worst weekend. Everyone's getting ready to go to school. Yeah. That's the worst. It came out like three weeks after Tropics Thunder and two weeks after

Starting point is 00:45:08 Step Brothers. So there were all these amazing comedies in the theater already. We just and like the came out in like 2000 or 3000 screens and like the purse screen average was like $203 or something like that. And it's like, it was brutal. I put I worked so hard on it. I promoted the hell out of it. And no one wanted to see the rain Wilson starring vehicle. And it was devastating. But why, you know, why was I in such a place back then? And I think I'm in a different place now where it's like you say about the bus boy, like, oh, if only I can get to be a waiter, then my life will be made. But oh, if only I can be, I'm a TV star. If only I can be a movie star, then I will be happy. Yeah. You know, but but then you want to walk on the

Starting point is 00:45:56 Hollywood Walk of Fame or then you want, you know, your kid to be a movie star. You don't mean anything. I, you know, yes, I think that search for different things never really ends. But I think we have to try and monitor where does that search come from, right? And what are exactly we searching for? And that's the kind of thing, honestly, not to go back to your book, but I think it that's kind of the some of the stuff that it's touching on. It's like where some of these motivations coming from, not only for me as a person, but where's our motivation coming from as a species and as a human. If we want external validation, if we want to find happiness extrinsically, that's outside of ourselves, you know, we're never,

Starting point is 00:46:37 we're never going to be satisfied. We have to find that deep, soul rich satisfaction of being alive, you know, in the garden of our hearts, you know, tending to, you know, what fulfills us and brings us joy and talk about being in the moment, you know, that's such a key part of it. It's hard. And then when we're able to cultivate that, then we're able to spread that and give that to others, you know, and one of the things that you get to do. And I think you're a great divine and solemn responsibility. And I put the rat king crown on your head and annoying you king rat. And I say to you, you are a spreader of joy. You make people laugh, you spread joy, you spread ideas, you uplift people. There's probably some really depressed guy right now sitting in a trailer

Starting point is 00:47:27 park in Mobile, Alabama, taking a shit. And he doesn't know where he's going to pay the next month rent. And he's listening right now to this as he's watching. And he's chortling all of your analogies and your, your verbal sense of humor and your, and your humble demeanor and, and, and he's uplifted. And, and then that is a, that is a divine power. That is your ant man powers is to, is to uplift and inspire, not just summon rats or summon decent rats. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's really the best hope to be is just a, you know, be a decent rat. Be a decent rat. I like that. I kind of like that too, man. Is that going to be on your merch page now? It could be. We can put it on there. Yeah. Yeah. We can put a decent. Can you put my little face on it? Little rat.

Starting point is 00:48:20 What's your name again? Alex. Zach. My brother's name's Alex. You can name him Zach or Alex. You can name him Alex. Zach, it's nice to have him there because he smiles when it's funny. Yep. Someone's not really an audience. Right. There isn't. You also have to recognize his, his, his sense of humor may not be the same as yours. So sometimes you might be being funny and he doesn't, he, his deadpan stonewall, he doesn't fake it really for you, which I like. Yeah. It feels authentic. It feels legit. I think, I think that, but I've already, I've worked, I got a couple of giggles out of Zach track. I'm honest with it. He is honest with it. I like that. He's out of Cincinnati and he's honest with it. I would say that that's

Starting point is 00:49:03 about him. Was he from Cincinnati? That's why I said about bathrooms in Cincinnati. WKRP, right? How long was that? The turkeys from the sky, remember then? Oh, they shot turkeys out of the air. They threw turkeys out of the sky in that show. That's what, that's the only thing I remember. I never saw those before. WKRP in Cincinnati. You ever saw the show? Yeah. I saw. Yeah. I used to watch that in seventies, golden age of the sitcom. All in the family. I loved it. God, he was good. Carol O'Connor, I've been to his grave seven times. You've been to Carol O'Connor's grave seven times. Yup. That is devotion and dedication. Where is his grave? In my backyard. That's why I was mowing the lawn every time I mowed the lawn. That was Carol O'Connor.

Starting point is 00:49:41 He's buried in my heart. Where is his grave? He's buried in Westwood. There's a cemetery in Westwood. Okay. Right by UCLA? Yup. I thought that's one with like a thousand soldiers in it? Nope. Oh, there's that one, but there's another little one. It's like a quarter of a block. It's behind some business buildings. You never think it's there. Hugh Hefner is in there. Marilyn Munro, Carol O'Connor. Who's the guy from, who are the two old guys from the angry grandpa's? We're in the boat and they're hitting them. Walter Matthow? Yup. Walter Matthow. It's pretty good. I got that. You know who the angry old guy was? And Jerry Matno. And the last one is the other guy, Jack Lemon. Both of grumpy old men were buried there? All buried there in the

Starting point is 00:50:33 same cemetery. Wow. And the first guy that ever played Robin Hood. Kevin Gosner? I thought he was still alive. Oh, no. Tarzan or Robin Hood. We're Googling this shit. Someone. Maybe he could have been him. Could have been Pierce Brosnan too. He's still alive. Oh, then not him. Congrats, Pierce. Well done, Pierce. Still looks amazing. Have you ever subscribed to something and forgot about it? I have. I did. I was part of a scarf annual and I send you a scarf every month. Thank God your neck just can't handle it. Dang. I was getting dang hives just because I had, you know, by May I had on three scarves and I just, people couldn't even recognize me. It's getting dangerous too. Couldn't see over the top one. Well, rocket money can help you

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Starting point is 00:55:21 something that we struggle with is, or one thing that you like to take note of, because I don't want to say like you're being accusatory towards society, because it's more like you're saying, hey, let's all look at some of this stuff. Do you think that's a fair statement? Yes. It's just education, like the educations, what we educate youth on at all, really. To me, a lot of it is asinine. I talk about, later on in the book, I talk a lot about how systems are broken. So this is where I get a little, I wax a little philosophical. I'm like, so many systems are broken. Anyone who works in any system will tell you how broken it is. You ever noticed that? Like you talk to someone who's like a bus driver and like,

Starting point is 00:56:09 what's it like being under bus drivers? Like, well, it's gone to shit. Yeah. I'll tell you why. They're making us work 14 hours and not enough people and we don't get to park the buses downtown and it's BYOB. Yeah. You got to wipe down the seats yourself. We used to have guys that wipe down the seats and every system is broken down because everything's based on greed. Everything's based on aggression and greed and one-upsmanship and competition and you know, and healthcare and agriculture and education is one of those systems. And the reason I bring all this up is not to be like negative Nellie, but to kind of say like, we need to realize that they're based on faulty systems. Like take education and I talk about

Starting point is 00:57:00 when they pull people and they're like, hey, what do you want to learn in school? People will be like gardening, you know, or how to have a friendship or how to take rejection or how to, you know, work on a car engine or how to pay bills, right? And have like a banking account. You know, all this stuff that they, people say they want, you don't ever spend, you don't learn shit about that. You spend, my son is 18. Like some of this stuff, like his math class, it's like, give me a break. Like he's not going to be a mathematician. He's in like this, it's so hard and it's so pointless. And you get something out of math, like it exercises your brain, right? It's like advanced Sudoku, right? Which is good for brain. But

Starting point is 00:57:51 it's not practical at all. And like he took this history class and his entire history class, like European history, was just about who won what battle. You know, in 1707, the French beat the Polish and in 1842, the English beat the Dutch. And the Dutch beat the gays and you're like, what is this? Hey, where's this going? Like who's writing this? Yeah, I agree, man. But who cares about that? Like who cares who won the battle of Shishkabab in 1684, you know? Yeah, 100%. I'd much rather learn how to, how to, you know, if I was 17 to have a checking account or how to grow a cabbage. Yeah. Oh, it'd be sick, dude. You saw some freaking hot chick with a balanced checkbook and two heads of lettuce. You know what I'm saying, buddy? But dude, yeah,

Starting point is 00:58:42 I agree. There should be class, like I always thought there should be classes on like, um, like we had spelling every week, right? Three kids did the best. 16 kids did medium. Four kids could not spell ever. Yeah. And it was the same for the whole, like after four weeks, let's just say we get, we know what's going to happen. Yeah. Let's move on. Like I think just let the four, let the four kids. Yes. Just duke it out among themselves. Yeah. I was always in the medium. Yeah. I was a good speller. You were a good speller? Yeah. Did you ever make it to some kind of finals? I made it almost, but I missed on inconvenience, right? That's inconvenient. Yeah. I wrote that line on the, in the office. I lost the spelling bee. I misspelled the word failure.

Starting point is 00:59:33 And I actually wrote that line. I felt kind of proud of that. Hey, Zach. Yeah. Give us a tough word. Let's have a little spelling bee. All right. Um, Renaissance. Um, mere, mere him. The fair or the motel? Uh, the fair. All right. R E N A I S S A N C E. No. Renaissance. R E N N A I S S A N C E. Just one N. He's right. You got it. Well, it's also, you have two N's in your name. So you probably were it's like, I was sure it was two N's. I was so sure. Two S's. Okay. Let's do best two out of three then. And I'll pick a category two outdoors. Just Google, Google spelling bee words. Okay. I won't pick a category then. I'll take my category back. Um, they're all easy. These are verbates. Hold on. Look up harder spelling be words. I did.

Starting point is 01:00:39 High school. Senior year. Community college. Yeah. Justiculate. Oh, G E S T I C U L A T E. Pretty easy. Talking with your hands being Italian, even doing that. Yeah. I think here's a class you should have. Right. Rain eye contact. What a great class. The first week, it's all eye contact. How are you doing? Betty, you know, what do you, what do you, what about the second week? Then you move up, you do nodding. So why don't you just say like interpersonal communication? Yeah, you can. You're gonna scare off a lot of people that one. Yeah, you put that, you're scaring off a lot of folks. That's okay. Let him be scared. Okay.

Starting point is 01:01:28 Kids need it. People need it right now. You know, you look on college campuses and some of the most popular classes, like the most popular class at USC is on friendship. Like how to have friendship. Yeah. Well, I mean, because look at what we do. You, yeah, I think you do eye contact nodding. You, if you, you, you do all the nodding, you get to, you get to move into the handshakers union, right? And then you're there. You're doing real handshakes in real time with people, right? But you're learning, yeah, how to communicate, how to take rejection. Like you said, that'd be great. Oh, damn, you suck. Oh man. All right, bro. But I'm still good at this, right? But we teach, it's like, we go straight from like dinosaurs to sex ed. It's like, you believe in

Starting point is 01:02:12 Tyrannosaurus Rex? Let's fuck, you know, like that's crazy, bro. Yeah. We, there's so much as huge, right? None of it is based on. No one has ever fucked a dinosaur. Oh, I, I believe. No, because they never overlapped. Humans and dinosaurs never overlapped. It was like a million a year after the last dinosaur died before humans. There's no pictures of humans and dinosaurs at the same time. Well, there's no, there's no pictures before 1880. There's paintings, but yeah, there was no, there's no wall carving. Woolly mammoths. Yeah. It could be that someone fucked a woolly mammoth. Oh yeah. In the plasticine. The brunettes they called them back then.

Starting point is 01:02:55 Yeah. In a heart. There's so woolly. Yeah. Oh, especially on a cold night. Yeah. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. I would braid that tail, buddy. You could sleep in that vagina. It's like a rucksack. Oh, I bet if they had a newborn baby, if they're riding on a woolly mammoth, they just plopped that. Right in there. Yeah. Why not? That's the only sound that they do. All aboard. Trains leave in the station. But they don't fuck dinosaurs. But that's in, you know, I think, yeah, like getting back to being human. Do you, sometimes I will romanticize Native American and tribal people and the connection that they had to the earth. Do you do that? I do very much. I really

Starting point is 01:03:43 believe that we have a lot to learn from Native American folk the way that by and large they lived in harmony with the natural world. And the thing I think about with a lot of indigenous peoples and their spiritual practices is that spirituality wasn't separate from nature. And when you think about that, it can be very inspiring. You know what I mean? Like, this mountain is holy. You know, this river is the river of our ancestors. This is where our ancestors are buried in this forest. And that's holy. Let's pray to the spirit of the mountain or to the spirit of the river or the spirit of the forest. And so it isn't this idea of God as this kind of dude who like a deity, like with superpowers, you know, up on a cloud, it's merged into the

Starting point is 01:04:33 natural world, the beauty, the majesty, the wonder, the wonder, the mystery of the natural world, you know, the winds, the four directions. And when you read about Native American spirituality, I think it can be very uplifting. And it was very, it was very helpful to me because I was reading some stuff about in the Lakota Su tradition, the God of the Lakota Su is called, is referred to as Wakantanka, which means the great mystery. So even the word for God, instead of, maybe we should all do that as throw away the word God, it's such a loaded word, right? Except for Michael Landon, it's a highway to heaven. But that, and just substitute the great mystery, like, you know, oh, did you, did you pray to the great mystery today? Or, oh, thank the great

Starting point is 01:05:24 mystery or ask the great mystery for help or like, you know, great mystery, damn it. Yeah, I don't know. But I really love that idea. And that was very resonant for me as a young person, because I was really struggling with God and higher power. And I didn't know what that meant to me. And, you know, my parents were religious, but I didn't have the same conception that they did. And that really allowed me to kind of have a different vision for what a higher power could be, which was something that is not separate from nature and something that is not separate from physical reality. It is in physical reality and in nature and, and yet part of it and also above it at the same time. And the idea, I love, I was gonna say I love mysteries, but I don't mean like,

Starting point is 01:06:09 I love mystery podcasts. I mean, I love, you know, I just love as an artist, I love the idea of life being this mystery. And so I found that very helpful. And I think we could get real humble. And we really screwed over Native Americans in this country. And yeah, we should go back to the reservation and help them out and learn from them and not, you know, tell them what to do and when to do it, but actually be humble and learn from them because they might have something to teach us. A great, I mean, I think we, I think we're, there's a lot of people that are trying to get back to those spaces now. I think in a lot of ways, you know, you see it with like a lot of ayahuasca use and people getting back to the jungle and having experiences that really bring

Starting point is 01:06:55 them closer to nature. But I can imagine, yeah, I'm not going to litter if I think that the ground has some semblance of sacredness, of course not. Right? It's kind of things are going to have so much more value to me. Yeah. I'm not going to strip mine that mountain and cause an ecological disaster. You know, there's all these floods that have been happening in West Virginia and they, they called it when they were doing all the strip mining in the 70s and 80s, they're like, this is going to be an ecological disaster because you're wiping out all these trees and you're just digging these trenches and digging up the coal, you know, from these mountain sides. And then when it rains and floods, you know, you're just, you're, you're fucked. Yeah. But if those mountains

Starting point is 01:07:37 were sacred, the people wouldn't tolerate it, you know, because you can have both, you can have jobs and you can have sacred land. Yeah, we kind of sold our, I mean, I think about that a lot, like especially in the US, did we like sell ourselves out? Or did we, how did we get on this wrong path where, or are we on a wrong path? You don't know, but it feels like there's some, there must be something more if so many people are looking for meaning, I think, and feeling, you know, something real. And especially before we get so trapped into the digital universe that you can't even come out. I mean, a smile might be in a museum one day, you might have to go to a museum to see a smile. I like the museum of smiles.

Starting point is 01:08:30 But that'd be so crazy. Yeah. Remember Rick? You'd be right up there. Yeah. Remember when Eddie got his first orgasm? Yeah. Remember when Eddie got his first orgasm? He's just like, it's not quite a smile. You go to the curator like, that's not technically a smile, it's a grimace of ecstasy, but it's not quite a smile. Like, hey, it's our biggest attraction buddy. All right, calm down. I think too, like we're, you know, we talked about people in the future looking back at this time, we talked about phones and distractions and boredom, but the other thing too is like the

Starting point is 01:09:11 amount of disunity and the fact that America is so divided 49% on each side, Democrat and Republican and this partisanship and the, how deadlocked it is and how much fighting there is. And it's, and it's really, it's so sad because we've so many problems that need fixing, you know, and you know, like Republicans might criticize Democrats like, oh, they're running their cities terribly and there's homelessness and they kind of mock it right on Fox News. And then the left does the same thing. They'll be like, to find some other problem in Republican states and like, and then make fun of that. And it's like, why aren't we helping each other? Like why, why is partisanship become the de facto way to kind

Starting point is 01:09:58 of do business? Like it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. It's not practical. It doesn't get shit done and it's not helping anyone. And we really need to move past it. You know, I was thinking about debates and, uh, isn't it funny on, on a, like you watch a political debate and then immediately there's articles like an hour later, like who won the debate? And the reason that they say that they won the debate is they got more zingers in on the other person. And then that's who we elect is the person who is able to get more zingers in on the other person. As if that's a leadership skill. Could you imagine you're running for class president as a senior in high school and like, you know, it's, it's, it's Bobby and Darren

Starting point is 01:10:47 and like Bobby's like, well, Darren's got a such an overbite. You know, he looks like a woodchuck. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Let's vote for him. Like, no, the teachers would never allow that. Like, what's your policy position? How are you going to help the school? Like, how are you going to fix Darren's teeth? How are we going to have a fundraiser for braces for Darren and his poor overbite? Yeah, like I agree. But yeah, it's, that is, well, the news, something happened when the news fell off. It used to feel like, and we talk about this sometimes on here, that you could rely on the news, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:11:19 I feel like my parents and your parents probably felt like the news, uh, had a general interest in the wellness of their viewer. Yeah. And now it does not, it feels like the news wants to be like a nicotine for their viewer. Um, right. And that, uh, outrage keeps you watching. And if you read, if you look through like Yahoo news feed online, I'm not talking about like cable news, but it works in cable news too. If they keep you outraged, they keep you coming back. Oh yeah. People like, they always end like the end of the news show. Like after the commercial, you won't believe what this kid did to this man's face with a baseball bat. After these messages, this guy hit a two run double on this senior citizen.

Starting point is 01:12:06 You're like, Jesus. Wow. Yeah. That's a terrible baseball analogy. Some guy's dead. Yeah. Man's head found locally. We'll be back, right? After this, still alive. And it'll say, and you're like, what? The show picture. Yeah, it makes you, but then like there, you feel like there's a swing to everything. So it's like, are we just hopefully at this point of the pen, you know, we're at the out and then there's a turn that we can't see that's coming or that maybe we hope for, you know, because I wonder if people have thought this way in the past as well. Well, if people have felt as nervous about the future. Well, Civil War.

Starting point is 01:12:49 Oh, that had to be definitely, huh? Yeah. I mean, that was, that, that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, right? You ever hit any of the reenactments or anything? Probably not where you're from. You're from the Northwest, right? From Seattle. Yeah. We didn't have reenactments, but you got to go. You probably, you probably, you'd fit right in. Oh, we crowd. Dude, we'd be out there at the CWRs, bro. Freaking chilling, bro. So what is the CWR? Civil Reenactment. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:13:15 And, uh, yeah, I just, did you, did you all being from the South be like, okay, we're going to need 20 Yankees and like, no. Yeah. Theo, yeah. Theo, you're going to be Yankee. I don't want to be a fucking Yankee. Like the South will rise again. Like everyone wanted to be. Well, people kept southerner. People played a lot of like Southern music and shit, you know, because the party was better for the South than the before that like it was like the breakfast or whatever the big breakfast they would do before the fight or whatever was definitely, because the South loses every time, you know, there was one day where they kind of won, but it was like,

Starting point is 01:13:50 you know, historically they've lost. And so, yeah, sometimes you'd have groups from the North that would come and they would do it. It was like a big deal. Oh, you'd have Yankee reenactors come down and, and then the Southern reenactment. It's like a renaissance fair kind of. But they would know that they were going to win. So they'd be like, fuck y'all. Yeah, there was a lot of that. But there was also like, you know, afterwards, everybody would have, you know, have a Michelobre schlitz, you know, and try to like sometimes they would do it around the same time as a renaissance fair and people would come over and everybody try to like,

Starting point is 01:14:16 bang some chick from the renaissance fair. Because they're buxom. Oh, man. Right. God, did they, I'll say this about the renaissance fair, dude. Hot chicks. No chicks, no chicks, civil war reenactors, right? Zilch dude, a lot of masturbation, a lot of people drawing cooter in the dirt and stuff, you know, fucking woolly mammoth carcasses, right and left. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people writing girl on their buddy's butt, you know, a lot of like, a lot of obtuse ideas out there. But, uh, oh, renaissance fair. God, I could see you at a renaissance fair. I could be honest. Yeah. Have you been to some? I have been. I'm a huge fan. I actually wrote a, a pretty hysterical script called renaissance men, that comedy that took place at a renaissance

Starting point is 01:15:05 fair. Of course. We tried to sell it for years. We tried to get it going, but it didn't really take off. It's very funny. Do you want to, would you like to be in it? Yeah. Could you find someone else to, to be in that? Yeah. Man or woman, you think? Man, it's a buddy comedy to guys. Yeah. You could find someone else to be in it. Yep. What kind of guy does the other guy have to be? Well, I don't know. So there's one guy that's really intense and takes a renaissance fair, like really seriously. He's a little bit more of a Dwight character and the other guy's more of a player and like seducing the ladies and like doesn't take it as seriously. I think you'd be the player guy. Yeah. Who wants to throw an ax into my butt? You know what I'm saying? I don't know what you're

Starting point is 01:15:47 saying. I literally, I don't know what you mean. Get your motor running. Yeah. So maybe the music would be a little bit like from a different era though. Yeah. That's, that's not the right. Okay. It would be like a madrigal. Okay. Like let me go get Rapunzel on. Like green sleeves. Alas, my love, you do me wrong to have cast me out so disdainfully. God. Something beautiful about that. And I have loved you so long. I fare thee well with my hair so free. I don't know the rest of it, but it sounds good, man. I'm serious. I'm going to send you the script. Yeah, I'd love to read it. I really would. That'd be an honor actually. Because you guys just knew you young ins and your

Starting point is 01:16:34 young podcast generation, you and Bert could do it. Oh, well, Bert just did a movie too. Yeah. He just did a movie about the machine, about being the machine. Yeah. Yeah. You talk about, you talk about faith in your book. Yeah. What's that been like for you? And like, I know, and, and Hollywood a lot of times seemed like there's not a lot of faith in it. I mean, it's a very business world, you know, and maybe the world is overall, I don't want to just, I pick on Hollywood a lot. Good. You should. But it's very, I don't know. You know, I like faith. I like having something other than myself in the world. I need it. Yeah, I do too. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I'll tell you something. I was thinking about

Starting point is 01:17:20 this the other day, like there's a lot of weirdos in the comedy world in Hollywood. And everyone kind of prides themselves on being like, oh, I'm eccentric and I'm weird and this and that. And, but for me, it was always a little weird because I'd always want to talk about faith and God and the soul and life after death and kind of big concepts and whatnot. And the comedy world just did not know what to do with me. Like who is this guy who's talking about God? It's the unsexiest, uncoolest thing to talk about anywhere. And, but especially like in the too cool for school comedy world. So you've got all these eccentrics and misfits and losers as they describe themselves. But then they also want to be cool. They want to be like the cool kids in the lunch room,

Starting point is 01:18:03 right? The cool kids table. So it was, it was always hard for me because I always wanted to talk about that stuff and people just didn't know what to do with that guy. He's also weird, that guy who plays Dwight, but then he talks about spiritual topics and stuff. Well, the gods must be crazy. It was a huge movie, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it was. I remember somebody snuck that in our apartment when I was a kid and we watched it. That's a South African movie about the, about the Coke bottle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That fell down from the sky. Yeah. I was like, what is this even about? But we watched it probably 30 times. Family man, have you seen that? Yeah, with Nicholas Cage. God, is it good? I love that movie. Dude, I love that. I'm a big family

Starting point is 01:18:46 man guy. I've never met another family man fan. I think it's terrific and it kind of came and went. I think it's a Christmas classic. Me too. I played it for a girl at Christmas recently. Yeah. She didn't pay attention, fell asleep during it and we don't date anymore. Good. Good. And that was it for me, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Family man. Oh, the one where the guy Quaid talks with us through the radio. Through the radio. Yeah. Yeah. I loved that movie. Yeah. Right. That was good. The ghost of his father, like the radio. Yeah. God, that was powerful. That was good. Frequency. Frequency. God, that was good. Yeah. I mean, that hit me right in the frickin' heart nuts, man. But you were talking about God and faith and... Yeah, I don't think it

Starting point is 01:19:32 turns people off. I think people are desperate for it. Well, it's a different day now. It's a different age and it's funny because I just did Burt's podcast and his is a lot bigger than yours. Like in what, studio size? No, like numbers. His is huge. Oh, you're making that up? Yeah, I'm just trying. I was trying to incite something. And you are? A little bit. And you are and I like it, dude. Yeah, I was getting it. I like it. I have no idea, but I just know that you guys are very, very popular. But it was so great because Burt, it was so refreshing because he's like, oh, you wrote a book on spirituality. That's so cool. What do you talk about? I'm like, oh, I talk about God and he's like, I love God. God is awesome. I totally believe in God. I love

Starting point is 01:20:20 God. You know, and he's like, and it was like, it was so cool to hear that from like a top comedy guy who was just able to just say, you know, it's a different, it's a different time right now. And I think because things aren't working out so well and we see big problems and people are turning and this is what Soul Boom is about. I want it up on that shelf one of these days. You know what I'll put it up. I'll actually, you know, what I'll put it in front of this book for a while. You put it in front of Jordan Peterson? Yeah, I'd be glad to. Oh, thank you. I really, I really enjoyed the 50 pages that I read. All right. I hope you'll read the next 50. I think there's a lot of things we talk about it in here, but I think people are more open to spiritual

Starting point is 01:21:04 ideas because the other, you know, political solutions and economic and legislative kind of, it's not working, you know, it's not working. Things are breaking down and people feel that. Right. It's let us down. You know, I think it's, you know, people used to feel a sense of purpose more. We're talking about this a few weeks ago with the school shootings and stuff. I think some of the reasons why you get these folks is you have people that have no sense of purpose, right? They don't get it through their job anymore because it's a lot of big companies and there's not the place in your town that makes like, you know, your favorite shoes. My dad works at the shoe company and we wear the shoes my dad makes. And there's a sense of pride that like

Starting point is 01:21:40 a place was connected to a product, you know, and it was, and you're part of your personality was in it. You went into work because you knew your kid was going to be wearing the thing and you wanted to have a, you wanted to fucking get home and have a sense of something in the home when you got there, you know? And just like there's no sense of purpose through work. A lot of people don't have a family. They're not in love or loved. And so you don't have a sense through love of purpose. But I may add to that. Okay. And this is has to do with religion. Like so much of America has turned away from religion and so many young people have. And for a good reason, there's been a lot, there's a lot of shitty things about organized religion. Oh, a lot of pervs out there.

Starting point is 01:22:20 A lot of, you know, a lot of big dogs, you know, touching kiddos and, you know, being molesters, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And also like church can be very judgmental, you know, of people, you know, gays and lesbians and whatnot. And it can, you know, cause a lot of disunity in ways. But people have also lost purpose as they've lost their sense of the community that religious faith can give, you know? Because what does religion give you? It gives you community, a shared sense of purpose, you know, transcendence, love, like service, like service projects, you know, I have friends that are part of churches or in my own Baha'i faith, you know, going out and doing service projects on the weekend together, working together side by side,

Starting point is 01:23:10 praying together, common prayer, singing together, right? Potlucks. Like just like there's, we've jettisoned everything having to do with religion, but there are a lot of positives that come from that world. Oh, potlucks alone, pretend, having to pretend somebody's casserole is good to their face, dude. Yeah. Yeah. And the good casseroles are taken like right off the bat. Oh, yeah. Like someone comes in with like a tater tot and cheese casserole with ground beef, and it's like, the pan is dry. As soon as it turns 18, brother, it is off the table. And then, but someone else brought, you know, the green bean salad, like in vinegar and, and it's like, there's plenty of that left. Why don't you have some of the green bean salad?

Starting point is 01:23:56 The tater tot's gone, but dig in. There's a bird. There's like a walk, not even eating it, just walking on it. Like, oh, this is bad. But no, I agree, a sense of community. Those are things that I love about church. You see a sense of community, you know, kids get to see each other on the weekend. It's things like that. Yeah. You get that in 12 step meetings. Yeah. Oh, a ton of it. Yeah. It's why I go, man. Rotary and it's why I go. Yeah. I see people that care about me and that I care about. I forget. There's a, I have a forgetter in me that my heart has a quick forgetter in it. You know, it forgets that I care about people in a way and I got to see them, you know, but the second I walk into an A meeting, I see like, oh, Jimmy's getting a year chip today

Starting point is 01:24:38 and man, and I've seen him in 50 meetings and I'm fucking, it's like, I'm his, like I'm his actual blood brother and I couldn't be more happy for him. You know, yeah, there's just something about it, you know, being in a place like that. There's things like AA and recovery meetings that make that make me feel hopeful about society. Right. Right. You know, and that, and I love the way that 12 step meetings are run. Like there's no leaders. Yeah. There's no clergy. There's no one in charge. There's no kings or presidents or anything. There's, it's just the inmates running the asylum, you know, and you elect them every couple months and someone's in charge of the phone list and someone's in charge of the book table and, you know, it's beautiful. You're like,

Starting point is 01:25:24 oh, we're all, you know, there, there's no leaders that are only trusted servants. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that, and stuff like that gives you hope for the future, you know, but it's interesting and I don't want this to be like a conversation that's like dour, you know, because also you have your show that is kind of a search for happiness kind of, and I found it to be a real charming kind of, you know, like here's a guy going to see where people are happy and why. Yeah. So do you want to talk about that at all? I would love to talk about that. Okay. So the geography of bliss is a travel show coming out in late May on the Peacock network, which is where the office is, where it lives and breathes

Starting point is 01:26:08 and doesn't die, just keeps on chugging along. Apparently we thought it was dead upon arrival, but anyways, it keeps chugging along and, but the geography of bliss is, and I never thought I'd have a better show than the office. Really? Because nine seasons, 200 episodes, everyone got along, made a big impact, was funny as hell. It's great character, great money, like fun, fun people everywhere. Oh yeah. I saw Kevin scoping chicks at a club once. Did you? You know, it's like the best time ever. So cool. Didn't you almost have a show right before the office that didn't go through? Yes, that's good. Good memory. Yeah. I was supposed to be on this Janine Garofalo TV show, and we did it, and on the way to the table read for it,

Starting point is 01:27:04 I ran into this TV executive, and he's like, Oh, I'm so excited. We're going to do the American version of the office. And I had seen the English version. I loved it. And I was like, I was outside. I was like, Oh, that's great. Inside. I was like, Fuck, I want to be on that. Like, okay, you got to go to the table read for this. And Janine's lovely. It's not about her, but the pilot was very good. We read the pilot. Bob Odenkirk was in it, me and Bob Odenkirk. Nice man. And Mark Maron. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it went so the read through went so bad, they pulled the plug on the spot. By the time I got home, they were like, they're not shooting. They closed the donuts up even though. And I was like inside. I was like, I could do audition for the office.

Starting point is 01:27:50 Sure enough, month later, audition for the office and got and got Dwight a few months after that. So had I gotten, so you never know, kitties. Yeah, sometimes a rejection and a disappointment is a good thing. And it just is a path forward where other doors can open. Oh, yeah. What they say sucks to lose a limb until you're in a one legged contest. Are there a lot of one legged contests? Sure. Can you Google that? Bob, uh, kid rock has a one legged brother. And every time I see him, I say, man, you think with all the money you have, you'd buy your brother another leg or an Android leg, you know, like a bionic thing. Yeah. Like a leg saber. Do you remember the bionic man? Leg saber. You never saw the bionic man?

Starting point is 01:28:43 Uh-uh. Oh, that's great. I love the little house in the prairie. We loved a lot of Michael Lanna stuff. We loved a lot of, um, bonanza. So I'm way back after bonanza. Post-bonanza. I did like all in the family because, and I like the Jeffersons. I like good times. Temporary layoff. Is it great or rip off? Good times. Yeah. I love that. Um, so the geography of bliss is a show where I travel around the world and I look for happiness in other cultures. So it's like Anthony Bourdain, but it's about happiness, not food. And we went to Iceland, Bulgaria, Ghana, West Africa, Thailand, and then back here in Los Angeles. And it's so fun, man. I love these kinds of conversations, having deep, meaningful, but fun and silly

Starting point is 01:29:36 conversations. And, um, it's a, it's a terrific show. It's really uplifting. Um, it's inspiring and hopeful. People need some hope these days. Remember I told you that's your divine responsibility. I appreciate that. It's yours too. I think it's why we're even having this conversation because we're curious about hope, you know? Yeah. People need hope. It's a precious and depleted resource. And, uh, there's a lot of pessimism out there and we got to, we got to turn that pessimism around and, uh, make people believe that there is a bright day. There is a Star Trek future for humanity where we can all get along and work together and solve problems and make the world a better place. We do it. We start small. We start on a podcast. You start in a family. You

Starting point is 01:30:21 start in a cul-de-sac and you spread out from there and then you bring it to your workplace. But, uh, we're not going to do it with the way the current media system is and we're not going to do it with the way that the current political partisan politics system works in our country. It's, uh, it's killing us. It's killing us. Well, some of it could be changing. I mean, one thing that's waving podcast started was because people felt like they couldn't get through into like sitcoms, talented comedians felt like they couldn't get opportunities. You know what I'm saying? Just me, but even like predecessors in podcast, they wanted to have a place to have a voice, right? Yeah. Cause even acting is just a way you want to be able to have a place to

Starting point is 01:31:02 put yourself in the world. You want to be able to have a voice, even if it's a physical voice. Yeah. You know, um, so that's why that started and that's made conversations more long form and been able to get, uh, people's points across. Like I remember seeing Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan, right? And I've always been of the ilk that I think they should have to have one candidate. You shouldn't be able to pick up. If you're Republican, you shouldn't be able to pick a Republican vice president. You should have to have a democratic vice president and vice versa. So that that way you're always in contention of an idea. Yeah. So you have to figure out the best idea between the two of you in order to get it enacted or move it forward, right?

Starting point is 01:31:45 Forced people to work together. Right. Like I would have loved probably, uh, Trump, uh, Bernie ticket, right? Because you're right. You're going to see two totally throttle each other. They wouldn't have been at each other. I agree. Trump would have crushed him like a, like a stick insect. And that would have just cost them the possibility of maybe getting elected, but you would have had to see two guys that were different have to figure it out together, right? Yeah. Um, but, um, yeah, but I remember listening to Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan. It was the first time I got to hear him in a long for that. I didn't hear a clip at the media and say, I didn't hear like a two minute rebuttal on a, um, it was Joe Rogan. It's four and a half hours long. So you

Starting point is 01:32:22 got to hear. Yeah, you were there. Yeah. Put it on when you go to sleep and you wake up and still on. You'd love being in there, man. Have you ever been on there? No, man. It would be, you guys would have a really neat conversation. I don't, I don't smoke pot. I don't do ayahuasca. That's a good point. Does that disqualify me? No, he doesn't do ayahuasca either, but he, you just have to say I don't, I don't wrestle. Oh, no, I don't disqualify you. I don't, I mean, I try to wrestle for a year, but I kept getting hurt so badly and then I don't smoke pot and then I'll do ayahuasca, but I don't know. I mean, some people consider that different, you know, have different thoughts about sobriety and that, you know, um, but I haven't done it in over a year, but I would maybe do it

Starting point is 01:33:02 again. I found it to be really, really helpful and really ties you back to nature in a lot of ways. Oh, interesting. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, were we talking about Bernie Sanders podcasts, but I got to hear him. Yeah. And I listened to the whole thing and at first I would have been like, maybe I'll listen to Bernie Sanders. I don't know, but I was like, Oh, this is, he has some great ideas. It's like, I get to know this guy. Yeah. Right. Whether you like his idea, whatever it's just like, Oh, I feel like I get to know this guy, you know? Um, but what's been, uh, what was like, where did you find some of the best happiness you think in the places you've been? Was there one place that kind of, or anything you noticed over the course of, uh, the places you went?

Starting point is 01:33:46 I, I saw happiness all over, which was great. I, it's so funny because happiness, you know, when I saw it, when I saw like real profound blissful joy, it was always about connection with other people. It was always about connection. You talk about the 12 step meetings, like it was in a family or in a community or, uh, with some kind of service project or it's, it's people connecting, you know, and that's why COVID was so devastating. Like, you know, isolated us all. We need connection. We thrive in connection, you know, and, uh, but the happiest place and it's my favorite place on the planet is Iceland. I fucking love Iceland. Have you been there? It's so cool. I mean, everyone goes there. I mean, it's very popular, um,

Starting point is 01:34:42 yeah, to bright light. People go see the bright lights, right? Yeah, the people at night. Yeah, the, the, the Aurora Borealis. Oh, yeah. I saw those. I went to Greenland and I got to see those, but it's like watching Mother Nature. Iceland is, um, Iceland is just do like image search. You're on image search. Can you scroll through them? Can you just go through? Oh, look at that. Um, oh, look at those children in Iceland. Go look at them. Look at them. Look at those. Look how happy they are. God, they're happy. Visit Iceland official tourist info for Iceland, but there's a pretty Icelandic woman. Yeah. Wait, let's look at travel to Iceland with diabetes. Go down one more, down one more. That's not something I thought I would see is traveling

Starting point is 01:35:31 to Iceland with diabetes, but click on it. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, that's cool. I haven't seen that. So I've been five times to Iceland, five times. It's so beautiful. You can't even believe it. Black sand beaches, glaciers, volcanoes, uh, waterfalls everywhere. I remember one time when I took my family, when we went camping there, like in a camper van. And then we were like driving down the road and we're like, oh my God, look at that waterfall. And we're like, and I realized like, we just drove by a 200 foot waterfall. And we were like, because we've seen 1000 foot waterfalls, you know, and it's so gorgeous. Uh, the people are, are wonderful. Uh, the food is expensive as hell. Really? Oh yeah. I had a,

Starting point is 01:36:22 I had a pizza. I think it cost like 80 bucks once. Does it cost a lot to warm it up or something? Well, we, when we were in the camper van, it was great because we would go to the grocery stores and we would get like ramen and spaghetti and oatmeal and salad and, and we would just kind of eat and, and, and then maybe once a day we'd get like an expensive meal. The fish is fantastic there, but it's so beautiful. There's whale watching. Um, it's, I can't say enough good things about it, but the people are happy there. One of the reasons the people are happy is, and I don't know if a lot of your viewers are going to like this or not, but they trust their government. They believe in their government and there's a social safety net because you pay

Starting point is 01:37:05 a shit ton of taxes, but the education is first rate. There's the healthcare is through the roof. They will take care of you when you're sick, mental health, um, the roads, the bridges, everything is taken care of and it just works, you know. And so you have, and in talking to Icelanders, like they, there was this trust that feel like, Oh, I can, if I get sick, I can take some time off and then I'm protected by, by regulations. I'll be able to get my job back. And there's this, this net of government is there for, they believed like it was there for them, right? You know, and we're, we've since the Vietnam war and over the last several decades, our trust in government has gone down and you know, truth be told, our government

Starting point is 01:37:52 is not working in, in, in huge ways. I mean, it's, it's kind of taken care of our highways and potholes and, and you know, maybe our street lights, but not a whole lot more than that. And it's, yeah. I mean, even the U S postal system, even the one person from the government that stopped by your house every day, you could give a cookie to get a pat on the head. Yeah. And it wasn't even molesting people. You never heard postal people molesting. Yeah. Never. You can even pull down their pants and write girl on their back. Yeah. You don't ever hear somebody licking a stamp and put it on some kid's weaner. You know what I'm saying? It never, it never happened. Yeah. And they, and they, and Amazon or they messed the postal systems going

Starting point is 01:38:31 back. It's just, yes, we've let the government really, I try and be really nice to the postal workers. Oh, same. Yeah. God bless you. You're working so hard for like just above minimum wage. And you were saying to us when I was a kid, it was like, right? Now it's like, who care? Oh, the, the postman's here. Who cares? The Amazon guys here. Oh, new headphones. And the postman is just like that ex-girlfriend, man. In the arms. Just walking back to Tori Amos's house somewhere. God, it hurts, man. But yeah, it's like, there were institutions that we had that we had some pride. Do you, what do you think happened with our government? You know, what do you think happened? Like you said, like after Vietnam War, I know there was like

Starting point is 01:39:18 a lot of contention like between Americans that thought it was good and bad to be there. You know, I remember seeing Forest Gump, but I blame it on partisanship. Really? I really do. And what does that mean when you say partisanship? I'm not sure what it is. I'm, that's the kind of Republican versus Democrat saying me versus you. Me versus you, seeking power above all would rather see, I'll never forget like when Obama got elected and Rush Limbaugh was like, I hope he fails. I hope he fails because I'm against his policies and I want him to not succeed. And I was like, wow, you want, because I want, even if Trump get elected and I'm one of the huge fan, but Trump, I wanted him to succeed. Yeah, I didn't want him to fail.

Starting point is 01:40:06 I wanted him to make lives better and to help fix things. And I was kind of hoping, oh, maybe he'll fix some broken things. But think about every election cycle, Theo, think about this, how much money is spent on campaign ads? It's insane. Banner ads, like, and where's all that money going? It's going into the coffers of MSNBC and Fox News and CNN and all of these media outlets that we don't trust because they're so partisan and they have such an agenda. And they're getting rich from it and they're going to stay polarized because they're making so much money from it. But what if you just took all of that hundreds of millions of dollars? What if you had no campaign finance? You had government campaign financing. You weren't able to kind of raise

Starting point is 01:40:50 and spend money willy-nilly. And you took all that money and put it towards fixing things, you know, schools and hospitals and whatnot. And giving teachers a raise, giving nurses a raise. Exactly. You had an announcement one day, it was like, hey, we're going to give every nurse a $2,000 raise this year or every teacher a $2,000. You know how excited everybody would be? It'd be great. The first aid, actually, can I take a pee break? Let's pee and then we'll wrap up, actually. I gotta pack. I gotta leave tomorrow morning for a two and a half week book tour. Really? Yeah. Whoo. Exciting. Have you written a book? You have like a comedy book? I never have. I've written a lot of chapters for a book about growing

Starting point is 01:41:39 up and some comedy stories about different experiences and stuff. Yeah. Your book would do you do really well. Thanks, man. It's really awesome to sit here with you, man. Oh, it's awesome for me, man. I love your stories about growing up and your stories about kids at school. Like, we had a kid in our school, you always have those. Oh, yeah. That's great. Well, the first Asian kid we ever had or allegedly had, you know, we had, remember how pizza huts had those unique rooftops on them? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, of course. Yeah, like, yeah. Diamond shaped. Yes. Well, one of those burnt down right in Slotell, Louisiana, right? And so,

Starting point is 01:42:16 and the roof had fallen flat on the ground, kind of like at a little bit of an angle. Right. And people, like said, Asian people lived there, you know? Okay. So we heard about it. Yeah. And we got a taxi over there to go look and it was just a... You literally called a taxi? Yeah. Well, you saved up money. We saved $17 to take a taxi there. That's them. Yeah. God. And you looked for Asian people inside of it? We'd never seen it before. Yeah. Burn down. When it's on the ground, flush on the ground, it has a very,

Starting point is 01:42:46 kind of look of the Orient. Do you know how they cook pizzas at Pizza Hut? Have you ever seen that? Last time I went in there, it's all automated. It's a, they just take, they unwrap it from the plastic and they put it on a, a thing. It's like at one of those like hotels and it just goes through the oven on the conveyor belt and it comes out done. Oh yeah. That's how, that's how they used to do it, I think. Did they always do it that way? It was like a little rolling thing. It was just like, kind of like these things and it just kept moving forward. Yeah. But it used to be a pretty long oven. Is it really short now or something?

Starting point is 01:43:20 I think it was a long oven. Yeah. I love that. Pizza Hut was good when I was young. It was the real, it was a... We used to go to the one on Ballinger Way. Look up the Pizza Hut on Ballinger Way, Lake Forest Park, Washington. I don't know if it's still there. I think it's a Thai restaurant now. Speaking of Asian people. Oh yeah. Oh, they'll start a restaurant in anything. Ballinger Way. Asian people, could they'll start a restaurant in anything? No. A lot of beautiful Asian people up in Washington. Yeah. Wow. Is there one on Ballinger Way? No. Oh, it's closed down. God, but you know what? Just look under images and see if they have any. Let's get an old image

Starting point is 01:44:01 of it. Somebody took a snapshot of it. There you go. On the left. There's probably it right there. Yeah. Oh, and there's my mom's Ford Fest E-Vow out front. She used to drive that deal. Yeah. God, it was so small. Got like three cylinders. Oh, and one of the cylinders was just us in the backseat going. And she could beat us from that. Like the front seat was so close that she could beat everybody. Like she was playing the drums, dude. Why don't they have cars with pedals? Like Flintstones kind of, but like just to get like a two-cylinder car. Yeah. But then everyone in the backseat is doing this just to help it along. Kind of. And you get your workout. We're also fat. Yeah. Americans like, right? Win-win. Well, that's almost an example of

Starting point is 01:44:47 everything that we've been talking about. Like are some of the stuff that would help. Solutions. Humanity. Okay. Is if we every, there was some sense of a need for a vested interest and if people felt like they were contributing, you know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's tough, you know, with this broken political system. I think, you know, in my faith traditions called the Bahá'í Faith, there are elections and it's kind of like a 12-step meeting. It's a little different, but you elect what's called a local spiritual assembly to guide the affairs of your local community. And every year you do that and you write down names, silent ballot, and you pray and meditate. And you think, who's the wisest, most mature people to kind of

Starting point is 01:45:40 help steer forward the Bahá'í community here in Los Angeles or whatever. You ponder it and there's maybe a master list of everyone who lives there and you write them down. There's no campaigning. There's no yard signs. There's no money spent. No one says, I think I would make a good assembly member and here's why. It's all done silently and then you put them in the envelope and then the tellers count them and then nine people are elected. Like why couldn't you do that in a small town? Could you do that in Covington, Louisiana? Could you have people like, no campaigning, no one, no proselytizing, no aggrandizing, no one saying like, I should be the mayor or what have you and just have people gather at the local high school football stadium and write down who they

Starting point is 01:46:24 think would best serve the affairs of the people of Covington, Louisiana? Yeah, I think that could happen. I think it's probably, and obviously it's hypothetical because you look at a obviously America's much bigger, but yeah, you start to think what system could be different. I think a lot of people are wondering now what system could be different. I think a lot of people think that it's the system we have isn't helping us. I think, yeah, you start to wonder how could it be better. Because I'm glad you're saying that because it really is like we keep slapping band-aids on a broken system and if the system is broken, it's no good. It's like, well, we'll change this policy, we'll pass this bill or we'll get an increased funding for this and it's just like

Starting point is 01:47:10 slapping band-aids on, you know, on a boat full of buckshot. Well, I think you have to have guys maybe possibly, you have to have someone, they always, that you hear anyway, that electing an independent candidate, getting one of them into the runoff would shake up the way that the funds are distributed. You also have some interesting guys now like Bobby Kennedy Jr., right? Yeah. So he's, he is a Democrat, but he has his... He's anti-vaccine, I know that. Yeah, he's like, yeah, he's anti, is he an anti-vaxxer? I think so. He raised a ton of concern about... But I think he was anti-vaxxed before COVID. I think he's like... He's an environmentalist, so he's always been about the environment. He's always been about let's test things before we move them forward,

Starting point is 01:47:55 right? I mean, he has a book, he was against Dr. Fauci, you know, so it's like he's definitely in that world, right? But it's interesting because he's going to run the Democratic ticket, right? I think you're starting to get, hopefully you're going to start to get candidates that are different. It's got to start to expand at some point because it feels very railroaded. But isn't, and that's true, like if we opened it up and you had like, let's say you had Joe Rogan run, or you had Mark Cuban run, or you know, some really interesting kind of thought leaders, or businessmen, or entrepreneurs, that's cool. But the system is still, I want the power, I'm going to raise a shit ton of money, I'm going to go around doing all these fundraising

Starting point is 01:48:35 dinners, I'm going to be spending all these money on these media outlets, because I want the power for me and my coterie, and we're going to try and put down you and your little coterie of friends. We're still in that mode where we're not really in the mode of public service, you know, they're public servants, they should be serving the public. So how do we just get out of that whole campaigning thing altogether is what I say. Now, maybe I'm being naive and people are probably rolling their eyes and like, oh, you hippie, you know, but, but no, it's okay to have that's a great, that's a, I agree, because people are sick of all the wasted money, the fucking bullshit, the desperation by these parties to get your vote, the pandering to poor people with fear videos,

Starting point is 01:49:20 and all of this and using classes and cultures as puppets and keeping people in certain places, just so they'll continue to vote for you. Like, I think everyone's exhausted. I think the heart of the world is, you know, has arteriosclerosis, you know, it feels that way. And that's okay. Look, if that's okay, if you and I are sitting and talking about that, and I like that your book makes me think about that. Yeah, you know, and not just the negative sides of it or the problems. Yeah. But, but I talk at the end of my book, I have a chapter called Seven Pillars for a Spiritual Revolution. And I offer some tangible solutions, some things. And one of them is what we talked about before, which is hope. And I said, foster joy and squash cynicism. Because as long as we

Starting point is 01:50:07 stay cynical and pessimistic, nothing gets done. If everyone's sitting back just like, oh, it's a pile of shit, it'll never work. Like, then nothing will change. And it's just going to get worse, actually. So that's a really deadly trap. And it's, it's super important that we, you know, we as entertainers as storytellers, you know, we try and foster joy and people, give them hope. And don't let ourselves get cynical. You get cynical sometimes you fight on, you fight against cynicism. Oh, yeah. I battle the dark arts, I battle self pity sometimes, which is a unique way that uh, cynicism kind of sneaks into you, I find. Yeah, you know, is me just that, you know, so I just have to stay, stay, stay on top of it. Yeah. You know, and

Starting point is 01:50:54 it's a misery brigade. Yeah, it does. And it does get to be there, you know, to me and yeah. Yeah. But there's a lot of people doing good stuff out there. And that's another way to look at things and to wake up and think, Hey, uh, you know, there was a guy, I wrote about this guy in my book. Um, this guy named Callum Greaves and he works with Greta Thunberg and a lot of youth ambassadors for climate change and whatever you think about Greta Thunberg, putting that aside, really brilliant guy. And he said to me, you know, I work on clean air because everyone can agree on clean air. Some people on this side of the political spectrum might not think that man made CO2 is causing climate change or that people are being extremist and whatnot. And

Starting point is 01:51:39 people on this side, you know, have different opinions, but clean air is something everyone can get behind. You know, you reduce, you don't want kids to get asthma, right? You want your grandkids to have clean air, you know, when you, when you go to the grave and that is a precious point of unity from both sides. And then it's win-win because CO2 does get reduced, but you're also really focusing on the human story, which is making air cleaner for kids. So that's a way to look at like solving a solution like climate change. Like if we all just work together on clean air, like we would fix climate change. Right. Letting these kids long up and feel comfortable and happy. Yeah. Yeah. I like it, man. I can't, I don't know if I'll finish the

Starting point is 01:52:23 whole book, but I'm going to try at least go to the seven pillars at the end. I appreciate that. If you ever want me to read it to you, like a bedtime story or something like that, I can do that as well. FaceTime. Yeah. Just put me on your pillow and I'll read it to you. I love that. You can stuggle up. It's been a pleasure lunging up with you. I like that, lung up. Yeah, man. I'm such a big fan. I love your stuff and so funny and weird and wonderful. And I think you're doing great things and it's just a pleasure to be in this room with you and your friend. Yeah. The Zachary Alex. Yeah. Thank you, man. And thank you for all the years of entertainment and also now all the years of thought, you know, that you're, you know, it's

Starting point is 01:53:06 like the second organ inside, you know, it's like you got our brains now you're going after our hearts and our brains, you know. Oh, thank you, man. I appreciate that. I like it, man. Rainn Wilson, man. Anytime, man. And we'll get the book and we'll put it up right here. I love it. Thank you. Soul Bloom, guys. It'll be. Boom. Sorry. Soul Boom, guys. It's available now or it'll be available soon. And Rainn Wilson.

This Past Weekend - E442 Rainn Wilson

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