Episode 108 - Jesse Thorn

Episode 108 • Released September 14, 2010 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Guest:Really?

00:00:08Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:09Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:12Guest:Pow!

00:00:12Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:14Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Guest:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Guest:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest:With Marc Maron.

00:00:24Marc:Okay, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:28Marc:What the fuck nicks?

00:00:29Marc:How about what the fuck nuts I'm getting now?

00:00:32Marc:I'm not getting what the fuck nuts.

00:00:33Marc:I don't have what the fuck nuts.

00:00:34Marc:I'm calling you what the fuck nuts.

00:00:35Marc:That ain't a bad one.

00:00:37Marc:Just keep sending them.

00:00:38Marc:And by the way, I do read all the emails even if I don't respond to you.

00:00:42Marc:I read them and they come up here and there.

00:00:44Marc:They come up on the live shows and I take note of what you say.

00:00:48Marc:Even if it's shitty and mean.

00:00:50Marc:Lately, getting a little flack about my gal, Jessica,

00:00:54Marc:Some people are piping up, piping in, piping in, chipping in.

00:00:58Marc:What are they doing?

00:00:59Marc:They're getting involved.

00:01:00Marc:They're there.

00:01:01Marc:They're being a bit intrusive and critical of my relationship with this new girl that I'm with.

00:01:05Marc:Look, I I'm not thrilled about who I am.

00:01:08Marc:I'm looking.

00:01:08Marc:It seems that I find girls or they find me.

00:01:11Marc:And a couple of things happen.

00:01:12Marc:They get they're very intense.

00:01:14Marc:They're frenetic.

00:01:15Marc:They're they're usually inspired and a little crazy and really smart.

00:01:19Marc:And then they say, you know, my father's an asshole.

00:01:21Marc:And I go, oh, well, I can't.

00:01:23Marc:You can fill in.

00:01:24Marc:For a while.

00:01:27Marc:Look, you can have all the things.

00:01:29Marc:You can have a guy that's similar to your dad and you can have sex with him.

00:01:34Marc:What?

00:01:35Marc:You had sex with your father.

00:01:36Marc:Oh, that's horrible.

00:01:37Marc:But kind of hot.

00:01:38Marc:Am I wrong?

00:01:39Marc:I'm sorry.

00:01:39Marc:Am I being insensitive?

00:01:40Marc:Don't cry.

00:01:41Marc:Let's go have some dinner.

00:01:42Marc:Look.

00:01:43Marc:I don't know really what I'm doing.

00:01:44Marc:And I appreciate you guys.

00:01:46Marc:I appreciate your concern.

00:01:47Marc:Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are.

00:01:49Marc:I didn't think I would be 46 years old and still, you know, going out to diners at one in the morning after shows talking about stuff.

00:01:56Marc:I'm getting old and tired a little bit.

00:02:00Marc:But you know what?

00:02:01Marc:I don't mind it.

00:02:02Marc:I don't mind it.

00:02:03Marc:This is the life I've chosen.

00:02:04Marc:This is the life I live.

00:02:05Marc:I don't have kids.

00:02:06Marc:A lot of my friends have kids.

00:02:08Marc:I don't know what I would do with them.

00:02:10Marc:So, you know, I'm dating a relatively young person.

00:02:13Marc:And I'm having a good time when we're not fighting.

00:02:16Marc:But I seem to like the fighting, and I'm trying to work that shit out.

00:02:21Marc:I started therapy last week.

00:02:23Marc:I went to one session.

00:02:25Marc:It was pretty good.

00:02:27Marc:We'll see what happens.

00:02:29Marc:Jesse Thorne is on the show today from the Sound of Young America, who was a great help to me in starting this show and has his own wonderful shows.

00:02:37Marc:Jordan Jesse Goh, Sound of Young America.

00:02:39Marc:And I'm looking forward to talking to Jesse here in the garage.

00:02:45Marc:All right.

00:02:45Marc:Also, getting a lot of input about the cold brewed coffee.

00:02:48Marc:Talked briefly about the cold brewed coffee.

00:02:50Marc:And people are like, wow, okay, you mentioned it.

00:02:52Marc:Well, what the fuck is it?

00:02:53Marc:How does it work?

00:02:54Marc:How do you make it?

00:02:55Marc:I literally, it took a couple of jars, many filterings.

00:02:58Marc:It was like I was making a methamphetamine in there.

00:03:02Marc:Here's the recipe I got.

00:03:03Marc:This is what I got.

00:03:03Marc:If you want to try this, you take about what I took was two cups of ground, just coffee dot co-op coffee, reanimator blend or use WTF blend.

00:03:12Marc:Grind that shit up.

00:03:13Marc:Two cups of medium ground coffee.

00:03:15Marc:Put that in a jar, a big jar, then put nine cups of water into the jar, cold water.

00:03:20Marc:And I let it sit.

00:03:20Marc:I shook it up and I let it sit overnight.

00:03:23Marc:OK, and then after that, after it sits for 12 hours, run it through a sieve.

00:03:28Marc:Or run it through cheesecloth in a sieve.

00:03:30Marc:Do that twice.

00:03:31Marc:I ran it through a sieve and then I ran it through a cone filter to clean out all the grinds.

00:03:36Marc:And then you just throw that in a pitcher, put it in the fridge.

00:03:38Marc:And what you do is you use that as a concentrate.

00:03:41Marc:Like you put half a cup of that or three quarters of a cup of that water and ice.

00:03:45Marc:Then some dude told me to make coffee ice cubes.

00:03:48Marc:So I fucking made coffee ice cubes.

00:03:50Marc:That was crazy.

00:03:51Marc:I had like concentrated coffee ice cubes and this coffee, this cold brew, the cold brewed iced coffee, smooth as shit.

00:03:57Marc:And it's got a lot of body to it.

00:03:59Marc:It's really a treat, but it's sort of a pain in the ass and a bit of a mess to make.

00:04:02Marc:So there you go.

00:04:03Marc:That's that recipe.

00:04:04Marc:I know it was important and pressing.

00:04:06Marc:What else?

00:04:07Marc:Slow down, dude.

00:04:09Marc:Slow the fuck down.

00:04:11Marc:I mean, for Christ's sake, it's nighttime here.

00:04:14Marc:Mark, you're talking to yourself out loud.

00:04:17Marc:Yeah, that's what I do.

00:04:18Marc:I do that.

00:04:20Marc:That's what this is.

00:04:21Marc:That's what this podcast is.

00:04:22Marc:It's me talking to myself out loud.

00:04:24Marc:No, but you're talking to you.

00:04:26Marc:You're not talking to the audience right now.

00:04:28Marc:And now you're engaged in a full conversation with yourself.

00:04:31Marc:Shut the fuck up.

00:04:33Marc:Why do you got to be so judgmental?

00:04:34Marc:Dude, it's just weird.

00:04:35Marc:And just be quiet.

00:04:38Marc:Okay, because I'm doing the show.

00:04:40Marc:OK, listen, I audition for Curb Your Enthusiasm.

00:04:44Marc:Finally, I know some of you know that Jeff Garland said that he was going to set me up with that.

00:04:48Marc:I don't know if he did or not, but I did go in.

00:04:50Marc:It was a little weird how it works.

00:04:53Marc:So maybe I'll give you the inside line on how it works.

00:04:56Marc:How it works is you go to the audition.

00:05:00Marc:They have a little little pieces of paper with the character you'll play in the situation you're in.

00:05:04Marc:So there were several pieces of paper.

00:05:06Marc:There was emergency room doctor.

00:05:07Marc:There was guy who got who got his computer stolen.

00:05:11Marc:There was black guy just said black guy.

00:05:15Marc:So it was me.

00:05:16Marc:I was either reading for emergency room doctor or a computer guy is what it was.

00:05:23Marc:Computer guy.

00:05:23Marc:And I saw this on what I on the description that I got from my management.

00:05:28Marc:But it just said computer guy or emergency room doctor didn't have the description of the situation.

00:05:33Marc:So some of the people that I saw there was kind of cool.

00:05:36Marc:Well, I saw Jeff Ross and Eddie Pepitone.

00:05:38Marc:It was nice to see them, but I know them.

00:05:40Marc:And to be honest with you, Pepitone, little pompous at the audition.

00:05:45Marc:Little detached.

00:05:47Marc:Like, oh, you're here too.

00:05:48Marc:Yeah, I'm an actor.

00:05:49Marc:And your name again, Marc Maron?

00:05:51Marc:Yeah, little distant.

00:05:53Marc:You know, I talked to him about it.

00:05:54Marc:Jeff Ross was there.

00:05:55Marc:But it was funny.

00:05:56Marc:Richard Libertini, the guy who played the dictator with the senior winces in the original In-Laws, was at the audition.

00:06:04Marc:It was just good to see him alive.

00:06:05Marc:I mean, there are times where I'm like, what does that guy do?

00:06:07Marc:What do they do?

00:06:10Marc:What did some of these actors, these old actors they haven't seen since the 70s?

00:06:13Marc:I know they show up on TV shows here and there, but I wonder if they go home and their wife or their kid shuts him off and puts him in a closet.

00:06:21Marc:I don't know what they do.

00:06:23Marc:I guess they made enough money.

00:06:24Marc:Who knows what they do, how they make money?

00:06:26Marc:That's always my thought.

00:06:27Marc:How did they make money, that guy?

00:06:28Marc:Maybe he saved his money.

00:06:29Marc:Maybe he made a lot of money making movies.

00:06:30Marc:Whatever the case.

00:06:32Marc:So I'm there.

00:06:33Marc:It's me and Jeff Ross and a bunch of older dudes who are reading for this doctor part and a bunch of black dudes who are reading for black guy.

00:06:40Marc:And Jerry Minor walks in.

00:06:41Marc:He's been on this show before.

00:06:43Marc:And he looks at the sides.

00:06:45Marc:He looks at the other black guys.

00:06:47Marc:He looks at me and he goes.

00:06:49Marc:Are you reading for Black Guy?

00:06:50Marc:And I said, of course I am.

00:06:51Marc:They're not sure what they want to do with the part yet.

00:06:53Marc:Yeah, I'm reading for Black Guy.

00:06:55Marc:We had a nice laugh.

00:06:56Marc:But the audition is kind of interesting.

00:06:57Marc:So the scene that I had with Computer Guy is that I was at a restaurant using my computer.

00:07:03Marc:I went to the bathroom and I asked Larry, who was also at the restaurant, to watch my computer.

00:07:06Marc:I came out and the computer was gone and Larry was gone.

00:07:10Marc:And the scene was an improvisation where I run into Larry on the street...

00:07:14Marc:And I ask him what happened.

00:07:16Marc:And then he says he let a black guy watch it.

00:07:19Marc:And then I'm supposed to get angry.

00:07:20Marc:And then in the middle, you know, check myself, you know, because I catch myself being racist and I get self-conscious about it.

00:07:28Marc:And that's all you get.

00:07:30Marc:So I walk in.

00:07:31Marc:Larry's there.

00:07:32Marc:He recognizes me from the conversation at the airport.

00:07:35Marc:He's like, hey, Mark Barron.

00:07:36Marc:How are you?

00:07:37Marc:I'm like, fine.

00:07:38Marc:What do we do now?

00:07:39Marc:It's Larry Charles is in there.

00:07:41Marc:A couple other people, someone on a camera.

00:07:43Marc:And I go the other side and we just start off and I just start, you know, like, you know, what?

00:07:48Marc:Where's my computer?

00:07:49Marc:What the hell happened?

00:07:51Marc:Where where were you?

00:07:52Marc:What happened to you?

00:07:53Marc:And where's my computer?

00:07:54Marc:You know, I'm yelling on this and that.

00:07:56Marc:And he and then we you know, he's like, what?

00:07:58Marc:I didn't.

00:07:58Marc:And I'm yelling some more.

00:08:00Marc:And he goes, you know, you know, I let a black guy watch it.

00:08:03Marc:And I'm like, well, that's why I asked you, the black guy who was sitting there.

00:08:06Marc:I said, because that's why I asked you to watch it, because that's not how I felt.

00:08:08Marc:But that was the improv.

00:08:09Marc:So I was.

00:08:10Marc:That was the racist thing that I was going to feel bad about.

00:08:12Marc:Then I kind of went through the whole improv with him.

00:08:14Marc:It went pretty well, I guess.

00:08:16Marc:But there was moments where it sort of fell out, and I kind of waited for him to end it.

00:08:22Marc:Pow.

00:08:24Marc:Wow.

00:08:24Marc:I just shit my pants.

00:08:27Marc:Just coffee.coop.

00:08:28Marc:So anyways, the the the thing ends and I walk out and I feel like it went well.

00:08:34Marc:But, you know, by by the time I walked out, I'm like, shit, I should have done this.

00:08:38Marc:I should have done that.

00:08:38Marc:By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, we were on the second floor of a building.

00:08:42Marc:I was like, why do I why don't even bother?

00:08:44Marc:Then by the time I got to my car, I was like, this is bullshit.

00:08:47Marc:I fucking hate going out on auditions.

00:08:48Marc:I never go out on them and I fuck them up somehow.

00:08:51Marc:And then by the time I'm in my car and driving 10 minutes, I'm thinking, you know, like they don't like they need another aggravated Jew on that show.

00:08:59Marc:You know, what are the fucking chances?

00:09:00Marc:And then by the time I got home, I was like, I don't want to do it anymore.

00:09:06Marc:But I think it went well.

00:09:07Marc:That's the important thing.

00:09:10Marc:I had something I wanted to talk about.

00:09:11Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:09:13Marc:Big brother.

00:09:14Marc:Is there a big brother?

00:09:15Marc:You know, a lot of you ask me, you know, not a lot of you, but a few of you like him.

00:09:18Marc:We used to do politics.

00:09:19Marc:You don't really do politics anymore.

00:09:20Marc:Look, I it's not that I'm not a political person.

00:09:23Marc:It's just I give up.

00:09:24Marc:I give the fuck up.

00:09:25Marc:People are asking me, what about the Glenn Beck thing?

00:09:27Marc:Yeah, Glenn Beck is horrible.

00:09:28Marc:I knew I knew he was horrible four years ago.

00:09:31Marc:I was like, this guy's dangerous.

00:09:33Marc:He's a demagogue.

00:09:33Marc:It's going to be trouble.

00:09:35Marc:Yeah, but I'm not saying I told you so.

00:09:37Marc:I'm just saying, what am I going to do to talk to those people that think he's the second coming, those misguided people?

00:09:44Marc:What am I going to do?

00:09:45Marc:And I don't want to just preach to the choir.

00:09:47Marc:You know, it's a free for all out there.

00:09:48Marc:We'll see where the chips fall.

00:09:50Marc:We'll see what the fuck happens.

00:09:52Marc:If there's any vestiges of democracy that still function properly, it will filter out the shit.

00:09:56Marc:It may take some time, but I just I can't I don't I don't want to get involved with the chatter because then I get disappointed.

00:10:04Marc:I get my feelings hurt.

00:10:06Marc:I get disillusioned.

00:10:07Marc:I'm already disillusioned.

00:10:08Marc:I'm already cynical.

00:10:09Marc:I don't fucking know what's going to happen.

00:10:11Marc:I sense that something bad is happening.

00:10:14Marc:But maybe that's what we got to go through.

00:10:15Marc:And I'm not disengaging from it, but I'm not.

00:10:17Marc:What am I going to sit here and say, you know, if you think gay marriage is wrong, you're an idiot.

00:10:22Marc:Well, I believe that.

00:10:23Marc:But I'm going to spend my time doing that right now.

00:10:26Marc:I mean, if we can't all be adults and realize that what's at the core of America's problem is just a complete disillusionment, across the board sadness.

00:10:36Marc:across the board disappointment, across the board gutting of everything we believe was true and real.

00:10:43Marc:And the people that think they're fighting for democracy are just puppets of the people that own democracy.

00:10:49Marc:And they've got them rubbing up and just running up against the people that still believe that something could come out of government that might function for everybody.

00:10:58Marc:Because one of the big problems is, and I'm not getting political, is that no one thinks they're fucking poor.

00:11:03Marc:Everybody thinks they're just waiting to be rich.

00:11:06Marc:So they don't see themselves as people that are compromised or that they are in trouble.

00:11:13Marc:They just see themselves as almost winning the lottery.

00:11:17Marc:I just think there's a lot of disillusion across the board and I'm part and I'm part of it.

00:11:21Marc:And then I get this into this conversation.

00:11:25Marc:with Jessica about Big Brother, kind of.

00:11:32Marc:Specifically about the x-ray machines that they're going to be putting at most airports where you get scanned and a picture of your naked, sad self beneath your clothing

00:11:41Marc:with your sad balls and your sad boobs and your sad pussy, and all that stuff that we keep hidden and we try to keep clean is just going to be there for the TSA attendant to see.

00:11:50Marc:Everybody's going to see it.

00:11:51Marc:People are going to download the x-ray pics and put them on the internet.

00:11:56Marc:Whatever's going to happen, it's sort of frightening that we can be visually raped by technology in the guise of protecting the nation.

00:12:06Marc:I really think that after a certain point, this is just about selling equipment.

00:12:10Marc:You know, clearly you can't stop everything.

00:12:13Marc:Whatever.

00:12:13Marc:That's not the point.

00:12:14Marc:The point is, like, people who are like, well, it's Big Brother.

00:12:17Marc:Is it Big Brother?

00:12:18Marc:Is there a Big Brother?

00:12:19Marc:I hate to tell you, I think we're Big Brother.

00:12:22Marc:I think Big Brother resides in all of us.

00:12:24Marc:And sadly, Big Brother's orientation is not totalitarianism.

00:12:28Marc:It's not ultimate control.

00:12:30Marc:It's really outside of airport security.

00:12:32Marc:How do we sell shit to people?

00:12:34Marc:You know what Big Brother sounds like?

00:12:36Marc:It's not some warning.

00:12:37Marc:Big Brother doesn't sound like Big Brother...

00:12:39Marc:I'm watching you.

00:12:40Marc:Watch your move.

00:12:42Marc:I'm watching you.

00:12:43Marc:Here's what Big Brother sounds like.

00:12:45Marc:You know what?

00:12:46Marc:Just go through the thing.

00:12:47Marc:Come on.

00:12:48Marc:You're holding up the line.

00:12:49Marc:Just go.

00:12:50Marc:Who gives a shit?

00:12:51Marc:Just go through.

00:12:51Marc:All right.

00:12:52Marc:Quit complaining.

00:12:53Marc:So what?

00:12:54Marc:So you got nothing that everyone else doesn't have.

00:12:56Marc:Who cares if they see it?

00:12:58Marc:Come on.

00:12:58Marc:You're holding up the line.

00:12:59Marc:That's what Big Brother sounds like.

00:13:01Marc:Here's what Big Brother sounds like.

00:13:02Marc:Just sign the thing.

00:13:03Marc:Put your email address on it.

00:13:05Marc:What do you mean?

00:13:05Marc:What's going to happen?

00:13:06Marc:So, what, are you going to get some spam or whatever?

00:13:08Marc:We've got to get going.

00:13:10Marc:Just give them what they want.

00:13:11Marc:Sign the thing.

00:13:12Marc:That's what Big Brother sounds like.

00:13:14Marc:Or else Big Brother sounds like that.

00:13:15Marc:Well, you know, if it's going to be safer, why the hell not?

00:13:19Marc:No one wants to take it to the next level because it's too aggravating and it interrupts their day.

00:13:23Marc:And there's going to be lawyers involved.

00:13:25Marc:It's just a consumer rights thing.

00:13:27Marc:It's also a civil rights thing.

00:13:28Marc:But people would rather not be aggravated if their life isn't compromised too much.

00:13:34Marc:And also Big Brother is watching this.

00:13:41Marc:I guess I should turn the fan off.

00:13:42Marc:Jesse Thorne is in the garage here at the Cat Ranch.

00:13:46Marc:We got the fan going, but I'm happy that before we got on the show, Jesse, as you know, is the host of The Sound of Young America, Jordan, Jesse Goh, then the Jesse Thorne Empire, the Max Fun Empire.

00:13:57Marc:What does that include, Jesse?

00:13:58Marc:Yeah.

00:13:58Guest:We're talking about Jordan Jesse Go, The Sound of Young America.

00:14:01Guest:Yeah.

00:14:02Guest:Stop podcasting yourself.

00:14:03Guest:The Casper Hauser Comedy Podcast.

00:14:05Guest:No.

00:14:05Guest:The Coil and Sharp Podcast.

00:14:06Guest:Holy shit.

00:14:07Guest:The Sound of Young America, The College Years.

00:14:09Guest:Oh, my God.

00:14:10Guest:It's a pretty spectacular operation.

00:14:13Marc:How do you manage all that?

00:14:15Marc:I can barely manage sending those T-shirts out, and that's with your old intern, Brian.

00:14:21Yeah.

00:14:21Guest:You got my hand-me-down intern.

00:14:23Marc:I do.

00:14:24Marc:I have your hand-me-down intern.

00:14:25Marc:Brian's great, though.

00:14:27Guest:You know, it's been a long time.

00:14:28Guest:It's been a slow growth over the course of, you know, five or at this point.

00:14:35Guest:It depends on what you start counting by, but it's been podcasting for five-plus years at this point, and, you know, I started doing the show 10 years ago now.

00:14:43Marc:I know, and I think that some people, I told the story on your show,

00:14:47Marc:I don't know if I told it on my show.

00:14:48Marc:I can't even remember, but the first time I met you was on the phone.

00:14:53Marc:It was a phone interview.

00:14:54Marc:You were standing in the street in Santa Cruz.

00:14:55Guest:In my underpants.

00:14:56Marc:In your underpants.

00:14:57Guest:Specifically.

00:14:57Marc:Yeah, doing some sort of bit.

00:14:59Guest:Well, it wasn't a bit.

00:15:00Guest:How did you find me?

00:15:01Guest:It was a pledge drive.

00:15:03Guest:Well, you're a celebrity comedian.

00:15:05Marc:Oh, back then?

00:15:06Marc:Really?

00:15:06Marc:Yeah, sure.

00:15:07Marc:Okay, all right, all right.

00:15:08Marc:Sure.

00:15:09Marc:Right, so we set up the interview.

00:15:10Marc:We were both into Mark Maron and Todd Berry.

00:15:12Marc:Yeah, you were ahead of the curve on those names.

00:15:14Guest:Absolutely.

00:15:15Guest:Well, we're always ahead of the curve.

00:15:17Guest:It's because once the curve reaches us, we can't book them anymore.

00:15:21Guest:Once the curve arcs, the wave crashes or they get out of your reach or they take off.

00:15:25Guest:Exactly.

00:15:26Guest:Michael Cera was on the Sound of Young America.

00:15:28Guest:We got him just after Arrested Development got canceled.

00:15:32Guest:oh really that's the secret just after it got canceled that's where you get it was on there's no way we could have gotten him right when he became a movie star no way we could have gotten him but in that little intervening the frightened window the frightened window where it might not happen or where he you know doesn't he's unsure of his future yes sarah silverman was on the show she was sitting on her luggage in the alley out behind uh the punch line in san francisco i know that alley

00:15:57Guest:That's our sweet spot, the alley behind a small club.

00:16:03Marc:The moment that weird window where celebrities are lost and needy.

00:16:07Guest:Exactly.

00:16:07Marc:Got it.

00:16:08Guest:That's where we get them.

00:16:09Marc:So explain to me why ... Okay, so you were at Santa Cruz, you were a student, and I remember phoning

00:16:13Guest:the show it was the pledge drive right and jordan who at the time did the sound of young america with me now does jordan jesse go with me and i were at the base of the santa cruz campus we had recently found out that the station had this remote broadcast unit which was the amazing discovery to us because this was a station that um it literally the board when we started there instead of having sliders that slid up and down it had the huge knobs that you turn left to right and

00:16:41Guest:It was the old feminine board.

00:16:42Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:16:43Guest:With the big knobs you could put your old hand on.

00:16:45Guest:Honk, honk.

00:16:46Guest:And so we found out that we had this remote broadcast unit.

00:16:50Guest:And so it was pledge drive.

00:16:51Guest:Yeah.

00:16:52Guest:And we decided we should do a pledge drive stunt of some kind.

00:16:55Guest:Yeah.

00:16:55Guest:And we decided to go down to the base.

00:16:57Guest:You couldn't go more than about like a mile with this broadcast, remote broadcast unit.

00:17:01Guest:So we went to the base of the UCSC campus, which is where all the cars drive in.

00:17:06Guest:And there's sort of like a field there.

00:17:08Guest:And we just stood there on the corner in our underwear.

00:17:10Guest:And did this show called me and we called Marc Maron.

00:17:14Guest:But you weren't even the you weren't even the championship of awkwardness in that because you were on the phone.

00:17:19Guest:Yeah.

00:17:20Guest:And so you knew in your sort of you knew intellectually.

00:17:23Guest:Yeah.

00:17:24Guest:That we were in our underwear.

00:17:25Guest:Yeah.

00:17:25Guest:We interviewed this guy, this really sweet guy.

00:17:27Guest:I can't think of what his name is, who directed this documentary called Afro Punk.

00:17:31Guest:Uh huh.

00:17:32Guest:And he's this he's this sort of like he's like as big as me.

00:17:34Guest:I'm like six, three to ten.

00:17:36Guest:You're a big man in Madras shorts.

00:17:37Guest:Yeah.

00:17:37Guest:And he's he wasn't wearing Madras shorts.

00:17:40Guest:He was wearing full, you know, 1980, 1979 punk rock regalia.

00:17:46Guest:This huge black guy in punk rock clothes and like, you know, what's his name?

00:17:49Guest:I can't remember, but he directed an interesting documentary called Afropunk about black people and punk rock.

00:17:57Guest:And this guy did it in person.

00:17:59Guest:He was there in armor, in punk rock armor.

00:18:02Guest:So he's there in his crazy punk rock armor, huge guy, his cars drive past and honk at us.

00:18:07Guest:Because we're literally, we were also, we were wearing tighty-whities.

00:18:11Guest:That was part of the joke.

00:18:13Guest:Well, you know, I mean, what else are you going to wear?

00:18:15Guest:New ones, right?

00:18:16Guest:Oh, absolutely.

00:18:17Marc:yeah not kind of distended that's a good reason that's a good reason to go down to watsonville to the target sure pick up a new tidy whities so here's here's what happened so when when actually you had reached out to me like a couple years ago to do the sound of young america and you reminded me of this and that was the great moment was i'm like oh it's that kid who called me in his underwear

00:18:38Marc:I'm just going to blow this off and tell him no.

00:18:41Marc:So I'm like, sorry, man, can't do it because I just pictured this weird phone and I know where you were in your basement.

00:18:47Marc:I don't think you even emailed me back.

00:18:48Guest:Is that true?

00:18:49Guest:Yeah, I think I just figured maybe you don't check that email address anymore.

00:18:53Marc:Oh, man.

00:18:54Marc:So here's what happens.

00:18:56Marc:I'm making something in my kitchen in Astoria, and then Jesse comes on the radio, the Sound of Young America, and I'm like, holy shit.

00:19:03Marc:And I go back and check my email.

00:19:05Marc:It's like, it's that kid.

00:19:06Marc:The kid in his underwear.

00:19:07Marc:He's on the radio on NPR.

00:19:08Marc:And I'm like, hey, man.

00:19:10Guest:You look around, double checking that you're not in Santa Cruz.

00:19:12Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:19:13Marc:So then I get back.

00:19:14Marc:I get on my email.

00:19:15Marc:I'm like, hey, dude, just wondering if that offer is still available.

00:19:18Marc:I'm glad you're doing so well.

00:19:20Marc:Oh, what a fucking idiot I am.

00:19:22Marc:But it worked out, and I had no idea that you had this empire, this Max Fund empire.

00:19:26Marc:Here's what I'm trying to figure out, Jesse.

00:19:28Marc:And oddly, not oddly, but honestly, I owe you a lot of gratitude, a lot of thanks for setting me up.

00:19:34Marc:I mean, really, you taught me how to use all this stuff, and it's going pretty well.

00:19:37Marc:I've not expanded on my knowledge at all.

00:19:39Guest:Uh-huh.

00:19:40Marc:You know, I'm still in GarageBand.

00:19:42Marc:I don't touch too many knobs.

00:19:44Guest:But I haven't called you with a crisis.

00:19:46Guest:It's been months since you've called me with a crisis.

00:19:48Guest:And frankly, I'm glad because just as you have not learned anything besides the absolutely essential things to know how to do what you do.

00:19:55Guest:Yeah.

00:19:55Guest:That is also what I have learned.

00:19:57Guest:So if you were to extend your skills and then have a problem...

00:20:00Guest:I would be completely useless to you.

00:20:02Marc:But I'd still like to get to your skill set because you are feeding a bigger machine than I am.

00:20:07Marc:I'm still, look, when I've been to your apartment, it's like NASA over there.

00:20:11Marc:So you're asking me to teach you administration skills.

00:20:13Marc:I need administration skills.

00:20:15Marc:Management.

00:20:15Marc:Yeah, management skills.

00:20:16Marc:I need to know what big board to get.

00:20:18Guest:I'm your Peter Drucker is what you're saying.

00:20:20Marc:And I need you to get me on NPR.

00:20:22Marc:There's a lot of things I need.

00:20:23Marc:Who moved my cheese?

00:20:26Marc:I don't think I'm going to be on NPR.

00:20:27Marc:I don't think that's going to happen.

00:20:29Marc:Not realistic.

00:20:31Marc:I have a filthy mouth.

00:20:33Marc:I talk about things that are too deep for the average dog.

00:20:36Marc:Public radio people don't like my show.

00:20:38Marc:Why not?

00:20:39Marc:I don't know.

00:20:40Guest:It's hard to say.

00:20:41Marc:You're not precious enough?

00:20:42Marc:Too much personality?

00:20:44Guest:It's...

00:20:44Guest:It's there's different people are looking for different things when it comes to public radio program directors.

00:20:50Guest:And there are some who really support my WNYC in New York where you heard my show like they're super supportive of me and my station.

00:20:56Guest:It's a fantastic station.

00:20:58Guest:I think generally it's sort of in a no man's land where it's, you know, the format of the show is similar to fresh air or whatever.

00:21:06Guest:Yeah.

00:21:07Guest:Um, but no program directors have ever heard of anyone that's ever been on my show.

00:21:12Guest:Um, so like I'm, I'm going to the public radio program directors conference and they can say like, Oh, tell me about who's who, what kind of guests do you book?

00:21:19Guest:I could list the top 15 people that have been on my show and they wouldn't have heard of any of them.

00:21:25Guest:Uh, maybe if I got lucky, maybe they'd heard of Devo, you know, come on.

00:21:29Guest:It's not that stodgy.

00:21:30Guest:It's not, it's not so much.

00:21:32Guest:It's this just, it's a, it's a very particular world that they're in.

00:21:37Marc:Well, and also I think what happens is that's exactly it.

00:21:39Marc:People get insulated.

00:21:40Marc:If there's not a kid around to go, hey, you guys, you heard this, that they're not going to hear that.

00:21:44Guest:And it's not even like, and then they sort of assume that the people that I'm booking are real up and comers.

00:21:51Guest:And not established.

00:21:52Guest:And sort of like, well, yeah, when I'm interviewing Steve Albini or whatever, he was an up and comer 25 years ago.

00:21:59Guest:Steve Albini is there.

00:22:00Marc:If they're saying to you, who's this Hodgman fella?

00:22:03Marc:Right.

00:22:03Guest:Yeah.

00:22:04Guest:That kind of stuff.

00:22:04Guest:Hodgman is someone they might know because he's contributed to This American Life.

00:22:07Guest:I love This American Life.

00:22:08Guest:I love Ira Glass.

00:22:10Guest:I love everything.

00:22:10Guest:He's one of the big reasons I do public radio.

00:22:13Guest:But I think that there is, in public radio, there's kind of two understandings of what programming can be.

00:22:20Guest:One is it's like Morning Edition or All Things Considered.

00:22:24Guest:That's right.

00:22:24Guest:So that's where you get your marketplace, which is like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but vaguely more irreverent and sort of about business.

00:22:32Guest:Yeah.

00:22:32Guest:And, you know, you get the world, which is like Morning Edition and Marketplace, but a little bit more world focused and with a world music report at the end.

00:22:40Marc:I like it where it's like it's softer.

00:22:42Marc:And, you know, the news is given with a slight a slight tone of like, don't you feel a little bad?

00:22:46Guest:Yeah.

00:22:47Guest:And so the and then the other thing is, it's like this American life and like Ira basically just blew down the doors with this American life.

00:22:55Marc:Like it's so blew down the doors with a very precious wind.

00:22:58Marc:I know.

00:22:59Marc:Yeah.

00:22:59Guest:But it's so good.

00:23:01Guest:I mean, the show is so good, and it's so popular, and it has such a strong... I mean, the narrative element of it is so strong.

00:23:09Guest:I squirt out tears every time I hear it.

00:23:10Guest:Absolutely.

00:23:11Guest:No, there's no doubt about it.

00:23:12Guest:And so he sort of overwhelmed the program director's resistance through sheer brilliance, and I can't manage that.

00:23:21Guest:So program directors think, is it like All Things Considered?

00:23:23Guest:Is it like This American Life?

00:23:25Guest:And if it's neither of those things, it sort of falls into...

00:23:28Guest:It's not that they hate it.

00:23:31Guest:It's that they just kind of like they don't really get why they should take something off to put it on.

00:23:36Marc:Well, the thing I like about you and the thing that makes me a little resentful of public radio, as much as I like Ira Glass, there is a pretension to it as far as I'm concerned.

00:23:47Guest:I think he delivers.

00:23:48Guest:I mean, I think it's the kind of pretense where he assumes certain that he's going to try and do something really bold and then he does it.

00:23:57Marc:Yeah, no, I agree.

00:23:58Marc:And I and it's definitely it's it's definitely a big machine now, this American life.

00:24:04Guest:Right.

00:24:04Marc:It is an institution at this point.

00:24:07Marc:But I mean, a guy like you, like I don't have much of a chance on public radio because at heart, you know, I'm not I think I'm sensitive.

00:24:13Marc:I think I'm precious enough.

00:24:15Marc:But, you know, I'm sort of filthy.

00:24:16Marc:I'm a little aggressive.

00:24:17Marc:I'm a bit irreverent and completely self-involved.

00:24:19Marc:Is that a show?

00:24:21Marc:If I pitch that as a public radio executive, we're in.

00:24:25Marc:Oh, absolutely.

00:24:26Marc:I'm sold.

00:24:27Marc:When can we start, Mark?

00:24:30Marc:But you're different.

00:24:31Marc:You're like a regular guy.

00:24:32Marc:And you're a thoughtful guy.

00:24:34Marc:You're engaged with things you like.

00:24:36Marc:And I think it's just because you're not precious enough.

00:24:39Guest:I don't know.

00:24:40Guest:I think it's that I'm not something enough.

00:24:44Guest:Do you fester about it?

00:24:45Guest:Do you sleep over it?

00:24:46Guest:I did.

00:24:47Guest:You know, I've been with Public Radio International for like, I guess, almost four years now.

00:24:53Guest:Yeah.

00:24:53Guest:And I think for the first two years, I festered about it a lot.

00:24:58Marc:Like, why don't they like me?

00:25:00Guest:I really did, and I wasn't really getting anywhere.

00:25:04Guest:Just recently, I found out I'm getting added to this station in Seattle, which is a really big deal for me.

00:25:10Guest:It's a really great market.

00:25:11Guest:But really, the progress has been very slow since the beginning, and I really freaked out about it.

00:25:17Guest:And then maybe two years ago,

00:25:19Guest:I just thought, I'm really happy to be on the stations that I am on, and I continue to be really proud to be a public radio host.

00:25:28Guest:When I'm at a party and somebody says, oh, so what do you do?

00:25:30Guest:And I say, public radio host, I feel really proud of that.

00:25:33Guest:That's something that I think is really admirable.

00:25:35Guest:You can say that now.

00:25:36Guest:And I'm really glad about that.

00:25:38Guest:But maybe it's not worth my emotional effort to freak out about, you know, how come I can't get picked up in Columbus?

00:25:45Guest:How come you don't have more stations?

00:25:46Guest:I mean, those stations are just fighting to survive anyway.

00:25:49Guest:Yeah.

00:25:49Guest:A lot of them.

00:25:50Guest:Oh, absolutely.

00:25:50Guest:Almost all of them are right now.

00:25:52Guest:I mean, like any nonprofit.

00:25:54Marc:So you can't take it too personally.

00:25:55Guest:Sort of like, you fuckers.

00:25:56Guest:You know, I mean, the thing is that for a public radio station, it's really hard to change anything because you've got people... I mean, basically the structure is people are donating to support a show that they like.

00:26:07Guest:So even if a show is what would be in commercial radio a failure, you know, even if your numbers from a show A, B, and C are...

00:26:14Guest:30,000, 5,000, and 30,000, that's still 5,000 people that love this show and are donating.

00:26:22Guest:And so if you take that off and put something new on, you're starting from zero with the new show.

00:26:28Guest:So you're still losing those 5,000 people and pissing them off.

00:26:31Guest:They may be donors.

00:26:32Guest:And it might take three years, even if the show's a big success, to get back that donor base from that time slot.

00:26:38Marc:Isn't that interesting?

00:26:39Marc:That's something that's supposed to be progressive.

00:26:41Marc:Yeah, is anything but when it comes to protecting their piece of the pie.

00:26:48Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, I got to hand it to public radio.

00:26:50Guest:I mean, the thing that's really cool about public radio is you listen to anything else on the radio.

00:26:55Guest:There's so little content on the radio.

00:26:57Guest:I mean, you worked on 12 different Air America shows, and they were trying to make something.

00:27:02Guest:And, you know, like when when you were doing Morning Sedition, you know, this is that was as, you know, ambitious in terms of content or commercial radio show has has been around because you were actually writing content.

00:27:15Guest:You were writing material, you know, you actually.

00:27:18Guest:Yeah.

00:27:18Guest:had people writing and making things too expensive and public radio at this point is basically the only place where they're still spending money on making quality content it's basically at this point all of commercial radio is just like well either it's rush limbaugh and it just happens to be a personality that's so compelling that you know you can do it with one producer and one host right or it just doesn't happen

00:27:42Marc:Well, I find that when I'm at home, I listen to public radio all the time.

00:27:46Marc:I just have it on.

00:27:47Marc:And when I was in New York, I did the same thing.

00:27:49Marc:I liked certain shows.

00:27:52Marc:I usually would go, I need news, and that's really what I'm concerned about.

00:27:56Marc:Sometimes I'll listen to Morning Become Eclectic, and I'm always baffled and amazed how it can have the same, how they can find so much music with exactly the same tone.

00:28:04Marc:That makes me feel somewhere in between existentially despairing and elated.

00:28:09Marc:Yeah.

00:28:09Guest:I don't know.

00:28:10Guest:It's genius.

00:28:11Guest:I love KCRW so much, but I like rap music and morning becomes eclectic.

00:28:16Guest:It just makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

00:28:18Guest:There's a bit of that.

00:28:19Guest:It's like, how is this morning?

00:28:20Guest:This morning becomes, I want to kill myself.

00:28:23Guest:I feel like I'm trapped in like, they really do a great job of what they're doing, but it's so not for me.

00:28:30Guest:You listen to rap in the morning?

00:28:32Guest:yeah oh absolutely like right out of bed there's a new kanye west remix um well i was just listening to uh you dropped the bomb on me by the gap band um but uh yeah totally there's this new kanye west remix of this song called power with jay-z on it uh produced by swizz beats yeah oh man i've just been listening to that over and over it's so fun it's great now it's the greatest thing ever as as one of the more whiter people i know

00:28:54Marc:And I say that as a white guy, and I have no right to even talk like that.

00:28:58Marc:How are you received as a rap aficionado?

00:29:01Marc:In black culture, let's say.

00:29:03Guest:I think my whole persona is so perplexing to people.

00:29:08Guest:What is that about?

00:29:09Guest:Let's break it down.

00:29:10Guest:Because as you know, Mark, I'm from San Francisco, right?

00:29:14Guest:And I very sincerely grew up in the inner city.

00:29:17Guest:Yeah.

00:29:18Guest:But I also, until from...

00:29:21Guest:kindergarten through middle school was like the scholarship kid at private schools yeah and so the fact that i liked you know urban music was really weird there um and then but it was natural to you because you grew up with it on some level yeah no i certainly i mean i think you know like my the that is also the music that my parents listened to like it's not like my parents were listening to the doobie brothers and i was like fuck that i'm gonna listen to rap music like my my mom's

00:29:47Guest:My dad's favorite musician is James Brown, and my mom's favorite band musician is probably Nina Simone.

00:29:53Guest:Really?

00:29:54Guest:And that's what you grew up with?

00:29:55Guest:So that's sort of what I grew up listening to.

00:29:57Marc:What kind of people were these parents of yours?

00:29:59Guest:Well, basically, my parents divorced when I was three, so my conceptions of them are as two very distinct forces in the world.

00:30:07Guest:They're tugging at you.

00:30:08Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:30:11Guest:My mom is a college teacher.

00:30:13Guest:She teaches at a junior college in Northern California.

00:30:15Guest:Really?

00:30:16Guest:What does she teach?

00:30:17Guest:She teaches interdisciplinary studies, humanities.

00:30:20Guest:She teaches actually a class about hip hop.

00:30:22Marc:Okay.

00:30:23Marc:And the old man, what path is he on?

00:30:26Guest:He sort of grew up.

00:30:27Guest:He's from Kansas City originally, although he spent his teenage years here in Southern California in Glendale.

00:30:33Guest:Driving around in fast cars?

00:30:35Guest:Yeah, I think so.

00:30:36Guest:He once told me that he dated every cheerleader on the cheerleading squad.

00:30:41Guest:Yeah.

00:30:41Guest:Isn't that awesome?

00:30:42Guest:Jesse Thorne's dad is a player.

00:30:45Guest:But he rebelled against his parents by volunteering for the Navy in the early 60s.

00:30:52Guest:And when he came back from the service, which would have been like 63 or 64, he went to Berkeley.

00:31:01Guest:He was done by the time Vietnam really kicked out.

00:31:04Guest:Well, I mean, his carrier was in Southeast Asia.

00:31:09Guest:It was during the...

00:31:11Guest:Basically, his carrier participated in the secret bombing of Laos in Cambodia.

00:31:17Guest:He came back and he helped found this organization that became what is now Vets for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

00:31:26Guest:So he's helped found the West Coast version.

00:31:28Guest:It's the thing that John Kerry founded the East Coast version of.

00:31:31Guest:And then they merged when they had the Winter Soldier hearings in the mid-late 60s.

00:31:38Guest:Yeah.

00:31:38Guest:um so he basically spent his whole life uh in the peace movement until you know until i was a kid um and he also he also got sober when i was a kid like when i was like maybe four that's great before i can remember and you have a relationship with both of them

00:31:56Guest:Yeah, yeah, totally.

00:31:56Marc:I have a great relationship with both of them.

00:31:59Marc:So you grew up in a fairly progressive household and pretty groovy.

00:32:02Marc:Oh, yeah, totally, yeah.

00:32:03Marc:But there was a lot of respect for education.

00:32:06Marc:Oh, undoubtedly, yeah.

00:32:07Marc:And you were in San Francisco.

00:32:09Marc:I was in San Francisco.

00:32:10Marc:So you learned how to dress properly.

00:32:11Marc:Yeah.

00:32:12Guest:Well, it was funny.

00:32:13Guest:I was just talking to somebody about this because I'm- Can I just set the scene though?

00:32:16Marc:You're wearing Madras shorts.

00:32:17Marc:That's true.

00:32:18Marc:Is that a penguin polo shirt perhaps?

00:32:20Guest:This is actually a Land's End.

00:32:21Guest:I'm into Land's End size medium tall right now.

00:32:25Guest:Land's End, huh?

00:32:26Guest:Because it's oversized, but I can never find a polo shirt that's long enough for me that's also reasonably not billowy in the body and medium tall works great for me.

00:32:36Guest:And those are Converse?

00:32:38Guest:These are Supergays.

00:32:40Guest:Supergays?

00:32:40Guest:Yeah, I call them Supergays.

00:32:42Guest:I don't know how it's pronounced.

00:32:44Guest:It's Italian.

00:32:44Guest:I don't know how it's pronounced.

00:32:45Guest:S-U-P-E-R-G-A, but I think they should be called super gays.

00:32:48Guest:So you're sort of enigmatic in the way you present yourself.

00:32:52Guest:Yeah, and so people will bitch at me about talking about something that happened to me when I was a kid, like some kind of shitty hood shit, like shooting or junkie breaks into house, threatens mom with knife.

00:33:07Guest:That actually happened when I was nine or so.

00:33:10Guest:A junkie broke into our house.

00:33:11Guest:And my mom woke up to him with a big ass knife standing over her bed, standing over the foot of her bed.

00:33:18Guest:She screamed and chased him out of the house and down the block.

00:33:22Guest:Really?

00:33:23Guest:That's my mom for you.

00:33:25Marc:It's great he was a junkie.

00:33:26Guest:My mom does not take any shit.

00:33:28Guest:My mom does not fuck around.

00:33:31Guest:But if I talk about something like that on Jordan Jesse Go, then people are so perplexed because they're like, isn't that the guy who wears bow ties?

00:33:40Guest:Isn't this the bow tie guy?

00:33:41Marc:Well, let's address that because I think the perplexing...

00:33:44Marc:nature about you and also about the two communities that seem to be existing in the hipster world which is where you have a fairly insulated nerdish community and then you have a fairly aggressive sophisticated kind of more street wise I don't even know what you call it the legacy of what would have been punk rock or what would have been those type of hipsters and then you have people that that sort of fell through the cracks and

00:34:05Guest:Well, there's this other kind of hipster that I think is a big kind of hipster right now, which is sort of like the Eurodance hipster.

00:34:12Marc:I don't know at what point those people got to become hipsters.

00:34:16Marc:Why did they come back?

00:34:17Marc:There's so much stuff from when I was a kid, because I'm older than you, where I'm like, that had to come back?

00:34:20Guest:Wait, you're older than me?

00:34:22Marc:A little bit.

00:34:22Guest:A little bit.

00:34:23Marc:I had no idea.

00:34:24Marc:Yeah, I know.

00:34:24Marc:It's weird, because you look about my age.

00:34:26Guest:I'm 29.

00:34:27Guest:I would have guessed 28, Mark.

00:34:28Marc:I would have guessed.

00:34:29Marc:46, man.

00:34:30Marc:I'm going to be 47 next month and I'm working out of my garage.

00:34:34Marc:But no, help me explain this.

00:34:37Marc:Because I was never a nerd.

00:34:39Marc:And now there's a lot of people who are claiming to be nerds.

00:34:42Marc:I question their nerd credentials.

00:34:45Marc:And I'm perfectly willing to admit that I wasn't a nerd.

00:34:49Marc:My obsessions were not outside of me.

00:34:52Marc:It seems that nerds, if I understand it properly- I think fans of the show are familiar with your obsessions.

00:34:57Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:34:58Marc:But nerds are very focused on seemingly proactive obsessions that generally become bridges and large math problems, perhaps chess championships.

00:35:07Marc:I really just was trying to figure out how to exist in the world.

00:35:10Marc:But that aside, we don't need to talk about me, is that...

00:35:13Marc:We don't?

00:35:14Marc:No.

00:35:14Marc:What show is this?

00:35:15Marc:This is WTF with Marc Maron.

00:35:17Marc:Okay, we can talk about me.

00:35:19Marc:But you seem to... Okay, I'll be honest with you.

00:35:22Marc:I'm not going to use you as a psychiatrist or anything.

00:35:24Marc:I do feel that I am... You're trying to figure out whether you're a geek or not.

00:35:28Guest:Yeah.

00:35:28Guest:I have that issue, too.

00:35:29Guest:How could you have that issue?

00:35:31Guest:Because I don't really... I mean, that's not really how I identify myself.

00:35:34Guest:I mean, it's such a... You've been to MaxFunCon.

00:35:38Guest:You know that... Yes, I have.

00:35:40Guest:And it was very interesting to me.

00:35:42Guest:A big part, I mean, not all, but a significant part of the sort of core constituency of The Sound of Young America and Jordan and Jesse Goh to some extent is people who self-identify as geeks.

00:35:54Guest:You know, people who think of themselves as like participants in geek culture and like the whole thing, you know, like the new wave of people who are proud to be geeks and, you know, and they... What are some of the, what would you call it, the watermarks or benchmarks?

00:36:09Guest:People who read Boing Boing.

00:36:10Guest:Okay.

00:36:11Guest:You know what I mean?

00:36:12Guest:People who love the IT crowd or people like Chris Hardwick, our friend Chris Hardwick.

00:36:17Guest:Chris is somebody who really like that's a core part of his identity.

00:36:22Guest:But it wasn't always.

00:36:23Guest:I mean, it seems to me that- Well, the question is not so much that it wasn't always.

00:36:26Guest:I think that he, like a lot of people, felt like he had to hide it.

00:36:30Marc:Oh, closet geeks.

00:36:32Guest:Exactly.

00:36:32Guest:And people don't feel that way.

00:36:34Guest:And I feel kind of like, I feel kind of bad for not being that.

00:36:38Guest:Yeah.

00:36:38Guest:Like I've definitely geeked.

00:36:40Guest:There have been, I have geeky tendencies of certain kinds.

00:36:43Guest:I mean, obviously, but I mean, geeking out about clothes and baseball is a slightly different kind of thing.

00:36:51Guest:You know what I mean?

00:36:52Guest:Like I, so I'm like, I, like I collected comic books, but I stopped when I was like 10 and

00:36:58Marc:Yeah, I have comic books.

00:36:59Marc:And if you look around my garage here, I'm sort of a geek to a certain degree.

00:37:03Marc:But it seems to me that because of my age, I was stuck in the middle.

00:37:07Marc:Right.

00:37:08Marc:Like I'm not quite a boomer.

00:37:11Marc:I'm just maybe the last month or so of what would be considered a boomer.

00:37:14Marc:I really had to kind of pick out the stuff that washed up after the 70s to build an identity from.

00:37:20Marc:Right.

00:37:20Marc:And I think a lot of the people now, none of that, none of the 60s culture or 70s culture, well, some of the late 70s culture, is even relevant anymore to them or their identity.

00:37:31Marc:So I got kind of screwed because I have remnants of the Stones, and I still have punk rock, but punk rock wasn't the starting point.

00:37:40Marc:Punk rock came in when I was in high school, and it didn't really fully integrate as an archetype until after I left.

00:37:47Guest:Right.

00:37:48Guest:See, I went to arts high school.

00:37:49Guest:So like my idea of like, if I talk to Jordan, like Jordan went to this, you know, 5,000 student, whatever, giant high school in Orange County.

00:38:01Guest:And he was in the theater department and he has, goes to the comic book store every week.

00:38:07Guest:Still.

00:38:08Guest:And they like save comics out for him.

00:38:10Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:11Guest:Which is called a pull list I learned recently.

00:38:13Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:38:13Guest:and you know he loves video games and in those are things that like and i never felt like because i was lucky enough to go to arts high school like i never felt the need that i had to like double down and like identify myself in opposition to the like straight kids or whatever right um straight kids meaning just the the mediocratites the the predictable people yeah or just you know or the the popular kids or the jocks or anything like there weren't

00:38:42Guest:There was no jocks.

00:38:43Guest:There was no sports teams at my high school.

00:38:45Guest:At my high school, I was a jock because I played Little League baseball until I was 15, and I knew the starting lineup of the Giants.

00:38:54Guest:That made me a jock at my high school.

00:38:57Marc:But there must have been some school of thought that there must have been lines drawn between people who respected Warhol and didn't.

00:39:03Guest:Yeah, well, sure.

00:39:05Guest:Well, I mean, but it was different.

00:39:07Guest:It wasn't like geeks versus not geeks.

00:39:09Guest:I get it, yeah.

00:39:11Guest:And so I never had to defend myself by saying, this is my team.

00:39:17Guest:You know what I mean?

00:39:18Guest:And so now that I'm a grown-up and I'm sort of like in the geek business, it's kind of an odd place for me to be because on the one hand, I think like...

00:39:32Guest:So there's this legacy for that world of you're with us or against us, right?

00:39:37Guest:Because it's a group that develops out of defending themselves.

00:39:41Marc:I think that's true.

00:39:42Marc:And also, because they are the dominant cultural paradigm now, there's a lot of bullying that goes on that I find surprising, that bullies begat bullies.

00:39:51Marc:My whole thing is that I understand that geek culture and these guys and gals that grew up

00:39:56Marc:being different for a specific reason, whether it be marching band or chess club or the ability to do calculus, that they didn't fit in to whatever culture they came from, and they have a chip on their shoulder about that, and now they can celebrate.

00:40:11Marc:Whereas I don't feel like I fit in anywhere.

00:40:13Marc:That's what I came up with.

00:40:15Marc:I've got to figure out how to get all these different people to like me because I don't fit in with any of this.

00:40:20Marc:Right.

00:40:21Marc:So all I guess I'm saying, Jesse, is I'm much more specific and much more special than anything that's going on now.

00:40:28Marc:Oh, I don't doubt.

00:40:29Guest:I mean, I think anyone knows how special you are.

00:40:32Marc:Anybody who's out there in the public, they know you as a real special guy.

00:40:36Marc:Yeah, that's all I'm trying to get across here.

00:40:38Marc:That's all I'm trying to do.

00:40:38Marc:I'm trying to help the people that don't fit in anywhere.

00:40:41Guest:Yeah, by the way, do you need your binky?

00:40:43Guest:Yes, please.

00:40:47Marc:Just give me a minute with my binky.

00:40:48Guest:Yeah, but you know, it's funny.

00:40:49Guest:I was thinking about, you live here in Highland Park, California, and I was thinking about how I live in Silver Lake, which is theoretically, culturally, pretty much in Los Angeles where I should live.

00:41:01Guest:People are always like, yeah, sure, you live in Silver Lake.

00:41:04Guest:Of course you do.

00:41:04Guest:Groovy.

00:41:04Guest:people and i feel so uncomfortable in silver lake and meanwhile if i'm walking down york avenue or you know avenue 52 or whatever it's like the mission and i feel at home but what's funny about it is that i don't feel at home because i was a cholo as a kid you know what i mean yes i feel at home because when i was a kid like my whole identity is built around being like the white guy and

00:41:29Guest:In a place where there's practically no other white teenagers, you know what I mean?

00:41:35Guest:And it's okay.

00:41:36Marc:Yeah.

00:41:36Marc:Yeah, I just, like, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around it, and because I fight it, too, that I get the feeling, like, I recently, if we can talk specifics, you know, I got some shit from some Sharpling fans.

00:41:48Marc:Uh-huh.

00:41:49Guest:From the best show on- Tom's fans are not afraid to give people shit for poor reasons.

00:41:55Marc:Yeah, yeah, I know.

00:41:56Marc:But like it was clearly one of these line drawing things where I was like that there is a pseudo intelligentsia to to to sort of geek chic that that I think a lot of times what makes you interesting and different is that your life experience is genuine life experience.

00:42:12Marc:By virtue of what you were brought up with.

00:42:14Marc:And whatever life I live, I feel like I live in the real world.

00:42:17Marc:And some of the criticism that I receive from the geek culture is really sort of like weird highbrow condescension that is coming from a place where it's sort of like, well, what world do you live in?

00:42:29Marc:Where are you living?

00:42:30Marc:Do you get out and talk to people?

00:42:32Marc:I mean, are you so insulated that you're going to have these opinions on me?

00:42:35Marc:And that made me upset.

00:42:36Guest:Well, there's, you know, I think one of the cool things about the internet that has negative side effects is that it's a place where, you know, you can really get into what you're into.

00:42:46Guest:And I think Tom's show, the best show, is something that so rewards...

00:42:52Guest:just in-depth commitment that it sort of feeds back on itself and so the dicks who get into it i know because i've gotten i've like four of my itunes reviews of my you know 300 or whatever are one star reviews that say fuck this listen to the best joe no that's right that's right

00:43:08Guest:Tom is my friend.

00:43:09Marc:I also like the best show.

00:43:11Marc:Right.

00:43:11Marc:And but that's also the you know, and I and I like the best show, too.

00:43:14Marc:And I like Tom.

00:43:15Marc:But that's also that team dynamic that you were talking about is that there definitely is a team now.

00:43:19Marc:And all these things that people are loyal to.

00:43:21Marc:There's no sort of big tent on some level.

00:43:23Marc:A lot of some people are like that.

00:43:24Marc:But some people, they're like, fuck this.

00:43:26Marc:There is no other show other than this.

00:43:28Marc:You kind of want them, though.

00:43:30Marc:I'd like to have some of them.

00:43:31Guest:I think that it does have validity in content.

00:43:35Guest:I mean, I think we talked about John Hodgman.

00:43:38Guest:Hodgman is a good friend of mine, and he gave a talk, or he spoke at the White House Correspondence Center like two years ago.

00:43:46Guest:And he was very funny.

00:43:49Guest:I mean, it was a comic thing, but it was very serious as well.

00:43:52Guest:And it was basically about it was basically about what he sees as the difference between jocks and geeks and that he sees Obama as a geek president.

00:44:06Guest:And it's really, you know, you can type it into YouTube.

00:44:09Guest:It's really eloquent and fascinating in addition to being very funny.

00:44:13Guest:And in that way, like, yes, then I pick, as much as I actually do like playing sports, although I'm not notably good at them, like, I can understand that.

00:44:24Guest:And I can see why people would pick that side.

00:44:27Guest:And it's cool that we live in a world, you know, that, you know, where that's an okay thing to be, which wasn't necessarily the case 35 years ago.

00:44:36Marc:Well, it was always the people that were that before it was okay knew that they were on the right trajectory, at least in terms of career or pursuing something productive.

00:44:46Marc:But, you know, cultural recognition.

00:44:48Guest:In the world of unproductive things, yeah.

00:44:52Guest:Now there's room for them to be really into Scott Pilgrim in public.

00:44:56Marc:That's right.

00:44:57Marc:But I think that they built the infrastructure that is what we live in to some degree, these geeks.

00:45:02Marc:But they just as a cultural force, they're always condescended to by the morons that lived in those buildings.

00:45:08Marc:Right.

00:45:09Marc:Or that lived in that infrastructure.

00:45:10Marc:Now they're sort of like, we've got our own world now.

00:45:12Marc:Yeah.

00:45:14Marc:And I'm definitely part of that, but I think I'm a little like you where I got a foot in each one.

00:45:18Marc:And I have some blind sides, but I guess I feel a little, like sometimes I feel a little excluded.

00:45:26Marc:That's all I'm saying.

00:45:27Guest:Yeah, no, I can understand that.

00:45:28Guest:And actually, I've recently come to the conclusion.

00:45:31Guest:I mean, I know a lot, like friends of mine, like Hodgman, for example, or like my friend Jonathan Colton, are sort of geek icons.

00:45:38Guest:Yeah.

00:45:38Guest:And, you know, or Chris Hardwick has also become a geek icon.

00:45:43Guest:And Chris has done it sort of self-consciously.

00:45:45Guest:Like he said, you know what?

00:45:46Guest:Fuck this.

00:45:47Guest:Fuck all this other stuff that I was doing.

00:45:50Guest:I like geek shit.

00:45:51Guest:I'll just become a geek icon.

00:45:52Guest:It's more fun for me.

00:45:54Guest:Um, and I, uh, I am, I'm not really into doing that.

00:45:59Guest:I think I'm going to try and figure out a way to become a gay icon because it just seems more fun.

00:46:04Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:46:05Guest:And you already got all the clothes.

00:46:07Guest:Yeah, but I can't, I need, I'm not like, I'm not very dramatic.

00:46:11Guest:Like I need a good, I need a good hook.

00:46:14Guest:I haven't figured out what my hook is besides the outfits.

00:46:16Guest:Outfits isn't enough, I think.

00:46:18Guest:What, you like a vocal hook?

00:46:19Guest:Like...

00:46:19Marc:Like your equivalent of You Go Girl or Snap?

00:46:23Guest:Just something like Tammy Faye Baker's eyelashes.

00:46:27Marc:Okay, but you're a radio guy.

00:46:29Marc:I think maybe you should think of a vocal hook.

00:46:31Marc:I already have a sibling ass.

00:46:33Marc:Oh, you do?

00:46:33Marc:Which is what?

00:46:35Marc:Oh, yeah, I have a little of that.

00:46:36Marc:And I have rolling L's.

00:46:37Marc:But I mean, I didn't notice that.

00:46:38Marc:You don't talk.

00:46:39Marc:Yeah.

00:46:40Marc:You don't have a feminine way of speaking.

00:46:43Guest:I got to think of something to become a gay.

00:46:45Guest:I mean, look how great it's working out for Margaret Cho.

00:46:47Guest:She just goes and does whatever the fuck she wants.

00:46:49Marc:You know what you could do?

00:46:50Marc:You could start being gay.

00:46:51Guest:I know.

00:46:52Guest:I have no interest in it.

00:46:53Guest:I have no interest.

00:46:54Guest:Yeah.

00:46:54Guest:that's the easiest path there you know i grew up in san francisco i'm very supportive of the gay agenda sure yeah now uh what else i want okay so max fun con you know i learned a lot up there okay so let's talk about what you learned uh by the way i just announced the uh dates of next year's max fun con i think it's june 10th through 12th is that is that an invitation i'm not no you're probably not invited oh god what did i do wrong

00:47:19Guest:You didn't do anything wrong.

00:47:20Guest:It's just that I only get to invite like 10 people, so I try and change it every year.

00:47:23Guest:All right, so you're just plugging the thing and excluding you from it.

00:47:26Guest:Well, here's the thing, Mark.

00:47:27Guest:I mean, like with MaxFunCon, which is what it is, by the way, if people don't know, if they didn't hear you, you and Maria talked about it a little bit.

00:47:34Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:47:35Guest:It's basically sort of like this weekend here in Southern California where we have comedy shows at night and sort of seminars during the day and a couple hundred people go, sort of like a theme vacation slash conference.

00:47:46Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:47:46Guest:And the thing about MaxFunCon is that I think that one of the things that I have been really self-aware about in terms of when I'm making this thing is I don't want those mean elements to be part of what I'm doing.

00:48:03Guest:You mean the mean element of the geek community?

00:48:05Guest:Of the geek community or just of a community.

00:48:08Marc:Like communities tend to- I thought you were talking about me specifically as the mean element.

00:48:12Marc:No, no, no, no.

00:48:13Marc:Because I've been the mean element.

00:48:14Guest:No, not at all.

00:48:15Guest:Yeah, no, I've heard your show.

00:48:17Guest:Yeah.

00:48:18Guest:Not that you're mean on your show.

00:48:19Marc:But I talk about- People talk about pastimes that you've been- Sure, sure.

00:48:21Marc:Yeah, I didn't want to be that guy.

00:48:23Marc:I learned how not to be that guy at Max Von Kahn.

00:48:24Guest:And, like, it's... I try and be self-aware about being inclusive and just not tolerating that kind of shit.

00:48:35Guest:Yeah.

00:48:36Guest:You know?

00:48:36Guest:I just don't want to fucking deal with it.

00:48:38Guest:Right.

00:48:38Guest:It sucks.

00:48:39Guest:Right.

00:48:39Guest:And so I think Max FunCon is...

00:48:44Guest:I think the people who come to it, it's a self-selected group.

00:48:47Guest:It's not like a huge number of people or anything.

00:48:49Guest:They're just not into that shit.

00:48:51Guest:Yeah.

00:48:52Guest:You know?

00:48:52Marc:Yeah.

00:48:53Marc:Everybody was very sweet, and there was actually this idea that there was almost a utopic kind of thing going on up there, that everybody knew exactly what it was, and they were there to have fun with like-minded people.

00:49:05Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think what it is... It's like camp.

00:49:08Guest:Yeah, that was my idea, for it to be like camp.

00:49:11Guest:But I think part of it is just...

00:49:13Guest:you know you can get through a lot by just setting expectations you know like that really does a lot of the work for you if you're just clear about what the thing is that you're doing you know then people people are like okay well if that's what we're doing i'll do that that's fine yeah i did learn how to resent uh you know i'm sorry this got nothing to do with you i don't want to put you in the middle of anything but um

00:49:39Marc:But the Radiolab guy, I found him to be very, you know, he's a little condescending to me.

00:49:44Marc:Really?

00:49:44Marc:A little bit.

00:49:45Marc:He felt like it.

00:49:46Guest:I'm surprised to hear that because he's such a sweet guy.

00:49:49Guest:What's his name?

00:49:49Guest:Jad Album.

00:49:50Marc:See, I might be projecting.

00:49:52Marc:I think you're projecting.

00:49:53Marc:Well, I mean, like he- In fact, you're almost certainly projecting.

00:49:56Marc:Let's be honest.

00:49:57Marc:Well, there was a fan of mine up there, and I liked what he did, and he said some nice stuff, and he seems very smart, and everything is very put together, and I enjoyed his presentation.

00:50:05Guest:Well, Jad is- I learned things.

00:50:07Guest:Jad is like, in the world of public radio, Jad is really a special genius.

00:50:13Guest:I think Jad is the most talented public radio producer that there is in America.

00:50:17Guest:The only possible competition is Hira.

00:50:19Guest:Yeah.

00:50:20Guest:I think he's a special genius.

00:50:22Guest:And he was really coming.

00:50:23Guest:I mean, talk about you coming to Max FunCon feeling like the odd man out.

00:50:27Guest:Yeah.

00:50:27Guest:Like at least you know that Al Madrigal and Maria Bamford that you know are going to be there and Jimmy Pardo is going to be there.

00:50:32Guest:And these are things that you're sort of familiar with.

00:50:34Guest:Yeah.

00:50:35Guest:I had Jimmy in here last week.

00:50:36Guest:Jad is like, he doesn't know who any of these comedians are.

00:50:42Guest:He doesn't know, and he basically just knew that I was nice to him that one time that he was on The Sound of Young America, and well, he might as well, because I told him it would be really fun.

00:50:50Guest:And he had an amazing time.

00:50:52Guest:Yeah.

00:50:52Marc:A fan of mine who is a fan of yours and a fan of everything that is podcasting in this world,

00:50:59Marc:asked him what he thought of me.

00:51:02Marc:And he said, it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

00:51:07Guest:Mark, I don't mean to be rude to you or to condescend.

00:51:15Guest:I think that may be a reaction that you get reasonably frequently.

00:51:20Guest:I would almost suggest that that might be the premise of your act.

00:51:25Marc:Maybe I should call it my new CD.

00:51:27Marc:Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

00:51:31Guest:I think, I mean, do you feel like that's not what you do on stage?

00:51:35Guest:Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there?

00:51:38Marc:No, my assumption is that I am living inside of you.

00:51:42Marc:You just have to find him.

00:51:44Guest:I think, I mean, what I've always found remarkable about your act, Mark.

00:51:47Marc:This is where the show gets good.

00:51:48Guest:What I've always found remarkable about your act is that you can go to any place on stage and bring the audience with you.

00:51:57Guest:That you're such a great performer and you're so funny and talented and all that shit and so skilled that you can just start talking about something that's really personal and intimate and kind of upsetting and bring the audience with you.

00:52:13Guest:Right.

00:52:14Guest:Whether or not that's an entertainment experience people will seek out is a question.

00:52:18Guest:But you have that coveted stand-up comedy skill, which is I think that you can go in front of an audience of just people who are in a comedy club and do something really weird.

00:52:29Guest:And drag them through my problems.

00:52:30Guest:And drag them through your problems.

00:52:31Guest:And they're fine with it.

00:52:32Guest:They're laughing and enjoying it.

00:52:34Guest:And then they leave feeling a little mentally raped, but that's all right.

00:52:37Guest:And so I think when you don't know what you're getting into, I can understand that at the end of that you're like,

00:52:46Marc:huh yeah what was that that i just laughed so much at yeah yeah yeah i guess i guess it's uh that is true and i guess when i hear something like that it's actually a compliment of some kind but i just feel like i'm sharing love and and and celebrating the human spirit and and perhaps i don't uh maybe that should be the this title of your new cd a celebration of the human spirit yeah yeah i think that's what i'm trying to do jesse god damn it why can't people understand that

00:53:15Marc:That I'm a celebrator of the human spirit.

00:53:18Guest:There are very few comedians that you would not say nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

00:53:24Guest:That's true.

00:53:25Guest:There are a few comedians that are worth- All right, I'll let him off the hook.

00:53:29Guest:What's his name?

00:53:29Guest:Comedian Jad Abumrad.

00:53:30Guest:Jad Abumrad?

00:53:31Guest:Yeah.

00:53:33Guest:It's, I believe, half Lebanese.

00:53:34Guest:That's a hell of a name.

00:53:35Guest:He's a hell of a radio producer.

00:53:37Marc:Radio Lab's amazing.

00:53:38Guest:It is amazing.

00:53:39Marc:But think of it.

00:53:39Marc:I can't deny him the talent.

00:53:42Marc:I mean, he's great.

00:53:42Marc:I mean, it was a good presentation-

00:53:44Guest:Don't you feel like, I mean, I don't think there's a better comedian than Louis C.K.

00:53:49Guest:I think you could say that about Louis C.K.

00:53:51Guest:I just watched Bill Burr on Letterman last night.

00:53:53Guest:I think he's about as good a comedian as it gets.

00:53:55Guest:And I would certainly say that about Bill Burr's act.

00:54:00Guest:He's basically- No, we're out there doing it for you.

00:54:03Marc:We're providing a service so you don't have to live there.

00:54:05Guest:That's the whole thing.

00:54:06Guest:That's what going to see a challenging comedy show is.

00:54:11Guest:It's like you get to a place where they're helping you kind of understand and acknowledge a thing that's difficult.

00:54:19Marc:Right.

00:54:20Marc:And also maybe difficult within themselves, but they don't want to be there either.

00:54:23Marc:I mean, I think that's really what we're getting at.

00:54:26Marc:It's that, oh, my God, he's talking about that thing in me that I can't accept.

00:54:31Marc:And, you know, he's giving it, he's filling it with blood and life and humanizing it.

00:54:36Marc:And I feel a little better.

00:54:37Marc:Right.

00:54:38Marc:I hope to reach those people.

00:54:39Marc:Yeah.

00:54:40Marc:Okay.

00:54:40Marc:You're doing good work.

00:54:41Marc:Thank you.

00:54:42Marc:I'm glad we settled that.

00:54:42Marc:You're a regular Jad Abumrad.

00:54:44Marc:Oh, no, I'm not.

00:54:45It's...

00:54:45Guest:There's a cool wasp in here, by the way.

00:54:49Guest:A terrifying wasp.

00:54:50Guest:Holy crap, get a load of that motherfucker.

00:54:53Marc:But that doesn't look like, it's a weird wasp.

00:54:56Marc:It's like a multi-part wasp.

00:54:57Guest:Yeah, it's got very distinct... It looks like a science fiction wasp.

00:55:01Marc:Well, I'm pretty nerdy.

00:55:02Marc:I track that kind of stuff.

00:55:04Marc:Maybe it's because you're here.

00:55:06Marc:We said, great, the machine can travel freely and meet Mr. Thorne.

00:55:10Guest:It's here because you're so sweet, Mike.

00:55:12Guest:Oh, shit.

00:55:13Guest:We should describe this wasp.

00:55:14Marc:This is like an inch and a half long, at least.

00:55:16Marc:And it seems like the tail part, the abdomen, is just dangling from the body of the wasp.

00:55:22Marc:It doesn't look like it's connected.

00:55:24Guest:Yeah, this is terrifying.

00:55:26Guest:It has big, long wings like a termite.

00:55:29Guest:Oh, there it comes.

00:55:30Guest:Oh, it's coming towards me.

00:55:31Guest:Get out.

00:55:32Guest:Go.

00:55:32Guest:Yes.

00:55:33Guest:It's gone.

00:55:34Marc:Your dad's an alcoholic.

00:55:36Marc:We got that.

00:55:37Guest:Your mom seems very nice.

00:55:38Guest:That's public information.

00:55:39Guest:I've talked on Jordan Jesse Go about spending my childhood years drawing pictures in the back of AA meetings.

00:55:45Guest:Did go to AA as a kid?

00:55:46Guest:My parents divorced when I was three, so when I was with my dad, he went to AA three or four times a week.

00:55:51Marc:So back then it was like they were smoking in the room still and a lot of coffee, dirty people.

00:55:55Guest:The AA meetings that I went to, I lived in the mission, so it was like...

00:56:01Guest:I would say and my dad being a crazy vet sought out crazy vet themed AA meetings.

00:56:06Guest:So it was like it was roughly those rooms were roughly 50 percent homeless people.

00:56:16Guest:I would say 50 to 70 percent vets.

00:56:20Guest:And how old were you?

00:56:22Marc:five six that's some mind-blowing shit to have to deal with yeah it was well you know it was okay i mean it was fine no but when you think about cookies out of it cookies maybe shitty cookies they have really bad cookies at those they do yeah they're really good to really get away at a lot of them they did people just they have a cookie commitment mother's assortment they just pick up whatever they can but that's interesting because you know so many people it's been so much time trying to protect their kids from things and and for you know i see kids at a meetings now

00:56:48Marc:And, you know, to see that, to be experienced with that, because I remember there are certain things that will blow your mind when you're a kid.

00:56:54Marc:My dad was in the service and we flew from Alaska to New Jersey on a military cargo plane because we got a deal to go visit my grandparents.

00:57:04Marc:Right.

00:57:04Marc:And we're traveling with body bags.

00:57:06Marc:Hops.

00:57:06Marc:It's called, right?

00:57:07Marc:Yeah.

00:57:07Marc:Hops?

00:57:08Marc:Is that what the name of the cargo plane is?

00:57:09Marc:When you take it, when you get on a cargo plane.

00:57:11Guest:That's right.

00:57:11Guest:And that's what we did.

00:57:12Marc:I think that's what it's called.

00:57:13Marc:And we were flying with body boxes, you know, and I'll never forget that, you know, from Vietnam because it was maybe 69, 70, maybe 70.

00:57:19Marc:And they told me us that's what it was.

00:57:22Marc:And then you just sit there.

00:57:23Guest:That's a long time to be in there, too.

00:57:25Guest:Four or five hours.

00:57:26Marc:Yeah, just to have to process that.

00:57:27Marc:And they give us a box lunch.

00:57:28Marc:And I remember there was V8 in it.

00:57:31Marc:But in the same way, going to an AA meeting as a four-year-old has got to be fucking mind-blowing.

00:57:35Guest:It's funny.

00:57:35Guest:You know, like my parents, I mean, the reality of the situation is that when I was a kid, my parents lived in the inner city and didn't have any money at all.

00:57:45Guest:And just like shit, you know, we just did stuff.

00:57:49Guest:You know, like I started taking like people will...

00:57:51Guest:You know, my wife was working at this job where her boss, who was the super highly paid attorney, was always having to leave to go like take her kids to soccer practice or something.

00:58:01Guest:And we were talking about how I started taking the bus, not the school bus, the regular city bus to school by myself in second grade.

00:58:09Guest:And like the idea that like that's like so crazy.

00:58:12Guest:But like, it's not, I mean, I just took the fucking bus.

00:58:15Guest:That's right.

00:58:16Guest:The bus stop was like a block from my house and it stopped pretty much like half a block from my school.

00:58:22Guest:And I was seven.

00:58:22Guest:I could handle that.

00:58:23Marc:Right.

00:58:23Marc:But I think that the culture has become more frightened.

00:58:25Guest:Yeah.

00:58:26Marc:As people become more informed and more things to be frightened of, informed in maybe a negative way in terms of what you can or can't do, that the idea of sending a kid outside to go more than two blocks by himself as a seven-year-old is fucking unheard of.

00:58:38Guest:But, you know, I mean, I think the reality of the situation was for my parents, because they were divorced and because they, you know, so they were each taking care of me essentially by themselves.

00:58:48Guest:And, you know, they were both, you know, each of them was making, you know, $22,000 a year or whatever.

00:58:54Guest:And that was just what happened.

00:58:56Guest:It was just the only way it could work.

00:58:58Guest:Sure.

00:58:58Guest:And you survived.

00:58:59Guest:Yeah, it was fine.

00:59:00Guest:It wasn't, I mean, like, even stuff like...

00:59:03Guest:Like, I definitely would be, like, I used to get jumped as a kid and stuff like that.

00:59:08Guest:But, like, you know, it only happened half a dozen times over the course of the 10 years that I was the age that you would jump someone, you know, from, like, age 7 to 15 or whatever.

00:59:19Guest:But the truth of the matter is, as a 7-year-old.

00:59:21Guest:Not always by other kids, but yeah.

00:59:23Guest:By grown-ups?

00:59:23Guest:Yeah.

00:59:24Guest:What does that mean?

00:59:26Guest:Just with like a knife or something.

00:59:27Guest:Really?

00:59:28Guest:I never had anything.

00:59:29Guest:I mean, I still, I still feel, I still never carry any more than like $40 on me because I just assume that, cause you know, if you just get jumped, you just give them your money, right?

00:59:40Guest:Yeah.

00:59:40Guest:I just don't carry enough money for it to matter.

00:59:42Marc:That's right.

00:59:43Marc:And hopefully they don't go, we're going to your bank.

00:59:45Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:59:46Marc:Get your ATM card.

00:59:48Marc:But do you find that after coming from that, that I think some of the manifestations psychologically from that kind of upbringing, do you find yourself being control freakish, fairly meticulous, overly organized?

01:00:01Guest:No, I mean, I think what it is is that I'm certainly not those things.

01:00:06Guest:But I think, you know, like I'm just, I just assume self-reliance.

01:00:12Guest:Like I think that there was no choice, but for me, and it's not like I felt like my parents weren't taking care of me or something like that.

01:00:19Guest:Right.

01:00:19Guest:But just the reality was that if my mom had to go somewhere, then I had to stay home by myself.

01:00:25Guest:Like there was no money for a babysitter, you know?

01:00:27Guest:And make a grilled cheese and wait for Jim Lehrer.

01:00:29Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:00:31Guest:I did.

01:00:31Guest:I used to watch, I was just talking with my wife about what we used to watch as kids.

01:00:35Guest:Yeah.

01:00:36Guest:Like I watched a fair amount of dumb TV shows, especially after I got my own TV as like 11, 12 year old.

01:00:41Guest:But before that, my dad's TV was like a 10, nine, 10 inch black and white TV.

01:00:48Guest:And it had broken knobs and shit.

01:00:50Guest:Was there a hanger stuck in the broken antenna hole?

01:00:52Guest:I'll tell you what there was.

01:00:53Guest:There was a pliers that sat on top of it that you used to change the channel.

01:00:57Guest:Nice.

01:00:58Guest:And so I just watched, my childhood is populated by my dad, the shows that my dad watched, which was essentially MASH, Cheers, and the NewsHour, and that's it.

01:01:08Guest:It's just my dad only watched MASH, Cheers, and the NewsHour.

01:01:10Marc:And I think that is completely apparent in the man you've become.

01:01:16Marc:I could think of three Jungian archetypes.

01:01:19Marc:Exactly.

01:01:20Marc:Exactly.

01:01:20Marc:I think that captures any play James Brown music.

01:01:23Marc:And there it is.

01:01:23Marc:That is how Jesse Thorne was built.

01:01:25Marc:Yeah.

01:01:26Marc:Well, thanks for being here, man.

01:01:27Guest:Oh, of course.

01:01:27Guest:Thank you so much for having me.

01:01:34Marc:That's it, Jesse Thorne.

01:01:36Marc:What a wonderful, well-dressed man that guy is.

01:01:40Marc:You know, he's a little clean for me.

01:01:43Marc:A little clean.

01:01:45Marc:Kind of runs a clean shop, that guy.

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