This is covering the spread part of the Fandall podcast network We are just eight days away from the first round of the 2024 NFL draft and Props are going up across various books right now the offerings getting more expansive We're gonna break down the NFL draft the Connor Allen of bets birds and four for four today Getting his read on the first round talking about his most recent mock draft where he's seen valued Fandall sports book And much more to get you ready for next week's opening round This is covering the spread right here on the Fandall podcast network and Fandall research My name is Jim Sonnis I am a managing editor of digital media for Fandall research Joined here as mentioned by Connor Allen check him out on Twitter at collar Connor Allen NFL you can find his work at bets birds and four for four and of course on the move the line Podcast as well Connor. It is a pleasure to have you on the show for today. How you doing? I'm great Jim. Yeah, it's awesome come on the show. You know, we've hung out I think once or twice now in real life always fun good to chat, you know Some people and meets of people you know online in real life. So that's always super fun. And then Yeah, I mean it's draft season. I think no better time and no better events about yeah selfishly I was like, oh, like cool. I get to meet Connor like in real life But also I can like ask Connor to come on covering the spread now Because like, you know, once you've met it's like I feel like it's harder to say no So like there was like they're like, oh cool I get to meet Connor but also I'm gonna be selfish and like use him for my show now, too So it actually worked both ways for me. Oh, it was perfect. Yeah, of course Yeah, it's an easy out to be like, yeah, come on the show. You know hang out for a little bit Right now now you live in the Chicago area. Are you a Bears fan? I assume Honestly, not really like I saw you still live in Colorado when I was growing up for a couple years in my during my You know formative sports year. I was years. I would say I saw that in Marius Thomas jersey behind yours. Okay Yeah, yeah And so that was like my initial fandom But now at this point like I just bet on everything that makes me money I you know, like I'm so removed like fantasy when you play in like 15 fantasy leagues, which I used to I don't anymore like you're just like rooting for players and not teams and so like I just kind of lost my fandom So I don't know. I'm excited for the city of Chicago. Chicago's a better place when their sports teams are good And so I'm very excited for the Bears this year. Um, just for the city mostly though, not for my fandom The lack of fandom is so relatable because I grew up a Jets fan. I'm like no reason to root for that anymore So like it's just whatever can win me money. I will happily root for so I am fully on board of that But if I get to watch Kayla Williams and the town I now live in I'll take that too for sure We're gonna talk to Connor about the first round of this nfl draft Where he's seen valued fandom sports book and much more in just one second But first a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to covering the spread Wherever you get your podcast tomorrow epl thoughts formula one and nascar here on the show NHL Stanley Cup playoff preview coming up on Friday as well with Tom Vecchio So get those as they are posted by making sure you're subscribed to covering the spread Wherever you get your podcast you can also find us on the fan dual youtube page and on fan dual tv Plus the nba play and tournament gives teams a chance to play their way into the post season So it only seems right now that right now new customers on fan dual can play their way into 150 bucks as well just place any five dollar bet You'll get 150 dollars in bonus bets win or 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gambling helpline ma.org or call 100 327 50 50 for 24 seven support in massachusetts or call 1877 8 hope and y or text open y in new york now connor we'll talk about this year's draft here in just one second but first i want to know about your overall process for betting the draft because there are a lot of ways to play this uh you can grind the box as much as you want you can try to listen to podcasty with shifty saying stuff like that and there are a lot of things you have to do to be on top of things here for the draft so what does your overall draft betting process look like yeah so i would say that it's probably consuming as much information from reliable sources as possible and i think when i look to make bets on the nfl draft specifically it's way it has nothing to do with what i would do personally and almost everything to do with what i think general managers will do and so it's you know very much not like oh i think you know jane daniel's the second best quarterback so i'm going to bet him number two like to me that type of analysis generally has not been fruitful in uh draft betting so that's something that i tried not to pay attention to whereas you know uh things that are like general managers view this player is this or scouts view this player is this so that's the type of stuff that i'd like to put stock into i create a big google sheet for my own make basically great notes of like what i think are viable notes throughout the process for each pick um and then i look at uh you know vagus refund is a great job of like compiling different sharp mock drafters so that like aggregates a lot of different stuff and then from there it's basically like early on in the process with betting the draft i like to take a lot of long shots and kind of embrace him with volatility because things change fast and so it's one of those things where like you know wil levis was favored to go second overall last year but if you were taking alt overs or you know finding ways to like you know basically take the extremes there you were able to get make a ton of money and same with ethyl richardson under it's a number four and see just draw number two so like i think kind of embracing some of that volatility there early in the process and then trying to hammer some like i guess you know heavy favorites late um is generally my strategy now the one thing you said that i want to dig into is you're relying on reliable people and that's difficult people who have not done this before because hard to know who is reliable and who is not um you know i'm not going to ask you to list who is not reliable but who are some of the people you put the most stock into when you're trying to discern what matters and what does not yeah i think it's important to know i guess where these people get their information from so generally adam shefter is obviously one of the best i think that he generally has good information but it's not like he's not you know the gospel like it's not a hundred percent um as we've seen in previous years he's you know gotten the mac jones thing wrong maybe they changed their minds from those there peter schrager does a good job generally he's good friends with shon mcvay and cliff kingsbury so like he generally has done a really good job with wherever they are with his final mock draft that's very important because they don't tell him like who they're picking you know two weeks out a week about they just kind of think of him hints along the way and then closer to the draft and they're a little more comfortable telling them daniel jeremiah with the jets and i think the ray ravens chargers i think he's been involved with in some some aspects whether it's being their broadcaster like knowing people on the team so like some of those are some of the connections that i think are the most important so not even like oh this guy is the most accurate mock drafter i should pay attention to everything it's like specific team fits within certain mock drafters that i think are the most useful yeah for sure and it's the same list i would have given to as far as guys i truly trust another mac jones thing happened with shefter but like his track record goes beyond just that one that one thing for sure so um knowing who to trust is definitely a key here the problem is that people know that too we're not catching anybody napping by saying hey trust shefty stuff like that and the betting markets have evolved a lot i know in 2020 it kind of boom because we're all bored of covid and stuff like that but it's changed a lot since then so what have you noticed as being different within the markets this year and how has it impacted your approach to betting the draft yeah it's really interesting because so in 2021 sports books took like an absolute bath on the draft i mean they really they got hit there was multiple stories on it i think you know david perdom talked about it talked to a different bunch of sports books they're like this is terrible so in 2022 uh sports books were very reluctant to post and you know i think that that's something that i noticed you know across the industry and was not just one specific sports book they were just very hesitant to post because again it's like a you know a lost leader for the month they're they're really struggling um but then you know things got a little crazy in last year's draft with the Texan straighting back up to pick will anderson cj straggler number two we already talked about all the craziness there will let us go and weigh over even though he was you know quote unquote a lock to go forward to the Colts um like the sports books cleaned up you know by all accounts they cleaned up last year so then this year they've been a little bit more generous there are more props out um and the menu this year is fantastic i mean we are seeing tons of overunders that were just posted at vandal there are you know great long shot markets so like for me it's kind of ebbing and flowing with with the markets essentially so you know in 2021 i thought there was a pretty big edge i mean traven walker opened like 30 to one to go number one overall um and so that was pretty wild and again probably one of the reasons the sports books didn't do well and then whereas now like we're seeing a lot of markets again so it's exciting times and for me personally it's like long shots early and then laying juice late absolutely and i think that the expansion the menu has been slow this year but now that it's here and we've got a lot of stuff out there it opens up a lot of chances to you can find some middles uh there's like you don't get this amount of discrepancy between books for any other market basically sometimes future stuff like that but like it's definitely a good time to shop around try to identify the best number because you can find given there is no consensus it's good for us as sports betters in general now connor you do your own mock drafts over at uh four from four in bet spurts and you put one up earlier on this week and in that one you had drake may going second overall since then peter schreger did drop a mock draft obviously not his last one you mentioned that's kind of the one we put the most stock in but in that one schreger did have daniel's going second overall you mentioned uh schreger's ties to some people in the commander's organization his track record very good so now at fandals sportsbook drake may is plus 220 jj mccarthy is 21 does that tempt you or does the drum beat around daniel's via schreger via shifter etc push you away from this market yeah so it's one of two things are happening right now this is either going to be like the cj stroud bryce young kind of steam towards the second half of the the draft where everyone publicly started saying hey i think it's bryce young not cj stroud who was originally the favorite and he just kind of kept steaming and steaming steaming for its daniel's now my hesitancy here is that there's a couple of pieces here so adam schrefter has been pretty public about saying that he thinks it's jade daniel's but on every if you listen to every single show he did like a world podcast tour last week where he went on like seven different uh it's like on those people question him we're like well why do you think that you know which is not a question that adam schrefter normally gets asked because because but the answer was it's not like anyone from washington has told me it's just who other people think they're picking which in my mind actually means like he doesn't really know he's just putting the pieces together and he's been pretty vocal about that and then in schreger's first mock he said like as of today i think it's jade daniel's he also again on his podcast was like i you know cliff kingsbury has not told me who they're taking and so maybe they're saying that because they can't tip the pick maybe they're saying that because they legitimately don't know i think that adam peters who was in the san francisco front office when they picked trey lands when there was a whole mac jones trey lands you know kerfluffle there i think it's one of those things that it's like i don't think anyone knows i don't think anyone's going to know until the day of so for me i had drake may going second in my mock i think that it could be him jaden or to some extent j j mcarthy by the book percentages it'd be like 45 45 10 um but like me putting drake may was more of a statement that i think that the market is wrong uh right now and not and like not quite as uh confident that it's going to be jade daniel so that's why i put drake may and there's a difference between thinking the market is being over confident and thinking that we must bet drake may like you can think that the market is over confident in jane daniels because he's a minus 300 right now if annual sports book and still not want to bet drake may at plus 220 is that where you're sitting right now where it's kind of a stay away market for you yeah totally and i think that so they just said their visits uh on wednesday was the last day all of them together uh over the for the commanders yeah that's another thing too like why they it's they have the number two pick the number one pick is caleb Williams we already know that number two pick we there's no mystery i mean we know they're picking a quarterback so they could very easily just be like have their guide for a visit do what the panthers did last year where they put stroud and levis having a you know kind of bs visit the last day where they were all together but no they had jade daniels they had drake may jade mcarthy all go play top golf together and like hang out that's what they're saying so i don't know what they're doing they're a new regime they're just figuring it out um very unique process so yeah for me it's not a must bet on drake may or jade mcarthy but like if you are itching to make a bet like you know that's where i would lean is maybe a little sprinkle on both yeah right now for me i have a daniels ticket at plus 265 to go second overall and i've been trying to get a good enough number to like i hate hedging i think it's the stupid like i don't want to like we're talking before i don't want to neuter my good bets by hedging um i've been waiting to take a number on may at a certain point but i've not gotten a good enough number to actually get me to do that and that's in large part because i am anti-hedge in general um but keeping close eyes on that that second overall pick market because i would like a chance to potentially add it but i want a more generous number on may or more reputable drafters saying may will go second overall that's kind of what i'm looking for right now right there the other interesting i was going to say there's going to be a great opportunity here too like if it's not jade daniels there these are my opinion are the best opportunities like if you if in the next few days we start hearing like hey maybe they're not locked in on jade daniels you should start betting like drake lane jade mcarthy because like these things change very fast and we'll start to hear that drum beat publicly here pretty quickly or it's going to be they're locked in on jade daniels and then it's just over like yes that's it so i think pay attention to that right now like in the next week we'll get the best information that won't add you know by far this is around the point in the mac jones year where it started to shift towards trey lands it was around a week before the draft when it really became public that they had changed their mind effectively um so this is a good time as far as keeping your nose to the ground other interesting pick in your mock draft connor was you had liatu lotu being the first defensive player picked going ahead of dalas turner right now if andal sports speaking bet on who'll be the first defensive limiter edge drafted and turners minus 110 and there been some movement against him recently in that market lotu is plus 240 as is jared verse who is plus 240 as well now if lotu does that plus 240 number tempt you at all or what's your read on this market here yeah it's kind of interesting because from the sourcing that i've done like dalas turner to the falcons like a super popular picking mock drafts i think we're talking like 85 90 percent um you know from the sourcing that i've done like it's it's not that falcons don't really view it like that like i think that they view lotu as someone who's you know as good if not better than turner jimmy lake their current defensive coordinator was actually lotu's coach before at washington as well um and lotu's a guy where there's obviously obviously some medical red flags but if he's cleared on those medical red flags which seems to be pretty universal like teams of that's kind of died off at this point in terms of like a red flag i mean he could very easily be the first defensive player taken so yeah i think that lotu here in this market is interesting whether the question is whether the falcon stay at eight because if they don't stay at eight then you know we don't know who's taking the first defender and i think that opens the door for a guy like jared verse who you know i had nine or i think it could be interesting at nine as well to the bear so like there's i think multiple doors here of what happens and i'm not sure it's my favorite market is first offensive player drafted with this but i think finding a way to fade dallas turner the falcons is probably the best way i'd go about it and one way you could do so i know uh the positional markets or the overunders were just posted if andrew's forcing but i believe that the positional number uh for him was pretty actually i don't see him up here um any more but i thought at one point that there was a dallas turner prop that was right around nine and a half so that could have been another route to potentially fading him if you're looking at lotu and verse because both these guys are pretty much dead even with turner right now preference for you between lotu and verse if you're trying to find a way to fade turner or you're looking in over under markets as the best route for fading turner yeah i think it's kind of tough so yeah definitely the over under markets on turner if you can find it but i also think that like you can play a little bit of lotu inverse regardless because if the falcons stick at eight i think that they would prefer lotu over turner if the bears stick at nine from my understanding they love romadounza so they'll pick romadounza if he's there but again as i mentioned with the falcons like i think they are a very ripe trade down spot for a team like maybe the jets the colts i don't know the saints maybe even someone that's what someone suggests another mock to trade up and get a romadounza ahead of the bears so now if that happens the bears are left with who will be the first defender and again from my understanding they really like jared verse so um you know jared verse very much also seems like the darnell right of this year's draft kind of just like on a little bit off the board mid-teens mox guy a little bit older but you know is good polished you know has some some interesting skill sets so it makes a ton of sense and from everything i've heard they like him so i think both of those two bats are pretty interesting okay so you could consider lots you reverse a plus 240 but then also keep your eyes open in case fandal does post those over unders um for dalis turner as well now we do have top 10 markets of fandal sportsbook uh there i don't believe there was a no market uh for these to be a top 10 pick uh that's up right now but we do have yes markets on those when you look at those connor any standout to you as being good values right now yeah so my favorite thing about this market actually is that you can like parlay them so you can parlay multiple of them because i guess the thing about the draft too is in why it's so much different than a regular sporting market like i think a great example is uh you know steve asik tweets out perdu minus 416 c one seed being 16 seed the game still has to be played like basketball still has to be played crazy stuff can happen in the draft like roma dunza is going top 10 you know if i want to like if i had him you know a million dollars and fandal will take a million dollars i would just put it on roma dunza going top 10 i know that you know again not financial advice but you know i think that's uh you know like i it's one of those things where it's it's whatever it is but it should be like minus you know infinity in my my mind so that being said combining like a dunza jj mcarthy um i think is interesting um so yeah like i think that that's interesting potentially and then like if you want to get a little wild you can add in like a jared burst or you know uh even fought fatanu the office of lineman i think you could go to the jets at 10 potentially over brock bowers especially if joe alt's gone so you get thrown like alt uh there as well so it's one of those things where i like to kind of just parlay them and like kind of get better odds which i know is normally fishy but in the draft i don't think it's that fishy and again they're like i think that it's it's it could be fishy in some markets uh because if one player is a top 10 pick then there are fewer spots in the top 10 for other players that's part of why i think they allow you to parlay those but like there are also some other markets so like you could go with the top three overall picks exact order where there is obviously a correlation there jade and daniel's go second overall that increases the odds that drake may goes third overall and things like that so you can be creative if you're allowed to parlay things kind of dive into that and see ways you can find those correlations to try to find things like that um to get an edge there with some potentially correlated markets now it's not just top 10 we've also got um top five markets first round pick markets anything in those markets connor you're looking at right here yeah i think i i played around with the other with the yesterday the top five parlay of like jj jaden and may i think was minus 143 when you added it together um you know i think anything less than minus 150 minus 136 at this point i think that's fantastic odds for jay jen mccarthy to go essentially just jay j mccarthy to go top five or all three quarter x to go top five because we look we're looking at it right now there's one of cardinals sitting number four and the los angeles chargers sitting in number five i think the cardinals could trade out you know we saw montios and for last year trade out trade back trade back up um i think that if they get a good enough offer from someone like the vikings giants um you know raiders broncos that they would be interested in it but to say they want to take marvin arson junior that's fine the chargers have been linked to like offensive lineman and some defenders like right i don't think that they're going to take an offensive lineman at fifth overall like they already have rachon slater on the left side of left tackle so taking joe alt like one of them would have to move over to the right side so it's a little bit messy so like i think they're heavily heavily incentivized to trade down and so i think a team could even get like a you know cheaper offer to get up to five and then potentially take again jay j mccarthy quarterback where there seems like there's three to four teams betting on it so i really like jay j mccarthy to go in the top five even if i don't personally believe that he's that good at the prospect which i mean i don't i think he's a little bit raw but again that stuff doesn't really matter i think he's going to go top five and you get that again minus 136 to parley jayden daniel's drake may and jay j mccarthy all to be uh top five picks we don't have a lot of history of four quarterbacks going within the top five but this is kind of an unprecedented draft where there are a lot of it's a pretty deep class where there are a lot of guys who are pretty legit and i think that that makes a lot of sense so i don't mind that either minus 136 for that as mentioned you have positional over unders as well a lot of other markets so conor and open up the full board to you what other markets do you like for this year's nfl draft yeah there's two over unders that i thought were interesting right now so brock bowers over 12 and a half i think it's really interesting now again i like brock bowers the player but he's coming off of an injury that we thought was season ending he came back you know at the end of the season didn't do any of the testing of the combine didn't do any of the testing at the pro day some teams don't really like that um and obviously he's connected to the jets a lot i'm not really buying the hype to the jets here i think that they're going to go with an offensive linemen or try and trade up to potentially get one of the wider receivers so if you operate under that assumption you're looking at basically just pick 11 which could be the vikings could be the cardinals could be the chargers you know trading down in that scenario um i don't think any of them are really in play for brock bowers and then it's just the broncos basically who are kind of a mess in a lot of different ways but like i don't know could they go bow nicks could they go defender could they go you know like i just don't think brock bowers that a tight end there is going to be exactly what they're looking for i think it's probably a trade downer or you know maybe a defender in this spot for the broncos so for me it's just basically fading the broncos uh in my mind so like i don't really have as much insight there but i still think it's kind of unlikely there so i think over 12 and a half is pretty interesting for bowers all right that again is over 12 and a half for brock bowers minus 114 right now at vandal sportsbook for that one i did want to ask you quickly why have you here uh we got bow nicks uh his positional number 32 and a half over is plus or 35 and a half i should say over is plus 102 under minus 136 and then michael penix is sitting at uh 33 and a half over plus 106 under his minus 140 the quarterback market is all over the place like you'll see minus 200 minus 180 somewhere in that range for over four and a half quarterbacks i got that even money so i'm kind of nervous watching these numbers on penix and nicks sitting here because if they fall past the broncos like they're tumbling baby and i don't know where they're gonna stop so i'm curious what you read is on those two guys specifically are you trying to i mean alt overs i don't think they've been posted yet are you looking for alt overs alt unders if they eventually do get posted which we can't guarantee they will right how are you handling those two guys right now yeah it's it's really tough because every year there's those like quarterbacks that get pushed up in the first round conversation last year there was headed hooker um and you know like you i mean we could say we'll love us too but i thought that he was you know still pretty squarely in the first round like top 10 conversation malik willis yeah malik willis geno smith i mean there's like all these different guys um you know every year even i think garden room issue too like there was like you know previous years like there's all these guys just keep keep getting pushed up in the first round conversation they end up never being first round picks i'm skeptical with penix i think bonix is interesting i think that a team maybe could like him just because he's such a high floor and like you know executes what's needed to happen i would be very happy in your situation having an over four and a half ticket but penix i just i just can't buy penix i mean it's like maybe it's my personal bias getting in the way this one but i tweet out a poll of like him versus hendon hooker blindfolded you know like player a versus player b i mean michael pennick says four season ending injuries he's 24 years old he like i mean he says that the very similar hype to hendon hooker was like highs and non-anonymity was good and like we're seeing teams be like oh well maybe this team could like him but the sharpest mock drafters i think are say basically saying like i'm not buying it like i'm not buying the penix around one hype so i took the over on michael pennick's and a plus money at 33 and a half i think is interesting but bonix says it scares me a little bit i'm not gonna lie i'm not chan peyton does some crazy stuff and so like i feel like him being he's minus 120 with the broncos like that could very easily happen in some way shape or form i would be again i'd be surprised it doesn't make sense in my mind but like chan peyton does some wild stuff and they need a quarterback that i think i saw like minus 165 on next to go to the broncos in part because it's like a a marker where you can hide the hold pretty effectively so you can see those numbers get outrageous but like i don't see that yet like in like again i have over four and a half so i want that to happen but i don't i can't get there it's like that one makes me super uncomfortable too yeah that's it's just really tough with these quarterbacks because like there's legitimate people saying like oh they're going to go in the first round or like they're putting them in the first round of their mock drafts but then of course like in hindsight day one goes by the thing you picked day two goes by and they're like oh okay like of course they're going to go in the fifties because they're yeah why would you pick a 24 with two bad knees and a bad shoulder you know like of course yeah it's like the most obvious hindsight moment like ever right yeah i don't know we'll see how it goes but that is connor allen makes you check him out on twitter at connor allen nfl check out the move the line podcast as well it's a lot of fun i was checking that out from i think that went up this morning i listened to it this morning but either way talking somewhere nfl draft over there check out his work at bed spurts and four for four connor appreciate the time and uh looking forward to talking to you again soon and enjoy the draft if i don't talk to you before then yeah absolutely appreciate you having me on jim all righty and again find connor on twitter at connor allen nfl i am on twitter at jim sonnis can find fan dual research on twitter at fan dual research want to thank you all for tuning in for today back tomorrow talking epl formula one and nascar and hl coming up on friday we'll talk to all of you then this has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network


Joining us from beautiful Sausalito. How should I describe you?   There's so much that you do.   You've written the movies. Santa Junior and Monster Makers for the Hallmark Channel. You write for Splitsider. Huffington Post. You have Suck-A-Tash, which is a comedy sound-cast. Sound-cast. Sound-cast. Easy for you to say.  There's so much that you do.  Of none.   Yeah. And you just came back from Dan St. Paul's annual Memorial Day barbecue. Yeah, exactly. I saw a lot of our old friends there. Who'd you see? I saw Larry Bubbles Brown. Hey, buddy. Yeah. I saw Bob Sarlott. Wow. I saw Steven Pearl. Steven Pearl. We just had him on the show. Yes, I know. It was a very good episode, actually. Yeah. I enjoyed that. And then some other folks that aren't actually work in comics like Tom Sawyer. We talk about Tom Sawyer all the time on this show. I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. He actually has a really good Trump impression, by the way. He was always a good impressionist. Tom Sawyer started Cubs. Yes. And was one of the early gatekeepers of the San Francisco comedy scene. As were you. I can remember you booking the punchline before you went off and became a writer and performer. I remember you would come in from Seattle to audition talent. Yes. Do you remember this? I do. I actually started out working in San Francisco for Fox Productions. And then we needed a club manager in Seattle at the Comedy Underground. So I went back up there. But I would, yeah, I would come down occasionally to look at guys that I'd say, yeah, well, let's bring him up. He's good or she's funny. Let's bring her up. Swannies, swannies, swannies, swannies. That's right. That was the sports bar on street level. And then we were downstairs in the basement. I thought the Holy City Zoo was the most insane comedy club in the world until I played swannies. That literally the inmates were running the asylum at swannies. Is that correct? Is that a fair statement? I believe that it was. Swannies is, I think it's still around. They've moved locations. But at the time, Jim Swanson, who was the titular owner, I think he had people that actually had money behind him, was like a AAA ball player as part of the Mariners farm system. And never really made it into the majors, but decided to open up a sports bar, a spitting distance from the kingdom. And I think everyone who worked for him was like some sort of baseball reject or something. But whenever there was a game, it would be overflowing with his friends who played Major League Baseball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and umpires and all those other kind of hangers on. But I thought one of the best things about having a comedy club downstairs was every time we had like a heckler or somebody who was getting out of hand, I could just go upstairs and get any number of giant hulking dudes to just come down and literally one night, they actually lifted a guy up with his chair and just carried him out of the room. One of my favorite places to play in, there was a condo that was one of those spiral, spiral cases. And I was dating my then ex-wife or soon, but I was dating my soon-to-be ex-wife. I was opening for John Fox, the comedian. Oh, I got a John Fox story for you. Well, there are a million John Fox stories, but John Fox was a great comedian. We lost him. He passed away. He was built for the road. He was. Yeah, if science was going to build a comedian for the road, it would have been John Fox. There are great stories about him. One night, I'm trying to convince my soon-to-be ex-wife, who I was dating at the time, that I was not a degenerate. She came with me to Seattle. And I was sharing the condo with John Fox. And my woman was sleeping with me. And the door, they were pounding on the door all night. John, I need to see you, John. John, I love you, John. All week, and then Saturday night, Sam Kenneson is in town. Playing, I think, the Paramount or one of the big theaters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He comes by to our show afterwards with Sika. There was a porn star named Sika, if I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Sam brought Sika up to the condo to have tea with John Fox at four in the morning. They were having high tea at four in the morning. I don't know what they were doing. And I was upstairs in my bedroom, trying to convince my soon-to-be ex-wife, this is not my lifestyle, I swear to you, I swear. Anyway, it was the most insane club on the planet. Tell me your John Fox story. Yeah, so John is headlining. This was before your particular story. He's headlining the club and he'd spent the weekend out on Lake Washington getting completely soused. And he's like wearing like a polo shirt and some cut-offs or some shorts. And he just says, look, I got to go back to the condo and grab a quick nap before the show. Okay, well, we're going to start pretty soon because that's okay. Just give me a call like 10 minutes before I got to be on because the condo was like a block away, right? So, all right. So I say, you know what, he was pretty out of it.  So I start calling. I go, I get a busy signal. You know, back then that's what would happen when you would call a landline. There was no call waiting. I go, okay, well, at least he's awake. He's on the phone. So I go, okay, great. So another five minutes goes by. I give him a call. Still busy. This is worrying me because he's got to go on in 15 minutes. So I tell my assistant manager, I'll be right back and I run down to the comedy condo, which I was living in at the time along with the comics. So I had keys. So I go in and I find him stretched out on his bed, still completely clothed, but with the phone receiver in his outstretched hand. So off the hook, which is why it was busy. And I wake him up and go, John, John. He said, I said to call me. And I pointed to the phone in his hand. I go, and what was going to happen? And he goes, oh, and he throws the phone down and we were running down and he literally gets into the club the moment he's introduced. Wow. And of course, like we said, he's built for comedy. He didn't miss a trick. No, he had an act. He was, it was built like a tank. The act, he would go up on stage holding a glass of bourbon and he would sip the bourbon and extend his pinky. Every time he took a sip, he would extend his pinky. And I marveled at him. I thought his act, I always wanted that kind of act where he could just go anywhere. Yeah. He was a great comic. When did he pass away? You know, I think it was a couple of years ago now. I think he had pancreatic cancer, I believe. Yeah, it was just amazing. He went pretty quickly after he'd been diagnosed, I think. Yeah. Now, I want to talk to you about your movies for the Hallmark Channel and your teaching improv and you do Cartier. You really are a renaissance, man. It's truly remarkable how much you do. Tell me about Suck-A-Tash, your podcast. Okay, it's been going for six years. I was calling it the comedy podcast podcast. The initial thrust of the show was to play clips of other people's comedy podcasts to just promote podcasts in general. Six years ago, it was not the floodgates that it is now. And I said, you know, it'd be great if there was someone who could promote some of these things. You know, some of these are kind of obscure and some of them are comics I know, but they're not getting any kind of, you know, traction. And so that's what I started out doing. And it was, I think I'm sort of, you know, beloved by podcasters because I will play clips from their show. Right. But about a year and a half ago, I got tired of sort of calling things podcasts because, I mean, that's what they are. But the podcast name came from Apple, right, because of their iPod. And it occurred to me when they announced that they were discontinuing making iPods by that name, that why are we still calling them podcasts? You know, if they changed the name of radio to something else, would we still be listening to the radio? Uh-huh. So I decided I start calling them soundcasts, which who knows whether that will ever catch on. But it's interesting because I just interviewed a guy who has a show that's only available in Audible, you know, Audible.com and their app. They're literally not available on iTunes and they don't call the shows podcasts. They don't really have a generic name for it all. It's just called his show, which is The Genius Dialogues, a guy named Bob Garfield, pretty well-known journalist. But anyway, so that's why I've decided to call it the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. And I also do interviews. You've been on the show before, you're a past guest. And I alternate. I have soundcasts that are suck-a-tash clips and I have soundcasts that are suck-a-tash chats just to differentiate the two. Why is it called suck-a-tash? Because it's a mishmash of people's shows and clips, you know. It's not my own format in terms of, hey, here's what my show is going to be and here's the bits I'm going to do. It's here's a mixed bag collection of different comedy shows and some of them are dramas in terms of they're like a... It's sort of like when you started doing your show, it was more like an old radio show. And it was very different from doing an interview show like you do now.  So it was this whole different collection of things. So that's where suck-a-tash came from. You listened to podcasts, specifically comedy podcasts. That's what I feature on the show. That's what I write about on splitsider.com. The reviews that I do for Huffington Post, I've begun to branch out a bit because it's amazing how expansive the world of sound casting has become. I don't know if you're aware of some of these amazing dramas that people are doing now and just amazing journalist shows that people are doing now. It's gone far beyond what it started out as 15 years ago. What are some shows that I should be listening to?  So there's a lot, that became a template for a number of different kinds of journalists. That's from this American life, right? That's right, it's been off from that. Where they, you know, followed this murder, this cold case, basically. I mean, it was a guy who was convicted for the murder. Why is this even a case? And it's now resulted in the fact that the guy has gotten a new trial because the evidence was very flimsy. And if it wasn't for the publicity generated by that show, I don't think that ever would have happened. So its effects are being felt kind of far and wide. There's an interesting show, London or Britain has a lot of interesting comedy shows. There's one called My Dad Wrote a Porno. And it's a guy whose father wrote this pornographic novel. And he found it hilarious. And he reads a chapter per episode to two of his friends who just do nothing but snipe it. How bad the writing is. It's horrible. And there's been, like, these amazing celebrities who listen to the show. They love the show. People like Elijah Wood was a guest on the show just because he likes listening to how horrible it is. Well, it's a show about Wood. Why not have Elijah? Ah, see. See what I am horrible at? How did people find podcasts? Very good question. I think there's the few that rise to the top. I mean when something like Cereal became popular, all of a sudden everybody was writing about it. So people found out about it. I like to think things like the AV Club and Splitsider.com and things like that where we're reviewing shows. I think that starts to help bring it to the fore. Comedians that have been doing podcasts or soundcasts talk them up when they're doing their shows. And, you know, if you look at Mark Marin, he was able to basically resuscitate a career that wasn't doing that well, I think, do largely to the popularity of his show. Yeah, I was with him the summer before he launched his podcast. And he was doing his one-man show in Montreal. We were walking around Montreal. I think it was 2009 or 2010. And he was in bad shape financially. His one-man show was fantastic.  And I condescendingly said, yeah, I think you'll enjoy it. I have one. And it took off. Why do you think Mark's podcast gained such traction? I think it was probably double-pronged. He was willing to kind of open a vein on the microphone and talk about his life. And I think people to some extent or another maybe would have gotten a little tired of just that. But he also began to have on an amazing array of guests. You know, it started with friends and comics and people that he either knew or he admired. And it has become, for better or worse, it's become a little bit more like a commercial talk show.   And then I think the corner really got turned, not that it wasn't popular at the beginning with, but when he had Obama on his show a couple of years ago, I think you ask, how do people find podcasts? I think things like that, when an event like that happens, it really spikes interest. And people go, hey, how do I hear that thing? How do I find out about that thing? And so when you get on iTunes and you go, here's how I download it, you suddenly realize, wait a minute, there's hundreds of shows on here. This is not just one guy. This is a whole array of things, not just comedy either. There's all the, there's, you know, a figure I keep banding around. It's probably grown since I started using it. But there are 300,000 podcasts out there, which is an amazing amount of stuff to get through. And the great thing about Suck-A-Tash is you're filtering it. And if you listen to Suck-A-Tash, you can kind of pick a la carte, right? Yeah, it's a bit like a Whitman sampler of comedy podcasts. I try to keep it fresh. I will occasionally, you know, repeat playing a show because somebody had somebody good on or said something funny. Sometimes if they mentioned Suck-A-Tash, I will play a clip from their show mentioning my show. But it is a way for people to kind of get a feel for what's out there because I try to find the newer things that are out there. Like I just reviewed Andy Kindler. He's got a new... The Thought Spiral, yes. The Thought Spiral. So I reviewed that for Splitsetter this week and I'm going to clip it in my next show. And so that's brand new.  And so now he's trying to do his own. Or he is doing his own. Well, I say try. He's doing his own. And so it's nice to be able to tell people about that. And I think that I know from a perspective of working with comedians, I know they appreciate having the attention without having to go out of their way to get you to do it. You know, to mention them. You were there at the beginning of the comedy boom in San Francisco. I was. I was. Does the podcasting boom remind you of the stand up boom? It really does. I mean, there's similarities. It's not obviously a beat for beat element. But it is. It's interesting because, you know, I think Ricky Gervais had one of the first podcasts that was out there. And in a way, it's almost like each wave of comedy is touched off by sort of the dying embers of the wave that preceded it. Right. I mean, we had like a whole kind of nightclub comic playboy club kind of comedian thing that was in the fifties into the sixties. I mean, George Carlin came out of there and then began to develop his own style and move away from the establishment comedian and kind of just as that was beginning to fade, whatever happened in like the early seventies. I mean, part of it's probably political with Watergate and that sort of thing. But it seemed to touch off that next wave that started in the seventies. And then that really kind of caught fire moving into the eighties. And we had this huge comedy boom that lasted into the early nineties and it began to sort of simmer down again. It became kind of diluted and a lot of the number one big comic draws were getting television shows and moving out of the clubs. And then once again, I mean, it's not as hooked into comedy today as I was back then, but it seems like there's a lot of live stand-up happening again. So it's almost like, again, the blaze is being sort of brought up and podcasting has become the same thing. There's a lot of comedians that now are having trouble getting booked on the road because they're old, and it's harder to get those slots. There's not as many clubs willing to pay the kind of money a headliner should get paid. But comics still want to work. They still are developing material, and so they found their way into podcasting. And that's just the comedy end of it. Like I said, it's this wide array of topics now. So everybody's finding a way. And I was sort of a student of radio. Back in the day, I started out doing radio in the late sevens. Why don't we start with what you haven't done? I think that might be easier. I've never made pretzels. Oh, by the way, I'm saving the best for last, folks. I'm going to tell you a job that he has that will blow your mind. Yes, so radio is... When radio started, you know, everyone had a radio station because it didn't take much. They were in their basement. Their stations maybe went a block and a half. And everybody had one. This was like in the 20s. And then the FCC sort of came into existence and began sort of turning the airwaves into real estate. So you didn't need a license at first? Not at all. Not at all. But then these legitimate, I'm using air quotes, legitimate stations started to come about.  And so all of a sudden, they started pushing their muscle around. All those little stations started to kind of disappear. But to me, that's what podcasting is now. And I think we're beginning to see corporate America beginning to move into the territory. Like I said, audible.com is now a place where they operate apart from iTunes. They don't need iTunes. They're doing their own thing, whether it lasts or not remains to be seen. Is this model with Audible? That's a good question. They're spending a lot of money to get stuff out there. And I guess it'll all turn out whether commercials are going to be the thing that saved them because they're not charging a subscription to listen to the show. So it's all going to be based on sponsorship. When and where do people listen to podcasts? With radio, as I understood it, at least during the 80s and 90s, if you capture the morning, you capture your listener. So everything is drive time. Get them from 6 till 10. With podcasts, do we know where and how and when people are listening? It's a great question. I think it's an individualized medium. You know, when people talked on the radio as announcers, they would go, okay, folks. And now I know it's a lot of podcasters. They make it more personal. Like I'm just talking to you.   And so I think the listening habits are as varied as people themselves. I listen when I hike in the morning. That's usually when I listen to the ones I'm going to be reviewing. I've listened to my car radio in five years. I just, you know, I Bluetooth through the car speakers. So I can listen to exactly what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. And I do listen during drive time because that's when I'm in the car. So more and more people are going to be listening to podcasts in the next 10 years. And I think it's safe to say that more and more aging baby boomers are going to finally figure out what a podcast is. I think so. My mother hasn't heard my show yet. Well, she's not a baby boomer. No, she's not. But she's on the cusp of the previous generation.  So it's much easier to get the content from your smartphone into the speakers in the car. So I think you're right. I think it's just going to continue to increase with the ability to make listening that much easier. Yeah, I find it really interesting and satisfying because television is the brass ring. That's what everybody wants. And yet, you know, I do Greg Fitzsimmons podcast. And every time I do it, it's like I was just on The Tonight Show. For some reason, the reaction is I've got lawsuits, death threats, subpoenas. I mean, it's because audio connects with people in a way that nothing else does. I always say it's preliterate. We had reading. We had people talking into your ear. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I think the last time I reviewed Greg's podcast was when you were on and you were about to undergo a civil hearing of sorts. Yeah. And... It wasn't so civil. No. But I mentioned, if I, you know, is it a show I would have listened to if I didn't have earbuds to make it a very sort of private experience for me? Because you guys, you know, you guys had no restrictions on your language. You had no restrictions on the subject matter.  And I just, I'm sure I looked quite insane if anybody had seen me. But I don't think I would have done that if this was a medium where you've got the speakers on and you got it cranked up and you got the car windows down. That's not the show for that. Because you're afraid somebody might hear it. Someone might hear it. It might be inappropriate for any number of reasons, but it's a very, it can be a very personal experience, which I think sets it apart from almost any kind of media we have had up to this time. I agree. I've been saying that podcasting is not a means. It's an end in and of itself. Interesting. Because, you know, Netflix is an end in and of itself and it changes the way you watch television.  Which changes your, among other things, a screenwriter. So when you write a series, the arc is completely different now. Yeah. You're writing a 12-part movie.  That is true. What is a branding expert? It's somebody who really knows how to get a calf down on the ground and tie it off and then get that hot iron and just like, you know exactly where to put it in. What does branding mean? And what is it branding? I'm bearing the lead. Years ago, I couldn't do it, but you invited me up to San Francisco for a naming ceremony. You are the Elia Kazan of the 21st century because you name names. You are hired by companies to come up with names. Now, I think you created the name. Gynomotron? I was involved in the Gynomotron. Now, some of this is sort of legally sticky, right? Because I work for... So is Gynomotron. Oh, my God. You should have come to that session. I wish you had. What is Gynomotron? It's Lubricant. Let's just say that. Okay. A female Lubricant. But yeah, I work for a company now called Landor Associates in an international branding company. I'm a senior manager of naming and verbal identity. What that means is I create names and also all the words that go around names like taglines and all the other elements of messaging that come with a brand, right? What you're going to read about it in the press and that sort of thing. Okay, so what does branding mean? Branding is the identification of a product or service or company by which it is identified. So Coca-Cola is a name for a beverage and it's also the company that produces the beverage. And there's a logo. That's part of the brand? Yes, very much part of the brand. There's a logo. There's an advertising campaign. There's, as I said, there's messaging. So when people that are in the company are talking about it, they have a template for how they're going to talk about that particular brand. So everybody has the same message going. What does that mean? Well, when you give the information to an ad agency, you want the brand has a certain identity to it. It speaks with a certain voice and you want that voice to be consistent.  Those are the things you want to come up with the euphemisms for. It's a delightful refreshing beverage. But I'm not in the advertising business. I don't have to worry about that. So branding is saying this is Coca-Cola. I would assume you associate red. They have beads of condensation. Yes. Yes. It quences your thirst. Those are parts of the element of it. It's also, you know, they have their catchphrases, you know, we're going to teach the world to sing back in those days. I don't know how Coca-Cola was going to do that. Yeah, but what does that have to do with being addicted to sugar and caffeine, which is what Coca-Cola makes its money off? It's the idea that you want this in your lifestyle. In this case of Coca-Cola, this beverage fits my lifestyle. I want to be refreshed. I want to feel lively. I like the taste of sugary water. Okay, so I'm curious about this. I think I'm immune to branding. However, late at night I'm traveling. I'm on the road. We stop at a Denny's. And I see something on the menu. And it plants the picture of the food. Plants a taste in my mouth so that when the actual food arrives, my sense memory can pull from the picture to compensate for the lack of taste in the actual food I'm eating. Is that what branding is? Partially, but you do enjoy that moons over my hammy. I mean, admit it. And if it's your birthday, it's free. So why wouldn't you go? So is branding literally burning an image into your brain convincing you you're getting something that's not existent? That's more advertising. Branding is giving you a identification for a particular product. When you go to Denny's, they don't want you to think, oh, this is almost like I'm at Coco's or I'm at some other 24-hour restaurant joint. No, Coco's gives me the runs. Denny's makes me vomit. I know the difference. That's right. But they want you to, you know, they want that image of what they are, whatever that is to you. They want that implanted indelibly so nobody else can sort of trod on their brand. It's why Coca-Cola. It's why, you know, Kleenex fights so hard to keep people from calling tissue Kleenex. They don't want generic facial tissue to be called Kleenex. They're trying to protect their brand. I mean, there's a litany of brands that have lost their branding power over the years that started out as a brand name and became a generic escalator. Used to be a brand name. Aspirin used to be a brand name. And over the years, they got diluted because everyone just referred to every headache remedy as aspirin. And after a while, they could no longer protect it because that's how it became generically known. So companies spend thousands, millions of dollars every year to try and protect that brand. Are you allowed to tell me some of the names that you've come up with? I am. I am. Now some of them I will say I helped to come up with because I was working for one company or another at the time and I was part of a team. Before you give me the names, two things. Yes. Haagen-Dazs is made up, right? That's not a word. Totally invented. Farvignugin. I think that's actually got its roots in actual German, quite frankly. But it doesn't, I think they brought it out to kind of mean this spirit of Volkswagen. But I think it actually has a meaning, but I don't speak German. And isn't there a Japanese car that's a made-up Japanese name? Oh, there's a lot of made-up names. Acura is a made-up name. But I'm not sure which one you're referring to. But there's some great naming stories like that. You know, like when Coca-Cola, going back to Coca-Cola, when they went to China, they wanted people to pronounce Coca-Cola. But there's no letters in the Chinese alphabet to do that. So what they do is what's called a transliteration, where they get words in Chinese that sound like Coca-Cola and put them together. So that's what they did. And it turns out that the transliteration, when you actually find out what the translation means, means bite the wax tadpole. Seriously? Seriously. That's serious. Shouldn't it be in China, don't go pee pee in this? That's actually the transliteration for Pepsi. Don't go pee pee in my Coke. You know, there's an age range of people who, the minute you say Coca-Cola to me in China, I'm immediately trying to figure out the pee pee in the Coke joke. But you have to be of a certain age to even to get that. So what are some of the names that you've come up with? The Blackberry name, the original Blackberry. You named the Blackberry? I did, I did. I was working for a company called Lexicon at the time and it was part of a massive naming program that we did for a company called Research in Motion in Waterloo, Canada. Now I have a question for you. Since the Blackberry is always hanging from the back of your pants, why wasn't it called the Dingleberry? You really, people always put it in their back pocket. You know, sometimes I miss the moment. I couldn't come up with that one. I always kick it myself. It's a name Blackberry. And how did you arrive at that? Are there such things as a Blackberry? There are, but it's funny you say that because that is exactly the main reason why that became the name. This rarely happens. In fact, it's never happened before or since, but when we were initially being briefed by the company on this product, there was no telephone part of it. It was just about the size of a pager, the original device, and it was used to retrieve your desktop emails from your computer at the office when you're out of the office. So you could kind of read what had come in.  So it was the little round black plastic keys. And they're passing these prototypes around when we're being briefed on the product. And I just, I said it looks like a high-tech version of a Blackberry because that's what it looked like to me. And the guy from the company in Canada said, wow, that's really a cool idea. I said, what do you mean? He says, well, there's no such thing in nature as a Blackberry. And we said, yeah, yeah, there is. And we literally showed him a picture in a picture dictionary of a Blackberry. And he says, I have never encountered this word before. He says, we have something called a Loganberry where I'm from. It's very similar, but I've never heard that. So anyway, so okay, just casual observation. Interesting idea. We go on to develop literally hundreds and hundreds of names and do legal screening to make sure names are available. And we do consumer research to see what people like. And in the end, there was a dozen names. And the Blackberry was one of them. And the CEO at the time of Research in Motion had the exact same reaction. He'd been brought up in Waterloo, Canada. He too had never heard the term Blackberry. So to him, it was just this captivating idea that there was this high-tech kind of berry that was black and never been seen before. And apple is a fruit? Apple is a fruit. And part of the reason Blackberry was also something they liked was people were sort of getting, even back then, this was like in the late 90s, they were getting sort of overwhelmed with emails. And it was becoming this almost repulsive thing. They didn't want to have to check their emails. They wanted to make sure that this fruit sound had this sort of more natural feeling and things like that we found out in consumer research. That was very appealing to people, that they weren't dealing with technology, they were dealing with something more natural. Now Blackberry is making a comeback, right? As I understand it, well, first of all, they renamed Research in Motion years later. They called the company Blackberry. And then I think, if I remember correctly, and I don't really follow them, a lot of their business to a company in China to do a lot of their software and some of their hardware licensing. And I think that's what's making a comeback is it's being sort of reborn in some different sort of forms and styles and coming from the East or something. I'm not exactly sure, but I think you're right. I think there's a comeback of sorts in the works. What other names did you come up with? I worked on the team that did Swiffer. I love Swiffer. Who doesn't love Swiffer? That's what I ask.  Again, it was a naming session with a lot of people, but the interesting idea was the folks at Procter & Gamble, they insisted the word mop had to be in the name. And we said, why is that? They said, well, no one will know what this device is for unless you tell them it's a mop. And in the same sort of session, they had us watch all these videos of people using the prototype, these homemakers. And to a person, they all said, this is so much better than mopping. It's so fast. It's so quick. And we said, why do you want to call your device a mop when clearly people don't like mops or mopping? And so we took that idea of it being fast. And I said, well, let's look at Swift. But Swift actually has that T at the end that slows it down. So let's put two Fs in there instead of the T. We have Swift. And then the ER was added to make it more of an action word, like a verb, almost like a person, like a swiffer. And that's how it was born. I make it sound easy, but it takes hours of churning through words and ideas and reference materials and videos of people using the thing to start to get the feel of what's really appealing about this new technology to somebody. Did you know that they were a part of the pond clean up with Swiffer? No, not at the time. What did you think it was? Because, you know, Jeanine Garofalo when I were talking about Swiffer, nothing brings me more pleasure than listening to music and using my Swiffer. I can do that. I just, I have OCD. But did you had no idea how great that invention was? Do we know who invented the Swiffer? It was somebody in the Procter & Gamble Laboratories. It's somebody faceless, I guess. A guy named Dusty. So there's no hero. There's no Swiffer hero. There's no Hall of Fame for people. Not that I know. I've met some of the science folks at P&G over the years and nobody was sort of trotted out, here's the guy, so maybe it was a team thing. I mean, like Post-It's from 3M, which I had nothing to do with the name, by the way. But Post-It's was an invention that was invented by two people 10 years apart at 3M. This guy had invented, was working on adhesives at 3M and thought he had this like a super glue kind of adhesive and it turned out it didn't hold anything. It was horrible. It wouldn't stick together for two seconds. They were called damnits. Yeah, so he shelved his glue and 10 years later a guy was looking for something else that was going to, he wanted to make note paper that would stick as notes for literally his church choir. So it wasn't even an official product. It was just, hey, I found this really crappy glue and if I put it on this paper I can remove the paper later on and that became Post-It's. And when you work for these companies and you invent these things I know that Mike Nessmith's from the Monkees, his mother invented liquid paper. Right, yes. But for the most part we don't know who invented these things and do they get rich because they invented it or they are just... It kind of depends. We were talking about the iPod, we'll go full circle here because there was a guy and I'm going to forget his name in the moment unfortunately, but he had... You're supposed to be good with names. I know and yet I cannot remember. But he had invented one of the best MP3 players music players in the market and he took it to Steve Jobs at Apple and Steve Jobs that gave him the idea for the iPod so he basically bought this guy's invention Locke Stock & Barrel and gave him a job as a Vice President in the company. But basically took his technology and then improved on it and turned it into what we know is the iPod. And so yeah, he's really known. That is not part of the Steve Jobs legacy because we all think he's this Thomas Alva Edison but what we don't realize about Thomas Alva Edison and Steve Jobs is they were businessmen who were buying up other people's inventions. Yeah, and the GUI came from a park, what's it called? Xerox Park. Yeah, that's where they found the mouse. Yeah. But it's interesting, the movie The Fly with Jeffrey Goldblum I think is a great sort of parable about that because he was a guy who was a businessman who didn't know how the teleporter he was making worked. He just hired the right people. He just didn't like flying because he got air sick.  One more name. How about let's see try to think of something that's impressive enough. How about Crackle? The Sony website. Sony's network and website, yeah. It's a great name. You came up with Crackle. I named Crackle. There was a small company in Sausalito called Grupper which was they were trying to be a YouTube kind of show and Grupper although the name of a really ugly fish they thought it would be people bringing their friends into watch their videos having groups of people and Sony was looking to have their own YouTube but they didn't want to go to the trouble of setting up all the technology so they found Grupper and bought it but they said we're only going to buy it if you change the name because we can't tell people that we acquired a company called Grupper and so the president of Grupper had met me through a mutual friend and hired me to help him with a new name so the name Crackle for him. And he got paid a lot of money, a lot of money. So before you go. Yes sir. This has been fascinating. This is one of the great things about the David Feldman show. You never know where the interview is going to go. I knew that we were going to get to the names. I knew we were going to get there folks. Kind of amazing. If you were to give me a name. If I was going to say to you get rid of David Feldman could you do some research and tell me what name I should use? Well you know where I'm going to go and you know it's because you've paid the brand no real measured equity since you yourself developed it but there's still a lot of mileage left in Feldo the Clown. Oh my god. Oh my god you were there. You were there at the beginning of that.  You booked me as Feldo the Clown. I remember I just remembered you gave me a hard time because I was trying to break free of Feldo the Clown and you insisted that I'm under contract I had to show up at the punchline in my Clown suit Yes because that was the brand we'd hired. And you know John Fox not the comedian John Fox but the booker John Fox he will forever remain in my heart I'll tell you why. I was going up against you you were booking the punchline and I did not show up without the Clown suit if you are not wearing the Clown suit don't bother coming and I put on a blazer and a shirt and I showed up and there was tension in the air people a lot of people showed up to see whether or not Feldo the Clown was going to wear his suit and John Fox not the comedian the producer Yes I walk into the dressing room and John Fox is standing there and he says to me that's a great Clown suit have a great show tonight and I just went I almost broke down and cried but he gave me my manhood Yes you got your life back I got my life back How is John do you ever You know what I've treated email messages with him I think he's actually I think he's now running the comedy underground in Seattle it seems like he's up I see his Facebook posts occasionally and I think he's spending a lot of time up there so it's kind of funny that he's up there doing what I used to do 35 years ago The comedy scene in San Francisco as I understand it here in New York as I understand it Yes it is the Throckmorton in Mill Valley That's a Tuesday night show you know but it is not the same scene it was when we were starting out now my question to you is this when we were starting out if we were to look at that scene would we call it a scene or were we so desperate for stage time and willing to go anywhere in other words there's probably still a scene but we're not privy to it because we can't dirty our hands playing a laundry mat anymore right isn't that basically what it is I think that's partially true but I think it was a scene in that there was a very clear hierarchy back when we were doing this because there was the Holy City Zoo and there was the other cafe and those were shows or clubs where you could go and hang out and do sets there was cobs that was a little further up the ladder and then there was the punchline that was sort of like well if you're going to get hired and you want to get hired as a headliner if you can get into the punchline if you can even get in as a middle it would be a great thing and then there was the outline clubs in the outer Bay Area let alone the one let's not even talk about the one nighters so I think it really was a scene you know I remember comics always talking about they could you know they could work pretty solidly year round just going from gig to gig sometimes playing four or five sets a night some of which they were getting paid for some of which they weren't they could go and do a week in Walnut Creek or they could do a week in Sunnyvale or they could do some time in San Jose so I think if you can legitimately say you were earning a living in San Francisco or in the Bay Area without having to leave I think that probably denotes a scene and I don't think that exists anymore I don't think so you'd be hard pressed to kind of scrape together a true living I mean just talk to our friend Larry Bubbles Brown trying to do just shows in the Bay Area I think you have to go beyond the city limits to really try and pull down some dollars enough to live off and whose fault is that I blame myself good thank you I was going to say whose fault is it I blame the audiences audiences yes yes comedy became just too accessible I think with television and everything else so it became why do I need to go to a club when I can just sit in the comfort of my home and watch the exact same comic well yeah what they're not seeing are the people that haven't been able to make it to TV yet and I think there's a richness in that level of comedy that as bad as some of it is there's some of it that's so genius those TV watching people will never see they'll never appreciate some of those people that work so hard to bring such an original vision to the stage that the television industry said this is not for us Bob Rubin's Bob Rubin's a great example right I think people who listen to podcasts know that most television stinks most television stinks that's why they're listening to podcasts and I think that's why comedy audiences also appreciate podcasts I think so too but then there's this phenomenon I kind of think it's a new phenomenon at least when I was starting out this wasn't true when I was starting out all you had to do was be funny and then suddenly you had to be famous or maybe I wanted to be famous the fame certainly helped bring people in and I think it's also what helped kind of tear down that wave of comedy we were talking about that ended in the early 90s because the people that were getting on Carson and then after that Letterman and doing a seven minute set they had a whole act so if you want to go see them at the comedy underground or you saw them at Punchline or in New York somewhere you saw a show you saw 45 minutes to an hour and a half of fairly solid comedy and then once those people started moving up the ladder into television and the people down below them got bumped up the headliner they could do a seven minute set on the Letterman show but they couldn't hold their water trying to do a 45 minute set they didn't have the stuff and so the audience felt cheated and so the club owner started papering the room giving out free passes Rick Overton called those people pass holes and they went and the club owners just wanted to make the money off the drinks they didn't care that the free audience didn't have an appreciation for what they were watching on stage at that point and so what happened was David Feldman had kids and moved to Hollywood in the early 90s thinking well stand up as an avocation now yes and then people like Pat and Oswald did what Mort Saul did I just read the Mort Saul biography oh how is it I'm not ready fantastic, I want to get the author on the show it sated my obsession with Mort because it was everything I wanted to be and they he just covers everything so I went off to Los Angeles and did stand up but I didn't work the road but there were guys like Patton who said the hell with the clubs and then he found jazz clubs and rock and roll places and nurtured his own audience much the same way Mort Saul did with the clubs because he didn't want to play where Shacky Jackie was playing in the 50s in the 60s and he found his audience exactly and like Mark Maron did with the podcast quite frankly he could do that material that wasn't working on stage for him and just talk and people began to listen I had Jeremiah Tower a great chef on the show and he is responsible for Shea Panisse and Berkeley and stars in San Francisco and revolutionized the way we eat and he left San Francisco and I asked him do you hate San Francisco why don't you stay there I said are you aware of the phenomenon of people who lived and work in San Francisco and then leave and then get really angry at San Francisco he kind of acknowledged it but wasn't willing to go there explain the phenomenon or maybe you think it doesn't exist of people who like me were nurtured, pampered taken care of by San Francisco married, got their kids their manhood in San Francisco and then they have to leave and they really resent San Francisco that is an actual phenomenon right I've certainly heard it from people I kept gravitating back here after I left but the resentment comes I have a theory as to where the resentment comes from okay I'd be curious to hear it because I'm not as aware of it as you are to live in San Francisco ah there we go why do you get to stay in San Francisco and I'm killing myself and now I'm in Manhattan although I don't have what it takes to live in San Francisco because lifestyle comes first in San Francisco right well that's true that's why I live in Marin because I can't afford to live in San Francisco either but Marin happiness comes first then comes work right that's well kind of yes I'll accept that does that now you're a workaholic you do everything do you sometimes feel that maybe San Francisco doesn't have a desperate work ethic that you would find in New York or LA I would definitely agree with that except in the sort of Silicon Valley high-tech world that's where the work ethic is everywhere everything else it isn't it's much more of a sort of laid-back thing I never liked when I am writing I prefer writing in LA because there's a lot of people writing in LA there's an energy in LA when you go to Starbucks here in San Francisco people are just drinking coffee when you go to Starbucks in LA people are writing damn it people are happy in San Francisco they can be they certainly can be they seem well they certainly seem self-satisfied I don't know if that counts as happiness I remember being a miserable beaten dog and I moved to San Francisco and I healed just the air the people it's a very gentle place but they can only give you so much if you're looking for something right I think so I think so I mean if I was going to remain solidly a screenwriter I would have stayed in LA because you can't you can't work up here you can't you know you've got to go to meetings and you've got to you know be able to you know write with other people and you you can do it at a distance but it's very difficult unless you have a you know huge reputation or a huge fortune socked away you you got to be where the action is so you're right I think there is that idea that man I'd love to be able to do that up here but I can't you know I mentioned Rick Overton earlier I always say Rick what he loves it up here I said why don't you move up and he always goes that's not where the cameras are plugged in pal yeah I mean you do get last minute calls yeah to do things I yeah I always thought I could I had a fantasy of staying in San Francisco but yeah God I always the you know I blah blah blah I could just remember being in LA we would drive up to San Francisco the family and you get out of the car and suddenly you could breathe yeah it was shocking the the air the sea air is San Francisco is the perfect antidote to LA it is just the exact number of miles you need to be far away from LA and yeah for years I was able to afford crappy rent in both cities and I lived like this by metro lifestyle where I would work in LA and then I come back up here for a couple of weeks and I just remember driving down the 580 through Castro Valley and then into the Central Bay Area and the fog kind of comes in you roll the windows down and there's just this feeling of washing Los Angeles off of yourself and there's something bigger than fame and and fortune but now San Francisco as I understand it it's impossible to afford to live there right you know I got people that work in the branding company I work at with some young people there they're in their 20s and they're living with four or five roommates in North Beach or wherever because they simply can't afford an apartment by themselves hmm yeah it's it's gotten kind of insane and again I it's really the high tech community has has caused it you know the Googles and the apples and Facebook and all this because they're you know paying a lot of money and they've got free commuter buses to and from the city with Wi-Fi and it's sort of infested the Bay Area with this idea that you gotta you know you have to have a lot of money to be able to live in the city now and they will furnish that lifestyle for you but not the community they will not pay their fair share of taxes they park their profits overseas and instead of paying their fair share of taxes companies like Apple do not pay their fair share of taxes and so they don't have mass transit for the masses they only have buses for the Apple and Google employees right which use the the municipal bus stops to pick up their employees yeah yeah so it's a very unfair unbalanced situation yeah on that note Mark Hirshon is a brilliant man you really are and this was I have to use the word delightful it represented you it was all over the place and fascinating and we covered so many areas as do you you are Mark Hirshon a renaissance man without the black plague you are a screenwriter you are a performer the name of the show is Suck-a-tash you are a journalist your writings appear in Split Cider and the Huffington Post and you are a Namer yes absolutely and you'll come back I'd love to I'd love to are you kidding I love talking to you David the few times we get to run into each other like during the year somewhere I just love having as much time as I can to talk to you because I love conversing with you stay on the line for one second you got it


So Trisha Payne has just made a video titled Ready to Date Again and I could definitely empathize with her, I have been where she has been and I know a lot of you out there have been as well so let's talk about it. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel what I like to do is take a look at what's going on in the YouTube community or pop culture in general and try to see what lessons we can learn from them. So if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So real quick housekeeping I am a social commentary channel see it says right there in my banner social commentary with a solution. So if things are happening in the public spotlight I like to do some commentary on it share my personal experience and see if there's any lessons that you can take away from it as well. So anyways I was just watching this video and like it reminded me like Trisha Payne did this in her video and everything she was feeling and her emotions like it reminded me of this life that I was living for so so long and I can definitely relate to that and I know a lot of people who are watching her content can relate to that as well and I will say this like I am super glad that she like you know some some people say like you know she shouldn't be putting this out there and everything like that like regardless she is alright but at the end of the day there are definitely people who are watching this and being able to relate to it and connect to it. So I wanted to share my personal experience about it as well. So the first thing I want to address real quick is this clip right here. I think I'm going to need to be on antidepressants which I don't want to be on because I don't want to be on. Like I absolutely get that I absolutely get that Trisha Payne just recently discussed her addiction to prescription pills and getting off of them and everything like that and not wanting to be on antidepressants and this is something like that I have seen countless times so although I am not a licensed therapist or psychologist or doctor or anything like that I'm coming up on seven years clean I worked in addiction treatment for three years I have literally worked with thousands and thousands of drug addicts especially people who are addicted to pills and just to give you some insight a lot of us we don't want to start taking a medication to help with our depression or anxiety because we've been a slave to this pill for so long now that we're clean we don't want to do that again right but the reality is in order to recover in order to stay well we need to hit this baseline so what happens is and I won't go into the in-depth neuroscience of addiction my course on addiction is free if you want to check it out there's a free link down below check it out I go into the neuroscience and everything but long story short basically drugs spread out dopamine in your brain it raises your baseline all right so when you build up a tolerance to drugs you need more and more in order to get those dopamine hits dopamine is something that gives us pleasure makes us happy now when you stop taking drugs you go boom you plummet and your brain is not used to creating its own dopamine naturally so typically antidepressants help people when they're first getting clean it is extremely common for people who just got sober to be extremely depressed so like when I was working in the addiction treatment center like 98% of our clients regardless of if they had diagnosable depression we're on antidepressants so sometimes is actually a short-term thing now almost seven years later I am still on antidepressants I've gotten off of them a few times I've documented that on here on my channel but it still comes back so that's why I still take them but what I want to tell you anybody out there who is getting clean from pills or if you know somebody who is do not be afraid to take advantage of medications that will help you stay clean because the three reasons we drink or use drugs is to get a feeling to get rid of a feeling or to have an escape all right and what happens is if we fall victim or prey to our own depression we have a much higher chance of relapse one of the primary causes of relapse is an untreated mental illness like depression or anxiety so I used to joke with my clients all the time because a lot of them when they were coming on I don't want to take these medications and I would just laugh I'm like you guys we have been shoving substances into our bodies for years now then all of a sudden there's a medication that can actually help us and I would like oh no no no I don't want to take anything so if you're somebody who is experienced with that like I get it but just remember it doesn't have to be for the rest of your life typically an antidepressant you might only be on it for six months to a year just to get you out of bed so you can go out socialize with people get to therapy get to 12-step meetings hang out with family and friends that's what it's all about but anyways when it comes to dating again like I definitely feel the pain that Trisha Paytas is going through like looking back at her history it doesn't seem like she's had any extended period of being single and that's how I was as well so in my personal experience like once I started dating like freshman year of high school I was constantly in a relationship right and I was typically in long-term relationships I did not know how to how to be single right like I had this void inside of me that I thought only somebody else could fix I needed them to complete me I was relying on another person for my happiness and well-being and something that Trisha Paytas touched on which a lot of us can relate to is when we are so dependent on somebody else for our own happiness we can start to lower our bar or we'll stay in toxic relationships like I stayed in many toxic relationships far too long because although they were verbally mentally sometimes physically abusive to me the fear of being alone was greater than the fear of staying with that person so when I first got sober one of the biggest recommendations they had for anybody who's getting clean is to stay single for a year all right I was like well that is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard but it started to make sense for a couple reasons right one of them was I saw all of my friends in early recovery getting into relationships and one of a few things would happen either they would they would break up and the other person would relapse or they'd be in the relationship and the other person would relapse or they'd break up and my friend would relapse sometimes this would lead to a death from overdose all right and here's why like when you're early in recovery it's kind of like starting out a new business all right and when you start a new business or any business rather like it's about decreasing risk you want to minimize your risk so go through the gambit of all the reasons we drink or use drugs right well how many times have we drank or use drugs because of a breakup how many times have we drank or use drugs because of an argument with our significant other how many times have we drank or use drugs just because the other person wasn't giving us the amount of attention that we needed there are so many reasons why we choose to drink or use drugs we are so delicate and fragile in early recovery and here's the thing like I remember somebody one of my buddies in recovery saying this he said like staying single your first year it's the most suggested and the least followed and that's so true I am not even exaggerating this I have seen thousands of people try to get into relationships in early recovery and I've seen like two or three of them work out all right like think about it think about that and some people like well maybe I'll be that one of the three you know what I mean but the reality is we we are at a much higher risk of relapsing that first year that's why it's so important to focus on ourselves so I interest a patissist mama you know what I mean like if she's gonna date she's gonna date do your thing baby girl but if you're somebody watching this just understand this that first year it's time for us to repair ourselves and to figure out why we keep turning to drugs or alcohol not only was I addicted to drugs and alcohol I was addicted to relationships you see what I mean I did not know how to be alone I didn't know how to love myself I needed somebody else to do it for me and the thing is like how many of you out there have ever had somebody just break up with you and there wasn't even like a warning sign or they cheated on you right people are fallible people do random things without any warning so to put our happiness eggs in somebody else's basket is setting ourselves up for failure now something else I personally realized in my recovery and you might be able to relate to this is I realized that I can be a selfish self-centered dick all right like I remember I'll never forget I was sitting in a 12-step meeting and somebody was like talking about their relationship and they were talking about how like their wife or girlfriend or something like that like you know just want to spend time with them and everything I was in there I was like I just want to play video games you know what I mean like and then it clicked for me I'm like wow I am a really self-centered selfish a-hole like I think about me I constantly think about what this other person would do for me what can I take from this relationship rather than what can I give right so what I realized was not only was it dangerous for me to be in a relationship my first year but it was also selfish of me like it was selfish of me to be a hot mess to still be mentally and emotionally unstable and bring somebody into that like it would be so selfish for me to pull somebody in and say listen your job is to fix me all right so what I did was I actually stayed single and celibate for a year and a half well I did nothing but work on myself all right and because of that the next relationship I got in was better but it still wasn't perfect that lasted for I don't know six to nine months something like that but then I stayed single again for a very long time and then you know what happened you know what happened next I met that girl right there the most beautiful amazing woman on earth my lovely girlfriend Tristan all right but it's because I was able to stay single and now I can be in a relationship where I know what it's like to have a healthy relationship all right I waited until the time where I knew how to do that in a healthy way and now now I don't have to worry about relapsing just because my feelings got hurt all right so I wish Trisha Paytas the best again I am super glad that she's staying clean going to therapy and working on herself this video is for anybody out there who can relate and I hope you think about these different aspects of relationships before you get into your next one all right but anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you're all amazing and if you would like to become a patron help support what I'm doing here get access to our monthly Q&A and some other perks and benefits click the top right there all right thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time