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Punching Henry Podcast Style

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On Monday, October 11th, 2021, The great Henry Phillips popped in to delight Minddog and his listeners with talk about music, filmmaking, acting, and story telling in general.

And welcome my friends to yet another episode of the mind dog TV podcast. I’m Matt nappo Thanks for coming. It’s great to have you here as always got the great Henry folks with me tonight. I’m gonna bring him in just one minute just before I bring him in No, I just because I Henry has a habit of getting misconstrued in the press and stuff like that. So I want to bear all the responsibility for these comments, and no weight on Henry at all. For the racist and homophobic things I’m about to say. Really not just the happy indigenous peoples day, if you still call it Columbus Day, good for you. But it’s also Coming Out Day. And it just occurs to me. I mean, first of all, there’s no indigenous people want to call people who got here before the white Europeans that’s more accurate. So it’s happy people got here before the white Europeans day, Columbus was not Italian. So my Italian friends who just feel like they’ve been cheated out of a day to celebrate Italian heritage, Italian, whatever it is ancestry. Columbus was an Italian and he sailed for Spain. So get over that. The other part is National Coming Out there, which I’m all for. Everybody’s got a day, but 365 days in a year. We shouldn’t be competing over days. I mean, there has to be another day pick tomorrow. Pick yesterday, yesterday wasn’t a day that I knew about anyway. So we’re just causing a lot of conflict and a lot of unnecessary bs going around about whose day it is and all that stuff, but happy whatever day it is Monday night, and I got Henry Philips you know, Henry Philips, if you don’t know I almost want to tell you You shouldn’t be listening or watching this live stream shouldn’t be listening to my podcast, if you don’t know who Henry Henry Philips was born to be a rock star. But I think and we’ll find out about this but I think his humility and his sense of humor are what caused him to change his life cost and direction and career choice slightly ever so slightly. He is a rock star of sorts, but he is a singer, songwriter. troubadour extraordinaire, filmmaker, writer actor probably a bunch of other things I want to say chef but I don’t want to say let’s just say he’s a cooking show hosts and leave it at that Ladies and gentlemen, please open your ears open your minds and help me welcome in the fabulous Henry folks in mind on TV pockets Henry welcome.

Henry Phillips 4:21
Hey, thanks for having me.

matt nappo 4:23
It’s my pleasure to have you now as I mentioned I think you were born to be a rock star you got a great voice I know you probably you’re very humble about that and might argue with me about that but I think you had a great voice great ear for melody and good player and it seems like you were born to be a rock star. Do you agree with that at all?

Henry Phillips 4:44
Thanks. I was gonna say I your your intro and not everybody. I can’t say this about everybody but your intro was really pretty accurate. I was just like, yeah, you know, the sense of humor and everything sort of took me away from that and the humility of course, because being a

rock star is all about flamboyance and you know, muscle on your way in front of the crowd and standing out. And I’ve always been pretty bad at those things. So that that might be why I sort of ended up doing what I’m doing. But uh, but I appreciate that. Yeah, music is a huge first love for me. And I can tell you’re into it, too, with all those guitars in the back. And

I yeah, I’ll never stop doing it. So anything that I do, I always try to figure out how I can get the music in there. But right, but the rock star thing didn’t pan out for me.

matt nappo 5:31
Well, let’s talk. Yeah, and rock star is overrated and a lot of ways and I think you are a rock star of sorts in your own world right now I don’t I think you’ve got the market cornered on what you do, because there are a lot of guys who go out there with a guitar in a comedy club. But as you kind of alluded to in one of the, the films I’m not, I look at them as like one film right now like the Godfather saga. Yeah, Henry saga. But you kind of alluded to the fact that there are a lot of guys, and without naming any names or bashing anybody. There are a lot of guys out there with guitars. But more a lot of them are doing parody and stuff like this and not doing necessarily what you do. So I think you are a rock star in creating a whole new comedy genre, musical genre. So congratulations.

merch

Henry Phillips 6:21
Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s been, I guess, gosh, we’re going into the third decade now. You know, I mean, I think it was probably like 92 are something that I was hanging out with all musicians and I would crack my buddies and my bandmates up by just playing the guitar and kind of doing sort of a foe love song or something. But I’d read newspaper headlines or, or I would just sort of throw in a line in there about, you know, that you would never hear in a soft ballot or something like that. And then, yeah, my friend started saying, you really got to go up there and do this at open mic nights around town. And I never would have done it if it weren’t for friends of mine pushing me to do it.

matt nappo 7:05
You know, you mentioned going through the headlines and stuff and one thing I’m noticing about you is I don’t not sure if you’re reading lyrics or something, it seems to me, you make it as hard as possible on yourself. And Bob Dylan wise, with so many words to remember, I mean, I want to learn one of your songs. I couldn’t do it I don’t think I can do without relying on the lyrics or a teleprompter for year is I know you make it rough on yourself. I think how do you remember all

Henry Phillips 7:35
your right and I’m and I’m lazy about it too. Because like once I’ve got it in my brain, and like I have a couple of songs that are like ripped from today’s headlines and, and I’ll memorize them and then in order to do in order to update it, like it should be updated. I have to memorize it again. And I can’t do it sometimes. So I wound up doing the old version of fitness starts sounding dated. But yeah, it’s not easy. I mean, it’s just like anything else you have to just put in the time you know, if you say something to yourself over and over again for an hour straight while you’re staring at the wall. You probably can eventually bang it into your head but it nobody wants to do that. I don’t want to do it. But um, but you’re right. I have a there’s YouTube clips of me on the radio, doing songs and just screwing up halfway through and I’ll look at it and I’ll cringe I’ll be like, Oh, come on. Why didn’t you just learn the lyrics before he got on the radio? Wow,

matt nappo 8:30
I haven’t seen any. I mean, I’ve seen so much of your work. Unless I just it goes by me and because

Henry Phillips 8:36
I try to make a joke out of it. I’m like, you know, yeah, like as if that’s part of the joke or suddenly you know, but yeah,

matt nappo 8:45
yeah. And it seems to me that you know, the beauty of it is you’re listening to all the words so if you add live or impromptu or change a line here and there, there’s no way I because you have so many words in the song. There’s no way I’m gonna call you on it. Anyway. There

Henry Phillips 9:00
you go. Yeah. Well, a lot of times when in the middle of the live show, I’ll just sort of improv something a little bit more updated or whatever. And, and also because of the fact that it’s comedy, it doesn’t have to follow the exact meter. In fact, sometimes it’s funnier if it doesn’t, and it doesn’t rhyme. It catches people by surprise. So yeah, you can be a little loose that way, you know?

matt nappo 9:23
Yeah. Christopher doesn’t naturally Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah, some of those some of this stuff is really the melody though. Makes me think that at some level there there is a composer in you that wants or needs I should say, a classic rock hit song because, again, I’m not to blow smoke up your ass. But I think melody writing and the melodies you pick out are very unique, very radio friendly, at least for my generation. My job. That’s

Henry Phillips 9:59
that’s really cool to hear that you’re absolutely right. I’ve always tried really hard that the song that you just referenced to that turned out to be the duet that I do with my friend Julia lillas which is a completely ridiculous song with all kinds of sex references and stuff but the melody on that one, I was listening to a lot of that Brian Wilson stuff right after Good Vibrations, you know, when he started taking his downfall and started running some of the most beautiful melodies, like Surf’s up and a bunch of other ones and, and I was influenced by that and i and i actually that that melody was part of a song that I was writing for a friend of mine who’s whose mom had just died. And I I didn’t have a career. I didn’t have a career as a songwriter I couldn’t there’s it really honestly would have fallen completely on deaf ears for me to finish that song as nice as it might have been. But I wasn’t a recording artist, if nobody would have ever heard it. But I did have this comedy thing going so I when Julia and I came up with the idea for that duet, I started going back to other melodies and going oh, I never used this one for anything. But if that just for people that are interested on YouTube, you just put duet with Henry Phillips and Julia lillas. And it’s in it’s in you it’s on YouTube. And it’s the the melody is a very sincere and I’m actually very proud of it, but no, but I appreciate that you notice it because a lot of people don’t even think about it. They just hear the jokes. But yeah,

matt nappo 11:37
a lot of them a lot of you songs, you have great melodies. And again, I’m really impressed by your voice when you’re doing and I’ve seen some clips where you weren’t necessarily trying to be funny, but you were just singing from the heart and noticing your voice technique and it’s like wow, well you got to really, again not blowing smoke up your eyes. This is a genuine sincere compliment. Really a really good voice for pop rock. You know folk music, all that kind of stuff. What, cuz I have to ask what you’re and it’s a cliche that I hate asking any musician but your influences seem to be all over the place. And I will say that because I’ve never seen anybody go from F 13 chord into a B major ever in my life until I saw you do it. I’m like, wow, that’s some heavy jazz influence, right? Oh yeah. Why would you listen to where’d you get that stuff on? Yeah,

Henry Phillips 12:34
13th is great. Okay, so I used to be partnered up with a buddy of mine who would sing and I’d play guitar and we’d be on the patio at restaurants and we’d make like 100 bucks each and we would go through the whole catalogue of you know we would do Eagles songs and you know Billy Joe or whatever, but it was guitar and vocal but every time every now and then he would throw a song at me that he wanted to do but it wasn’t a guitar song like like a perfect example is just the way you are but Billy Joel and I was looking at the course and I was already a semi accomplished guitar player at this point. This is this is in the 90s and I looked at the chords I was like these are not Guitar Chords you know it was like the first one is de that’s fine and then it’s B minor six and then it’s G major seventh go into a G minor six we’ve added 13 I think and or added nine or something but I was just like whoa let’s happen in here but but I went ahead and took the challenge and I was like and I want to tell any any guitar players out there, take that particular piece of music and learn those chords and it’ll really expand your vocabulary, your chord vocabulary and and other ones to bridge over troubled water. If you watch Paul’s Paul Simon who is a guitar player, his chords are fantastic. I mean really, really good. Especially like his solo stuff. I was really inspired by the movie one trick pony. When we made our punch in the clown movie which the director of our movie Greg v ns turned me on to that movie and I was like wow, but But yeah, so his songwriting so I love when, when songs are on the guitar, but they do piano chords. So those are a couple of influences. Still on the pop genre, but also Tom Waits I’m big on who’s always of course a big piano player. He has he has a song called invitation of the blues that I learned that one on the guitar and that’s got some beautiful chords in it. And yeah, just all those singer songwriter guys, but I love a good good top three chord guitar song, but I also like when they start getting a little more experimental with the court. You know what another good one is you just got me on something that I’d love to talk about too, by the way, but the song by the beegees How deep is your love? Oh

matt nappo 15:02
yeah, great song on Guitar Man. Boy, yeah,

Henry Phillips 15:06
that was one that we did too. And I was just like, Whoa, I think the whole thing is like in key of E flat. But it’s all, you know, going from the minor to the major. And yeah, that’s a great one too.

matt nappo 15:19
I took that song apart years ago for a kind of like workshop to kind of say, how do you write this song? Because you don’t start out with those chords and try to put a melody to it? I think you’d be and I don’t know this for a fact. But I think the beegees kind of start out with singing the song and then figure out what are the chords that will make that really, that melody really jump out. But that that song in particular got me going like, wow, how do you how do you write a song?

Henry Phillips 15:48
I know. Yeah, I know, I think it’s the way that you just said, yeah, that’s the way that I’ve always done it. Like, the melody kind of comes first. And then you try to figure out which chords fit and you try to be as, as interesting as you can, without messing up the integrity of it, you know, but, uh, yeah, and then, but with me, it was an extra step, because I would think of a funny stand up idea. You know, I’d be like, Okay, well, what about a song about a, you know, a, you know, all the people that have, you know, made contributions to Western civilization, you know, you know, Da Vinci and you know, all of the Western philosophers and all these people. What about a song that talks about how great they were, but also what freaks that they were, because they all had these weird sexual fetishes and all that stuff. So then that’s like the stand up kind of idea, the comedy idea, and then it turned into Alright, so what’s the melody that I’m going to use and then I would just file through all these ideas that I had for melodies that I probably written just completely in earnest, that were supposed to be regular songs. And then I’d pick one and then I would just so so that way, at least the music still has a chance like if you didn’t speak English, and you heard it, you’d probably just think this is a regular folk song or something, you know, and that and that’s my favorite kind, you know, where you can’t tell because nobody’s really putting on a funny voice or making a funny music. You’re just just taking the idea and putting against a song that sounds legit.

matt nappo 17:26
Sometimes it’s sincerity with which you deliver it makes it all that more funny. Like he’s saying something that’s ridiculous. But you, you have this very serious and sincere tone in your voice and look on your face. Like you’re delivering a rock anthem, but you’re saying something like, crafting a great, you know, format, which is standing on the shoulders of the freaks. The song you just mentioned, it’s hard to explain. You know, when you go to see a comic, you can come back and say, Man, I saw this great comic last night, and he told some jokes. And here’s basically some of them. Yours. I mean, if I go to explain standing on the shoulders of freaks to my wife, she just looked at me like, what the hell? What the hell are you talking about? That’s funny. Well, I got to see him do it. Yeah.

Henry Phillips 18:17
Yeah, it’s not really a very easily repeatable thing. Yeah. But um, well, you know, I think one of the things that I was inspired by Well, a lot of the stuff that was going on on SNL when I was a kid was just mind blowingly funny, mostly those sketches that would happen in the last half hour that I don’t even think you can find them online anymore. It’s weird, but But remember, you obviously remember deep thoughts, you know, on SNL. So that was that kind of thing, right? Where he was saying it in that really, you know, small t sort of a poetic kind of a way, you know, touchy feely sort of new agey and they had the music and the presentation and everything and then all the more reason for the punchline of the jokes to just kind of blindside you you know, and it’s that presentation that I really liked a lot, right?

matt nappo 19:08
A couple of things they just want to ask you for my personal understanding of value because I’m a I’m a huge fan but I need to and this is for me, not for the audience. A couple of things I noticed is that this the old son pick, I know Yeah, play with that but you’re not doing what I call Travis picking it you’re using it in a very rock and roll kind of wait. Okay.

Henry Phillips 19:33
Wait should correct me so Travis is the one where you’re doing it like this? Is that right? Or

matt nappo 19:37
you’re doing the alternate baselines and doing and you’re locking your hand and be able to play the melody and the baseline at the same time time? Yeah, time your manual those drums, bass and get the end there. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

Henry Phillips 19:49
No, I, you know, I, what I do is I’ll do I’ll use my thumb. Okay, if it’s a G chord, for example, We’ll just a standard G I’ll do a thumb to hit that lowest note and then with these three fingers I’ll just grab the the other, you know, three of those chords or strings whichever ones that they are. And so it’s more of a you know, your own it’s a little like a drummer, you know, bass snare bass boom, didn’t you know, something like that. But I’m also singing at the same time, but I will say that I was doing that naturally anyway. And then I had a one of the first guys that I met when I was doing like coffee houses and stuff was a guy named Marty Canada who ended up being my manager. And probably the main thing that he did was increased my musicality because he was a guitar player and, and the first thing he told me to do is you got to use that thumb pick because when I was on stage, the bass notes were getting lost, right? And, and because there’s just obviously the way the guitar is, it’s your, your thumb would have to be working extra hard in order, but you know, so I started using that thumping, and everything sounded much more balanced. And that was great. But um, but yeah, I don’t, I don’t really I just tried to make sure that all the notes of the quarter in there, but I’m not, I’m not necessarily doing anything fancy that way. But I will say that I did some classical training too. So when I’m just doing solo guitar, like the probably the most difficult one I ever learned was the entertainer for the guitar, which was really difficult. I found some sheet music for it some somewhere but but yeah, I’ve only dabbled in that never really mastered

matt nappo 21:36
Chet, Chet Atkins swing doing the entertainer and he’s using his own picking. Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that traditional Travis picking and now Yeah, yeah, that’s unbelievable. That’s just good. And you know, I thank you for the audience for indulging me on that, because I’m just curious. Where some pics come in. A lot of people just adopt them naturally. For me, I think you’re right, though. bass notes. If you’re just using your thumb, and I’m, you know, especially if I’m playing electric. I’ll never use a thumb pick. Oh, yeah. playing acoustic bass notes just don’t come through if you’re just using the right go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we kind of we mentioned the films and kind of a casual conversation away. For people who don’t know punching the clown was the first movie, it was highly acclaimed. And then there was a follow up just a few years ago, I think, like five years ago now punching Henry. I see them all in one movie. But so in order in order to condense that whole long singer songwriter troubadour extraordinare, how about we just call you a storyteller? Because I think that’s what you are. And now I’m curious about your relationship with the director, I think, from if I have it correctly, you know him from undergraduate years in college, and you’ve kept a relationship all the time, and now putting films together?

Henry Phillips 23:00
Yeah, absolutely. The so so he and I met in college, I had pretty much given up on any dream of being a rock star. And I was out here in LA, which is basically my hometown, I spent some time in New Jersey, and which I think is one of the reasons our mutual friend, Tom Konopka and I, you know, got along really well, but so I, after jersey, we moved out to LA. And I went to UCLA, and I went through this whole like community college system, and eventually got to UCLA. And my one friend that I have is this guy that I’d sit next to all the time, we were political science majors. And we just chatted a lot. He was from France. I thought that was interesting. He thought it was fascinating that I was in the music and so we’d sort of share you know, stories about that. And then and then when we graduated, he went to film school because that was his dream is to become a filmmaker. And I’ve started going full on into the stand up comedy thing, just kind of backed into it. By my last year of college, I started doing these open mic nights, and having a lot of fun with it. It was sort of a hobby, and but I would tell Greg is my friend there and I would, we still kept up and I would tell him these stories, you know, I’d just be like, Oh, man, I played at this bar last night where the guy says that he’s gonna give me $4 for every person. And he gives me $14 at the end of the thing, and we had like, 40 people there, but I know he’s ripping me off, but I mean, at least rip me off with a number that makes sense. Like if he said 12, then that’d be like, Alright, well, according to his books, he counted three people, but 14 isn’t even divisible by four. So I don’t know how he could get, you know, so I would tell him stuff like this. And he was like, man, we got it. We got to make a movie of this. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. But that’s so his final project at UCLA I’m sorry at Syracuse University is where he went after graduate school or undergrad. He, he made a little short film that was made there was basically a precursor to our punching the clown movies and that available to see and yeah, there’s some of it on YouTube if you if you put punching the clown portrait because it was called a portrait of Henry Phillips, you can see little bits of it, it’s on there somewhere not the whole thing, but we might eventually put it on there.

matt nappo 25:25
I’m sorry to interrupt you.

Henry Phillips 25:28
That’s all right. But anyway, so that that started our whole thing. And then ever since then we, we became writing partners. And we would just, you know, do outlines for feature film and dream of making a feature film that tied all these stories together. And then we started seeing things pop up, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was really similar to what we were kind of going for and the stuff that Ricky Jabez was doing. And so I think in 2007, we finally, technology got to a point where you could rent a camera that looked almost like film and, and Greg just showed up to my door one time, and he just he said, Man, let’s just make this movie, I don’t know, I’ll borrow money from family, I’ll use whatever my life savings is, but we’re just going to, because he’s like, I’ve got films, he became a film professor. And he’s like, I’ve got film students that can help us. And they’re making films by themselves. And I’m teaching it and it’s like, I never wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be a filmmaker. So you know, let’s do this. And I was like, well, let’s do it. So we wrote out an outline and, and just eventually had a couple of false starts, but eventually landed a kid who was one of his film students to produce it. Meaning, you know, to make up all the calls to the, you know, the locations get sag on board, you know, and all the crew get the crew together. I mean, there’s a lot of work there that neither Gregor are interested in doing. And, and eventually, in 2008, the first couple months, to date, probably just about the most exciting. Three or four weeks of my life was the beginning of 2008 when we were actually making that film that we had been talking about for 12 years, or whatever it was, and it was fantastic. And and, and then a year later, we were done with the movie and showed it at a Theater in New York called quad cinemas and and then it got on Netflix. And before he knew it, it was I was literally like walking around the streets of New York and San Francisco and Houston, Texas. And every now and then not all the time. But sometimes somebody be like, Hey, I think I just saw a movie of yours on Netflix. And I was like, Wow, that’s so cool. Because it was on during that time where everybody started doing the streaming thing. So they didn’t have a ton of stuff. And people just kind of run would run out of stuff to watch and they just start browsing. Okay, punching the clown. Let’s see what this is all about. And so yeah, that’s that’s the story of that. And Greg and I still work together to this day. I mean, I just yesterday, we talked for a couple hours about a new screenplay that we’re trying to put together.

matt nappo 28:15
Oh, Tao, please tell me it’s a third. Henry. So sort

Henry Phillips 28:19
of, it’s a well, the idea was always that I, mice, all of my stories are still from that era when I started, which was the early 90s. So they’re just all they don’t really work in today’s world because of social media and cell phones. And there’s so many plots that you couldn’t really have any more so we thought, maybe it’s time to do a period piece. So it’d be like a prequel, like the early 90s. But you

matt nappo 28:46
can’t play yourself as a kid. I mean, you look young, but

Henry Phillips 28:51
yeah, be a kid has had some rough years. So yeah, so we’re changing a lot of who the main character is and whose perspective it’ll be from and everything like that, but but the stories were always to me the most important part of it, and those will all be in there because we we left a lot of stories untold from that era.

matt nappo 29:12
You know, I have to mention this. I don’t know if anybody has ever said this to you before, but you have a resemblance to a young or middle age now. Robert Redford, you could do okay. I think you could probably pull up the rug.

Henry Phillips 29:31
Yeah, maybe I can have him. Well, that’s,

matt nappo 29:35
that’s your movie. So I love them. And again, this is no smoke. I would rate them right up there with the top films and again, I look at them as one film now. It’s like the Godfather saga. banri Saga, but um, there’s a line in there, but you broke my heart. You really and I think it’s in punching Henry. Yeah, it is. Funny, I set you online. Your reaction to it got me but the line from funny guitar boy says I wouldn’t want to be. I wouldn’t want to be playing these rooms in my 40s and you just gave that like sigh and at that moment I said, imagine playing those rooms in the 60s because that’s my life. Oh yeah. Should I kill myself now? Or wait till the end of the movie? Tell me

Henry Phillips 30:25
behind you. I mean, at this point, I’m in my 50s so I’m not far

matt nappo 30:29
but you’re playing those types of rooms? Oh, yeah.

Henry Phillips 30:33
Well, I don’t know I’ve got the loony bin coming up in Wichita, Kansas next, a week and a half from now. Now I’m certainly not doing like you know, all glitzy theaters and stuff every now and then I’ll get I’ll get a gig that’s got a little more glamorous, but it’s like the smaller the town The better the? The treatment, I guess. Because Yeah, if I went to New York, I would be. Yeah, I’d be in a basically a shoe box.

matt nappo 31:00
To convince myself that, wait a minute, he’s right about fat, you know, funny, you’re tall boys, that I want to be nice to my 40s. But as I got into my 40s, that’s when I started enjoying playing those rooms. And if I look at it, honestly, right now, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t trade what the rooms I play in, which are those kinds of rooms and sometimes bigger rooms. But I wouldn’t trade that for the theater experience. I liked the intimacy, I liked getting to know the crowd. As long as they’re not too drunk and rowdy after I like getting to know the people that are coming to see me. Do you agree with that and feel like,

Henry Phillips 31:34
I do agree. And I want to make sure I’m not doing this laughable thing that I saw you to do. Like when their popularity started going down. I saw an article that it looked like they were trying to spin it and they’re saying, We’re gonna start going into more intimate venues now because we feel like we miss and it’s like, Oh, come on, you’re just not getting the crowds that he is. It’s a voluntary thing. It’s like, you know, we just sort of we’ve done that the arena thing. Now we wanted to go to the smaller venue. But so I’m not trying to say that it wouldn’t be great to just show up to some place and have 3000 people and then you’re on to the next town. That would be great. But, but you are absolutely right. And I think that most comedians that I know, I’d be really surprised if they didn’t agree, you know that they all started in comedy clubs. And comedy clubs are a lot of fun, you’re in the back of the room hanging out with the waitstaff. They’re all your friends for the week, and then, you know, 30 feet away from you, your buddies up on stage and says, There is bring up, you know, whoever it is, and then you go up. And you can see everybody’s faces, you can see them when they’re laughing. If they’re not laughing, you can work on that you can say, all right, well, what’s going on here? Well, you know, a theater you just see lights or just nothing. And that’s, that’s a lot more cold, you know, and But no, I love being in, in rooms, you know, clubs. Yeah. And I feel like the sensibilities better to there’s a I don’t know, well, I mean, I tried to do colleges for a little bit. And that was always really difficult in terms of the venue, it was either in the cafeteria, or even, like, if it’s in an auditorium or something, it’s just too wide and echoey, and the sound got lost or whatever. And, and I was, and I don’t think that the college students were grown up enough to start having a dark sense of humor, you know, and so I was like, most comfortable when I was like, between 30 and 40. And at a comedy club, and you could email everybody’s having a few drinks, maybe a couple people or divorced people started getting that kind of jaded. Sort of a little bit darker sense of humor, and I like that, you know, I would think it at theatres, I’m sure it’s great, but you don’t really have any, any gauge of what the personality of the audience is, you know, just some, some couple that’s never even been to a comedy show. But they figured that something that they saw on the newspaper that they’re going to be doing tonight, you know, but yeah, I really, really do like the comedy clubs,

matt nappo 34:12
especially doing the kind of work that you do. Sometimes the laughs aren’t, aren’t always like, especially in the beginning, like belly laughs they’re small laughs And if somebody is 1000 feet away, that small laugh isn’t gonna make it to the stage and you’re not getting any of that energy that you need. Oh, I

Henry Phillips 34:29
know. That’s very true. Now I kind of rely on having everybody pretty close together so that if one person laughs It sounds like they’re all kind of with me, you know? Yeah, there’s a some expression that I’ll probably butcher but it’s something like you know, if you have 10% of the audience that’s on your side, they can turn a whole show and your favorite you know, and it’s a lot harder to reach that 10% if you’ve got several 1000 people, but you know, in a room with 100 people in 10 people sure Yeah And yeah, no and and there’s some great comedy clubs around this country too.

matt nappo 35:06
Yeah. Another thing you allude to in the first film, I think it was Yeah, what’s the first film? I think you’re in a recording studio and this kind of struck me it’s a lot of your songs take a lot of bravery because you bravery might be the wrong word. I mean, nobody’s gonna kill you. But you’re taking your time to get to the funny part like a lot, especially with music stuff. And I know this for a fact when people want to, they want that laugh upfront and sometimes it takes a minute of listening to you sing to you get to the part that gets the first laugh. Yes, well, that takes some bravery and take some conditioning to get your get yourself able to deal with that and stay maintain your composure and say I know the laugh is coming to confidence and I know that they’re gonna get this eventually but I have to set them up properly. That that’s professional and it takes some getting used to tell tell me about how you got to that point because I would be nervous starting out that oh my god, I’m a minute into this. I haven’t gotten a laugh yet. I better get that pretty quick. get thrown out. There gonna flash the light. If we get off today. It’s whatever. How did you acquire patience and confidence?

Henry Phillips 36:18
Yeah, what you’re describing was the hardest part about what I what I did. And I so in the beginning, it was copy houses where people were expecting a real song. So it was like a minute and a half of this song. Everybody’s going okay. Alright, so he’s he’s upset about a breakup or whatever’s going on. And then all of a sudden, the lyrics would take a little bit of a turn, but still completely straight faced. And they’re like, Okay, well, now he’s talking about calling the police and, you know, and now this is starting to get out of hand and, and he’s losing control of his bodily functions in the middle of the living room, and just like, what the hell is this? And then and then and then everybody went, Oh, okay. It’s a joke. All right, I’m on board. And then they get on the mailing list and you develop a little bit of a following. But then I started doing comedy clubs in like 99 that was about about six years into trying to build this act that was based on exactly what you’re talking about that kind of Sucker Punch thing. And I’m telling you there were some rough ones, there were some really rough ones. And when I was the opening act, it was okay because there’s not as much pressure and and they would sort of go along with me. And then when they found out it was a joke, they’d be like, Oh, this is great. But then I started getting booked as the headliner because those middle middle act shows went really well. And that’s when I had some really really difficult ones I’d be I remember a string of them that I did up in Michigan was like in Grand Rapids Michigan and then clearly it should have been called the Henry Phillips sucks from one town to another tour because ever they’ve just we’re not getting it and the club owner in every case was standing in the back just go on I don’t think this is funny and then by the time I started getting to the funny parts, they had already checked out right? And that’s the fear so yeah, so I had a difficult time after several years of having this problem. I started I pretty much coward you know, chickened out. But but but in a way that I that I liked, I started because I at this point, I had a lot of jokes in between my songs that I would do some banner. And so I thought, Well, why don’t I just do all those at the top without the guitar? And so I started just doing stand up comedy. So if you were to get at the loony bin, or the funny bone, you went to see stand up comedy. So from the middle act, going into the headliner, okay, we’re still in that genre. Now the guy’s standing there, and he’s doing jokes. So I would do that. And I’d say, Hey, does anybody want to hear music? And then they already knew I’m joking, right? So it was a much much easier situation but it took me years and also, I can’t tell you how much envy I had when I watched people like the Flight of the Conchords or Tenacious D or these guys that were really doing that that serious songwriting thing but they weren’t they didn’t have to do it at the funny bone they were just they were sort of famous already. So they they were able to do that kind of thing that I was always you know, wishing that I could do but I couldn’t if I ever wanted to work at the comedy club again. It’s It’s ironic like you kind of have to be well known when you get messed around like that. Yeah, exactly. But but but I’m happy now I go up and I do. I do probably 15 minutes of stand up and I do you know, a lot of topical stuff and, and then I’ll just jump right into the songs and I’m kind of liking the groove that it’s got now.

matt nappo 39:49
Even your stand up has that kind of sincerity within the delivery of a bed. That makes it very It’s a different kind of stand up than anybody else does. So, you know, I know I’m blowing a lot of smoke at you, buddy. stuff. Now again, I love the films but like with historical fiction and novels, I’m a sucker for wanting to know what’s real and what’s not real because obviously these films are semi autobiographical. Yeah, I want to know what’s real and what’s not. And what what I take away from being a musician for 45 years now I’m performing. I’ve never been heckled. I’ve tried stand up and didn’t even get heckled doing stand up I shot, but I didn’t get heckled. I don’t know what that experience is like. But since you broach the subject, I think three times in both in both movies combined, this idea of getting heckling, I have, I have to think that at some point, it’s in your psyche, just that the whole you know, being hurt or wounded by some of these assholes can show up and they don’t do it for acting. They don’t do it for music. comedy is the only place you’ll see assholes show up and want to ruin your show. Is any of that stuff that’s in the movie based on reality? And is there a woman?

Henry Phillips 41:13
Yeah, Oh, absolutely. No, because I’m a I’m an incredibly self conscious person. It’s a lot of people are just like the worst nightmare that they could ever imagine as being heckled as a comedian. It’s like I I’m an idiot who picked that to be a possibility in my career. It’s like, I can’t believe that I wound up in that situation. But yeah, absolutely. Oh man, I’ve had some terrible terrible ones. In the movie, we depicted a couple of them. You know, one of the in the first movie, we had one where there was just a miss booking, you know, I was supposed to be performing my comedy and then they said, Oh, yeah, we also booked and it’s always some event, you know, it’s like, we also booked I think in real life, there was one that was like, it was all a, you know, cancer survivors or something like that. And it’s like, not not that they couldn’t have a sense of humor, but they were a pretty serious bunch and, and dark humor was not going over? Well, I mean, dark humor is really one of those kind of things that you you’re sort of privileged to be able to, to make those types of jokes, and then you don’t really think about him too much. But I yeah, I felt really uncomfortable one time doing a show like that. And I was just like, what? When do I get to that point where everybody’s there? Because they want to see what I’m doing? Because I was there. But um, yeah, no, I also had one. I remember having one in MLA of all places where it was a sports bar, and the guy ran the bar was British. And he didn’t really know much about American sports, but he definitely wanted to sell beers. And he did a whole promotion where he bust all these kids from USC to come in and watch their team basically clinch the season. And, and then he didn’t want any space between the end of the game and then me going on right after that to perform and he was just, you know, serving them tons and tons of drinks the whole time. So they were pretty drunk. And the guy lines up overcompensating, and so the game’s not even over yet. And he goes, Okay, go go go on there. And I go, Well, I don’t think the game’s over yet. He goes, it’s alright. They already know who won’t just get up up there. Like he had some kind of OCD about, like, God forbid, there’s a couple minutes in between the game and you know, right. Yeah, and they couldn’t, because they were all bused in there anyway, and it was like it didn’t even give them a chance to go to the bathroom or go up and get another beer or whatever. So then I went up there and going back to what you were saying, I’m doing this, this kind of Sucker Punch thing. So all of a sudden, they went from watching their game and they’re drunk to now they got a folk singer on stage, just singing for a minute and a half of a song that sounded like it was at that time I was opening with this song sounded like a religious like a campfire, religious song, and about God’s creatures or whatever and, and they’re just like, what is going on here. And literally, people started throwing things at the stage. There was a band that was going to play later. So the drum set was set up and one guy threw a chair and it crashed into the drum set. And then that was then the band that was there started jumping in and the guy who was doing the sound became sort of a bouncer. And he started and it was just absolute chaos. So yeah, and so and then I got I got off the stage because I was afraid somebody was gonna throw something at me. Or kick my ass or whatever and, and then the guy didn’t even pay me the 100 bucks that I was supposed to get. Because I didn’t do the set and I’m like, what you gave me an impossible situation here and

matt nappo 44:51
they have no sympathy for their mistakes. Oh, yeah,

Henry Phillips 44:54
it was awful. Yeah. But yeah, no, but in the movie, I would say overall Everything is at least based on a true story except in the you have to have an over reaching a plot, right? And so so in the second one, when you watch and the first movie, when you watch it from scene to scene, I can tell you the parallel real life story for just about everything in that movie. Except there’s this sort of telephone game thing where I say something off the cuff and eventually go That’s racist thing. Yeah, well, I’ll tell you the true part of it. I went to a meeting with a manager out here in LA. And it wasn’t bagels, it was donuts. He had a bunch of doughnuts. And he’s like, he’s a real powerful guy. And he’s like, and refill up. So would you like one of these donuts? And I was like, Okay, I’m just eating a doughnut. And there’s kind of a low in the conversation. And eventually, I was like, these are good doughnuts. And he’s like, yeah, they are good, aren’t they? And I was like, yeah, so where are they from? And he’s like, I don’t know. And then he gets, you know, on the speakerphone or whatever. And he’s like, Hi, Lisa. Can we find out where we got the doughnuts? Henry Phillips is here and he’s he’s a you know, an up and coming new comedian. He wants to know, and then, of course, the Secretary was like, I don’t know where we got the frickin doughnuts, but she’s trying to figure it out. And then she calls back and she’s like, hey, Dave got the doughnuts. And he’s I can’t get on the phone with him. Right now. He’s on a run, I guess be in just like before everybody was all hooked up with their cell phones and stuff. And so then he gets on the phone. He picks it up and he goes, Henry, I’m sorry. And he’s like, why is this a problem? Why is this a problem? I asked you where the doughnuts are? It’s the easiest question in the world. You can’t tell me I’ve got Henry Phillips here. I’m trying to you know i mean he he’s I don’t know what he said he is up and coming comic. You know, he’s, he want the guy wants to know where the doughnuts are? Find out. He hangs up and I’m just sitting here going, Oh, this is mortifying, you know, yeah. To hear

matt nappo 47:07
and the girl thinks you’re a dick. No, absolutely.

Henry Phillips 47:11
She thinks that I’m some asshole. Like, I’m a 28 year old guy. And I’m just some guy going, I want to know where the damn doughnuts are. So anyway, so that was the end of the real story. And then and then we started thinking, Well, what could have How funny would it be if if it turned into some kind of telephone game thing? You know, we made it bagels, because that way it’s like, oh, maybe he’s being anti semitic or something like that. And, and, and that was the big thing at that time, right? Like when it Cramer from Seinfeld is on on his show. And he went viral for his rant and then,

matt nappo 47:49
but he actually said so.

Henry Phillips 47:52
But the thing is, how funny would it be if there was a guy who got blamed for all that stuff, but never even did anything like that? I mean, that’s the worst punishment Yeah, that you could get so. So that’s pretty much where that that idea came from.

matt nappo 48:05
I live that there was a period of time back 2020 years ago. So we were playing at a very popular spot all the time. And there was a bouncer in a club who happened to be black. And White was getting into some altercation with some regulars who happened to be white. And a lot of white people started to gang up on the guy and I went to defend him. Now it was a hells Angel guy who started throwing the N word around a lot. And they chased this guy into the back alley to kill him. And I went back to protect them. And somehow it got around that I was one of the guys chasing him. I was one of the guys yelling the N word. And I had to kind of leave the band for a couple of years and leave that town basically known as the racist guy took a couple of years of me to kind of clear up my reputations in I was there to protect

Henry Phillips 49:01
no good deed. Yeah, so

matt nappo 49:03
I relate to a watch your movies. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. It’s like the story of my life.

Henry Phillips 49:12
Yeah, well, it’s funny that you bring that up, too. Because remember, I mentioned that guy, Marty categor, who is my first manager, the guy taught me about the thumb pics. He was telling me, we were talking about the movie Spinal Tap, which I could not get enough of, I must have seen it. 50 times I had the whole thing memorized and everything like that. And he loved it too, because he loves humor. But he was telling me he goes a lot of guys. I guess. He was probably about 20 years older than I am. And he said a lot of the guys that I knew didn’t like the movie. Because they didn’t think think it was funny at all. They just thought, Man this is bringing up bad memories. I remember when we had the show, you know we had the record company. The record store signing and nobody showed up and everybody’s yelling at each other. I mean, these were all real stories that were hilarious to me, but a lot of people live through them. And, and I and I’ve had a little bit of that with, with my movies, too, because I, I’ve had people say that they’re depressing. Yeah. And it’s like, real life,

matt nappo 50:23
don’t do one or two lines that you kind of take. Wow, well, yeah, that that’s a real moment. But all comedy I think has to have that, that. It has to be comfortable. At some point, that little bit of uncomfortableness will make the punch line all that more funny when you get to that point. And it’s it’s an important thing to kind of take that uncomfortable moment in and really absorb it and say, what does it mean to me?

Henry Phillips 50:51
I agree. There’s the movie, the movie King of Comedy is a good example. Have you seen that and a lot of people wouldn’t even classify it as a comedy to me, I’m laughing my ass off. But I’m like, there’s one part of that movie where every time it used to be on on TV, I had to change the channel. Like I couldn’t be in the room while that scene is going on when. When he invites when he invites a date over to Jerry lewis’s house. And Jerry loses coming they have that dramatic irony of his show. And I’m like, this is just too much man. I gotta change the channel. It’s like it’s so incredibly uncomfortable, but at the same time, it’s so awesome that it makes you feel that way.

matt nappo 51:34
douche chills. That’s what I call it. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the movies are great. And we got some comments in the in the chat room about the Densmore incident. I just discovered that in the last week.

Henry Phillips 51:50
Oh, the Densmore house in Kansas. Yeah,

matt nappo 51:54
I didn’t I didn’t even know that that video existed and then I found that the battle a week ago, and I’m trying to explain it to my wife, I of course, I do a very poor, but that that had me actually, like, laughing out loud at a computer screen, which doesn’t happen too often. Was that a real incident? Was that bass? Yes,

Henry Phillips 52:15
that was absolutely real. I mean, I played it up a little bit with the music and tried to make it like like one of those drama things, you know, but uh, but yeah, no, that absolutely I was born out of my mind driving all the way back to LA from I think it was Iowa and just Kansas, I think is about six hours from one side of the state to the other. And just you’re hoping a tornado is going to happen just so that you can see something. And I kept on seeing a sign saying, you know, Densmore house, you know, check this out. And so I just thought, well, I’ll do anything at this point, I had to go to the bathroom anyway. And so I went, and there’s this house that was built by a civil war veteran, and they were doing tours, and they had a lot of old people getting off the buses and to take this tour. And I was like, What the hell, you know, I’ll take the tour, and I paid like the 10 bucks or whatever. And I go in, and it’s pretty amazing. There’s a house where everybody, everybody was marveling at the fact that the guy built this thing by hand, and there’s a lot of incredible design stuff. And there’s engineers that couldn’t replicate the things that he did with his house, you know, typical museum type stuff. But at one point, somebody started noticing that it smelled like dogshit. And, and I smelled it too. And I’m just like, what is this and we’re like, up in one of the bedrooms or something like that. And the tour guide is like, yeah, I smell that does you guys, do you want to check your shoes or whatever, and I pick up one of my shoes, and it’s just completely just matted down with dogshit. Yeah, and I looked everywhere. And I had been tracking footsteps of dogshit throughout this whole house. And all these old people are like, ah, Tim grows, what are you doing? And I felt like such an asshole. You know, I just felt like such an outcast. And they were like, okay, let’s all go out in the backyard. Do sir if you don’t mind taking your shoes off or whatever. And so but and that’s another one where the story basically ended there. But of course, my mind is thinking Am I gonna have to pay some kind of cleaning costs? And how much is that going to cost? You know, I don’t know what kind of wood that they’re using. You know, I mean, they’re taking all these precautions to preserve everything and But yeah, I pretty much ended there. But But yeah, so the whole the whole video is, yeah, it’s on there. It’s

matt nappo 54:46
the question and bear with danger. The question it begs is has any of the people who were there taking the tour that day, seen that video and contacted you and saying, oh, you’re the head? Oh, yeah, no,

Henry Phillips 54:58
it happened. I’m guessing about maybe 10 years ago or even more. And

matt nappo 55:06
the internet being what it is, though somebody who is going to see it eventually

Henry Phillips 55:11
I kind of I kind of hope so. I mean, I would think it would come come up when people search YouTube for the Densmore house because other stuff, but no, I’ve never had anybody that noticed it, but I, hey, maybe I can help, you know, bring bring people to help make the place famous or something. That would be

matt nappo 55:32
beautiful. Check that out tonight, I think and I’m gonna encourage the audience playing search terms within Morehouse and Henry Phillips to kind of push that up in this surgery. Yeah.

Henry Phillips 55:45
algorithm. Yeah. But yeah, on YouTube, it’s called brush with danger. If anybody wants to look it up and right. It was gonna be I was gonna make it a series or something. But we never really did that.

matt nappo 55:56
I loved the treatment that you gave that because it does start and I thought, wow, is he part of one of these? You know, television shows that real life incidents and then to figure out it was a gag, but I love that treatment of it. Because it’s it’s so and you went very far out of your way to get all the lighting right in the hallway. Oh, yeah. the look and feel of that testimonial piece?

Henry Phillips 56:19
Yeah, well, I did that through. There’s a production company called all things comedy, which is run by a bunch of comics that they set up. The cinematographer did a great job. I don’t remember his name, but I’m sure it’s on there. But yeah, it was it was pretty fun.

matt nappo 56:33
Now, we are coming up on time, and I want to be respectful of your time. I’m grateful to have you here. And thank you to Tom Konopka for making this happen. Yeah, but I also want to talk quickly about the highway man and Henry’s kitchen if we can squeeze both of those in now. The highway man, funny stuff, very influenced by, I guess, late 70s 80s. network television shows, I guess, the most recent episode, I think, is the one I have in my way. Brendon Walsh is Yeah, photos and get the tattoo. Yeah, so there’s, yeah, tell me about the heart. There’s

Henry Phillips 57:12
there’s two there’s the ones that I put up on YouTube, which I’ll take some time and sort of tweak them and everything and just put them out randomly and those are publicly released. And you can see those on YouTube. Just to let people know that they’re on if you put Henry Phillips YouTube you’ll see all the stuff that we’re talking about here but um, so the highway man Yeah, there was a whole bunch of shows that was like Kung Fu, the Hulk you know, $6 million man Highway to Heaven. All these shows were just involved a drifter, you know? And so I thought, well, I want to be one of those guys, you know, but I want to be the 50 year old guy who’s like mysterious who just drifts from one town to another but my I don’t have a special talent. I’m not good at anything. In fact, I, I wind up making things worse in the town before I move to the next one, you know, and so it’s called the highway man. And, yeah, I’m just a guy and I’ve got a wig. And I’ve got like a jean jacket. And I’ll see mostly people stranded on the highway, and I’ll try to help them with their car, but it winds up being worse than it was before I got there. But yeah, the Brendan Brendan Walsh is great. And I’m working with a lot of my comic buddies on it, which is great. So yeah, there’s an episode where my buddy Brandon Walsh is in the like, at a high highway turn off, and he’s taking pictures with this camera. And then I’m witnessing a thug named a comic named Steve Gillespie, who’s just a guy who is, you know, mugger basically and he shows up to steal the camera and they wrestle with it. And eventually Steve gets branded on the ground starts kicking his ass and highway man is just sitting there in the bushes, watching the whole thing. And even writing down trying to make a drawing of the thing is if that’s going to help anything, and so once the coast is clear, and Steve takes off with Brendan’s camera, and then Brennan’s dusted himself off that’s when highway man comes out of the bushes and says Hey, man, I got I got the police sketch of the guy you know, you can give this to the police maybe they’ll be able to find it and Brennan’s like Who the hell’s this guy? So yeah, those are all on YouTube and, and, and Henry’s kitchen also. So about 10 years ago, I made a kitchen video out of my bachelor apartment, I was going through a breakup so it came off extra depressing. And I wrote music for it that was over the top depressing and and the second one that I did was called Henry’s chili for one and it went viral, it got over a million views. And so I was like, well, maybe I’ll turn this into a regular thing. And so I’ve been making them ever since for 10 years. And when the pandemic hit, I wasn’t going to be able to do a lot of the live stuff anymore, or any of it really and and I started kind of looking for a way that I can do more stuff out of home. And so, so I started these two web series, or I continued the Henry’s kitchen and the highway man. And they’re both the exclusive videos come out every month on Patreon. So there’s patreon.com slash Henry’s kitchen patreon.com slash highway, man. But that’s all in the videos. So if people like them, they can subscribe. And then I put them out every month and

matt nappo 1:00:24
every month. That’s pretty aggressive. I have to say, yeah, as a one man production company.

Henry Phillips 1:00:31
Yeah, I keep busy. And then, but but now I’m going back on the road, man. I’ve got a Wichita Kansas, Kansas week, a week and a half from now. And then I’m going to go to St. Louis, to open for a band called Ludo at the pageant theater for a few nights. And then I go to Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin and Wisconsin Rapids to do a couple of rural gigs there and, and then, and then Fresno after that, but I’m finally getting back out there and performing. And it feels good. I’m really happy to

matt nappo 1:01:03
be here for you. I have the link to your website. Yeah, going down there. It’s in the description. Also the links to the Patreon pages for the shows and all that kind of stuff. And I’m imagining I’m guessing the tour dates are on Henry Phelps. Yeah, yeah.

Henry Phillips 1:01:18
Well, it’s a good question, because I’m usually pretty bad about that stuff.

matt nappo 1:01:22
Most comedians aren’t. People in the music industry are cool. I mean, anytime I talk to entertainers on the show, I go to their website, and they say your website is totally outdated. And

Henry Phillips 1:01:36
it’s true. And I’m definitely one of those guys, because I never got to that point where I could get somebody to do it. Right. Most most of my comic friends eventually get to a point where they’ve got somebody who volunteers or somebody who gets a paycheck or whatever, to do all that stuff. But it’s for me, it’s me trying to figure out how to navigate the damn thing, you know, but it’s up to date now. So

matt nappo 1:01:57
yeah, well, I appreciate you being here. Now. I just have to note that you’re the second guest. on my show that has actually been interviewed by Larry King, I find that Yes. Wow. To me is that’s an impressive thing getting interviewed by Larry King, I’m guessing because there was no context to the one I saw. I’m guessing it came out right after punching the clown. That’s one

Henry Phillips 1:02:21
after the second movie. So the second movie punching Henry which by the way, both those movies are on Amazon, if anybody wants to see them, I think you have to pay a couple bucks. But But Amazon. But so punching Henry was done through a studio so that that had an actual budget where they hired a PR person to get me interviews. And Larry King wasn’t on on cable news anymore. But now he was doing it on the internet, and, but still just as cool. And so I was able to sit down with him and do a whole interview. And I think there’s two on YouTube. There’s the full interview. And there’s also like, just a quick q&a one,

matt nappo 1:03:02
right? Well, just and again, I’m trying to be as respectful of your time as possible. But there are a couple of questions I have to ask you about. Sure. First of all, he he seemed like he was reading off of something that is on your Wikipedia page. And that was included in the second one where you’re in the room with the record company executives and they’re talking badly about you they’re talking like a blockhead. Oh, yeah. His two best friends are despair and failure and all this kind of stuff, making you feel like a real loser. And I it says something like in your wiki page or Wikipedia page that Henry is known for playing a character who is a loser, and it’s like, Yeah, but you say I’m right here in the room, and then Larry, Larry King says something like you’re even a failure at that. People have no respect for this guy.

Henry Phillips 1:03:59
Yeah, a failure of being a failure. I don’t even remember that. The exact context of that, but uh, but yeah, so um, I all of the stuff that we talked about Kingdom comedy guy when I was a kid watching Garry Shandling do his stand up, you know, Rodney Dangerfield, these were all the people that I laughed at, you know who I guess their persona was losers, but I loved it. I Bob Newhart was another guy. Albert Brooks, you know,

matt nappo 1:04:30
I was gonna say your filmmaking and your approach to filmmaking and I didn’t want to kind of, because I didn’t know how you would feel about this because of your comparison. But I think when I look at your filmmaking and your approach to filmmaking, be Albert Brooks, influence to me jumped out at me that was the first Yeah, these films make me feel like you know, reminiscent of that kind of delivery, that kind of attitude.

Henry Phillips 1:04:55
Well, yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah. Modern Romance would be nice. Number one, you know and then yeah defending your life and loss in America. I mean, I love those movies. But yeah, those guys, I don’t know if I just saw all those people at a time where I was like, Oh, Okay, I get it there’s a world where it’s okay to be a loser and it’s actually encouraged you know, and it’s called comedy you know, and I love it you know, Chris Farley Will Ferrell you know all these guys you know, I mean that’s, that’s what it is, you know?

matt nappo 1:05:32
Right. And before I let you go together thing from the Larry King interview that came out he asked you at one point what would you What would you like to be more successful at I think it’s how we put it and your answer was I’d like to be a better kept actor. Now I think, again, not blowing smoke up your ass but I think you’re a great character actor. It just seems that most often you’re playing yourself as a character but I know you’ve done some other acting things. Anything like that in the horizon? Because I do I do think you have the ability if I read I know your father was a known as a character actor. any of that on the horizon for you other acting work? I’m not Henry.

Henry Phillips 1:06:13
I love the idea of it. But yeah, I guess what I was getting at there is my dad was a character actor. And yeah, that’s in the Wikipedia too. There’s a bigness to what a lot of character actors do that I love. Well, like Rip Torn would be a great examples, right? Like, you know, it’s like, that’s something that you know, if he asked me, What would be something that I wish that I could do that I can’t I’d say it’s that kind of grandiose, sort of character acting where you just command the whole room to you know, you just walk on there and everybody’s like, Oh, yeah, I mean that. That’s fantastic. I don’t feel like I’m that guy. I don’t necessarily aspire to be that right now. What I like I did I did several episodes of Silicon Valley, the show on HBO and I was pretty much I was playing a character for sure. But that character was a little bit of an offshoot of myself, you know, I was just kind of trained to be as dry and real as possible. And yeah, I’m all for doing parts like that. And you know, I’ll keep pursuing it. It’s not it’s not really a and a career that you get to choose whether you get to do it or somebody else has to put you in there stuff. But I

matt nappo 1:07:27
got suckered away. But yeah, yeah, it is fate. And it is a lot of luck and all that stuff that plays into it.

Henry Phillips 1:07:34
But we live in a time where we can make our own stuff which is really helping me out a lot.

matt nappo 1:07:39
I agree I visit that’s a double edged sword you know, and you know, this probably a conversation for another day because I do want to let it go because I you know, I’ve kept your over an hour now. But there, there is a point where all comergence like may say there’s no good music or anymore No good comedy around anymore. It’s just not true. It’s just you have to dig a little harder to find it because a lot of great artists aren’t getting the sweetheart promotional deals from record labels or movie studios. And they have to produce this stuff on their own. So you have to dig a little harder to find it, but it’s out there. So

Henry Phillips 1:08:13
it is out there and word of mouth is the best you know, and you just every time you talk to somebody who’s got similar tastes, just say, Hey, who are you listening to now? or What are you watching or whatever, and that’s the best way to do it.

matt nappo 1:08:26
Right? come to New York sometime soon.

Henry Phillips 1:08:28
Oh, absolutely. I’d love to. I’d love to. Well,

matt nappo 1:08:32
well hey, me. And Tom Kanaka says hello. He’s in the one of the chat rooms he says. Please have Henry back for round two. This was great. Bah bah bah, bah, bah, bah. Thank you, Tom. Thank you again, for hooking this up. Please stay in touch and do feel free to come back anytime you want. I appreciate this morning, you know, and I wish you great continued success and till next time Till we meet again. Be well. That sounds great. I appreciate it. Bye for now. Henry foe folks. Wow, what a great guy. What a great talent. One of the one of the most creative people in the world today. I say that you know, with no exaggeration, I mean, we’ve got a lot of things going on. I didn’t kind of chef, the chef stuff. Listen. The only reason I made that comment in the beginning about the chef stuff is I know a lot of serious chefs who struggle struggle they have YouTube shows and they struggled to get 1000 views and then this was kind of making a joke out of a cooking show getting millions of views. I know my chef friends are very hurt by that. But bad bad is a great stuff too and very entertaining Henry’s kitchen. I hope you’ll check out all the Henry stuff the movies, see the stand up the the music on iTunes and all that kind of stuff. Everywhere you find Henry in so many different creative endeavors. So that’s our show for today. Tomorrow, I have a musical group from LA to boo droz which is a cigar box foot stomp and rock and roll band. Anyway, I hope you will join me then 8pm tomorrow till then I’m Matt nappo for the mind dog TV podcast. Thanks for coming. Have a great night. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Dr Rick Strassman – DMT- The Spirit Molecule

The Spirit Molecule

Dr. Rick Strassman is an American clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He has held a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research at the University of California San Diego and was Professor of Psychiatry for eleven years at the University of New Mexico. After 20 years of intermission, Strassman was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, or entheogenic substances with his research on N,N-dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. He is also the author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, which summarizes his academic research into DMT and other experimental studies of it, and includes his own reflections and conclusions based on this research.

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Transcript:

Could psychedelics be the bridge between science and spirituality? We’ll talk about it on this episode of the minddog TV podcast

And welcome my friends to yet another episode of the mind dog TV podcast. I’m Matt nappo. Thanks for coming. It’s great to have you here. As always, we’re gonna talk about DMT. Today, if you don’t know what DMT is, you probably never listened to the Joe Rogan podcast. I only found out about DMT It’s also known as dimethyltryptamine. I hope I pronounced that correctly. It’s a hallucinogenic. psychedelic. I’m not sure if it’s clinically classified as a drug because it’s a natural occurring substance in the human body. I don’t think it can be a drug and, and be something that is naturally occurring within the human body. But my guest today is the authority on the subject is so the man who is responsible for at least Joe Rogan finding out about it. And that’s how I found out about it quickly. Just want to say here, we are not glorifying drug use. I have talked a lot about my drug use in my teen years. And I had some heavy experimentation with psychedelics, hallucinogens, whatever you want to call them, in the 70s, in my teenage years, stopped when I became an adult. Until, like 10 years later, when somebody slipped me some LSD and Stevie Ray Vaughan concert 1988. That’s the last time I did it before then probably around 78 1977 when I became interested in DMT, more so for the spiritual aspect of the experience that so many people who have done it claim and it’s kind of like the UFO thing where enough people come back with the same exact story of their experience, that it tends to lend some credibility to it. I’m extremely interested in spirituality and this whole idea of a pathway to greater understanding through what we call a pineal gland. We used to be called a psyche guy, when I was part of a cult in the 1990s, where a lot of psychics and healers would talk about this strange gland that sits in the middle of our brains behind the behind the bridge of the nose right here. And they call the psychic guy, the psyche guy. And so I became intrigued with that idea of what’s really going on back there. My guest today seems to know more than anybody in the world about this and I’m gonna make this a really short thing. Oop, there we go. Dr. Rick Rick strassman is a clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He had held a fellowship at the clinical psychopharmacology Research at the University of California, San Diego, and was professor of psychiatry for 11 years at the University of New Mexico. He was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, hallucinogenic, hallucinogenic. Can I say that substances, which is researching and dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT, is also the author of the Spirit molecule DMT, the spirit molecule, which summarizes his research into DMT and a couple of other books, but the one I’ve read recently is called Joseph lavey escapes death seems to be a bit autobiographical. Ladies and gentlemen, please open your ears, open your minds and help me welcome in Dr. Rasmussen, my dog TV podcast. Dr. Strassman. Welcome. Thanks, Matt. Good to be here. It’s great to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time, as you heard me mentioned in the in the intro, yeah, I’m confused. Is DMT a drug? Or is it as a classified as a drug?

Dr. Rick Strassman 4:27
Well, it just depends on what you want to call it on any particular day or any particular context. If it’s being used on the street for recreational purposes, I guess you’d call it a drug. And if you’re looking at it from the point of view of being produced endogenously in the human body, you could call it a substance or compound.

matt nappo 4:50
Okay, I’m just interested. Do you think it does the government classify it as a drug So basically, it’s a controlled study. Since in if you bought it on on the street, you’d be arrested for it. Yeah, it’s a schedule one drug according to the DEA. Okay. What fascinates me about about you and the book and i’m pronouncing it Lavie. Now, all my life. I’m a New Yorker. And I’ve had plenty of friends who had that last name. And I’ve always called them levy or Levy, because that’s what they call themselves, never heard it pronounced as labor until I listened to the audio book. And I was like, that’s how you pronounce it, I am in New York, we pronounce it wrong. What I’m fascinated by is the idea of, first of all, a scientist, a medical professional, who also has an interest in spirituality. And we do today Oh, God. And and so I’m bet that interests me about you, when I talked to my bass player in my band who was Jewish, but also identifies as an atheist, and we’ve had long conversations about what it really means to be a Jew. And, and, and the belief in in the God that we call and I don’t use the word Judeo Christian, because I don’t like to separate Christian belief systems are different, but that one god that both of those religions seem to believe, and that seems to be a contradiction for science, a scientist to be going down that path. Tell me about your interest in spirituality and religion.

Dr. Rick Strassman 6:31
Um, well, I started my psychedelic research career with spiritual questions, in a way I was looking for the biological basis of spiritual experience. And I believed if you could find something going on in the brain that was occurring. Well, let me backtrack a bit. When I was in college, I was impressed with the similarities and descriptions between the psychedelic drug state and that resulting from certain kinds of meditation. So I thought there must be some common biological denominator, which was being activated or turned on as a result of either taking psychedelics or doing certain kinds of meditation. So, I started looking for what I suppose could be called the spirit molecule, even back then, you know, was there a part of the brain or substance released that, you know, was comparable to, you know, the effects of of well, which would stimulate the you know, the common experience that people described either on psychedelics or through meditation. And as you mentioned, in the introduction, I began looking at the pineal gland, because there was some evidence back then other melatonin, which is the main hormonal product of the pineal, what psychoactive This was back in the 1970s 1980s. And also the pineal gland on has a long illustrious history in in esoteric, you know, psychos, spiritualities, you know, like, the sefie wrote of Kabbalah, you know, the, you know, kept her that, you know, the crown is corresponds to the anatomical location of the pineal, the 1000 petaled, Lotus, of you know, Hindu Physiology or chakra systems, is also anatomically located there. You know, so I started off my studies looking at melatonin in the 1980s, but it was only, you know, sedating. Um, it wasn’t psychedelic at all. And, you know, by then I started to learn about DMT worked on the protocol, and began my studies in 1990. You know, so, my question other than, you know, can you get this kind of research off the ground again, after 20 years, you know, you know, my unspoken but more near and dear question was, if you know, DMT is a spirit molecule in and of itself. If you just give DMT without much in terms of your proper preparation, you’re setting up expectations. You know, when to induce a spiritual experience and the spiritual experience that I was mostly interested in interested in at the time was that of enlightenment, you know, Buddhist enlightenment as especially, you know, Zen and the kensho experience, you know, which is a unitive, mystical kind of state that there’s no self, there’s no time, there’s no space, there’s no ideas, there’s no images, there’s no feelings. It’s completely empty. And I was, you know, wondering if I gave enough, you know, DMT to people in an unstructured, but supportive environment is the pharmacology of the drug in and of itself spiritual? And, you know, so there were a couple answers to that question. The first answer is, um, that DMT isn’t inherently spiritual, it is a psychedelic, you know, drug, you know, rather, you’re rather than a man and Theo genic drug, it is only able to work on what’s already there, in your mind more or less, consciously. You know, so for example, you know, the one I, you know, near death experience in our group of volunteers occurred in a nurse with a long standing interest in the near death experience. And she’d been

Dr. Rick Strassman 11:25
studying it reading books about the N D, E. And you volunteered to be in the study, because of her belief that, you know, DMT, could you mediate certain aspects of the near death state. And also, her experience was the closest you have to the classical near death experience of any of our volunteers. You know, there was a software designer who saw, you know, the origins of ones and zeros, you know, there’s an urban shaman, you know, who was dismembered and then, you know, brought back together in a shamanic experience, you’re the one your mystical unitive kind of kensho state occurred only in one volunteer, and you this was an individual with a long standing interest in kensho, in the Enlightenment experience, and he’d been studying and you’re practicing, and you’re volunteered to have that kind of experience. And he did it. So, you know, it turned out that you know, DMT isn’t inherently spiritual, you know, but it is, you know, psychedelic, it’s mind manifesting or mind disclosing, it stimulates amplifies, makes more true, you know, things which already were existent in your mind, and you’re more or less consciously, potential, you know, which is being actual as you Yeah, so the other question or the other answer, um, is that, you know, the DMT state, you know, wasn’t anything like enlightenment experience, it was not empty, it was, you know, full of stuff. You retained your personality, there was the passage of time, there’s experience of space. There were all kinds of, you know, visual imagery. You know, there are beings with which the volunteers interacted all kinds of feelings, ideas, things like that, you know, personality was able to observe carefully and report back. You know, so the experience wasn’t at all like, the Enlightenment experience of emptiness. You know, so once I completed my study, oh, and also there was an overwhelming feeling of the state of allowing the experience of a reality more real than this one, you know, that was a, you know, compelling and quite frequent report of the volunteers. You know, so after the studies, you know, wrapped up, I started to look for other spiritual models, which might be more consistent with the kinds of effects of my volunteers and you’re responding to DMT. So as raised, you know, conservative Jewish I, you know, went through an extremely long, you know, 20 plus year detour through Zen Buddhism. And after a while, you know, the Zen, you know, model, the Zen beliefs, you know, the practice And began kind of wearing FIM. Well, you know, the bowing I was, you know, wondering about all the bowing to statues and pictures of former teachers and things, you know, to each other. You know, it was explained to me while you’re bowing, you know, to the pure essence of each other in the process, but, but but still on my thought, you know, if you’re going to bow, you know, why not bow to the most high as opposed to just this big, golden statue of Buddha? Yeah, you know, um, and also, you know, the whole idea of, you know, Buddhism, you know, not having a god, you know, I’m Jewish, you know, you know, even genetically and, you know, the constant, you know, discussion that there is no God or suddenly karma started to where it kind of thin as well. And I, you know, began asking questions, which in Buddhism are called not conducive to enlightenment? You know, for example, you know, what occurred, you know, before cause and effect it, you know, on my favorite thing, you know, if, you know, cause and effect,

Dr. Rick Strassman 16:10
you know, determines everything, you know, what determines cause and effect, you know, so, you know, that, in a way is a question about what occurred before the big bang, right? I, you know, what, just God is, you know, God, you know, temporal or are not, you know, so, you know, those kinds of questions, were discouraged in the morning, a practical approach, but still, you know, there were some strange things, which we were expected to assume or to believe, and to do, you know, within Zen practice, yeah, the other was, you know, karma is supposed to be neutral. It’s just, you know, kind of it started somehow, and then every effect has got antecedent causes, you know, but I started to wonder, as well, you know, why are things, you know, the way they are, you know, why are, you know, why are certain ideas and behaviors rewarded, and others, you know, seem to be punished. You know, like, if you’re angry, you get an upset stomach. But, you know, as opposed to, if you get angry, you know, why don’t you make a million dollars, or you grow a pair of wings, you know, so, you know, things are a specific way in existence. And so, I began, you know, thinking, you know, their karma seems to reflect, you know, the will and the power of, you know, some overarching intelligence, you know, we just got a scheme, which is supposed to benefit us, as opposed to harming us, you know, so yeah, combined with, you know, those kinds of ruminations, you’re looking for another model of spirituality as revealed through the DMT effect. I started reading the Hebrew Bible, and ended up you know, being convinced of a prophetic state of consciousness, which pervades the text, which is quite DMT, like, but at the same time is quite different because of the information contained in the Bible as compared to, you know, contained in the DMT experience. So, you know, one of the things you’ve got to work through in the text is the existence of God, like the first word or the second word, in the, in the Bible, as in the beginning, God created heaven and earth. It’s like, Who’s God? What’s God do? How does that work? Right, right. So I spent years, you know, just, you know, be the I, you know, beating my head against the wall, you know, what does, you know, this God, and I started to, you know, read the medieval philosophers, you know, who are quite sophisticated, you know, back in the day, you know, 900 to, you know, 1400 in the Common Era. Yeah. And, you know, gradually, you know, slowly but surely, I began to believe in God, you know, want to understand, you know, God’s characteristics and interaction with the world. You know, my first you know, toeholds for I’m accepting, you know, the notion of God, you came through Buddhism actually, and it was around you know, those two issues of karma. You know, who created and, you know, who sustains karma, and what’s going to exist once karma is, you know, done as everything else is done, according to the law of karma. And also, you know, why does karma seem to operate in a particular manner, right, you know, so those were the two footholds with allowed me to start thinking, Oh, you know, it must be God who created and sustains cause and effect, which works in a particular way, which, you know, reflects, you know, so to speak the mind of God.

matt nappo 20:16
Wow, that’s so interesting. Now, there’s a lot to reflect on in that answer. First of all, the idea of similarities between nd ease and the DMT experience. I think one of the differences that I’ve noticed with that is because I’ve talked to a lot of people who, you know, found God through. And he is, an atheist will convert after a many times and atheists will convert to a somewhat of a believer in something hot, bigger and higher than ourselves after an nD nD. But I know a lot of atheists who have had the DMT experience and remain atheist, but also atheist in a very judgmental way in that, well, if you believe in God, you must be an idiot, if you believe this. And especially you mentioned the Bible, they’ll they’ll bring that up, like, how could any reasonable person take the stories in there to be literal truth? And I think that’s where we get into a problem with this idea of the old man in the sky. God, do you? How do you address that? Because I don’t think anywhere in the Bible, it actually says like, oh, man in the sky. But that’s, that’s the atheist view of what the belief is, how do you how do you address that or you don’t address it?

Dr. Rick Strassman 21:44
Yeah, you’ve got to address it. And it’s kind of, you know, like a DMT experience, you need to suspend disbelief in an order, you know, to get the most out of what you’re, you know, perceiving or reading or apprehending. You know, in the beginning of my DMT studies, I was pretty skeptical of the reality or, you know, bases of people’s experiences, you know, like, you know, when they were telling me about these are being encounters, you know, these, you know, critters or bees, or robots or cactuses, and doing things and interacting with people, I thought to myself, well, it’s your brain on drugs, or as a Freudian impulses, or conflicts, you know, being represented visually and emotionally. It’s some kind of union archetype. You know, but it was anything, you know, but real. And, you my skepticism, even though I was keeping it to myself, still kind of leaked out. And the volunteers weren’t as comfortable describing the stranger parts of their experiences. And, you know, I picked up on that, and then started to, you know, treat the experiences to be as real as the volunteers believe they were, you know, like, you know, the state is quite common, or it’s because it’s consistent. It’s, you know, visual, it’s not a body. If, you know, rapidly changing, there’s beings you interact with him. You’re a bit confused, a bit anxious early on, but then it just completely opens up, you know, so, I thought, Well, okay, you know, these are, you know, this drug, you know, this compound seems to allow people to enter into free standing, completely consistent, independent universe from this one, which is more real than real. So, you know, when you start reading the Bible, you have to do the same thing, you’ve got to say to yourself, okay, you know, this is describing a universe a particular, you know, world which is more real than real for those who are in those narratives. You know, if you read about your prophecy, you know, like Ezekiel, for example. You know, he just, you know, falls down because of the intensity of the visions, and it’s the most your real, overpowering thing that’s ever occurred to him in his life. You know, so you can say, Oh, that’s just crazy. That’s just schizophrenia, you know, but you need to, you know, I guess, you know, suspend your disbelief. You could study the text carefully. You don’t you know, learn about that. character, you know, who is he he’ll? And you could enter into his mind and you see what’s going on there? You know, what’s he saying? And why? And, you know, what are the implications back then, you know, nowadays, you know, the story of Abraham, you know, the first, the first Jew, you know, Abraham is, you know, living in, you know, you know, like an idol of infested Babylonia, and he gets a call from God to go to Canaan and to worship the one God. You know, so you know, who is Abraham, you know, is, you know, like, Are there qualities of Abraham in me? You know, who were his parents, his wife, his kids, his travels, his servant, his maid servant, Ishmael, and Isaac, you know, so it’s this, it’s this free standing universe. And you could say, Oh, it’s just a bunch of, you know, hooey and promoting a genocide and the chosen people and all that. You could just say, okay, that’s fine. But what does the text actually say? And your friends on who say, Oh, you know, the Bible is just, you know, Bs, you can ask them if they’ve ever read the Bible. And if they have, if they’ve ever studied it,

matt nappo 26:18
yeah, you know, most of the time, most of the time, the answer will be very surface level reading, so and they will go right to the easiest part parts of it like, no, there’s no way no one could have had to have every species on Earth on the on the end, that kind of stuff. So I think they have a probably have not read it, but have heard the stories enough to believe they have read it, if that makes sense.

Dr. Rick Strassman 26:50
Yeah, well, you cherry pick well, right. It’s, um, you know, kind of like the story or you know, that, you know, saying your first fear is a mountain, you know, then there is no mountain then there is, you know, the first time you read the Bible, it’s, you know, literal, and it’s just, like crazy. And, you know, there’s nothing like, it’s just, you know, nonsense, and, and, you know, then once you’ve begun to study it in earnest, you can start to glean the gems of information, which are embedded in the narratives in the poetry and the wisdom and the legal code,

matt nappo 27:31
right? Part of the nd II experience seems to be precondition. In other words, if, you know, the whole idea of, if you’re, you committed suicide or tried to commit suicide, and have the NDA, you will have visions of the hell or, you know, very dark experience. And if you, you know, whatever died in an accident, or you sleep, whatever the, you know, be non suicidal way that you might have had, you tend to have a more heavenly type experience. Are there people who are in DMT, who have that DMT experimentation that have had that dark experience, the hell experience where the beings don’t seem to be friendly beings, but judgmental beings?

Dr. Rick Strassman 28:25
Well, I’m not sure if I would call them judgmental, you know, but at least aggressive, and hostile, and even harmful, um, in a way, you know, one of our volunteers was a young guy, you know, tie dye, your long hair, hippie Dude, you know, loved MDMA, had taken small doses of your mushrooms in the past, and was completely into the loving light, you know, delusion, as it were. He was, you know, hard for him to face his own your darkness, you know, so on his first, you know, large, you know, dose of DMT he was raped in Italy by crocodiles who pinned into the bed. He he couldn’t move, he was paralyzed, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t ask for help. And, you know, the first few minutes of the DMT experience, I’m just, you know, kind of crossing my, my fingers together and you’re praying is going to go all right. And I had no idea was going on with him. And, you know, at about the 20 minute point, he opened up his eyes and said, that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Wow. You know, so that was, you know, one experience like that, you know, some other guy came in, um, after having a big, you know, pizza and your beer dinner the night before, because he figured DMT I could handle that. Yeah, and he was a bit hung over a bit full stop. From all that pizza and his DMT experience was rather frightening as well, this black warrior with a shield and a spear just appeared right in front of him and said You dare enter here, you know, so it would depend on your state of mind, your personality, your approach, you know, going into the study, you would need to be psychologically healthy and mature. You already mentally, physically, you know, so it wasn’t just a shirred, ecstatic beatific state, it could be quite taxing.

matt nappo 30:38
So So with that in mind, you can have a bad experience on this, is there any real therapeutic use, because in therapy, the last last thing you want to do is drive somebody further into a dark place? I mean, the, the whole purpose of therapy is to get them to a brighter, lighter place. And it seems like, you’re never sure what you’re going to get. And so is there a real therapeutic use for the empty?

Dr. Rick Strassman 31:10
Yeah, well, there’s two important issues there, you know, one of them is, you know, the whole notion of psychotherapy, and, you know, if you’re going to be, you know, successful doing psychotherapy, you need to increase at least usually, you need to increase slightly the amount of anxiety that you know, that the patient is feeling, I’m in order to spur them to start challenging themselves, to look at stuff that they would rather not look at our you know, think about things they would rather not think about. You know, so you want to increase their, their anxiety, but not too much. Otherwise, they’ll just be too anxious and won’t be able to attend, or they’ll get spooked and flee. You know, so you wouldn’t necessarily start off if you were doing, you know, psychotherapy with DMT, you might not start off with a full dose, you might start off with a lower dose that just kind of gets the wheels turning in a different way. You know, so that’s, you know, one issue, um, you know, there’s another issue, you know, specific to DMT, you know, which is it’s extremely short duration of action, it only is effective for maybe 1520 minutes or so, that to me. Right, right. That’s why I used to be called, you know, the business man’s trip. You know, but, you know, there are a couple of groups overseas that are developing a continuous infusion model of DMT. You know, so you could keep somebody in that state for an hour, you know, two or three, and you could turn it up, you could turn it down, you know, depending on the content of the material coming up in psychotherapy, you could turn it off and just interact with the patient. You know, in a sober state, it wears off so quickly. And you could do that for a few hours. And it might be extremely useful or you know, psycho therapeutically. Yeah, the other notion which is a bit more of a mind, bender is the whole field which is coalescing around the issues of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. neuroplasticity is where a compound or activity increases the complexity and the number of connections between nerve cells. And the other notion is neurogenesis is neurogenesis, which he points to the growth of new neurons from stem cells. And the psychedelics seem to induce you know, both neuroplasticity and neurogenesis and ketamine also does as well. And your ketamine is a psychedelic in a way and it’s an anti depressant. And you may not really need to attain to any particular subjective experience with ketamine in order to still see an anti depressant response. You know, so, you know, people are starting to think, you know, do you need to experience anything subjectively in order for these drugs to work in terms of anti depressant effect? You know, is that all going on behind the scenes? Is it just the stimulation of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity? You know, so the psychedelics also do that and in the same time course You know, like ketamine, you know, so yeah, there’s a, you know, move to develop non psychedelic psychedelics, which stimulate the same parts of the brain and stimulate your neuro and stimulate, I, you know, the plasticity and the stem cell affects you without any subjective effects. You know, so it’s a strange thing, you know, some people are saying, Oh, you need the subjective experience, if you’re going to be getting any healing, and others are saying, no, that’s not necessary. It just occurs behind the scenes with, you know, sprouting neurons, you know, that you’re not aware of, until after the fact.

matt nappo 35:43
But, well, part of this, I have to think that you’re pretty brave in going down this route, and even suggesting that there might be a spirit module molecule. And I know, you know, you’re not the first person in the history of mankind to kind of come up with that idea. But being a medical doctor and a professor and you know, what’s there any kind of just ambivalence about you know, what, what your colleagues might, because I talked to a lot of people on here, we’ll talk about consciousness talk about spirituality all the time, but most of them aren’t rooted in science and have nothing, no, nothing to lose by going down that path. We went. And so when you were first starting in this, was that a concern for you to even broach this subject?

Dr. Rick Strassman 36:41
Yeah, yeah, it was quite a concern. And I kept the spirituality aspect completely to myself. I never really talked about it with my colleagues, with my, you know, regulators with the people, you know, funding my studies, it was all strictly in psychopharmacology. You know, dose response work, endocrine results, cardio, vascular effects, those kinds of things. Yes, yeah. So I really stay clear of both spirituality and psychotherapy, you know, because a lot of the reasons or, you know, one of the reasons Anyway, these kinds of studies ended in the early 1970s is, you know, because of the spiritual flavor that was being, you know, kind of permeating, you know, the psychotherapy research, like it was, you know, mystical experiences, you know, which were, you know, curing depression, or OCD or end of life care, as opposed to, you know, psycho pharmacological effects. And, you know, regulators back then, especially back then, we, you know, we’re not going to teen on your mixing categories like this, you know, it’s either your psychotherapeutic or it’s spiritual. And, you know, I’m, I learned my lesson or, you know, I’m, I learned the lesson, you know, that the first generation of scientists, researchers learn is to just keep it psychopharmacological, you know, so, it wasn’t until I stopped my studies, and began, you know, looking at, you know, the, you know, the largest and broadest container, you know, to understand the experiences and, you know, that I started to speak more openly about, you know, my interest in the spiritual aspects of these compounds,

matt nappo 38:52
right, when we talk to people who were come from those fringes on this program, and I don’t even really know if I that’s disrespectful to say those fringes, people who have different belief systems than mainstream religion, about what what the experiences they took the word that always comes up is consciousness and it comes up in your book, too. And but in in terms of the separation of consciousness from the body, and I’m still trying to nail down exactly what consciousness is. We use the word so much. Can you help me out with that at all?

Dr. Rick Strassman 39:35
Um, probably, you know, not too much. Well, you know, consciousness, I suppose it’s, you know, like pornography, right? You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it, right. Yeah.

matt nappo 39:48
Yeah. Time displacement stuff, I understand. But it’s still when we’re talking about what consciousness is. I mean, cuz I it feels like a scientific way. of saying spirit without saying spirit?

Dr. Rick Strassman 40:04
Well, yeah, it, you know, is pretty complicated. Well, well, you know, when you’re a medical student, and you’re going on around, you know, they speak about consciousness, you know, what is the state of consciousness of your, of your, of your patient? Um, is a stable and alert, is it drowsy? Is it confused? Um, is it asleep? Is it in coma responsive or not? You know, so, it’s a you know, medical expression um, at least in you know, within the medical you know, context you know, a lot on a spectrum of alertness to coma and stability um, is at a stable level of consciousness or is it fluctuating Are you alert for a few minutes and then you get drowsy or fall asleep, you become alert again, you know, consciousness within your psychology, more partakes of awareness, attention, those kinds of things, right. And yes, in spiritual circles, it can assume, you know, your more abstract, you know, kinds of properties, like, you know, being elevated or being, you know, dance those kinds of expressions. Your spiritual is no complex term to and, you know, I usually like to call it our feelings or thoughts or behaviors or perceptions, which you partake of the elevated, the non ordinary, the special, the unique, the memorable, the more real than real. You know, so you have to be conscious in order to have a spiritual experience, you know, so that, you know, plays in, in, in to the definition as well,

matt nappo 42:22
right. And part of part of this whole idea about separating consciousness from the body. It’s confusing, because I’m thinking of the, the psychoactive effect of DMT seems to be opening up the pineal gland, I’m guessing, to experience something that is external, not internal. That’s the part that that confuses me. Because if I can work a really short story, and again, for the people on YouTube who monitor me, I’m not glorifying drug use. In the early 70s, mid 70s. I did LSD at Carlos Santana concert. And I was brought up in a supposedly Catholic New York Catholic upbringing, but what that really means is you don’t have religion, you don’t talk about religion, you don’t talk about faith it, it’s just a tag we put on you, you’re not going to go to church, you’re not going to read any Bible, you’re not gonna do any of that stuff. And don’t talk about it with your friends, because they’ll just, you know, they’ll tune you out. So I we were at a Carlos Santana concert with a girl who was in Catholic school, but still not religious. And we both had the same experience of telepathic communication on LSD, what we what we we are sure that we were having a conversation, and both of us felt like we were having the same conversation that like, I think you’re saying one thing and one thing and we’re after we said, Yeah, that was great. We actually could recount our conversation that we had without speaking a word. And so I, this this idea of, is it out there doors in an internal experience? is a drug doing something to our brain to make us believe something is happening externally? Or is it really an external experience? And it’s just opening up a pathway? Did you gain any, you know, definitive belief about what what’s really happening? Is it an internal experience, or is there really something out there that we are tapping into?

Dr. Rick Strassman 44:27
Um, yeah, well, yeah. Well, well, that’s an important question. And, well, yeah, before we, we go there, let me you know, clarify or shed some light on, you know, the notion of, you know, consciousness, leaving the body in my volunteers. You know, I think, you know, a more precise description of what took place is that people lost awareness of their body. They, you know, they were no longer aware of their bodies. You know, like with ketamine as well, you’re unaware of your body just.

matt nappo 45:07
So that’s different. I don’t mean to interrupt, but that’s different from the MDD nd experience where they believe that above their body and could look down and see it, so they’re conscious of their body.

Dr. Rick Strassman 45:19
Right? Yeah, there was no one with you know, that kind of experience in our group, you know, that, you know, they could view their bodies in from a distance, or they traveled, you know, like, you know, downtown Albuquerque to look around. Yeah, so, um, you know, so is the content of the experience in your mind? Or is? Or are you just able to perceive things which drops out of your mind? You know, because of the alteration in your brain chemistry? Yeah. And we just don’t know. I mean, it’s really impossible to say, you know, your experience of telepathy? Yeah, you know, that would point you to a model that proposes that you’re perceiving things which aren’t, you know, generated within you, you’re just in perceiving rather than, you know, generating it, you know, so, you know, that would be consistent with an external, you know, world that you’re now able to tap into, you know, the other model is the neuro theology model, which is, you know, this is your brain on drugs, you know, there are certain parts of your brain being, you know, dinged by the drug, and you’re generating, you know, the impression of, you know, reading your friends, your mind at the time,

matt nappo 46:44
right. And so, and part of the, the thing that confused, again, further complicates that is, we think both of us were taught never really, or conditioned, never really talked about being spiritual with that the conversation about it didn’t happen for 10 years after. So we were both kind of remembering the experience of what it what it was because she bade, I basically heard her telling me, we need to be up front in the front row, can I get on your shoulders, and I just lifted her up on my shoulders and ran to the front row. And we both remembered it that way. But 10 years can be a long time. And so the question really is to people on DMT. And I guess it would only happen on low doses, where you don’t have that experience of losing losing connection to your body, have any of those telepathic kind of, you know, experiences that part where I feel I can communicate without speaking?

Dr. Rick Strassman 47:43
Um, well, we only gave you know, DMT to one person at a time. You know, so, you know, there was never a case for people, you know, to be in that same stone space and interacting in that space, you know, with their minds only, you know, the closest thing might be one of our volunteers was, you know, sometimes asked to do a psychic work for the police, you know, to locate missing people. And so she was hoping on her DMT experiences to be able to make contact with those missing people. And it didn’t occur. So yes, and no one and it was a you know, didn’t work out

matt nappo 48:33
big letdown for the people who want to believe in the psychic experience right there. And I’m sure most any of them who are listening to that are waiting for you to say, and it did in your hands, her ability to find missing people. And we are kind of short on time here. And I wish I had you for three hours. But I want to be respectful of your time. I want to talk about the book. The other book, not the spirit, my my new book, The Joseph lavey. if I’m pronouncing that right way we escaped death. Yeah, difficult for me. I’ve just conditioned for 60 years to be saying levy. It seems autobiography, autobiographical, it seems like it’s, it’s definitely you. If so, if I’m writing that, why even bother with the pseudonym.

Dr. Rick Strassman 49:28
Right, right. Well, the well, you know, pronouncing the last name lavey. As you know, based on you know, the spelling in the Bible. The Hebrew spelling is um, is Lavie, which would be you know, you know, that’d be hard, you know, but I, you know, wanted to retain the verbalization anyway, right. Well, it’s completely autobiographical. But yeah, it describes You know, bad tooth procedure that just kind of, you know, took me down in so many hellish rabbit holes. I swore if I ever survived, I would write about it. Because it was just impossible to make this stuff up. So yeah, you know, what I tell people is everything which occurred to the protagonist occurred to me, and every, you know, thought that passed through his mind and passed, you know, through mine as well. But still, it’s a snapshot. It’s, you know, it’s a facet of my personality, as opposed to me. Well, you know, Philip Roth always used to be asked, you know, what’s the difference between you and Alexander Portnoy? And he’d say, I’m not Alexander Portnoy. You know, so, it’s the same thing. You know, I’m not Joseph lavey. But still, I couldn’t have written that book without being me. You know, why did I, you know, disguise things and names and places? Well, you know, with respect, you know, to the places I don’t, you know, paint the healthcare where I live in a very good light. And

matt nappo 51:13
I wanted to talk about it. But yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt.

Dr. Rick Strassman 51:16
Yeah. And I was concerned, if I said, Oh, it’s, you know, my hometown, and this is the name of the hospital. And if I ever needed to go to that hospital, they’d say, oh, you’re the guy that just completely trashed us, we’re not going to look after you. You know, it’s, you know, difficult to imagine they could have offered worse care, you know, than they did otherwise. But still, you know, they just might refuse to see me. The other is, you know, that, you know, there’s some, you know, some personal stuff, friends and family, women.

matt nappo 51:50
It’s an uncomfortable read, and some of the things I wish you would have kind of disguise. I mean, for the non medical people, people who might be a little bit squeamish, squeamish? Yeah. Some of the things in there are a little bit too detailed and too real for a guy like me. And I worked in pathology and did autopsies for many years. And so you would think, but your book definitely got me. Wow. But, um, the idea of your situation there, I had a friend, who, when I started to read the book, and I’m like, this is Andy story, he started with this tooth the same way the bad crown, ended up going through all the things that you went through. So you’re not alone in that. But on the healthcare thing a couple of weeks ago at Lee Tomlinson on who was a former corporate guy in television, and also a very successful guy who went through a lot of not quite just up rabies, struggles with the healthcare system, but some struggles with the healthcare system. And he came out and wrote a book about the lack of empathy. And he used that word, probably 1000 times in his book about the lack of empathy in the healthcare system. When I read your book, it felt it felt like I was talking to him all over again, about this chronic state of people. People get in doctor and I don’t have to tell you, doctors and nurses get into the field because they want to be helpful. They want to help people they want to, you know, be heroes. And then at some point along the line, it seemed like a lot of them, whether it’s because overworked stressed, the system that they’re in, seems to beat the empathy out of them. your take on that?

Dr. Rick Strassman 53:45
Yeah, I think that’s true. And if there’s one thing well, there was incompetence, like there was gross incompetence, which was difficult for me as an academic physician, you know, to count an ensign, I wasn’t very subtle about my suggestions for them, you know, kind of increasing their game, you know, upping their game, you know, but, you know, the empathy was, yeah, it was really lacking. And, you know, the nurses, you know, their radiology, well, well, the radiology department was great, you know, they were kind, supportive walk me through everything. I was cold, they put a blanket on me and stuff like that, you know, but everybody else was just out to lunch. You know, they forgot about me when I was getting a respiratory therapy on your treatment, you know, they just left me, you know, they just left the machine in there. going and going and going and there’s no more medication there is going go so I just unplugged it. Yeah. And you’re like half a day later and they say, Oh, we never pick this up. Did we? Yeah. So yeah, you know, if you see enough difficult patients, if you fail in your duties or your responsibilities, easier, your own expectations, you know, for helping people. You know, you, you begin to realize that only a job as opposed to you making your life worthwhile. All kinds of things like that. You start burning out. Yeah, you know, so I stopped your practice, you know, my own psychiatry practice, you know, when I started burning out, and I lost empathy, you know, like I had been, you know, working with your psychiatric patients for 30 years. But, you know, one thing I was smart, around was never working full time seeing patients, I only worked in three, four days a week. Otherwise, you just get overwhelmed. You just have too many people’s problems in your mind. You know, so I always had other things going on, I was living in beautiful places that I could, you know, drive around, you know, hike around you. But after a certain point, I was at a clinic between Santa Fe and tau, it’s a small town called es es Mineola. And it was the most hardcore group of patients I’ve ever had, you know, murderers. Just a lot of murderers, actually. And unbelievable amounts of you know, drug abuse and domestic violence and intergenerational abusive is just nuts. And after your tears at that, I had said, I don’t really want to hear about these things anymore.

matt nappo 56:35
Yeah. And I can understand that, yeah,

Dr. Rick Strassman 56:38
yeah. You know, so, you know, my contract was up, I said, I’m taking a break. And that break has become the 13 years now.

matt nappo 56:45
So I think it’s really important for medical professionals to read your book. I do. But the question I have for you is, and I don’t know if you can really answer this because you seem healthy now and probably haven’t. Get First of all, the book is just so frustrating. You just feel like my god is this is and I imagine you going through it probably said that 1000 times, is this ever going to end? The torture, you see personal physical torture, you seem to be enjoying? But do you have any sense that the medical profession, the medical industry, how we care for people? Has it improved since that time or not?

Dr. Rick Strassman 57:24
Well, I think, you know, small town, you know, health care, you know, generally, I mean, it’s a burnout. You know, I live in a small town, like, well, you live in a certain small towns, you know, like upper crust, your retirement, small towns like towns, you know, for example, you know, it’s a very small town with, you know, great positions and a great hospital. Yeah, yeah. But that is the exception. And you’re like, I live near them? Well, you work? Well, well, so I live, you know, near that, you know, the Navajo reservation, and it’s impoverished, and it’s really hard to attract physicians out here, your nurses and whatnot. Yeah, you know, so the healthcare is pretty poor, in small towns, especially if they’re extractive industry, kind of towns, you know, non University kind of towns, you know, without the kinds of things which appeal, you know, to, you know, well educated people. Yeah, and I think, you know, health insurance is just grim. You have to spend all your time, you know, begging for treatments or prescriptions to be filled in those kinds of things. Yeah, I don’t think it’s getting any better. And that’s

matt nappo 58:43
a shame and something, you know, we talk a lot about health care in this country, but it’s not just the insurance and how we’re going to pay for it that matters, I think, the approach to burning out doctors and nurses, to the point where they, they are not angels anymore, they’re just, you know, overworked, angry people, like the rest of us is the probably the worst thing we could do for the country in terms of health care, and I think that needs to be addressed as much as the financial part of it, and how we pay for all that we agree.

Dr. Rick Strassman 59:16
Yeah, and I think, you know, the, you know, the whole concept of electronic medical records has been a really mixed blessing. You can get your hands on, you know, medical records, you know, much easier now, you know, but at the same time, the amount of time you need to spend entering and checking boxes and all that on your computer after you, you’re done. You’re seeing a patient. It’s just really hard to do. You know, if you’re a large clinic with a lot of staff, you can hire a you know, somebody, you know, to take transcription, and you know, they can enter all that stuff in the computer, you know, but if you’re a solo practitioner, it’s important community, you’re stuck in bringing home an enormous amount of work, you know, much more than was the case, it’d be the instance, no

matt nappo 1:00:09
doubt about it. My wife is a nurse and her normal working hours at 40 hours a week. But the report work that she has to do is another 40 hours a week she she spent the equal time after she’s all done with her, doing her treatments and stuff with the reports. And so I feel that I hear it. And I think that’s something that needs to be addressed. I want to be respectful of your time. I know, you’re very busy man and very wanted on a lot for a lot of reasons. Not wanted into the way that guy in posters. But I do appreciate your time here. Just Finally, on the DMT thing. Do you feel like you’ve made you come to any, like real? Will enlightenment through your own experimentation About what? What’s really going on? Or? You know, I know that’s a loaded question like, but I’m so curious, this is why I want to do DMT. And I just want to do it once, just to see what that experience is. Did you out? Do you have any feeling like that you’ve been enlightened? beyond what I know right now from interviewing people?

Dr. Rick Strassman 1:01:27
No, not really. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, a study came out from the University of Michigan, demonstrating, you know, concentrations of DMT in the mammal brain, which are as high as serotonin, for example, which then, you know, points to the possibility of a DMT neurotransmitter system. And you’ve got to wonder, you know, what, you know, that might be doing in the brain? And, you know, what is your mediating, and your the hallmark of a DMT experiences is more real than real, you know, so it’s, you know, attempting to speculate that the role of a putative DMT neurotransmitter system is to mediate our ongoing sense of reality, you know, which is a very strange thought, because, you know, then you need to wonder, what’s your regulating the substance that’s regulating our feeling of reality? So that’s where it gets pretty spooky.

matt nappo 1:02:29
Does? Yeah. Wow. So I think the the, the big conclusion here with with today’s is really a big chicken and egg discussion going around in circles about, and I don’t think it’s ever going to end and so I feel like humanity is never going to get any closer. It’s like, you’ll know, when you die. What what happens after this? Or what goes on?

Dr. Rick Strassman 1:02:56
Yeah, yeah. And I think you know, you know, contemplating or wondering about what occurs after you die, it’s kind of moot. You know, it isn’t all that important in a way, you know, you’ve got no control over it. You know, nobody really knows what it’s like, you know, so, you know, that’s, you know, where the importance of, you know, living your life as best as you can, you know,

matt nappo 1:03:19
I get it. Yeah, and I but that fear of the unknown is what drives our curiosity. And that’s why I think we all want to know, I do appreciate your time here, and I’m gonna let you go. But I do want to say I will be continuing to suggest the books and promote the books, and I wish you great success. And And listen, if you ever have anything, like, be come across any big epiphany that you would love to share with me. I would love to hear that. Sure. Good. I’m so curious about this stuff. Thank you for coming. Have a great day. Well, thanks, man. Take care. Afterwards, Rick strassman. Folks, I wish we had three or four hours with them. I know you do, too. I feel like we were just scratching the surface there. But the overall conclusion I think, for me is some things are unknowable. As much as we want to know, I still I you know, that hasn’t deterred me from really wanting to have that one short, 15 minute experience with DMT. Again, for the YouTube folks, I’m not glorifying the experience. I’m not recommending anybody else do it. not suggesting that people go out and look for illegal substances. I’m just I’m a little disappointed that the government does classify it as a controlled substance and a drug but so I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Write to me at info at mind dog TV. com info at mind, dog tv.com. Please remember to check out Dr. strassman books. One more time. We got this DMT the spirit molecule and Joseph lavey escapes death which is you know what, that’s a real hard Read and frustrating read about you, you should have some empathy before you even open the cover of that book because it’s a really hellish experience. I mean hell on earth. He talks about you know, we don’t worry about what’s going to happen if you die because it seems to me he went to hell him in back in this lifetime on it during this life and that’s my takeaway from that book that’s my great book but not to be read on the cold heart because he does go through some and it is extremely frustrating you just like you just wanted to be suffering to end this great book. So anyway, that’s our program for today. tonight. I have Joseph Serra with me, who has written a book called The devil pulls the strings and puts things with spirituality, and time travel and all this kind of stuff and should be an interesting way to end this very strange week with psychics, palm readers, BMT discussion, scientists who are doing studies on Gen Z. It’s been a very full week of very wide subjects, that you can make infection come and talk to me. Round Listen to me, listen to Now listen to me, listen to me now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Why Should I Care About A Film That Is None Of My Business?

I’m a fan of comedy. Stand up comedy, in my view, is the last bastion of truth in art.  I am fascinated by the personalities of the men and women who perform with nothing more than a microphone and their wits and bravely attempt to make strangers laugh at their point of view. I love interviewing comedians and finding out what makes them tick.

I’m also naturally uncomfortable with conflict. That’s why I got rid of television in my house over a decade ago when networks figured out that having a roundtable of people shouting at each other was an inexpensive production that would bring in better ratings than real content driven productions. That’s also why I stopped following any politicians or pundits on social media.

Being on Twitter, I have seen many comedians argue and insult each other. It’s really hard to tell the good natured shit-giving, from malicious attacks. Comedians, by nature of what they do, are good at shitting on each other, often starting a fun and then turning a little darker. It can be entertaining if you’re the kind of person who enjoys listening to the neighbors fight.

I’m a fan, and as a fan I don’t like seeing ot hearing people I am a fan of being shat upon when it is malicious. Enter the tale of James Inman vs the entire world of Doug Stanhope about a movie that was made several years ago, that is truly none of my business., The Unbookables.

SYNOPSIS

“Ride with the Unbookables on an insane stand-up comedy road trip across the Midwest. Executive Producer Doug Stanhope (The Man Show, Louie) showcases some of our eras’ most fearless and challenging comics as they unite in this ground-breaking and hilarious documentary that tests what is “too far” in comedy clubs today.

The van tour hits a major speed bump when the gang runs headlong into a club owner in Kansas City that tells them to clean up their acts or get out. Now, comics James Inman (SF Comedy Competition winner) and Andy Andrist (The Man Show) face off as the group decides whether to finally compromise or get fired.

This instant underground comedy classic is now available for the first time On Demand with a new soundtrack featuring music from Mishka Shubaly. Get in the van with stand-ups including Sean Rouse (MIB 2, Premium Blend), Kristine Levine (Portlandia, Levine Large) and Brandon Walsh (Drunk History, Pickle & Peanut) as as they serve up comedy that is unsafe at any speed.”:

I wanted to ask James Inman to be on the show almost 2 years ago, when it was still only audio. I wanted him because I saw some videos online that truly had me laughing out loud. Then I followed him on Twitter and noticed him arguing with other comedians about the film, which I never heard of before. nI decided not to ask him to be on the show but was drawn into watching some of the arguments play out on Twitter, like watching a slow motion trainwreck, unable to turn away.

Around April of 2020, a few months into pandemic lockdown, I had the fortune, some might say good fortune, of being one of the first podcasters to get a bored Doug Stanhope on the show. That chance encounter lead to several other comedians from that circle coming into focus and I have been lucky to get some of them on my show. Some of them were in the film, although we never talked about it at all. I did notice that many of the comedians who were part of the film or associated with it were distancing themselves from it. The only person with a favorable view of the film seemed to be James Inman, who seems to love it like a parent an only child.

I didn’t watch the film until I watched and episode of Brendon Walsh’s World Record Podcast, with Henry Phillips as a guest. Both were part of the production. Henry Phillips seemed to be more supportive of the film than most but Brendon made a statement to the effect of wishing he hadn’t been part of it. I decided I had to see for myself. I found the film on Amazon Prime, a free stream.

I think the first go at it, I made it 3 minutes in before falling asleep, only to periodically woken by the sound of James screaming voice. My initial thought was that I had found a film that was possibly worse than Paul Blart – Mall Cop. I tried watching again, with similar results. All the while noting that Inman was still talking about the film as if it was Citizen Kane. All art is subjective and critics are often people who can’t create but have a need to tear down other people’s work to validate their own frustrations. That said, i personally did not enjoy The Unbookables at all, even when I did finally manage to taze myself to stay awake for the entire film. I know now that James tends to take opinions about the film personally. He also seems to think that not loving the movie is somehow disrespectful to the director, Jeff Pearson, who has since passed away.There are many films by directors who are dead that I don’t like. I’m not disrespecting their life or their body of work but not loving a particular film they created.

Fast forward to May of 2021 and a friend who has been very helpful in suggesting comedians for me to try to book, wrote to me saying “You have to get James Inman On”. I told him I wanted to get Brett Erickson on, who I am a fan of but also seems like a more civil conversationalist. The issue was I had seen a recent Twitter spat where Inman was saying some not so nice things about Erickson, and  I thought having Inman on first would ruin my chance of getting Erickson on. I decided to stop procrastinating and asked Erickson and he agreed. The episode was a great experience for me and I enjoyed our conversation as much as any other of the 100 or so comedians I have interviewed in the last 18 months.

Within minutes of my booking Erickson on the show, and quite coincidentally, a couple of people pushed UInman’s button on twitter and reignited the flaming of Brett Erickson. I tried my best to add some diffusion to the thread. James seems eager to take the bait when people are clearly just tr\ying to get him to have a negative emotional reaction. As a fan of comedy, such things can be painful to watch.

Next stop, Andy Andrist, who is one of the most underrated comedians of my lifetime, decided to use me for his own amusement. He suggested I have James on my show, knowing that I value his opinion and am a big fan. So I did ask James to be on and he was quick to say yes. The full, unedited interview can be seen or heard on this page, as well as the comments from the livestream on Youtube. In the comments you can see Andy calling out James for “false statements” and having great fun watching me struggle to find some balance in the interview. I’m not angry at Andy. I appreciate his play. It reminds me of  my best friend, Leo, manipulating me for his own entertainment, but I have to acknowledge that I was played.

Now, the truth can also be subjective and again, the truth about the real beef about the film is truly none of my business. Even if the things James told me were 100% false, and 100% is unlikely, I think I was able to read between the lines to get a hint of what the real issue is. I believe the executive producer, (Stanhope), and most of the comedians featured were not happy with the final product and somehow the director ended up with the rights to the film and signed a distribution deal without consent or approval of the the man who funded it. His name and influence being used to promote is bound to make him upset, to say the least. I don’t know any of this for a fact, but the circumstantial evidence seems to support that conclusion. Whatever the truth is I’m glad to be done with the subject and hope I never hear about the movie again.

James talked about hope for a reunion show.  The problem is that few, if any, of the significant members want any part of that. In a lot of ways the whole saga feels like a guy still stalking a girl who broke up with him years ago and can’t see that the more he’s ries to win her back the father he pushes her away.

I like Jamesa Inman, I think he is a talented and funny guy. I hope he moves on and puts the film behind him. I doubt that will happen. I do hope to have him on again to talk about anything not related to the movie whatsoever. I’d like to try to get through a show without  either of us saying “Doug”.

The full transcript is below:

Minddog 0:26
And welcome my friends to yet another episode of the mind dog TV podcast. I’m Matt nappo. Thanks for coming. It’s great to have you here. As always, first of all start off by apologizing if you hear a fan sound in the background, had some issues today with the overheating, and did not want to risk taking down the studio putting in a new computer to run the show tonight on short notice. So I got a fan running the whole show. I hope it doesn’t bother the audio too much. And I appreciate everybody coming here. You all know who’s here tonight. Obviously, there’s been a lot of excitement about this. A lot of emails, a lot of private messages, a lot of people talking about this program tonight. And so I have some explaining to do about how we got here, and why tonight. And so let me begin by saying

matt nappo 1:17
James Inman has already set the bar for guests on this program because the sponsor that usually sponsors comedy interviews on this program has been declined to sponsor tonight. I do have another sponsor who wants to sponsor tonight. I don’t know if I’m going to read them though. Because in the interest of time, I’m going to want to get James in as quickly as possible. I know you want to hear from him, not for me, and certainly not about the sponsors tonight. But I found it funny that the sponsor usually sponsors the comedy stuff, did not want to sponsor James because he’s considered controversial, especially on social media. And truth is, folks, I’ve been banned for life from Twitter. Eight times now, I’m off Twitter, in case you don’t know, I’m not on Twitter anymore. My good friend Nate kelp is on there. Now. He’s helping promote the program, but he doesn’t have any followers. I mean, and I understand he’s been behaving themselves, but sooner or later, he’s gonna get banned, too. But to my knowledge, I don’t think James has ever been banned from Twitter yet he’s got the reputation for being kind of a bad boy on social media. And I’m okay. I mean, they have no problem sponsoring me every week. So I thought that was a little inconsistent, a little weird. As you know, James Inman is hysterically funny. He’s He’s also a little bit prone to conflict lately, especially on social media, which scared me a little bit because I actually thought about asking James to be on the program almost two years ago now. And then I started following him on Twitter. When my other account, I wanted my previous editions on Twitter. And I saw him arguing with a lot of people and growing up in an Italian household where people were always yelling at each other. Conflict bothers me, it rubbed me the wrong way, it makes me uncomfortable. And whenever I would comment on any of this stuff, I would try to try to make it a little numerous or defuse the situation at all, but it didn’t seem to work. And I admit there are times when I am confused by comedians where I can’t tell if they’re being serious, or they’re seriously angry, because they fuck with each other so much that I don’t know when they’re being serious. So I see James arguing with a lot of people that I thought should be his friend, or were his friends. And, and that stuff went on for you. And so I put the brakes on asking him, and then about six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, now somebody suggested I have him on and I said, Yeah, I really want to have him on because he’s funny as fuck, and but I’m a little scared of him. And then two weeks ago, my friend Craig wrote to me said, you gotta have you know, I want to have bread on and I’m afraid that if I have in Milan, all shits gonna break loose with, with my chances of getting bread on the show. And then so I went to back on Twitter, and at that moment, that very moment, somebody was pushing James’s buttons about the unbuckles. And Brett’s name came up, and it was not pretty. And I thought, Well, I better get bread on the show as quickly as possible because I don’t want to, I don’t want to I don’t want to ruin my opportunity for getting him on the show. And so and then, after that,

Andy Andrews said, I should have James on the show. And I thought he was kidding and I asked him, let me see No, he was dead serious. James is a good guy. You should have him on the show. I think you’ll get along with them. I think it’ll be great for your show. And so I trust Andy a lot. And so that’s how we got here tonight. I said, You know what, maybe I maybe I’m being scared for nothing. Maybe we’ll get along fine. Maybe maybe things will go very smoothly. So let’s just get him in. James. Edmund is the winner of the San Francisco International comedy competition. So also the CO creator of mudslinging is ball comedy on Comedy Central pilot and produced his own one man show, adapted from his book, The Great hand diary. He’s also one of the unbuckles buckles and the focal point of the film by the same name. Ladies and gentlemen, please open your ears. Open your mind and help me welcome in James M. into my dog TV pockets. James, welcome.

Unknown Speaker 5:44
How are you? Well, thank thank you for coming.

James Inman 5:48
That was a long intro. Oh, my God.

I know, I had some explaining to do. People have written to me and ask me, you know why? And you know, the thread I’m talking about two weeks ago.

Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So I have a difficult time really known comedians kidding. And when they’re serious. And when I see that stuff going on, oh, I just, you know, and by the way, you got to know who your real friends are. And I have to say, before we even get started, Andy Andrist is a true friend of yours. And he will, he said nothing but kind things about you. And he happens to be the only person ever certified by the United States Postal Service as a very reasonable man. So when he says you got to have James on, he’s a good guy.

Unknown Speaker 6:38
So but what what’s the real deal now, James? Oh, wait, are you really at odds with some of these guys?

James Inman 6:45
Well, no, like, like you said, um, you don’t know if they’re joking or not. Right. Right. You’re Yeah. Well, that’s been my experience with Doug for like, since 1995. I mean, he’s been making fun of me for 25 years, and I’ve never known if he’s serious or not, my and so you know, and so then Doug starts making fun of me. And then then Doug gets famous. And then Doug has all these fans and friends and, and peers. And then there’s the book bubbles, and we film the movie, and then all the booqable start making fun of me, because Doug makes fun of me. So I’ve never known if they’re serious or not.

So we’re not we’re in the same boat, dude.

matt nappo 7:34
Okay, but Finn hope has had you on his podcast long after 919 95. And after the film, I think even right, yeah, so I don’t think he would have you on if he really didn’t, you know, and I don’t know dogs can open. I don’t know what he thinks to people. But I it’s hard for me to imagine he would it might be on the podcast, I think twice or three times. Yeah, if he didn’t like you?

James Inman 7:57
Well, the funny thing is, like when me and Doug get together, and he starts making fun of me, I like I push back, like, as hard as I can. Like, I know all of his buttons. And I try to say the most fucked up things I can say to him. But pretty much everybody else kisses kisses his ass on that podcast, because they’re like, oh, dog, you know, it’s so famous. I knew Doug when he was doing dick jokes. When he was like shaking up a bottle of beer. And he had no political jokes whatsoever. In his act. He was just a regular comic, just like, you know, all of us. You know, he wasn’t famous. We both won the San Francisco comedy competition. And so he was kind of like my peer and then he moved to LA, and he gets famous. So I’m kind of still his friend, you know, but a lot of other people you know, they kind of climbed on board after Doug got famous, huh?

matt nappo 8:51
Well, it’s seem and you know, you brought up to filming so let’s go there already. It seemed from me watching film that at the time it was being filmed. You got along with most of the people pretty well during that filming now or am I until the the incident where the big argument with with Lipski Yeah, yeah. And he threw something at you through a hot dog. He glass of water I thought it was a glass of wine or something. Right wine, but it seemed like you guys were friends at that point. Am I wrong? Again, cuz I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. I guess I’m I’m

James Inman 9:30
yeah, we’re all friends. But you know, so just the whole movie was just this long process. And it was, it was kind of like, you know, Jeff, the director and Doug didn’t get along. And, you know, so I had to kind of like, keep everybody together. I wasn’t a producer, but I kind of had to be friends with everybody and get along with everybody. So the movie would get done, you know, so I had to make Jeff happy. Big, big dog happy I had to make all the vocals happy. You know? Um, you know, it was, it was a long process. Well,

matt nappo 10:09
as I mentioned, and this is no smoke, I think you’re hysterically funny. But I also look at you did this film several years ago, and it’s something to be proud of Listen, anybody who’s been in a feature film should be proud of it.

James Inman 10:23
Right? I see. So that’s the other thing too. Like, since Doug makes fun of me, right? The movie comes out. And like all the vocals. I mean, Doug, kind of, he didn’t really trash the movie, but he didn’t really promote it. And so behind the scenes, everybody was making fun of the film. And, and so the film came out as like an independent film with only 10 with only 1000 DVDs. And it got on BitTorrent, but, you know, not very many people saw so. So there was, you know, there was Shawn Rouse, he had a lot of complaints. There was Doug that had certain complaints, you know, and Jeff wasn’t taking anybody’s suggestions, right. And so the movie just kind of sat there for a while. And I was on Facebook and this guy who used to be Bill Hicks, his best friend, Kevin booth, I was following Kevin booth on Facebook. And Kevin goes, Hey, does anybody have a movie that doesn’t have a distributor, I get to recommend three movies a year to my distributor. And I was like, well, I got this movie. You know, I sent him a link to send him a copy of the unbuckles. And he calls me back the very next day. Booth who my hero is Bill Hicks. Right. And I know who Kevin booth is. I’ve known Kevin booth for, like, you know, I’m nervous being around Kevin booth, you know, um, and so he calls me back and I like, I go do talk to the director. Maybe you guys could get together, the director. He might be open to making some changes. And so Kevin and Jeff started talking. Jeff said, Yeah, I think I might make some changes. And then I started giving Jeff all of Doug’s suggestions, all of Sean’s suggestions, and some of the unbuckles in problems, different parts. So I secretly talk Jeff into making those changes. And and we also we added some music by Mischka. And, and, you know, next thing, you know, we got a distributor, we sent it to comedy dynamics. They sent us a contract the very next day. And because the Vice President of comedy dynamics, he’s a huge Bill Hicks fan and Sam Kinison fan. And big Doug Stanhope fan, right. And so and he also knows Kevin booth. And so right when he sees the bubbles, he’s like, Oh, my God, I want this film. And so the whole time, I thought that movie sucked, because Doug was always making fun of it. All the buggles were making fun of it. Even to this day, they kind of laugh it off and stuff. But after we got to comedy dynamics, it got it’s on like, like 20 different platforms. It’s on Roku. It’s on iTunes. It’s on amazon prime. It’s on Google Play YouTube, the DVD is the DVDs everywhere DVD, you can even buy the DVD on Walmart’s website. Right?

matt nappo 13:32
Well, that’s pretty cool.

James Inman 13:33
I think it is the book of those have been making fun of this movie for so long. They don’t understand that. They’re a lot more famous now that we got a distributor and a lot more people are seeing that goddamn movie.

matt nappo 13:49
Right. But it’s been out for several years now. Right? Oh,

James Inman 13:51
it’s so it’s only at the last at the end see at the very first part of 2018. Like December 27 is when we we December of 2017, which it didn’t really end up on coffee dynamics until the very first part of 2018. So that movie is only been out three years, even though it came out as an independent film A long time ago. Nobody saw it. And that’s what the book was don’t understand. They don’t understand it. There’s a lot of people know who the bugaboos are now, because I think you could tell by my Twitter account like Mike right when that movie got on amazon prime, my Twitter account just fucking grew like crazy. more followers on Facebook. I mean, it’s all that shit. They just make fun of it.

matt nappo 14:45
Wow. So I obviously you’re very passionate about this movie, right? But the rest of the guys just don’t share your passion. And that is the root of the cause. I’m just trying to under understand the root of the conflict that I see on Twitter. That It makes me a little uncomfortable.

James Inman 15:02
I think it just it all boils down to Jeff, the director and Doug, and Brian hitting in all gotten this huge fight. And I heard about parts of it. You know, there were lawyers involved, like Doug’s lawyer and Jeff’s lawyer were like arguing over the phone. It took Jeff Jeff, his site, he had a side job where he, he was kind of helping with contracts. And he kind of knew how to negotiate contracts. That contracted Jeff signed for comedy dynamics, it took them six months to sign that contract, because they’re sending it back and forth to lawyers to Jeff’s lawyer, and the comedy dynamics lawyer. So the whole thing to me is funny, because I didn’t have a fucking diamond in my pocket. And still to this day, I don’t have a fucking dime. But there are all these fucking rich people arguing about this goddamn movie, you know. And it’s a movie about a bunch of edgy, poor broke artists that are pushing the envelope on stage.

matt nappo 16:12
Right? Well, this is this is what begs a question I was going to ask here, James, because I went to your website. And one thing I noticed is I couldn’t find any tour dates on it. And I’m thinking, this guy’s fucking hysterical. It’s got viral videos out. He’s an award winning comedian. Why aren’t you working? Why aren’t you moving on? I know, the film is important. But what you just said, I still don’t have it done. Why are you out there working?

James Inman 16:35
Well, before the end book was before, you know, I was doing pretty good as a comic. I mean, I had a really, I had a good reputation I was killing. You know, I used to live in Seattle. And, you know, I won San Francisco comedy competition. I was invited to the Montreal just for laughs festival. Yeah, I pretty good resume. But then I get hooked up with Doug. And we start doing this movie. And, you know, like, my reputation. I can’t really work these these big time comedy clubs, like them, the improv or the funnybone are, but I’m gonna have to, like start booking myself in these edgier, you know, underground, you know, punk rock clubs, or whatever, you know. And plus, there’s the goddamn the virus, the COVID-19. We had a whole year here, we’re, personally, I’ve been waiting for the unbuckles to get together and like, do some tour together, you know, but they always they, they make fun of me. They’re, they’re so used to making fun of me that they don’t understand that we could just like forget all of this stupid shit. And just like if we were real business man, we would put together an unbelievable tour and we’d make some money.

matt nappo 17:49
I get that. From from the outside perspective. Again, I don’t know any of your fucking history. But I’m glad you’re you’re giving me some of it here tonight. But from the outside perspective, I don’t see it as them making fun of you. I think I and the ones I’ve talked to respect you as a comedian. I know that. But I don’t see that as making funny I think sometimes, and I can’t I don’t know what it’s I’m not in that bad circle. And I don’t know these people that well, but it doesn’t seem like hateful. Most I set out for this couple of weeks ago, did

James Inman 18:23
I? I know. I know what you’re saying. Because, you know, they’re all great joke writers. Um, usually Andy’s not that hateful. You know, I mean, I get it when he says it. But you know, when it’s when it’s, you know, some of the other ones. It’s like, I kind of question Do they really mean it or not? You know, because this, they might really fucking hate me. There’s there’s a lot of Doug’s friends that do fucking hate me. And so when they make their little jokes, it does kind of hurt. You know, I, I’ve had to deal with it for the past 15 years, dude. I mean, past 20. Since I’ve known Doug, I’ve had to deal with this shit, where every joke is some kind of insult or put down. None of these guys ever give each other compliments, rarely in public, like maybe Andy will go. Yeah, you should book James on your podcast. He’s really good guy or whatever. You know, but in public. None of these fuckers give you a compliment the only guy that occasionally will give you a compliment. It’s like Mischka. Or, you know, Andy, those are the two guys that are nice. The rest of the people that follow Doug are just mean motherfuckers Okay, so yeah, yeah.

matt nappo 19:43
I mean, I don’t know. But they’ve been nice to me and so far, but, you know, I can’t I don’t get too close to them. They don’t get that close to me. But

James Inman 19:53
because, I mean, it’s just, I think it’s like it was the movie where James is the guy that We make fun of. And so ever since then that’s my character. That’s my role. My role is the punching bag.

matt nappo 20:08
But now on that I’m beat you end the movie by saying that’s pretty much the role of the comedian anyway, so make yourself the clown the fool. And I don’t want to quote you directly because I don’t remember exactly. But for those affected, that’s the comedian’s job in the first place. Right? Yeah.

James Inman 20:24
Right. That’s every to me. That’s every comedians job. But, but when you’re with the group of comedians, there should be some kind of a, you know, respect of your fucking peers. You know, like, I don’t know, it just seems like ever since that movie came out, they fucking hated my guts. You know,

matt nappo 20:48
I wish there was some way we could help resolve that. Because especially if you say you want to see people get back together again and work together again. That can’t happen without some kind of resolution as a matter of love maker here matchmaker.

James Inman 21:01
Since that movie came out, we haven’t done one on bookable show together as a group.

matt nappo 21:10
Well, it seemed to me when Sam Talon is on the show, I like to play with him a little bit about the comparing the life of a musician with the life of a comedian. And it seems to me comedians are used to traveling in really small groups, if not alone. And musicians are used to the experience from the unbuckles, where you have four or five, six guys in a van, traveling from city to city. Yeah. And that’s why van bands are always on the verge of breaking up at all times. And I think I got through it a little bit. You can’t You can’t be back close to your peers for that longer time and not have a bunch of conflict. Do you agree?

James Inman 21:46
Yeah. But I mean, I would think that they would want to do it just had a professional reason. You know, I like I said, like, I doubted myself, for the longest time. I thought the movie sucked. And then after, you know, Kevin booth got involved, and then it got on Comedy dynamics, and then it was all over the place. I was I was sitting around, and I was talking to Brad and you know, cuz he was living in LA. And he was at the Comedy Store every day. And I remembered that Doug had it. He did a podcast once in Las Vegas. And so I met the booking agent or the manager of the Comedy Store. And he said, he was telling me, he’s like, yeah, once we got rid of Mitzi shore, we started booking the comics that we wanted to book not connected to any management company. So we brought in Joe Rogan, and some edgier comics, like Doug and like, so and so and you know, all he should fear and stuff like that. And he goes, and the line was around the block. That place was sold out every night by booking edgy comics, right? So that’s stuck in the back of my head. And when I realized I was like, Brad, you’re at the fucking comedy stores. Let’s book the book. It was at the Comedy Store. And he’s like, that’s a dumb idea. Jamie Mumma. You know, he’s first he said he was gonna do it. Then he said he wasn’t gonna do it. And I’m like, and I’m on the phone with him. I’m like, well, I’ll just off fucking what’s the guy’s number? I’ll call him and Brett goes, you do that James? And I’m like, What the You like he wouldn’t even give you the guy’s phone number. And he’s being sarcastic like you do that James? Like I couldn’t do it. Not Two weeks later, I need this guy who works at Comedy Store. I do a set in front of him. And he goes yeah, hey, James. I was funny. I go Hey, can you do you ever want to book the book bubbles at the Comedy Store is like a book The all the in bookable I’ll give you date right fucking now. And it wasn’t two weeks after that fucking argument with Brett Erickson that I got all the vocals at the Comedy Store. So I was like, holy shit, they know who we are, you know. And so, you know, I fucking we had to push the date back a couple months. And that’s when COVID-19 hit. And they had to cancel a show. So that’s why that show got cancelled. But I don’t think in bubbles realize that we could make one phone call and get the book bubbles at it, at least the belly room. And it would just be fun to do it just some that we could all get together and do a show.

matt nappo 24:27
Well, I don’t think most of them have any real interest in whether you know whether you can book the show or not. And I again, I don’t want to speak for them, but from what I’ve heard publicly said from some people and it doesn’t even look like Travis Lipski is even doing comedy anymore.

James Inman 24:43
He was I was on the phone with Travis. I was like Travis, do you want to do it? He’s like, I’m thinking about doing it. I have to buy a plane ticket blah, blah, blah. And you know, so Travis was back and forth. But he I asked him I said Travis, if we do a comedy, another Comedy Store show Are you gonna do it? He’s like, Fuck yeah, I’m gonna do it. The only person that I haven’t contacted is norm Wilkerson, but everybody else like, like Christine Levine, Brett Erickson and the Andrus, Brendon Walsh me, all of us we’ve been doing comedy 2530 years. It’s not hard to do 10 minutes comedy. That’s all we have to do. You get six or seven of the book goes on stage. We all do 10 minutes. Easy peasy. How hard can that be?

matt nappo 25:32
Right? Well, of course Sean’s not still with us know who else who else in your estimation is in that group was Brendan Walsh and I’m bookable?

James Inman 25:41
Yeah. Like when I set up that Comedy Store gig, Brendan, I called Brendan. I sent him a text. I go, dude, we’re gonna be there March 26, or whatever you want to do it. He’s like, Fuck, I’ll do it. And so Brendan Walsh, Brett Erickson me Christine Levine Andy Andrus and Mischka. Were supposed to do that Comedy Store gig, it was gonna be fun. You know, who knows? there might have been some agents in the room or whatever, you know, and we’re all doing this. We’re all putting this together without Doug’s help. Because I mean, that’s, that’s the whole thing. Doug is like a libertarian, he’s like a, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. He doesn’t want to help anybody. That’s his gig. I mean, that’s his. That’s his philosophy of life. You know,

matt nappo 26:25
I disagree. Yeah, he helps in town, he helped, he helped me a little bit, because if it wasn’t for him, and I don’t, you know, I don’t think he necessarily intended it as as helped towards me. But if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have made a lot of the connections that I made. But I know, he went out of his way to give Sam talent a real boost with this book. So to say he doesn’t want to help anyone.

James Inman 26:45
I know. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I mean, I don’t mean, he doesn’t want to help anybody in a negative way. I just mean that there’s two ways of dealing with something. And when you want to teach somebody, you know, you can either, you know, do it for them, or you can teach them how to do it, and they fucking figure it out themselves. You know, I think that, you know, just like any teacher or your dad, your dad, after a while, he’s like, okay, you’re gonna have to fucking learn how to swim on your own. I’m just gonna throw you in the goddamn water and you’re going to swim.

matt nappo 27:19
Did you read my dad? What’s that? Did you meet my dad? No, cuz he actually did that. My grandfather threw me in a 20 foot deep canal. And I was for,

James Inman 27:33
you know, rely on other people. I mean, that’s the libertarian ideal, even though Doug says, Oh, I’m not a libertarian anymore. He still is at heart a libertarian. Me On the other hand, I love collaborating with people I love like groups of people. And that’s why I love the book most so much, because it was a group of people and we made this really cool thing together.

matt nappo 27:55
Hmm. So that’s what this is all been past base. What about future based? What do you What are you looking at? Because, obviously, if they decide not to, or for any reason, this doesn’t happen. You gotta make other plans for the future. Are you planning anything for the future? If Trump shows anything? Um,

James Inman 28:11
well, right now I’m, I’m working on like, like three or four books, I’m kind of editing, formatting and getting ready to publish a couple books. I can’t really say you know what they are. And also, I’m helping another friend of mine, publish his book and plays so so it’s, it’s all this fucking computer shit on word. And I’m teaching myself how to format a book so they look, you know, professional.

matt nappo 28:48
Gotcha. So where are you? Where are you located? Now? You’re not back in Kansas City. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m in. I’m in Kansas City now. Oh, I thought there was a while Wasn’t there a while while you were in New York?

James Inman 28:59
Yeah, I lived in New York for three years. I lived in Seattle for like 10 years. I lived in Minneapolis for like a year. I you know, I’ve been I’ve been doing comedy like 30 fucking years. You know, and that’s the see that’s the thing where I don’t think a lot of Doug’s friends really know who I am, you know, and, and that whatever I say about myself, they just they think I’m bragging you know, but it’s like Dude, you don’t even know who I am. You know? Like, I feel like I would just like go look at my resume dude. I’ve been you know it’s just really fucking annoying.

matt nappo 29:37
You know? I I got you but and I you know you want to be respected for what you did but I you know I what really does it matter what what they think about you? I mean, cuz I know there are people there a lot. As I mentioned, I got banned from Twitter eight times. There are a lot of people who don’t like me, a lot of people hate me. You know, I move on with my life. Getting Go on to the next thing.

James Inman 30:01
Why not? Why not? Yeah, I got I got banned from Twitter once but then I, you know, I got back on Doug. If this long story Mischka, like reported one of my tweets or something. And this kitty a friend, dude. And so Doug brought us Doug brought us back. Me and Mischka were like arguing with each other. And so Doug brought me and Mischka on his podcast, and we got back together. Right. I wish Doug would do that with Brett Erickson, because I’m really interested, Brad. Yeah, well,

matt nappo 30:37
that came across a couple of weeks ago. And when the day that I Craig Johnson told me you just got to get him in on the program. And then I went and saw your Twitter feed was lining up with a lot of Eric’s and stuff. And so at that moment, I decided to ask Erickson pretty quickly before this blows up. Now, I didn’t watch. I didn’t watch Erickson’s podcast with you. He didn’t mention you at all. I

James Inman 31:03
probably didn’t mention the book mosey bryden mentioned me. And, you know, it’s just it’s like, what he did was just so fucking unforgiveable you know, and the funny thing is, like, I I’m pretty, I’m pretty good at understanding what’s like, morally right and wrong, you know, even though you know, people think I’m crazy, or I’m not reasonable, or

matt nappo 31:27
I don’t know, but not reasonable. I don’t know what they think of. Yeah, I know, I would I thought of you. And I think you’re very emotional and very passionate about the film, obviously. And anybody who doesn’t agree with you, you seem to get seem to take that as a personal offense.

James Inman 31:45
I mean, the director of the film just recently died, Jeff Pearson, the guy that made that film, and I never even got to go to his funeral. I mean, we had a really stupid Memorial that Doug tried to put together and Brett started bad mouth and Jeff on the goddamn Memorial. I just fucking left. You know, I couldn’t take it, because it was just going to be more of that shit where they make fun of me. And I wanted it to be about Jeff Pearson. You know, they don’t understand that Jeff worked really hard on that film. And Jeff is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met in my life. The only other person I think that might be as smart as Jeff is probably Brian Hennigan, which is Doug’s manager, you know, smartest, fuck, he’s like a goddamn alien, you know, but Jeff was like his equal, right. And I’ve known Jeff since I don’t know, since 1992. I met him in Seattle. And, and so yeah, he’s the guy that made that movie. He got, you know, he filmed the whole thing. He had 150 hours of film, and he had to take all you, they watched all of that film. And he had to go through that whole three weeks of film and find the little parts that would create a story. So um, and he had the whole thing mapped out, but they had, this is what I couldn’t believe, because when I went back up to Seattle, to help him like, pick the, the stand up parts, because Kevin Booth was like, we need longer stand up parts. And so they chose me to help him pick out the stand up parts. And I go up there, and Jeff had a office, he had a business office for the unbuckles in a in a real, like, fucking office building. I mean, they didn’t make this out of their house. You know, this is a, this is a real project, a real fucking movie. You know,

matt nappo 33:45
I get it. I listen. I’ve been trying to I’ve been working on my own documentary for five years right now. So I know what, what the struggles of putting a movie like that together are. But at some point, you know, for you, personally, the movies out been out, it’s got whatever reception is gonna get, you can continue to promote it. But at some point, you got to look towards the future, don’t you?

James Inman 34:09
I see. That’s another thing that Doug has been saying. Since we started filming. I mean, it’s like, I’ve heard you look, here’s the deal. Like the whole the whole thing about up, you know, why don’t you move on, you know, that that movies really all did it come out like nine years ago, Doug started that he started right. The day after the movie came out. He’s like that movies old. He’s been saying that for fucking 10 years, because I wanted to make he that’s I honestly started believing that for the longest time until Kevin booth saw the film and he’s like, Oh my god, this is a great film. Like,

matt nappo 34:53
honestly,

James Inman 34:55
I know what you’re saying. Kevin Booth was the first guy that ever complimented me on that film. Everybody else made fun of it, right? And I was like, holy shit. That’s when we gave it to comedy dynamics. And that’s when we signed that contract. So yes, yeah, it’s been around six, seven years. Why don’t you move on? Right now we got the power to call up comedy to cut the fucking Comedy Store and get the unbuckles. Like, like, people know who we are now because of that.

matt nappo 35:29
Well, what I’m gonna say though, is I can understand feeling like that movie is Oh, because if I look at that movie, Erickson looks like a kid. Andy looks at least 10 years younger. 15 years younger. Brendan’s got big brown red hair all over. Now, Brendan’s pure white. I don’t know if you’ve seen him lately. But the age difference if you look at the movie, compared to the people I see today, it feels pretty old. To me. I feel like I’m looking at new styles. If I look and I just started again.

James Inman 36:00
I mean, brothers right now that Psychedelic Furs are touring with Blondie, and I know

matt nappo 36:06
but you but when you’re looking at the film from that perspective, you do see people who are a lot younger than they appear today. And so that

James Inman 36:15
I mean, I’ve been to some open mic nights, and there’s people that come up to me, and they’re nervous being around me. I’m like, What’s your deal, dude? Like, I just want to say, I don’t want to bother you James but I can I shake your hand cuz I The unbuckles is one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen. What has happened is that movies turned into like a cult classic for for open mic comics and edgy comics because there’s no other documentary like that.

matt nappo 36:45
Right? There’s nothing like that.

James Inman 36:47
Yeah, and Jeff never got his accolades. Like, there was never a time where Doug sat me down and said, Good job, James. It was there was no you like my dad growing up? Yeah. What if?

matt nappo 37:00
What if he honestly doesn’t feel that it was it was a good movie you still

James Inman 37:04
want to do? Then fucking mind that I lie all the time. somebody that’s like he did. He tried really hard and he really wasn’t that funny. He’s funny. Online to his face, just to make him feel better.

matt nappo 37:21
I haven’t talked to

James Inman 37:22
him about the fucking truth. That’s like, bread. Butter. You know, fucking at the memorial. People need to know the truth. Who gives a fuck? Jeff is dead. You know, life is crazy to begin with. Sometimes, we don’t want to hear the truth.

matt nappo 37:38
Right? Sometimes we can’t take the truth. I get it. But what do we just say? Nothing. What? You could just say nothing right? But But

James Inman 37:48
fuck, look, I do comedy. I don’t necessarily tell the truth on in comedy. Right job in comedy is to make people laugh if I have to fucking lie, a lie to make people laugh. I’m not I’m not a fucking monk. I’m not Jesus. I got a professor. I’m not a fucking I won’t make shit up. If I have to.

matt nappo 38:12
Let me let me ask you something. Were you. Were you lying to the Seattle City Council? Or was that all truth?

James Inman 38:19
Yeah, I mean, that was that was a true story. I got arrested for saying the F word. I got arrested for saying for saying fuck. And so it was an exaggeration. I mean, that’s what comedy is you just like, you take somebody exaggerate it to the 10th hour and make it funny. You know?

matt nappo 38:39
I was a classic video by the way. I wish I could get this just clips at that audio and just like use it for bumpers on the show. Because you know, I got two CDs out. So my TV. Yeah, if Yeah, but I’m sure you have copyrights on it. And whether or not you gave me permission, you

James Inman 39:02
can you can you could use it if you do. There’s all I need. I haven’t really promoted my CDs that much. Because, like, oh,

matt nappo 39:11
why not? Why not shift from the movie to the CDs?

James Inman 39:14
these guys, they make fun of me so much. I didn’t even want to promote myself. But like, whenever I promote myself, there’s some fucking jackwagon on Facebook or Twitter who’s friends with dog or fans dog? He’s like, Oh, what a big self promoter. I can’t believe all you do is a big, big day. I mean, I rarely talk about the unbuckles I rarely tweet about it. I rarely tweet about my CDs, you know, because like, that’s the last thing any of the you know, they think it’s it’s like a you know, crass to sell, promote.

matt nappo 39:49
Yeah, and I know, people who came and now people here tonight in 30 different platforms that have a 30 different chat rooms going that people are

James Inman 39:59
really hurt. My feelings I listen to other people I take other people’s. That’s the thing I like they came to see

matt nappo 40:06
you tonight is my point. So I don’t think people can. I don’t think

James Inman 40:11
people understand me, I really don’t. I always seek out criticism, I fucking like it when someone comes up to me and goes, that was funny, but you know, you should do this, or you should change that or add this or that, you know, I listened to that. So when someone like makes fun of me or criticizes me, it really does hurt because I fucking I think that they’re probably partly true. You know, I,

matt nappo 40:36
I totally feel that, you know, and I’m not like you in that if somebody comes up to me and says, that was a great show, but that but it’s gonna kill me for honestly, that buddy’s gonna kill me for a year. I’m gonna think nothing about but then when that person said, but and then what follows is like,

James Inman 40:56
does it hurt my ego, it more it. I use it to like, make myself better. You know, like, because I like before you met dog, my best friend was Brad Nelson. Now Brad made fun of me all the time. So it’s not like Doug was the first guy to make fun of me. I seek out these people that like, make me the butt of the joke. So I’m always like, laughing at myself. I don’t take myself seriously. And it’s so funny that I mean, that’s what happened in the movie. I didn’t know. That’s what was gonna happen. But in the movie, everybody makes fun of me. And then I ended up being in every fucking scene, which was not my I did I had no idea that was gonna happen, right? That’s why one of the reasons why they’re all pissed, you know,

matt nappo 41:44
could be you know, you know how artists are, whatever, whatever the situation, I’m really hoping you can put that animosity behind you and just kind of, you know, we connect with you. I’ll tell you people who I played with in a band 45 years ago, died recently, and we had broken up for stupid reasons. And when they got cancer and died, I felt really bad because they were a big part of my life when I was young and shared that experience in a van quote, traveling the country. I mean, eating shitty food, you know? And, and so, you know, when you have that experience, you regret those relationships when you get old. Me? Yeah. Having lost them for stupid reasons, right?

James Inman 42:29
Exactly. Yeah, I’m the guy trying to get the book bubbles back together. They’re the ones that do fucking all they do is make fun of it. You know? Whatever. I still I could. I’m still a forgiving person. I like you know, bygones be bygones. I don’t give a fuck what happened in the past? I just want to, like do one and bookable show somewhere.

matt nappo 42:51
Gotcha. In the meantime, there are people who who are your fans who think you’re hysterically funny, who want to see you do something, even if it’s without them. Want to see you do something? Now I know that’s true, because some of them have already commented that in the chat room, they want to see you do your stuff. They think you’re really funny.

James Inman 43:13
Book man, like, if they’re, you know, if you’re living in some town somewhere, find the comedy club and tell the booking agent to book me

matt nappo 43:22
to stand up. You want to come to New York in the end of August. What glub glub I don’t want to mention the club yet, but I took two clubs on Long Island, probably not New York City clubs. But I you know, Booker’s from both clubs

James Inman 43:38
really well in New Jersey, like, I didn’t do so hot in Manhattan, because the audience is there. They just they just want to hear jokes. They don’t want to. They don’t want to see a character. But I got to do New Jersey with the the guy with the puppet. Um, that was real dirty. The real dirty puppet guy. Oh,

matt nappo 43:57
I forgot about Oh, George.

James Inman 43:58
Yes. I got to work with Otto and George. And I killed I was like, Oh my god, they like me in New Jersey. And after the show. Like I didn’t know how cool Otto and George was right? But I was kind of nervous around him. And he’s like, I should have you. You want to open for me. And I thought he was just joking. I should have took him up on it because he died like, like a couple years later, right?

matt nappo 44:21
I knew Otto when he first was starting out. He used to he used to he was in New Jersey. But he used to come to Long Island to play my friends dive wise. And he had some really old comedian guy was like 90 years old, who would have to drive him to the shows from New Jersey for a $75 gig. You’d have to pay somebody to drive them and then it would cost gas and tolls to get there but he would go to a gig to play a total. Yeah, that’s that’s a far back.

James Inman 44:47
Well, my jokes always worked better on the West Coast than they did the East Coast. I think

matt nappo 44:52
you’re funny. I’m an East Coast guy. So I think he would do well here anyway. You know, Big I mentioned that a lot of ingest but not so much in jest, because earlier you mentioned that you and Mischka were on the stand hosts podcast because Mitch Stanhope kept you guys together. And it was suggested that I get now i don’t think Erickson would agree to it. But it was suggested that I get you in Erickson on here and I kind of played moderator to that. Would you would you

James Inman 45:23
know, I really like to talk to Doug or Brett and just ask him, what is it that I can say and can’t say? Because, you know, when all this shit went down, like I can tell Doug didn’t want to be on his podcast because he knew he was going to talk about it. Brett doesn’t want me on issues of Andy because he knows I’m going to talk about it. It was they did the show at the there was a show down in Austin. Right. It was called the altercation Comedy Festival. Right? They invited all in bookable except me. And I thought it was a joke. And then I find out later that there’s this I can’t even talk about it because people like oh, this girl said that I called her account on Doug’s podcast. I told Brett, I was like, Brett, first of all, if I called sewing so I’m not gonna mention her name a con on Doug’s podcast. First of all, Doug would address that second of all, shaylee would edit it out. Third, I’d fucking remember that. and forth. All those podcasts are on YouTube. You can go through them. I went through them. I couldn’t find one place where I call this girl I can’t. And so that was supposed to be the reason why I couldn’t do the altercation Comedy Festival because this guy that booked it. He booked Brett. And then he booked Christine Levine and Andy. And then Mishcon. I was like, Dude, are you having an unbelievable show? I was like, I’ll do it. I mean, like, we could do an unbelievable show. No, we await you, James. You got Bubba Khan on tugs podcast like, Are you fucking out of your mind? Oh my god, it just like I fucking snapped. And here’s what pisses me off the most is in the movie. They all get together and say, James, if you don’t work this room with us tonight, if you work famous Johnny’s, we’re never gonna talk to you again, say for this little union. And they told me I got it. And what did I do? I stuck by my friends. Okay, so then we do this. This fucking altercation Comedy Festival. And I’m like, I’m talking to him. I’m like, the guys invite NaVi and buggles except me. All you have to do is tell him you’re not doing the show without James Inman. And none of them fucking take one goddamn thing. None of them had a spine. None of them told that bitch to shut the fuck up. She’s not even a comic for fuck sake. Alright, so Brad is like, I’m sorry. It’s just like the. So they do the show. Anyway, the guy that was booking and he even see he started to like, like, choose a name that sounded like the unbuckles he started to call the show the undesirables.

matt nappo 48:23
But my show was called the undesirables 35 years ago, so I’ll sue him.

James Inman 48:27
Yeah. You know, I confirmed him on Twitter and he fucking blocks me right away. Wow, this guy’s a douche. I can’t believe it. I told Brett. I said Brett, let me tell you something. It’s some douchebag tried to do a comedy show and bring all the Invincibles except you to Kansas City. I would tell that guy to fuck off. I would tell that guy if you want the in bookable you’re gonna have to bring Brett Erickson because nobody’s gonna have a fucking show. And not bring like Christina bean or Oh, we’ll want Lipski. Nope, fuck you. We’re praying Lipski now just because you said you don’t want him that’s what I would have done because you know why? Because I’m a fucking man. And I have a spine and nobody gets in between my fucking friends. It’s like the Musketeers offer run and one for all. And these policies have to fucking lay down like a bunch of goddamn little squirrels. Oh my god, I couldn’t believe it. My head almost exploded. I’m like, fuck you

matt nappo 49:34
mind can explode to I keep it up. You know, this is the first I’m hearing of your side of the story. But I’ve heard

James Inman 49:44
he’s heard my side of the story. I’ve never told this story on a podcast. I think they’d be there as one podcast that nobody saw. But it was like I can’t believe this. Are you kidding me? You know I reminded I reminded Brett to I said credit you know in the movie, you You guys all get together and say we’re gonna talk to you if you don’t work with us. I’m like, all right, so fuck you. I told the club owner to fuck off. And I stuck by my friends. Right so when they do this show off the theme it is they think it I think it’s a big deal. I don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s just something fun to do. I wanted to drive down to Austin. See some my friends do goddamn show but no, James is an asshole. Yeah,

matt nappo 50:29
fuck you. Yeah. So the altercation thing. I think that none of them are doing it though. Except maybe Erickson is doing a tissue but I don’t think anybody else is on that. Am I? You know, whatever. All

James Inman 50:42
I know is I’ve one thing I’ve been born with is a good judge of character. All right, because I I’m pretty picky with the people I fucking hang out with. And whoever is running this altercation Comedy Festival, gigantic douche bag. All right, because I I can’t I’d never really met that guy. He was at one of Doug’s parties, but we never got introduced. I never said one word to that guy. I never got into an argument. I never fucked him over. I never did anything to that fucker. And all of a sudden he hates me. I might keep the guy doesn’t even know me. Hate is a strong word.

matt nappo 51:22
Maybe wavy like me what I would call uncomfortable made uncomfortable by the kind of conversations we see on on social media. Now I will tell you that all three of the guys that who fall into that group he on vocals that I’ve had on the program while they were here. They didn’t mention you and didn’t say anything bad about you at all. But in the chat room, it was lighten up and the questions were asked. Ask him Why do you think James Inman is so easily triggered? Is the word

Unknown Speaker 51:55
emotion?

James Inman 51:55
Yeah, that’s the thing because it’s little it’s Doug’s little shtick that he likes to do. And he thinks that Oh, we’ll fuck with James and we’ll get him all mad. But Doug doesn’t know that. I fucking I know what he’s doing. But I still get to say the shit to his face. Just like, you know, Brett’s like, let’s trigger James. Yeah, trigger me, Brett. I’ll tell everybody what the fuck you did in Austin, when you didn’t have the balls to tell JT the fuck off.

matt nappo 52:26
But see, this is not the way to get people to work back together.

James Inman 52:30
Funny, dude. I think it’s funny. I see. Look, one of the reasons why I didn’t watch Brett’s podcast, because it looked boring. He wasn’t saying anything. I don’t know. Maybe it’s interesting. But you know, if you’re gonna do a podcast, you know, fucking doing the podcast.

matt nappo 52:48
I thought I thought it was one of the funnier ones I’ve had. And I’ve had, I’ve got a lot of funny comedians on the program. I didn’t I don’t know,

James Inman 52:55
maybe I should watch it. But when I started doing Doug’s podcast, me and Doug will get into these arguments. And it was the most downloaded podcast I had. Therefore, why I had the two of the most downloaded Doug Stanhope podcasts because he would bring me on. And we’ve known each other since 1995. And we fucking argue and it’s funny.

matt nappo 53:19
Well, you know, didn’t stand hope have that same kind of relationship with Dane Cook for a while for all those years too. And I don’t know. I don’t ever remember Doug being friends with Dane Cook. He never was he was kind of they were rivals, but they patched it up. That’s what I meant. I mean, so at some point. Yeah, like going back to my point of before you get too old to keep keep the fights going. Keep the conflict going and just very active somehow.

James Inman 53:47
I’ve been trying to bury the hatchet. What are you talking about? Brett won’t even pick up my phone call. What? I’m trying to bury the hatchet.

matt nappo 53:58
gives a fuck or cares. Nobody. Nobody cares. So I’m not sure. Again, I think hate is too strong a word and different. Maybe, you know, I feel like I know some people who don’t like me and then professional comedians and people but I wouldn’t say they hate me. They just wish I’d go away.

James Inman 54:17
Hate is a strong word. To me. It’s just a word. It’s an easy word to say. And like you can have two baskets. You got one baskets got love, like, adore. You know, I think you’re beautiful. This basket over here is got hate aversion. dislike disinterested fucking smells like shit. Those are just words that define what I mean. Words. Do words define reality. Words point to reality. Words are not reality in and of themselves.

matt nappo 54:55
Gotcha. Okay. So I don’t think anybody really hates you. And I think You have a lot of fans out there. And again, the point the reason I’m saying is because people, people who really genuinely do have an affection for you and a great respect for you, as a comedian. Want us to want to see you just say something. That’s not you know,

James Inman 55:15
I remember before I met Doug, I used to hang out with Brody Stevens in Seattle. I was there when Brody Stevens started comedy, and so we became best friends, hung out, helped him write jokes over at his apartment. Then Tina comes along. So it was me, Taina, Yoshi, Josh wolf. It was like the young guns and we all hung out. And I was like the older kind of more experienced comic, and it was given them all pointers, but my point is, when I hung out with Brody, Stevens, we all complemented each other. It would we all watched each other’s show, we get off stage, we’d high fiving each other and Dude, you’re the master? No, you’re the master. And so that was my experience with Brody. I need Doug. Right. Doug is like a curmudgeon he makes he’s critical and he makes fun of everybody. So I’m around Doug and all his friends. Nobody ever compliments anybody. It’s it’s the complete opposite of hanging out with Brody. Stevens. Always like happy hanging out with 30 Stevens, you know, we’re all having fun. We’re all like, we liked each other. You know, here, it’s like fucking everyone’s jealous. Everyone’s angry. Everyone’s like, Oh, you suck are good. Boo Boo. You know, it’s like the like I said, the only person that occasionally will give out a compliment is Andy or Mischka. And that’s it. The rest of them, you know, they’re just, they’re negative. You know, it’s like, fucking, it’s, it’s crazy.

matt nappo 56:49
Well, I’m gonna challenge them all, to give you a compliment. Cuz I definitely know they do respect you as a comedian.

James Inman 56:58
They’re worried that Oh, he’ll get a big head if I compliment him. I’m like, dude, I already think I’m a piece of shit. I don’t need to know. I don’t like when people make fun of me. I’m like, dude, I tell myself that every day. Do you think you could tell? You could say something to me? That would be worse that I say to myself, you know, I don’t think much of myself and people think that I’m egotistical. I’m like,

matt nappo 57:25
well, well, that was kind of why I was a little bit nervous about having you on too, because you remind me a little bit of me and I hate myself. But I know that I had in the past I was I’ve had the same issues with you with people being a little bit misunderstood and been emotional and said some things on on on Twitter and Facebook.

James Inman 57:51
You know what? You wrote something on Twitter? That is what got my attention because you’ve got this this fake name, which is

matt nappo 58:00
my friend Dave Kelly. Yeah. Okay.

James Inman 58:01
All right. All right. When we were when we were like, busting each other’s balls, like Andy made some joke like, I’m not gonna do the altercation Comedy Festival this year. Because I think it’s it’s not they’re not doing it anymore. Something. That was the joke, I think. Yeah. Anyway, so you write. And this is funny, because when I read that, I was like, that’s the first time anybody’s ever said anything like that. You wrote, I wish I had a friend that I was sure would have my back like that in life. Or basically, You’re mocking Andy, you’re like, you guys didn’t have James’s back during the altercation Comedy Festival. That was like the first fucking tweet I’d ever read. That was on my side.

matt nappo 58:51
Wow, it was on my side, too. I think everybody should have each other’s backs. I think people should have each other’s back.

James Inman 58:58
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but it’s like, it’s like at during during that whole art altercation Comedy Festival. All I got were jokes about me how I was the fuckup. And I’m like, dude, you haven’t heard the real story. You know? And when you wrote that, I was like, holy shit. Who is this guy? I can’t believe that somebody actually broke the rules. rule is that you’re supposed to make fun of James you and you’re like, Oh, I’m gonna make fun of Andy for what

matt nappo 59:28
my mission is just to try to diffuse the anger again. I grew up in a household where people were yelling at each other all the time. It makes me feel uncomfortable and I maybe I’m pollyannish I want I want people to get along especially I want what I guess

James Inman 59:42
I want the same thing to what I want is the unbuckles to make fun of each other occasionally, and stop making me the center of every goddamn joke. Like how about Brett you know, make fun of Andy or Andy make fun of Mr. or Miss can make fun of brands. Dinner, or you know, fucking Christine makes fun of Doug. You know, but it’s all if you’re gonna joke about a comedian, they’re gonna fucking joke about me. I’m like, dude, leave me alone. Just like, have somebody else be the center of attention from once.

matt nappo 1:00:15
Well, you know, and that’s an unusual position for a company in the performing arts take what is crazy.

James Inman 1:00:22
Like, it makes me feel like I didn’t even want to do comedy anymore. I mean, I was like, happy when I was hanging out with Brody. Stevens, you know, we were all having fun. Now. It’s just like, fuck it, man. It’s like all the shit I went through with them bubbles and now have the only do is just like, they just make fun of it. And I’m like, Jesus Christ. You guys. Who would? Why would you make fun of the movie that you’re in? Why would you trash? The fucking The only movie that you’re in? Because this is the only movie that Brett’s been in the only movie Christine. Well, Christine was on portlandia. Alright, Andy, it’s the only movie Andy’s been on, you know?

matt nappo 1:01:05
Yeah. Well, a lot of people haven’t been in movies. But I you know what, I appreciate your side of the story, James, and I’m sorry that you feel like you’ve been made the butt of a joke or a victim?

James Inman 1:01:19
Dude, I’m just explaining it to you wanted me to explain it. That’s what my life is like,

matt nappo 1:01:25
I actually thought this was that part of the program would take about the first five minutes. It took a whole hour. Right. I get it. I get it. And I hope we can move on past that. Now. I do want to because some one thing that really interests me about you is I know, you’re very well read on. How do I say government operations, things that stare conspiracy theories and all that stuff. What is your level of interest in in that I do a lot of reading on that. And people want me to study that shit before

James Inman 1:02:02
the internet came up for the, you know, whole, you know, Microsoft boom, where everyone got a computer in like 1996 or something. I had a huge bookshelf I used to just take all I did. Before I had a computer was like three, four times a day, I just hang out at a goddamn used bookstore I bought I bought most of my books at a used bookstore. And so the subjects that I read, or I probably read every fucking half of the books on UFOs, they even find on the shelf. I’ve read almost every, like half of every book that you’ve ever seen on Buddhism. So my subjects were UFOs religion, mysticism, and conspiracy, CIA. I used to live two blocks from a library for a year. And I would just walk down the library and I read every book on the CIA, I could find, you know,

matt nappo 1:02:58
have you ever heard of the Montauk project? Yeah, I knew that guy who wrote that book very well. He was on my show a lot. The first time he was on my show, we were talking about psychotronics. But then the second time he came on the show, he brought his friend out by luck, Ed by like, I’m not sure if it was Allah Ed. But a guy claimed he was on the Philadelphia on the match, which was the Philadelphia Experiment. But the third time they came they brought Duncan Cameron who was supposedly fused with Al bielek on the Philadelphia Experiment boat, so very well steeped in all that kind of stuff.

James Inman 1:03:33
You know how all that started? What whole the whole Philadelphia Experiment?

matt nappo 1:03:40
Maybe y’all call Carlos hell yesterday. My band was called to call us on Monday treat somebody for the UFO book and Morris Jeff’s

James Inman 1:03:48
book. It was Yeah. Morris Jessup. It had all these notes in the book and it was like who wrote these, you know?

matt nappo 1:03:55
Yeah, call out and it turned out the guy Robert, I can’t remember Roberts last name now who who did the whole research on call Allen? He actually lived across the street from call Alan Fogg with the whole time and yeah, so basically caught a call Alan. Yeah. All right. They look like this all the time. And they brought the letters in compared to Wow, that’s the exact same handwriting and looked at. Okay, and so Carl Allen, Carlos. Oh, Yun de who wrote all that stuff started the Philadelphia Experiment. Yeah,

James Inman 1:04:25
yeah. Well, um, you know, one of the things I learned that I never knew was and when people think of the CIA, they think, oh, double Oh, seven, you know, assassins, and, and, and they think flipping elections and going down to Central America and starting wars and shit. A lot of people don’t realize that 50% of what the CIA does is in disinformation is in publishing, they by publishing companies, magazines well before before the internet You know, it was always, you know, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies books. I think there was one scholar That said, the CIA helped publish like over 1000 books, like nonfiction books that you find at the bookshop, you know, the bookstore. Right? Right. So, but most people think, Oh, this isn’t the CIA, don’t they do analysis? And then they also start. Yeah. But people don’t realize just how much disinformation they spread. And, you know, I came out during the church commission, where now they’re asking the head of the CIA, do you have people on your payroll that send in articles to publications? And he’s like, yes. And they’re like, do you have people on your payroll? in the news media, like CBS or ABC? Is I just a second? I like to not answer that right now. Because I’m tired. You know? Well, we’ll discuss that later. You know, so, the CIA, you know, they’ve been in this business of disinformation for since they started in 1947. Right.

matt nappo 1:06:06
I in the early 80s. I was a courier for the CIA with top secret clearance. What? Yeah, really? Yeah. From 1982 to 1986. But 86 Yeah. actually worked for the CIA. Yeah. And the CIA is not supposed to have any interest in domestic affairs. We’re only supposed right exactly, but that’s the seed. They Truman Harry Truman when they signed the the National Security Act that was one of the things that they he got, you know, Allen Dulles to promise you know, you could do all this shit, but don’t do anything in the United States, you know, but since that time, we like found evidence that they have done shit inside the United States. Right, so I want to get your take on this now, lately, the Pentagon’s coming out with a lot of and other Air Force and other entities within our government are coming out and saying a lot of stuff about UFOs now Do you believe Do you believe this stuff they’re saying? Oh, dude, I yes. UFOs exists? They’ve not I’m not asking if they exist. Do you believe the stories the government is telling because you just said they’ve been they’ve been very responsible for misinformation and disinformation. So do you believe the stories that are coming

James Inman 1:07:26
well see disinformation is is part true and part untrue so so when the CIA tells you something like part of it can be true? So they’re probably really are like unexplained craft in in the air? They’ve been? They’ve been looking at this shit since the 50s. You know, they. And so yes, those some of those videos that they released are probably real UFOs.

matt nappo 1:07:53
Yeah. Even be on the air. One of the statements that came out of the Pentagon was that they were in possession of a craft not of this earth, which naza mean, it’s in the air means they have physical craft remains or acquit. Do you believe that?

James Inman 1:08:09
Well see, in 19 I think it was 1947. That’s when Roswell happened. And so that’s been pretty well documented. And since then, there’s other crashes that have happened, that there’s eyewitnesses there’s there’s like, like all kinds of so there was like one in Mexico, there was one outside of Chillicothe, Missouri. There’s there’s been a lot of strange eyewitness reports of there was a woman like so these were were like this, this, this woman and her grandmother and her son, they all got like sunburn. And it was radiation. And they saw this diamond shaped craft like it looked like it wasn’t really it was about ready to crash or something. And it was kind of hovering. And it was going real slow and there was like, like six or seven helicopters flying around it because we can track anything in the sky. We’ve been able to with satellites and and radar and shit whenever there’s an unknown object. We have to know what the fuck that thing is. Why they scramble jets to find out what is it It could be a it could be a plane from another country, you know, that have its has its transponder turned off or whatever, you know. So that’s one of the reasons why they they they know there’s so much shit in the air. They they also used to have, you know, these planes, a lot of these bombers that used to go on those bombing runs where they keep the plane up in the air, just during the Cold War, you know, so they’d have a short period The time that they had to attack well on those planes where the gun cameras and so they’ve I’m sure they’ve got all kinds of fucking really good film of unexplained craft that it’s not Russian not Chinese. It’s not American and it’s moving fast.

matt nappo 1:10:18
Yeah. So I’m having somebody on the program Friday at 1pm or I want to make sure I get her I think so Myra Mercy is a name. Oh, yeah. Oh, my mercy. She’s claimed to have been abducted. And it and had some, according to some physical proof of it. Anyway, so that’s it one, one o’clock Friday. I’m just curious now not what you know, but what you believe about extraterrestrials? What is what? What do you do you believe there are extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth and walk the walk on on the earth in our lifetime?

James Inman 1:10:55
Yeah, yeah, I think there’s, like 200 million stars in our galaxy, right? What, eight, nine planets around our star, our sun is just a star. So all it has to happen is there’s probably some planets out there that can sustain life, and they have intelligent life. And those those people are able to build crafts that are able to travel long distances, just like we build ships, and we came from, you know, Spain, and we got in a goddamn ship. It took a few days, but we finally got to America, you know, so and that’s, you know, heck, we only invented the airplane 100 years ago, and now we got jets flying around. Right?

matt nappo 1:11:43
If you believe in the moon landing, and I do yeah. 66 years between the Wright brothers and Neil Armstrong.

James Inman 1:11:50
Yes, we really did go to the moon. I’m all the cost really happened. The earth is round. It’s not flat. I get I hate it when people like lump me in with all the other conspiracy theorists. You know, when this, this COVID-19 thing happened at right when it happened, it sounded like a leaked bio weapon to me and I started looking around. I told I didn’t say anything on social media, because I knew they’re banning people. Anybody that started saying that, you know, COVID might be a leak. bioweapon did get banned on Twitter, fucking YouTube or Facebook. So I kept my mouth shut. And I told my parents I told my, my girlfriend I told all my friends. I was like, dude, I think this elite bio weapon, and they looked at me like I was fucking crazy. year later. That’s what they’re saying.

matt nappo 1:12:39
No, that’s not exactly what they’re saying. People are still saying what it is, is a gaming function accident. Where? Because the original? No, no, no gain of function happened in the United States. I used to be in pathology too. So I know about this stuff. That gain of function was outlawed by the Obama administration. Domestically, they put it over in China, but we still funded it. Right gate gain of function means it was studying the advancement of the disease within bats and mammals and one of the bat better technician, the technician went home from work that day, and spread it to everybody. That’s that’s not necessarily a bio weapon. That’s it.

James Inman 1:13:20
Right, right, you’re right. It’s not an actual bio weapon. But the reason why they have BSL four Labs is they tell people Oh, we’re trying to study these viruses, but every technology, every fucking technology, whether it’s you know, you know, something algorithm, or it could be some technology for you know, the internet or network. All of that shit is used by the goddamn, my phone is going off.

matt nappo 1:13:53
It’s fine. Well, that’s exactly why we outlawed it here, because the probability of that accident happened was extremely high. And we knew it. But But I don’t know what

James Inman 1:14:02
I mean is, I guess what I’m trying to say is every technology is used by the Pentagon, the military, whatever fucking is. So if we got the technology to go into a virus and change the goddamn DNA, or add gain a function to make it a more dangerous virus, you’re telling me the military wouldn’t be interested in that?

matt nappo 1:14:24
Of course, they would be interested in it, but I don’t think the current the one that we responded to, was that at all I think it was again a function accident that we knew any fool could see happen. And it’s like, you know, you’re driving down a car where you give a drunk guy the keys, you know, he’s gonna crash into something. Yeah,

James Inman 1:14:43
but see, I mean, I’m not done, man. I mean, these these, these people in the military, they know what could possibly happen. You know, an enemy could possibly spread a bio weapon. So then what do they do? They have to come up with a vaccine. That’s why these BSL three and BSL four labs, they, they fuck with the virus and then they also create a vaccine for that virus, right. So that’s where they come up with the technology for these vaccines. So if you’re dumb enough to not take a goddamn vaccine, when they suspect it might be a goddamn gain of function leak, I won’t say by a weapon, a leaked virus from the Wu Han virology Institute. I mean, come on, this is the time to take a goddamn vaccine.

matt nappo 1:15:37
All right. Well, I’m glad we cleared that up. Any other big conspiracy things that you think need to be known about that are going on right now?

James Inman 1:15:51
Oh, I’m the most the thing that I’m most interested in is probably the, the COVID-19 thing. But before that, um, you know, I think it was a little odd. The whole attack on the on the Congress or whatever the January 6. insurrection, I think was a little strange. It’s a little hard for me to believe that our intelligence agencies, our Pentagon, and all of our security services, had no idea something like that was gonna happen. You know, I

matt nappo 1:16:30
knew it was gonna happen.

James Inman 1:16:31
Yeah. I knew it was gonna happen. I think they went ahead and they I think they knew that these guys didn’t have guns and they were gonna go there and cause a lot of shit. Okay, well, I guess like, this is where I’m getting I’m getting to you’re asking me another conspiracy theory I’m interested in is I think that whole q anon thing was a disinformation psyop. You know, I think that what what q anon is, is like they mix in some truth and some complete bullshit. And they they get a bunch of people believe in it. So this group of people who like guns end up it what it does, is it discredits groups in organizations? If you look at what they did in the 60s with, you know, trying to discredit, you know, a Martin Luther King, you know, trying to discredit the weatherman or any of these movements that happened in the 60s. That’s how you stop a movement from growing, you know, what, you know, an interesting thing. I always believe that, um, that Charles Manson, that whole thing was to put an end to the hippie movement. And, and so I always thought that maybe I was like a nutbag for believing that, that, you know, Charles Manson could be some kind of a, you know, CIA stooge to fuck up the hippie movement. Turns out, there’s a guy that just wrote a

matt nappo 1:18:03
book, Tom O’Neill. Yeah,

James Inman 1:18:05
yeah, it’s called chaos, where he talks about all these strange things that were where somebody was always there to help out Charles Manson, you know, and he gets out of jail early, and he goes down to Mexico and, and they were gonna fuckin they didn’t arrest him for the longest time. That’s the guy you need to interview is that

matt nappo 1:18:25
I I’ve had, I’ve asked him my fourth time, believe me, I’m on that guy spent 20 years researching that book, right. But there was a book in 1980 that came out Paul Watkins, who was within the Manson circle, who wrote a similar book that books been buried, and you can’t even find it anymore. I read it in 1982. And about the inside of the Manson family about how he started in the, the hate district with the CIA using him and for misinformation purposes really got that and infiltrating the hippies. Yeah. And, and Paul kind of nailed that in his book in 1980. And I know, Tom kind of makes some reference to that. And I think he got inspired by that his book goes much further, I want to get him on here because he knows all the stuff.

James Inman 1:19:13
Believe the CIA was, was trying to infiltrate or was or had the Jim Jones, you know, group infiltrated, like that was some kind of psyop, you know, to stop. Because Christianity in Central America and South America, it was kind of taken a left wing. There was this thing called the, what was it called? There’s a type of Christianity that’s like a socialist version of Christianity, liberation theology was growing down in Central America. And so a lot of these Catholic priests were becoming like Marxist, you know, and so the theory is that they sent down Jim Jones, who was this guy Mixing socialism with Christianity. And he does this giant suicide thing. So like nobody ever wants to mix socialism with Christianity ever again. Well,

matt nappo 1:20:13
that’s only one john, john Sam for you if you’re counting references to Andy and is 666 John’s Right, right. That’s a pretty wild conspiracy theory. But I’ve already I’ve already exposed a little of myself here tonight about the CIA, CIA. Talking to a CIA agent. I wasn’t an agent. I was a courier. Yeah, I was just bringing envelopes that stuff like yeah, this whole podcast is here to discredit me. Right. But I also told you of my work in pathology, but I also worked in a cult and worked for a cult and I’ve had several cult members on the program, including people who were Yeah, yeah, I work for a cult that was a healing cult. It was basically a four year school where they teach you to hands on the healing butts hands over healing while you’re moaning stuff in the shop. But, but they the leader of the cult channel that a guide from Atlanta is called Hey, when I was the audio visual technician, meaning, you know, videotape in audio, and every time you go into chance, if you’d be talking as Hey, went for it, and for some reason Hey, when we sounded Asian was a list he’d be talking about in Canada and she’d open one eye and look at me like my mic, make it louder, and go and go right back into for 1200 people that really thought you worked on what they called the the goddess every Sunday morning she had a god

James Inman 1:21:38
that’s depressing. You know, some of those Colts in some of those, those wacky religions, they fuck it up for real? Like, I study religion. Like, I’ve been studying the doubt aging for years. I’ve studied Buddhism for years. Because there’s a couple crazy people like Jim Jones, like Charles Manson, or like this eeling called the urine. Does it mean that all religions are bullshit?

matt nappo 1:22:05
I would agree that I you know, I’m, I’m really open to the idea open minded to the idea of faith and all this kind of stuff. But I think well, religion, any organ, anytime we get organized about stuff, it kind of becomes corrupt people, people can operate with that corruption

James Inman 1:22:21
I never think of it is it’s like we’re we only know we’re like, we’re like a fish. And we’re like a goldfish in a little goldfish bowl, we don’t really know what it’s like over in the east, you know, over in Asia with Buddhism and Taoism, they look at things completely different than we do. So when you say, you know, America has some of the dumbest Christian churches that are nowhere near what Christ taught, we all know that, but you know, over in the East in Asia, you know, it’s all about the, they don’t really care about the world, they’re, they’re more interested in the mind, like what’s going on inside your own mind. So a lot of the for Buddhism, they don’t even have a preacher, you know, they just okay, you want to be a Buddhist monk. Okay, sit down, meditate on nothingness for eight hours, there’s no God to believe in, there’s no, there’s no pastor or, you know, it’s like, you’re stuck with yourself. You have to learn how to meditate. And so there’s this it’s, it’s everything’s turned around in, in the religions of the East. They’re more concerned with psychology than they are with, like stupid laws, you know, whether you know, it’s wrong for gay people get married or abortions wrong, you know, that doesn’t even they don’t even care, you know?

matt nappo 1:23:50
Yeah, I wouldn’t argue against that. What I would say is, there’s no organization over there, you’re talking about the guy who paid the monks up in the top of Mount Everest. I there’s no real organization there of like, you know, Vatican’s, and whatever organization I serve, I mean,

James Inman 1:24:06
the Buddha he lived until he was 90. So he created the Sangha, which is the order of monks and be a monk you have to follow these rules. If you break the rule. They kick your ass out. Unlike the Catholic Church, you know, he’d start fucking kids. They’d like they know them. I’m not

matt nappo 1:24:25
sure that’s against the rules. I’m not sure that’s against the rules. I just think it’s an unwritten rule.

James Inman 1:24:30
Yeah, it’s every Catholic priest has to take a vow of celibacy. But Buddhist monks, not every monk has to take a vow of celibacy, because they know that it’s hard as fuck to never have sex ever again. So not all the monks, you know, take that vow. If you take a vow of celibacy. That means you got to stick to that vow.

matt nappo 1:24:55
I get it. Yeah, so there’s a lot of that stuff but I think all in all, it If we look at the religions, that mainstream religions that we talk about people joining them, and I don’t like, I want to be open minded and respectful of people’s ideas and beliefs, but when you get to organize I really have a problem with with all.

James Inman 1:25:16
Yeah, I mean, the thing of it is I, when people say, organized religion, I’m like, there’s like, there’s all kinds of organizations. You know, it’s like, I don’t really know what people are talking about the what the only thing I know about religion is my parents. They never sent us to church. My parents never talked about when you grew up in the Bible Belt, right? Yeah, I was, I was raised in Kansas City. But when I was growing up, they never sent us to church. They never talked about the Bible. They rarely talked about God. And so I found out later that they wanted us to, like, decide on our own what we were, what religion we were, or if we believe in God or not. So I didn’t start right studying religion. I didn’t go to church. Basically, I just went to bookstores. And I started reading every book on religion that I can find, because I figured if I went to a church that have their own doctrine, you know, so I just wanted to learn, like, what is basic Christianity? 101? You know, what is basic Buddhism one on one? What are the, what are the core principles of this philosophy, theology, or whatever, you know, and so that’s kind of, you know, when I talk about religion, I’m talking about the bookstore, the section that says the religion section where you can find the Bhagavad Gita, you can find the doubt Asian, you can find the dhammapada or the Aponte shots. You know, that’s what I love. I just love the the ancient mystical texts. That’s what I like.

matt nappo 1:26:54
So a lot of comedians are atheists, and I know we’re getting better. We’re way over time. And we’re gonna wrap it up soon. But I want to get your take on this. A lot of comedians are atheists, and I can understand that. I mean, you look at the myths and stuff about Wow, God is supposed to be. But now science is saying, No, a lot of scientists are saying some very smart scientists are saying, not only is there a God, but there’s God is a computer geek with the laptop who’s created this whole simulation? Right? What we learned universe? What, what do you what is your?

James Inman 1:27:29
Well, I mean, about what for when I first heard the simulated Universe Theory, I was like, that’s nothing new or different. The Buddha talked about the same thing. 2500 years ago, basically, the Buddha said that all life is an illusion. And, you know, all this stuff is impermanent. So the only thing that really matters is your own mind and how you perceive the world. Your own perceptions are what’s important, because this world is always changing. You know, you, your parents grow old and die, you know, your girlfriend, she might may not love you anymore, she’s gone. You get a new girlfriend, people come and go, people die. The world. I mean, buildings get old and they fucking tumble. I mean, there’s nothing in this world that is permanent. So it’s it’s it’s illusory. It’s it’s a lot like an illusion, even though it seems real. It’s not real, like a million years from now the earth is going to fall into the sun. So, um, I guess, what was your question

matt nappo 1:28:36
about simulation theory, whether you believed in it or not. And it

James Inman 1:28:40
sounds like the simulated Universe Theory sounds like Buddhism, where everything’s an illusion. It’s sort of like in in Hinduism, they have a concept called Maya, and aura. Laila, Laila is the dance of the universe. So whether you call it a simulation created by computer or whether you call it Laila, you’re putting up word, you’re trying to define something. And basically, it’s all the same shit. You know, it’s this fake world.

matt nappo 1:29:13
So this idea of everything being an illusion, and it’s whatever your mind decides is an illusion is reality. Is it you subscribe to that.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:24
Think? Well. I know. I mean, it’s your mind creates reality. You know, a lot of people think that’s bullshit. They’re like, you can’t, you know, lift up a glass of water with your mind. It’s not like that. It’s more like you in your mind, you have the power to choose what you what your perceptions are. You have the power to choose what you focus on. You can sit down and meditate. Or you can you could it every event that happens in the world, it’s up to you on how you determine how you look at that experience, you know. So you’re, you have, a lot of people don’t realize how much power they have in their mind, just with that little bit of freedom. Now, if you’re psychotic or mentally ill, they have no control over their mind, you know, but, but the Hindus believe that deep deep down inside, they’re still this self, they call it the self with a capital S. It’s like the soul or, you know, the spirit or, you know, the deep, deep mind. There’s something in us that is never changing. It’s always there. It’s immutable, immemorial, indestructible. And so, the Hindus believe that God is within.

matt nappo 1:30:57
Right, okay, now, wrapping this up, bringing it back. 360 completely what you just said, your mind is in control of your reality, all that stuff. I happen to agree with much of that and try to practice it as much as possible. But bringing that back to your situation with the unbuckles and your reality that you perceive that everybody hates you. And once you’re on the outside, kick, kick. Don’t you have the power in your mind to just let go of that perception? I’m also kind of like, part of my mind is joking to dude. Okay. I started by saying, I don’t know when comedians are joking anymore. I become. And Brandon did this to me more than anybody. Oh, yeah. He just fucking mindfuck me so much that I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real, right?

James Inman 1:31:43
Yeah, Brendan. Brendan is he’s a big fan of pranks. And so it’s Doug. So Doug’s a big fan of pranks. So I kind of what I do is like, like, I do a judo trick where I use truth, to fuck with his pranks, you know? Because to me, you know, what’s real? is actually funnier than than his little fake prank. Gotcha. That explain it to you.

matt nappo 1:32:10
Yes. Yeah. So I do appreciate you taking an hour and a half to spend this night with me. I’m sure you had better things you could have been doing, than hanging out with me tonight. But you You’re a good sport. And you came here. And I think, you know, dispelled a lot of my misunderstandings about you from what I’ve read on on social media and I hope we we’ve done you some kind of service. I want to ask though, and I don’t think I don’t have a lot of confidence that I can do this. But if I can get one of those guys to come on, and talk to you live on a program and me kind of be like a crossfire moderator would you be open to that?

James Inman 1:32:48
Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you this. They won’t do it. You’re not gonna get lucky. I really, there’s no way in hell, you’re gonna get Brett Erickson to talk to me on a podcast about what happened at the altercation comedy festival? I doubt if you know fuckin Andy and even do it. There’s no way.

matt nappo 1:33:11
I never say no to everything. But I agree. I agree that it’s extremely, extremely unlikely. Yeah.

James Inman 1:33:19
about it, dude. Last thing he wants to talk about because, you know, he does want to look bad, because he knows that if people find out the story, and they’re like, Are you kidding me? The disease can be a laughingstock.

matt nappo 1:33:33
I agree, it probably won’t happen. But I think the the numbers that that program would draw would be pretty big. And

James Inman 1:33:42
the only reason I keep bringing it up is because one day I want Brett to learn how to laugh at himself, and and accept that he fucked up. Because this time, all have actually fucked up because none of them really stuck together and said, I don’t want to do this show without James, you know that none of them had the balls to do that. So it’s not just Brett’s fault. It’s Andy. It’s Christine. It’s Mischka. None of them stood up for me. They could have said something. You know.

matt nappo 1:34:13
It’s like on the waterfront.

James Inman 1:34:15
Yeah. Right, Brett, you know, he totally is my brother. Yeah. He’s like, this isn’t all my fault. Like he’s right. It’s not all his fault. It’s It’s fucking all of their fault for

matt nappo 1:34:28
I’ve been. I got kicked out of the band that I started over a girl one time, so I can understand how you feel about that. Yeah, I don’t

James Inman 1:34:38
like who’s kicked out. This isn’t even a band. It’s just all I want to do. One show? How hard can it be?

matt nappo 1:34:46
Oh, it can be very difficult. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I do appreciate your giving me your side of story. I look forward to maybe having you back on sometime. I would love that. Yeah, have you back up. We’ll talk about everything. But the envelope balls There you go. I think we got that off my chest and I appreciate everybody coming by I do thank you for stopping by and, you know, facing all the questions and not dodging any of them and telling me like, like, you know, thank you. Alright. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Bye for now. All right, James Amen, folks. You heard his story. I’d love to hear what your take on tonight is you can write to me at info at mind dog tv.com. I gotta check this banner off one second. There we go. Ah, interesting to hear James’s take on all this stuff. And I know that they all the chat rooms were lit up even the twitch chat room, which is a little bit different. We don’t usually see that going on. So I want to thank everybody for coming by. I’m curious as to what your take on tonight’s program again, write to me at info at mindful tv.com I didn’t read my sponsor tonight. fundwise capital, I gotta say they stood up and they were ready to sponsor tonight’s program if I were to read the stuff, and they said, and actually when I called him and said, You know the sponsor drop me tonight. Can you guys fill in? They said sure. And it says Why did they want to drop you? And I said basically, what the comedian that was having on was too risky. And they said I don’t care if you haven’t James in Milan, and I’d stopped for a second and then I heard him laughing He said I know you haven’t I watched I watched your schedule so they had no problem to fundwise Capital good booth for them. The link will be in the description anyway. I’m not going to read their head but their Stand Up Guys speaking of stand up, guys. They don’t care. I mean, as long as you’re standing by us, they stand by me. Good people from Lowe’s capital. Tomorrow, I got Joshua Shea talking about porn addiction at 1pm how to beat your porn addiction. And to me how to beat your porn addiction. If you want to beat it, stop beating it. Pretty simple. 1pm Joshua Shea how to beat your porn addiction. Till then I’m Matt nappo for the mind dog TV podcast. Thanks for coming, folks. Have a great rest of your night and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

10 Steps You Can Take To Slow Down Aging

Aging is a complicated procedure that entails many regions of your body. It’s not likely that any individual product or tablet should treatment all the ailments of getting older. However, there are things you may try this not handiest will assist you age greater slowly however will enhance your quality of existence. Your satisfactory wager for a long and healthful existence is to:

1. Eat a numerous and wholesome diet. Include masses of fruits, veggies and complete grain foods. Fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium, and nutrients all play a part in retaining your frame functioning at its excellent. Drink masses of fluids to keep healthful skin and flush out waste. Eating proper will assist you preserve a healthful weight.

2. Exercise every day. Exercise improves appetite, makes healthful bones, gives you a better emotional outlook and improves digestion and circulation. Exercise makes you more potent and allows you lose weight.

Three. Seeking activate medical care whilst you’re ill or injured. Listen to your body and deal with any little troubles earlier than they become large troubles. Get screened for sicknesses together with most cancers and coronary heart disorder.

4. Use sunscreen to prevent sunburn. Professionals agree that one of the most considerable elements contributing to growing old is persistent irritation of the pores and skin.

Five. Quit smoking and keep away from secondhand smoke. Smoking has very unfavourable effects and dramatically will increase your risk of getting cancer and coronary heart sickness.

6. Manage stress. Stress is part of everyday life. Develop methods that will help you cope and modify to situations in your lifestyles which could cause you strain. The situation isn’t the trouble…its how you react to it.

7. Look for methods to enhance average properly-being and enthusiasm for life. Be curios and creative as a way to encourage you to research new matters. You can also use humor and laughter to help you age nicely and live long.

Eight. Keep strong relationships. Maintaining near ties in your family and pals are essential to wholesome getting old.

9. Don’t allow fears and issues dominate your existence. A worried mind isn’t at peace and robs you of zest and electricity that you need to preserve youthfulness.

10. Keep cells younger with antioxidants. Antioxidants are observed in a full-variety of fruits and greens, as well as in some meat, like fish. Although, our bodies produce its own antioxidants, the extent of product declines over time because of environmental factors and thru the growing older process. You also can take anti oxidant supplements or even anti oxidant teas.

Do all you can to be wholesome and in doing so that you will age slower. If you have got any questions about products that declare to gradual or reverse ageing ask your physician. He or she allow you to kind thru the statistics and get the records.

10 Steps to Help You Get a Great Night’s Sleep

How did you sleep remaining night?

I had a outstanding night’s sleep, but when I woke up I concept what a powerful effect a wonderful night’s sleep has to your metabolism, and I wanted to percentage with you some ideas approximately how to get a better night time’s sleep.

Now my concept of a wonderful night’s sleep is one in that you sleep soundly and wake fully refreshed and full of strength. During a tremendous night’s sleep you rarely, if ever, consider your problems, your by no means reflect onconsideration on the information, and also you typically fall asleep inside 10 mins of your head hitting the pillow (with positive mind to your thoughts).

Also, a key element in figuring out in case you had a notable night’s sleep is in case you dream ‘wonderful’ or ‘fun’ dreams. Because if your night time complete of ‘awful’ or ‘worrying’ goals then you definately’re most truely tossing and turning during the night time and NOT getting a "restful" sleep.

Why is it so important to get pleasant sleep each and each night? Your frame and your thoughts destroy down and get wiped out from strain for the duration of the day.

The handiest time that your frame and your mind restore themselves and rejuvenate is whilst you’re dozing. But it’s critical to be aware here that "restful" sleep is the important thing. Tossing and turning all night or waking up every few hours isn’t considered restful sleep. I lately read a piece of writing that made it to my studies middle that stated the facts about how snoring outcomes your sleep and your health. People who snore have a tendency to disrupt their sleep, on average, three hundred instances each night – now it really is now not a restful night time’s sleep! Now reflect onconsideration on it this way for a second – if you’ve been underneath strain recently, or in case you’re mattress sucks, or if you simply simple have not been capable of sleep properly for the past few weeks (or months), then you haven’t given your mind or your body the time it desires to restore itself.

So you certainly begin each and each day a bit bit less centered and less metabolically wholesome than yesterday.

Don’t try to trap up to your sleep. People tell me all of the time that they realize that they don’t get sufficient sleep at some point of the week – however they "seize up" at the weekends. Let me positioned an quit to that myth right now. That does no longer paintings!!! Your body and your mind need a ordinary snoozing pattern to repair and rejuvenate – without it you’re virtually deteriorating yourself as opposed to re-energizing your self.

So what’s taken into consideration sufficient sleep?

Generally talking, everyone should try to get eight hours of restful sleep. Now in case you consume a completely healthy food plan and exercise nicely, and supply your self a few intellectual breaks throughout the day, and if you sleep like a toddler and wake up fully refreshed each day, you then is probably the type of person who can break out with less sleep – perhaps 6 hours every night.

On the alternative hand, in case you revel in first rate quantities of stress each day (mental or physical), then you will want extra than eight hours. A marathon runner as an instance, tends to position his/her frame thru a variety of stress each day – that individual wishes more than just eight hours because their body desires extra restore time than ordinary. The equal holds proper for the individual going via massive mental pressure as properly.

So what can you do to help facilitate a better night’s sleep for yourself and those round you?

10 Steps To Help You Get A Great Night’s Sleep:

1. Make a list of what you need to do the following day, write it all down and hold that paper and pen close to your bedside if you think about something else you need to do. When you write things down you’re giving your mind the signal that it now not wishes to consider the ones tasks.

2. Don’t watch tv or pay attention to the radio (particularly the news) earlier than retiring for the night – and without a doubt do not fall asleep with the TV or radio on.

Three. Read some inspirational or self-growth cloth for at the least 30 minutes previous to bed. Your intention is to fill your thoughts with inspirational mind earlier than falling asleep in order that the final mind you have got earlier than drifting off are uplifting thoughts – as opposed to the annoying mind that most people go to sleep considering.

Four. Make certain the room that you’re sound asleep in is as darkish a room as possible – the body is made to sleep while it is darkish out – the darker the room the extra ability for a deep sleep.

Five. Make the room as silent as viable – flip off all electric gadgets and ask others in the residence to be as quiet as they may be.

6. Don’t consume for at the least three hours before going to mattress. When there’s undigested meals within the belly, your frame is compelled to consciousness on digesting that meals in place of being targeted on repairing your frame and thoughts – which is what sleep is all approximately! The frame become designed to digest meals quality whilst moving – no longer while laying down.

7. Try to visit bed at approximately 10:00 pm and unsleeping at about 6:00 am. In Ayurvedic remedy it is believed that there are cycles which are the most conducive for positive sports. Going to mattress at 10:00 pm and arising at 6:00 am seems to permit the frame to relaxation the deepest, rejuvenate the most, and provide the man or woman the maximum strength for the duration of the day.

Eight. Don’t take tablets or vitamins/herbs which might be supposed that will help you sleep (unless required via your physician). Most of those synthetic slumbering aids do not anything extra than deaden your senses – the intention of ‘sleep’ is to give your frame the time and method to repair itself and prepare for the coming day. When you drug your self to sleep, each machine on your frame is bogged down, which include all the ones structures that are accountable for repairing you.

9. Make sure that there’s a fresh air deliver in the room. The air interior is said to be some of the maximum poisonous air round. When you sleep, you are simplest capable of breath inside the air that surrounds you on your enclosed bedroom. Try beginning a window (if it is cold out of doors then just open the window a crack). The fresh air that is available in even as you sleep will assist your body repair itself due to the fact you will have get right of entry to to cleanser, extra oxygenated air.

10. During the day, do 60 mins of mild exercising. If you do not have time to do 60 minutes in a row, then destroy it up into 2 – 30 minute sessions, or 3 – 20 minute session, or 6 – 10 minute periods — simply get a full 60 mins in. The high-quality workout when talking about popular fitness and preparing your body for a remarkable night’s sleep is on foot.

I wish you the best night’s sleep tonight and every

Rick Doblin Tells Rogan About His DMT Realization About Hitler

Richard Elliot Doblin is an American drug activist and executive who is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

He tells Joe Rogan about a DMT experience where he had a revelation about Hitler.

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