Yeah, fuck politics man. Like literally,
that's feckless. I'm telling you, I'm on my kindness conspiracy.
As long as I'm kind to people, if we love by an ethic of kindness
and we foster trust amongst each other, it will matters less what corporations and
politicians say because we'll be able to trust our society's cohesiveness.
If you look at life, anything in life, through the framework of money, you'll
miss most of the picture. In business,
especially at this stage in our careers, you realise through the years,
people play incentives. If they incentivise a certain way,
that's the way they're gonna behave so what they want is never really surprising.
How they get there is where all the surprises are. So, I feel like
I can forgive somebody for playing an incentive, it's disappointing,
but what was so remarkable when I walked away from the show
is that it was against incentive.
So people couldn't understand it at the time, "it was so much money! How could you do that?!..."
But you know, if I'd taken that money and finished the show,
I would've got the money but I might've never been the same.
I've never seen these things before, I've never seen anybody else do this and get back up,
I didn't see... and the drumbeat is "he's crazy, he smokes crack, he's this and that..."
It was a wild experience the people close to you react to it.
Like I had failed or I had ruined my life. And then when you're cold that
phone don't ring that often. And then I had over a decade of
sitting in that choice but I didn't languish in just that
experience, I started doing stand up for much better reasons than making it.
I still enjoyed it. I started seeing
the places where I was performing. Normally when you're successful in comedy,
you get off the plane or the bus, you do the hit, you go back to the hotel, you get back on the bus,
you don't really see anything, you don't really... like even now this last run we did here in Austin,
we were here for weeks. And I got to see Austin.
I got to find restaurants that I like. I met people that I'd probably call
because I'm in town, stuff like that. And it was like that all over
the world, not just the country, I started going around and just seeing the world.
I got overwhelmed with this idea that none of my information was first-hand,
I just read it in books or heard it from friends and I was eager to just see something for myself.
And I kind of entrenched this philosophy that my memories are
some of the most valuable things that I have. These first-hand experiences.
If I reminisce on a nice day, it feeds you. Remembering something is neurologically identical,
I've read, to experiencing it. Yeah, fuck politics man.
Like literally, that's feckless. I'm telling you, I'm on my kindness conspiracy.
As long as I'm kind to people, if we love by an ethic of kindness
and we foster trust amongst each other, it will matters less what corporations
and politicians say because we'll be able to trust
our society's cohesiveness. But if you politicise these things,
it's gonna become increasingly difficult to come to an understanding or agreement.
Yeah, it's getting tribal here. But you know what's funny,
I don't even really know what you politically believe or don't believe,
who gives a fuck, I get along with you every time I see you. I know you're funny,
I know you're a nice dude, we laugh about shit, we learn shit from each other.
You're from Boston, I'm from DC, two very different types of places and types of cultures,
but this culture of comedy, this common denominator,
makes me feel like we're of the same tribe. And there's trans people in my tribe,
and there's white and black and asian and all kinds of people
and all of them are committed to this concept of levity.
And we all get there in different and interesting and unique ways.
And what's wrong with that? It works.
And we say terrible shit to each other, all the fucking time, everyone's fine.