New York City Public Schools will all be closed today. Stop touching yourself, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. They're being closed because of a blizzard. They're reopening tomorrow. It's Tuesday, 3 a.m. March 14th, 2017. We have a lot of show. Let's get right to it. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. On today's show, comedian Kathleen Madigan joins us. Also stand-up comics, Micah Fox and Scott Rogowski. Is it just me, but now that Trump fired 46 federal prosecutors, are you guys flying a lot more Black Tar heroine into Miami than usual? I know I am. Is it just me? It just feels like I can get away with it. During an interview this weekend, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt said, carbon dioxide is not a major contributor to global warming. Pruitt said that because carbon dioxide is a major contributor to him. When he was Oklahoma Attorney General, he would just copy and paste press releases from ExxonMobil and make them law. I'm not making that up. That's the head of the EPA. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Speaker Paul Ryan's healthcare plan is implemented, the number of Americans without insurance would grow by 24 million. Donald Trump said with a little tweaking, he could get that number up to 50 million. Kathleen Madigan has been on The Tonight Show. I pay attention to this comics keep score. She's been on The Tonight Show 14 times. Letterman at least five. Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars, Getting Coffee. And her new special, Bothering Jesus, is on Netflix. Comics from my generation, that's what we do. We have like little trading cards and it's like Kathleen Madigan. Fourteen Tonight Shows, five Lettermans, 10 Conans. If you're of a certain generation, that's how you measure it. Her new special is hysterical. She talks about drinking, Jesus, her incredibly large and funny family. Visiting Ireland and growing up in Missouri. Kathleen's been at it for a while. She's performed on every stand-up television show ever made. As I mentioned earlier, Letterman, Conan, Ferguson, so on. And as we'll find out, not only has she been on Ferguson, she grew up in Ferguson, Ferguson, Missouri. Yeah, she was nominated for a 2014 American Comedy Award for Best Concert Comic and her third hour-long special, Madigan Again, was named one of iTunes' best comedy albums for 2013. Look at this, she's released four CDs, two DVDs, starred in two HBO specials, three Comedy Central specials, and she has gone overseas to entertain our troops. I believe she's been in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, Micah Fox, she's a terrific comic who hosts two podcasts. Both, I really recommend that you guys download them. This week in Jack'n, where people describe what they're masturbating to. And Shaman, where she and comedian Karen Feehan can't help but put you in your place. They don't think you're special. And frankly, you're embarrassing yourself, so stop it. Go listen to Shaman. It's really funny, unrelenting. A little business to take care of before we get to Kathleen Madigan. Last week I was talking about Heaven's Gate, the cult from San Diego, where they all followed Doe. He was a musical theater guy from Broadway who moved to San Diego and started the Heaven's Gate cult. He convinced everybody to put on Nike tracksuits, cut off their nuts, take this poison, so they could all greet the Comet Cahotech. I said it was the Comet Cahotech. I was wrong. It was the Comet Hallibop or Haleybop, not Cahotech. Special thanks to Paul Pot for correcting me. See, I made a mistake. I confused the Comet Cahotech with Haleybop. It was Haleybop.  Comet with the Hanson brothers. No, Comet Haleybop. See, I made a mistake. When was the last time somebody on the network news corrected themselves? We have a great show. We really do. Coming up, Kathleen Madigan, Micah Foxx and Scott Rogowski. It's an embarrassment of riches. Speaking of an embarrassment of riches, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy came out with a report yesterday saying, and this is just, I mean, this is going to upset you. This is going to get you angry. 258 Fortune 500 companies were consistently profitable for the past eight years and paid only 21.2% taxes. Now that would be their effective tax rate, even though the nominal tax rate in America for corporations is 35%. I learned something today. I learned the difference between an effective tax rate and a nominal tax rate. The effective tax rate is what people pay. The nominal tax rate is what they're supposed to pay. So corporations are supposed to pay 35%. That's the nominal rate, effective rate, depending on your accountants and lawyers. For 258 Fortune 500 companies, it's 21.2%. That's the effective tax rate. We have one of the highest nominal corporate tax rates in the industrialized world. That's what Republicans will tell you. What they won't tell you is that the reason our nominal corporate tax rate is so high is because the effective tax rate, what corporations actually pay, is so low. Because, as we're going to talk about, they park so much of their money overseas. They have accountants and lawyers. The study from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, in their report, I'll link to it at my website, they revealed that many of the big corporations that are lobbying Washington to lower the corporate tax rate so they can be more competitive, so they can stay here in America and not become a corporation in Ireland or Europe for lower tax rates. They already pay substantially less rate than the 35% nominal rate. These were some of the key findings. 100 Fortune 500 companies enjoyed at least one year in which their federal income tax rate was zero or less or less. That means subsidies, right? Even though they were making a profit. 24 Fortune 500 companies during the past eight years paid zero taxes in four out of eight years. 18 companies, including General Electric International Paper, Priceline.com and PG&E paid no federal income tax over an eight-year period. Collectively, 258 corporations received $513 billion in tax breaks over the last eight years. More than half of those tax breaks, $277 billion, went to just 25 of the most profitable companies. The five biggest beneficiaries of tax breaks during the past eight years were AT&T, they got $38 billion. That's like a subsidy of $38 billion. Wells Fargo, $31 billion. Remember Wells Fargo? They were the ones who were signing their clients up for checking accounts and charging them even though the clients didn't know they had new checking accounts and new fees. JP Morgan got $22 billion. Verizon, $21 billion. IBM, $17.8 billion. Tax breaks for executive stock options were one of the reasons these corporations don't have to pay so many taxes. The Fortune 500 companies were able to lower their tax rate by $51 billion during the past eight years collectively by writing off executive stock options. Those tax breaks went to companies like Facebook. We're going to talk about Facebook. Bernie Sanders read the report and he's our senator from Vermont. And when I say our, I mean America's only Elizabeth Warren, there are a couple of good senators out there. He and Senator Brian Schatz, the Democrat from Hawaii, introduced a bill yesterday that would eliminate tax loopholes that allow companies to park money overseas. This is what Bernie Sanders said on Thursday. We have rigged the tax code that has essentially legalized tax dodging for large corporations. He said offshore tax haven abuse has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the home to more than 18,000 corporations. So you tell me this is capitalism. How is this anything other than using the billions of dollars these corporations have to rewrite laws so they can be free to commit what is criminal behavior? It's just criminal behavior. It's unpatriotic. It's anti-American. It's grand theft democracy. It is not capitalism. And it makes me feel like Dottie Sandusky. I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking, what is happening in America? I'm Dottie Sandusky. Jerry Sandusky had a wife. I'm pretty sure her name was Dottie. Dottie Sandusky. If it wasn't Dottie Sandusky, it should have been. But I'm pretty sure it was Dottie.  She was married to Jerry Sandusky, who for 30 years was second in command to Joe Paterno's Penn State football team. That was a juggernaut. If you follow college football, you know who Papa Paterno was. That was more than a team. Football at Penn State, it was a religion. And Jerry Sandusky, well, he was a priest. And Dottie had it made. She was married to Jerry Sandusky. It gave her confidence. It made her feel special in the community. She had security and the confidence to know that her husband was taking care of her. He was taking care of the family and the community. Occasionally, there were strange sounds coming from the basement. But Dottie never questioned them because her husband, Jerry Sandusky, was a pillar of the community. Everybody knew that Jerry Sandusky was a good man.  But it was probably something wrong with her. She was getting older and cynical. She wanted more out of life and the marriage. So she questioned her own dedication to Jerry as he became more and more distant and, yes, harder to love. But Dottie was raised to believe in marriage. It's a sacred institution. And she would keep her mouth shut, never questioned. She turned a blind eye to herself, her marriage, to her husband. She just soldiered on through something that each year was making her feel more rotten inside. She couldn't put a finger on why she felt so bad, especially because everybody told her she had it all. Because she was Mrs. Jerry Sandusky. How could she not be happy? I feel like Dottie Sandusky. April 15th is coming up. Time to get our taxes ready. People listen to the show. We're the schmucks getting ready to pay our taxes for April 15th. Is the lying Neanderthal in the Oval Office sitting in Obama's chair? Is he going to pay us taxes? Why should he? The people in charge don't have to. They really don't. I just read you the study that came out yesterday. Microsoft would have to pay about $30 billion more in taxes. Just on the nearly $100 billion it's keeping in offshore accounts. You know there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They dole out $3.5 billion a year. Microsoft avoids in taxes each year about $4.6 billion a year. That's just from the money they keep overseas. By parking money overseas they avoid about $1 billion more than what Bill and Melinda Gates give out to Africa and impoverished nations. I feel rotten inside when I read that. I feel played. I feel lied to. I feel like Dottie Sandusky. I feel sick to my stomach.  What's happening in America right now, this is the time when all of us, including the corporations, it's time to put the cards on the table. It's time for all of us to go downstairs after dinner. It's time for Dottie to open the door to the basement and take a good look. Take a good look at Jerry. You don't have to walk all the way downstairs and see everything. Nobody should have to see that. But it's time to walk halfway down the basement steps.  It's wrong. I need to alert the authorities. This is not right, folks. You watch the news. You have two choices. You can get depressed or you can alert the authorities. This is not normal. The way we are living here in America, it is not normal. Do I believe in American exceptionalism?  We are unlike any other country in the history of the world. The same way Jerry and Dottie Sandesky's home in State College, Pennsylvania, was unlike any other home in the history of the world. You're depressed. You should be depressed. I'm out of my mind right now. And a lot of us like to think it's Trump that's making us feel this way. But this has been going on for a long time. Trump is just the wrecking ball coming in and shattering everything, our belief systems. He's destroying lives. He's destroying the lives of migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, Arabs. But, you know, he's providing a great service at the same time, because this is the ultimate wake-up call. It's time for all of us to realize that we are a nation of bullies, swimming in guns, nuclear weapons, and money that has been concentrated into the tiny, rapacious hands of inherited stolen wealth. It is impossible now to make money in this country, to be an entrepreneur, unless you're either breaking the law, not paying taxes, or hiring people to break these laws for you, or hiring people to rewrite the laws so they don't apply to you. Donald Trump, whose tax returns we can't see, he isn't the outlier. He is just an inelegant manifestation of wealth in America. He lacks class. He is the embodiment of nouveau riche. He is the common man with money, something the landed aristocracy always resents. He is somebody they will always distance themselves from, because it reminds them of how their wealth was gotten.  Bill Gates? He's a hero? Ask anybody who was trying to start a company in Silicon Valley during the 80s and 90s about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and their predatory, vindictive, monopolistic practices. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is only doing good work, and they may not be, and we'll get to this later, their foundation is only able to do what it does, because the Justice Department in the 80s decided to break up AT&T instead of Microsoft. They had a choice, Judge Green broke up AT&T, they could have also broken up Microsoft, but they didn't. Are Bill and Melinda doing good work, maybe? Not sure they're helping our public schools with their money, maybe ruining them. Not sure they have the right to dump conditional money into our public schools and dictate curriculum. Microsoft's fortune was built by predatory behavior. We have a Justice Department that facilitated Bill and Melinda Gates' fortune, and now they get to spend that fortune overseas and in this country without our scrutiny. Don't fall prey to their marketing, their public relations, because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the money they're doling out, that belongs to the United States government, that money belongs to the IRS. Bill Gates owns about 5% of Microsoft. That fortune comes, that money has been amassed because Microsoft is a monopoly that was never broken up by the Justice Department, Microsoft is a monopoly that has enough money to pay lawyers to rewrite tax code so Microsoft can avoid $5 billion, $6 billion a year in taxes because they keep some of their profits overseas. The money Bill and Melinda Gates stole out, that's our money. That's ours to dole out. Bill and Melinda Gates are running a foundation that is essentially a tax dodge. They have not given away their entire fortune. That's a myth. Bill and Melinda Gates continue to get wealthier and wealthier. They hire the accountants and the lawyers so they don't have to pay taxes. So they don't get to be heroes. They don't get to spend billions of dollars in Africa. That is the job and the responsibility of you and me and our government, the real citizens of the world who actually pay taxes. How dare Bill and Melinda Gates claim to be philanthropists when they're using our money, when they're using our tax dollars, the money they owe the IRS to paint themselves as benefactors. We are being lied to by Bill and Melinda Gates, by the Republican Party, and we are being trained and manipulated to believe that our financial problem is our fault. The same way Jerry Sandusky manipulated Dottie into believing that if maybe she made herself more attractive, if she looked younger, Jerry wouldn't need young boys. We as Americans have been tricked into thinking it's our fault that there's a budget deficit. That entitlements are the reason we have a debt and a deficit. We want food stamps. We want Medicare and Medicaid and healthcare. We can't afford that. We want too much from the government. We have to stop sucking off the teat of the government when we cannot get the Fortune 500 companies to pay something even close to their nominal tax rate. No, we've been convinced it's all our fault that there are no good jobs. When the same companies that get tax subsidies and don't pay taxes are shipping our jobs overseas. No, it's our fault. It's my fault. I'm the schmuck who pays us taxes, but it's my fault there's no money for universal health insurance. It's my fault that entitlements cost so much. We are being lied to and being told that it's a level playing field and that this is capitalism and freedom and all you need is an idea and a work ethic. And you too can be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Donald Trump because it's a meritocracy. So if I'm broke, it's because I spent too much on garbage. I didn't work hard enough. That's a lie. We are victims of greed, of the greed of about 40 families who control all the wealth in America. This is not a meritocracy. This is not a democracy. This is not the free market. This is authoritarianism. This is mercantilism where Jerry Sandusky convinces the victims that it's their fault. They've been molested. Remember Think Different? It was that big Apple advertising campaign. It was genius. It had nothing to do with the internal workings of a Mac computer. Nothing about the electronics. Nothing about the chips.  And people said, if I get a Macintosh, if I get an Apple computer, then I'll be like Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, and Einstein. Okay, I'll buy an Apple. These commercials were brilliant. The marketing was incredible. They never went over RAM, never went over operating systems. It simply said to you, hey, if you think you have the moral compass of a Gandhi, a Muhammad Ali, a Martin Luther King, then you should buy an Apple. And we did. Apple computers, I'm addicted. I'm convinced they're great. I think they're great. I mean, do I have a choice? Because in the end, Steve Jobs was a vindictive. He was a manipulative prick. He wasn't offering us choice. In fact, that was the beauty of Mac. We had no choice. You wanted to learn how to make a movie? You use iMovie. You want to learn how to do a podcast? You use GarageBand. This is my operating system. This is a Mac. You will use the software we tell you to use. Steve Jobs didn't invent the Mac. He knew how to market it. Because in the end, he demanded that his employees deliver what he couldn't buy from other companies. That's the dirty dark secret about these entrepreneurs, these great minds, Jobs, Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, they aren't inventors. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, they like Thomas Edison were buyers. They all bought other people's ideas because they had money, investors, and they buy up people and their inventions and put them all under one umbrella organization and lay claim to them. Why do Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have the money to buy up ideas?  That's why Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, California. But they pay their local taxes, not to Cupertino, California, but to Nevada, because Apple is legally headquartered in Nevada. It has a mailbox in Nevada. And that's why the school system in Cupertino, California, you know, the very same public school that produced Steve Wozniak who invented the Apple computer. That's why the public school system in Cupertino, California, where Apple is nominally headquartered. That's why the city of Cupertino, California, where Apple is nominally headquartered is effectively going broke. Cupertino is effectively going broke. I learned something today, nominal and effective tax rates, and I'm going to use that. And so should you.  Well, all that's true.  But say hello to Barry Chang. He's the mayor of Cupertino. That's where Apple is nominally headquartered. I'm just going to keep using the phrase nominally, because it's a word that will just eventually help me and you understand we are nominally the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet we are effectively broke. The other word, effectively, nominally and effectively, we're all going to learn important words today. Nominal tax rates, effective tax rates, and then you'll see why Paul Ryan, the nominal speaker of the house, is effectively a tool of 40 of the richest families in the world, effectively owning our nominal democracy. Barry Chang, he is the mayor of Cupertino. Mayor Chang told the Guardian, which everybody should subscribe to, he told the Guardian last year that Apple is, quote, ripping off the city of Cupertino by not paying any taxes, and Apple, he says, is hiding all of its profits overseas where city, state, and federal tax collectors can't get it. Mayor Chang of Cupertino says, quote, Apple is not willing to pay a dime. This is not a frustrated comedy writer. This is a frustrated mayor trying to run a city that is broke. Chang, Mayor Chang, the mayor of Cupertino, where Apple is nominally headquartered, told the Guardian, quote, Apple's making profit and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won't because they abuse us. The mayor of Cupertino said, Apple abuses the city of Cupertino by paying an effective tax rate of about 2.3 percent. Does that seem fair? He says Apple is keeping $181 billion parked overseas and in the fiscal year 2013, the city of Cupertino received total tax revenues of $9.2 million from Apple. Now, that seems like a lot of money, $9.2 million. Not to Apple. Cupertino invested in Apple back when Cupertino built the public school system that created Steve Wozniak, who created the Apple computer. No science class in the Cupertino public schools. No Steve Wozniak. No Steve Wozniak. No Apple computer. No Apple computer. No Steve Jobs. Think different. Yeah, that's different all right. That's anti-American different. Mayor Chang has personally asked Apple to give Cupertino $100 million to pay for infrastructure, roads, water, electricity, police, fire departments, all those things Apple needs so their employees can come to work each day to park money and jobs overseas. So Mayor Chang introduced a motion to the city council calling on Apple to cough up $100 million to pay for infrastructure and the entire city council voted against them, voted against that motion. How could that happen? How could an entire city council representing the voters of Cupertino, how could they all think the tax-paying voters of Cupertino who they represent wouldn't think it's fair that Apple pay its fair share of taxes? Something tells me the city council, much like our representatives in Washington, only nominally represent the voters in Cupertino. And I'm sure there are some voters in Cupertino who think Apple shouldn't have to pay taxes. I started doing comedy in San Francisco. That's about 60 miles away from Cupertino. I was doing comedy at the dawn of Silicon Valley and I would go visit fries down there with my friend Alex Bennett and he would show me where all the future billionaires bought their tools, which aisle at fries they walked around to create what essentially became the information age. Deep in my gut, I always had a problem with these computer geeks. Not because they were nerds, I like nerds. My problem with the computer geeks was their infatuation with toys, their Peter Panish quality, the permission they gave these computer companies to infantilize them, to encourage them to obsess on games, on software programs that isolated them from the community that turned them into bad citizens. Silicon Valley was built by and supported by this solipsistic breed of men who only require the illusion of human contact through the internet or through artificial intelligence or games. That makes them easy prey to corporatists in libertarian clothing. Corporatists in libertarian clothing who have convinced them to become apolitical because that's what the corporatists want. They won't tell you they're corporatists, they'll tell you they're libertarians.  They don't want you to pay attention to the city council in Cupertino or Washington DC because if you pay attention you'll find out that the corporatists aren't paying their fair share. What the computer geeks who I met in Silicon Valley, not the ones who actually succeeded, the ones who enabled or were suckered by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Bill Gates was out of Seattle, but Larry Ellison, they were taught to think globally, but don't focus on your neighbor. Why bother with your neighbor? We're talking worldwide web here.   Put on your Oculus headset. That's the real reality. No, the real reality is that Sin City is really Sin City. I've talked about this countless times. Martin Luther King says anything that separates you from your fellow man is a sin. Anything that removes you from the fabric of humanity is an act against nature. It's an act against whatever higher power you believe in. It's a sin. So I wonder what Martin Luther King, who so prominently featured in those think different commercials that Apple was so proud of, I wonder what Martin Luther King who thought different. I wonder what he would have to say about a company like Apple not paying taxes about creating devices that remove you from the fabric of humanity. You wouldn't be listening to me if it weren't for Apple. Apple invented the podcast. I think maybe I think they invented the podcast. Apple makes a great product. I think do I have a choice? How many companies have the money to scale at a level like Apple does to mass produce an iPhone at Foxconn in China, where the female employees work at gunpoint and the plant managers have to place netting around the windows to catch these women when they try to jump to their deaths. Yeah, that's a fact. But like Dottie Sandusky, we don't want to know how our Apple computers are made. We don't want to open the door to the basement because the iPhone, like Jerry Sandusky, provides so much for us. And we're all told that Apple is such a great company and an inspiration, and that Steve Jobs was a 21st century Henry Ford or Thomas Alva Edison. Yeah, he was a 21st century Henry Ford or Thomas Alva Edison. He was exactly like Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison. And just like Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they have enough money to greenwash their sins. So history will only remember Pixar and the computer and the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The same way, we only remember the light bulb and the Model T, not the union busting, not the bullying, not the invention of the electric chair and the torturing of prisoners and animals to prove that my invention of the electric chair works. That's what Thomas Edison did. Edison, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan. If you're religious, I guess you'd have to call these men the devil. You might want their money, but I don't think you would want their contrition. Actually, you might, since they probably aren't capable of contrition. You know, I always say I wouldn't mind having that kind of money. I don't think you can get that money unless you're willing to do what they do. By the way, I'm a sucker for making money and capitalism.  I still believe in capitalism, but now it's harder and harder to believe in it because this isn't even crony capitalism. This is mercantilism, which predates capitalism. Mercantilism is the government working with handpicked corporations to create an economy in which only a select few thrive because they have the full backing of the crown or the government. And most importantly, it's military. It's police. Ever wonder why it's the sheriff, the sheriff who gets his salary paid by taxpayers? Ever wonder why it's the sheriff who comes and forecloses on your house? That's what mercantilism is. Monopolistic privileges granted to those players favored by the state. This country was founded by mercantilists. You know, you had a corporation like the East India Company which was chartered by the English government under Queen Elizabeth and protected by the English Navy. And in return, the crown owned a piece of that corporation, as did other government officials, who would make official government policy to benefit the company which they own shares in. Do you understand what I'm saying? So you had people in Parliament, you had people in the Royal Court who owned a piece of the East India Company, which was chartered by the crown. And then they would make decisions to benefit, they would make government decisions to benefit the East India Company because these government officials owned stock in the East India Company. Let me see, let me see if I can give you a modern day equivalent. Imagine if the CEO of Exxon Mobile, I think his name is Rex Tillerson, imagine if he was made Secretary of State, that way he could make foreign treaties for America that favored Exxon Mobile, which he and his family and relatives and friends owned stock in. It would be like Exxon Mobile would be like a corporation chartered by the U.S. government, but owned and operated by people who either work for Exxon Mobile or have worked for Exxon Mobile and now work for the U.S. government. That's that's what mercantilism is and that's what our country would be if something like the head of Exxon Mobile becoming our Secretary of State. By the way, mercantilism, our country came about because of mercantilism, mercantilism, and it wasn't until 1776 when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, which was an attack on mercantilism in which he sang the praises of capitalism. 1776 is also the year Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence and Great Britain ushered in a new era of capitalism and put an end, we were told, to mercantilism. It's come back. We are operating under mercantilism. If you don't believe me, if you don't believe that Exxon Mobile is running the show, there's no sunlight between Exxon Mobile and the government. Conduct an experiment. Call your congressperson. Give them your name and see if he comes to the phone. Then call the same congressman and say you're with Exxon Mobile. Seriously, see what happens. I recently worked on a pilot for a television show where we pretty much tried that. You can get a congressperson or a senator, any one of them, to come to the phone if they think you're with Exxon Mobile. If they think you have money to donate or a job for them when they leave office or a job right now for their wife, for their children, or a former aide, they'll come to the phone. That's mercantilism. It's being sold to you as free market capitalism, but that is mercantilism. You don't think Exxon Mobile doesn't know how to convince you this is still the free market. You don't think they know how to convince us that they're the leading provider of clean energy while at the same time the leading provider of science that proves climate change is a hoax. You don't think they know how to manipulate you. You don't think these Fortune 500 companies that don't pay their taxes. You don't think they know how to convince us that they're all about democracy, the free market, and capitalism. You don't think they know how to sell you a false bill of goods. Think of Coke. By the way, Coke, of course, one of the top Fortune 500 companies, they park their money overseas. They get tax subsidies. Think about Coca-Cola. You're addicted to it. I'm not, but most people are. I'm addicted to coffee. Check the sodium content in Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is very high in salt. Why would that be? Salt makes you crave water.  Salt water shouldn't be ingested. It makes you thirstier. So, how do you disguise the taste of salt? Sugar.  You add sugar. Sugar disguises the taste of salt. That's why Coke has so much sugar. Coke isn't about sugar, though. It's about the salt. Why? Because salt makes you thirstier, which means you end up drinking more Coke because you will never quench your thirst if all you do is drink salt water. Somehow they're able to manipulate us.  Drink Coke. Drink this salt water to quench your thirst. And the same geniuses who have convinced you to drink salt water to quench your thirst, they are also capable of convincing you that you live in a democracy, that this is a free market, that this is capitalism, that anybody with a little hard work and determination can be the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg just adds sugar. That's how you do it. That's some sugar. Want to rip off the American people? Just add sugar. Just add a teaspoon of capitalism, another teaspoon of democracy, or a big tablespoon of patriotism. You won't taste the poison. And you know what the real poison is? It's the sugar. That's what's killing you when you drink Coca-Cola. Sugar, which is just the cover-up. You know, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Sugar is what allows us to lie to our taste buds about the salt. But it's the sugar that's making us obese. It's the sugar that causes cancer and diabetes. Not the salt. Salt is really not that bad for you. But we just don't like the way it tastes in our water, so they add sugar to the coke to keep it secret from us. Sugar-coating is what destroys this country. Sugar-coating is what we do to lie to ourselves. Sugar-coating, sugar, is the lie that covers up that fools our taste buds, that convinces us that it's not corruption, greed, that the playing field is level, that Coca-Cola pays taxes, that we all play by the rules, because we're being fed the sugar of patriotism, the free market, democracy, freedom. That's what Exxon Mobil and Coca-Cola and Microsoft and Steve Jobs telling us to think different. They give us this sugar so we don't taste their monopolistic, predatory, job-killing, rapacious behavior. Mayor Chang of Cupertino says that Apple is building a 2.8 million square foot spaceship campus in addition to their other headquarters in Cupertino, while at the same time refusing to pay, he says, quote, a diamond taxes leaving the city's infrastructure decrepit, overcrowded, and broke. That's what the mayor of Cupertino says, decrepit, overcrowded, and broke. In other words, Cupertino is turning into a third world nation. Maybe the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would like to step in. Bill Gates invested $100 million in the early 90s to save Apple. So a lot of the Bill Gates fortune comes from Apple. What about bailing out the public schools in Cupertino? Come on, Bill and Melinda Gates, you have money for the school system in Cupertino. After all, it was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that spent $200 million pushing Common Core, not in Africa, but in America. Bill Gates spent what is essentially our $200 million, as I already told you, this is money that belongs to the American taxpayer. But Bill Gates dumped $200 million into the American conversation about our public schools specifically to push Common Core. This from a man who doesn't know the first thing about education. This from a man whose entire myth is built on how unimportant colleges he dropped out of Harvard so he could buy MS-DOS. Again, he didn't invent MS-DOS. He and Steve Bomber purchased it because Bill Gates, well, his father was a wealthy lawyer who knew people. And Mark Zuckerberg's father is a wealthy dentist. His mother is now a psychiatrist. You know, he was a hard-working, ambitious kid, but the fact is Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook while he was at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard. And because he had, I'm not going to say wealthy parents, but comfortable parents who could hook them up with venture capital connections, he was able to outsmart the the Winklevoss twins. That's how it's done in America. Oculus. Facebook owns Oculus. Do you think Zuckerberg invented immersive 3D technology like Oculus? You really think a college dropout like Mark Zuckerberg is that smart? No, the venture capitalists who put money into Facebook brought him other companies that they invested in and convinced him to buy these companies. That's how it works when one of the companies takes off, the venture capitalists unload their other investments onto the company making money and they get their investment back 10 times, 100 times over. That's how it works. Venture capital works this way. You invest in 20 companies, three hit it big like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple. The companies that you invested in that aren't turning out like Facebook, Microsoft or Apple, you bully Facebook, Microsoft and Apple into buying the companies that are about to go bankrupt if they didn't have an angel investor behind it to get somebody to buy it. Think of YouTube. Back when YouTube was starting up, I was trying to start my own video company with no money. I actually learned had a compress video before NBC and HBO did like a schmuck. I took courses and learned how to deliver video through the internet tubes and my lawyer who's very smart said, it's not going to work. You don't have good money. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, good money makes good money. He said, when you have the right investors, they will take your company to the other companies with the right money and they'll make sure you succeed. Otherwise, you're going to fail. I tried to meet the good money and had one or two meetings and they knew right away once they met me that I had a big mouth. But I know the truth about YouTube. YouTube didn't invent YouTube. The technology was already there. Tons of guys were compressing video, but YouTube it was invented. If you want to say invented, it was started. It was invested in by three guys who had already made their fortune from PayPal. That's how it works. And then in October of 2006, when hardly anybody knew what YouTube was, they sell it to Google for what 1.6 billion dollars. How do you think that happened? The same people who invested in PayPal who knew these three guys, they also invested in Google and thought the three guys who created YouTube, they weren't geniuses. They played ball. They played ball. They were part of the game. They were going to take orders. And when the same venture capitalists had failing companies that weren't working, they knew that the three guys who started YouTube would buy their companies. Is it a mafia? You know, it's in its own way. It's a venture capital mafia. These guys who invented YouTube weren't geniuses. There were and still are plenty of video sites like YouTube. But YouTube got big because they had what essentially amounts to sovereign funds behind it. A sovereign fund is like Saudi Arabia. It's a sovereign fund. It's an entire nation investing in things. Well, venture capital, some of these venture capital funds are like Saudi Arabia. YouTube just had so much money behind it. There was no way it could go broke. Daily motion, Vimeo, they couldn't compete. Is that capitalism? Is that a level playing field? Is that the free market? I don't think that's competition. Then again, if I had billions to invest, I wouldn't have given it to me either. Every extra penny I have, I have blown on stupid, get rich quick schemes that have been designed for the sole purpose of making enough money so that I can lash out at people. I don't really think that's a business model. Anybody should bank role. Invest in me. I have an idea. I'm going to compress video to make ad hominem attacks on Henry Kissinger and his son. Anybody interested? Yeah, I didn't think so. The point I'm making is Zuckerberg Gates, they didn't graduate from Harvard, but they were anointed by Harvard. They got in, which is good enough. They didn't get the education. Not sure anybody at Harvard undergrad really gets an education. Gates, Zuckerberg, they got in because they were born into that lane. And because they craved more wealth, they gravitated to the wealth that would finance their vision to make other people's visions come to life. Like I said, Zuckerberg didn't invent Facebook. Gates didn't invent MS-DOS. They either stole it or purchased the innovations and the innovators that they now take credit for. And that's how they succeeded, taking credit, getting credit from rich investors. Common Core. So Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg, they're going to talk to us about Common Core. Bill Gates invested $200 million in pushing Common Core down our throats here in America. $200 million that was our money because Microsoft doesn't pay taxes. Common Core was designed to make schools competitive to teach to the test, not to teach to the individual student. Every child is different. One size doesn't fit all. But how would Bill Gates, a college dropout, know that? No, Common Core creates soldiers. Students are not soldiers. Students don't all march in lockstep. We all learn at our own pace. I'm 58. And some of the things that I was taught in kindergarten, they're just beginning to sink in. I'm just beginning to fully understand the importance of sharing, listening, and concern for others. Common Core is a disaster. Diane Ravich came out against Common Core. She served as Assistant Secretary of Education under George Herbert Walker Bush. She's the real deal. She attacked that movie Waiting for Superman. She's against charter schools. Remember Waiting for Superman? Another rich prick spending his parents' money to make a documentary. Guy goes to private school all his life. But he's going to fix the public schools by preaching the virtues of charter schools. Yes, save us, rich people, all you products of private schools who've never stepped inside a public school. Tell us how to fix a public school, you narcissistic b****. This is what Diane Ravich said about Common Core. She said Common Core was developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states. It was funded by Bill Gates, minimal public engagement in the development of Common Core. Bill Gates had $200 million to push it down our throats. The same way Bill Gates and his foundation spend billions, Warren Buffett is getting his billions, all of it, to Bill and Melinda Gates. All this money in the hands of two people, Bill and Melinda Gates, determining public policy here in America, in Africa. Where is the transparency? Where is the debate? Where are the congressional hearings to determine whether or not these billions are being spent properly and wisely? This is money that belongs to the United States government. This is the money that Bill and Melinda Gates should have been paying to the IRS. They don't get to be heroes for avoiding taxes and then deciding how they're going to spend their ill-gotten gains that they deprive the American people. This is our money to spend, not theirs. Right now, they have $47 billion and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. When Warren Buffett dies, it'll be triple that. Let's say it's $150 billion. If you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy and if you believe in sunlight, if you believe everyone should pay their fair share of taxes, that money belongs to America. It belongs to Washington and we as American citizens should decide how and where it's spent. Not Bill and Melinda Gates acting unilaterally. We have been fed another lie. We have been fed a lie. They have sugar-coated corporate America by trashing government. They have convinced us that the government can't spend money wisely, that only corporations know how to spend money. Is there waste in government? Yeah, but anyone who works in corporate America knows there is far greater waste on Wall Street and inside every Fortune 500 company. No government agency was ever headed by a cabinet official earning 700 times what the median employee of that agency earns. Do you know anybody who works for a Fortune 500 company? Chances are you don't, because they don't create jobs here in America. Fortune 500 companies have been sugar-coating their reputation with the same lie since the Reagan administration. The lie that government wastes your money but Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies don't waste a penny. They repeat that lie over and over until you actually believe it. Global justice now is a British think tank. Last year they issued a massive report on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. According to global justice now, quote, with assets of 43.5 billion dollars, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It is arguably the most influential actor on issues of global health and agriculture and distributes more aid for global health than any government. That could be America distributing that money for global health if Microsoft paid its taxes. Where does a college dropout who bullied and bought his way to the top get to dole out more money than the UN, more money than the United States? He is spending money that is not being subjected to democratic scrutiny. We have been told since the Reagan administration that you can't solve problems by simply throwing money at them. Sometimes throwing money at a problem creates even more problems. Sometimes that money ends up in the wrong hands. And that is why we need government to disperse this kind of money transparently with accountability and sunshine and hearings in the sloppy, messy, disgusting system of free and open democracy, which is annoying, hideous, stomach churning, and better than anything anybody else has invented. Global Justice, that's the British think tank that is demanding Bill and Linda Gates Foundation be audited. Global Justice writes, the world is being sold a myth that private philanthropy holds many of the solutions to the world's problems, when in fact it is pushing the world in many wrong directions. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is being allowed to speak too loudly and there are too many actors in international development falling into line with the Foundation's misguided priorities. Global Justice now, they issued a report, I'll link to it at my site. They claim that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in their attempts to solve famine, have become the leading promoter of dangerous fertilizers. They are the leading promoter of genetically modified crops. By pumping so much money into eradicating polio, Bill and Melinda Gates have left many third world countries unable to respond to other emergencies like Ebola. The Gates Foundation supports the patenting of seeds to benefit wealthy American agribusinesses, to benefit wealthy businesses like Monsanto. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation promotes the neoliberal idea that corporations, not governments, know what's best for struggling third world nations. Bill and Melinda Gates have taken on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, but by doing that they've partnered with the leading pharmaceutical companies. For example, Glax, Co, Smith, Klein and Pfizer manufacture the pneumonia vaccine, and they have earned more than $20 billion since this ammonia vaccine was invented back in 2009. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation buys the pneumonia vaccine. They pay $60 for each vaccine, even though many say they should only be paying $5 for the vaccine. But Bill Gates says, no, we need to keep the profit incentive. What he doesn't mention is that Glax, Co, Smith, Klein and Pfizer, the ones who make this vaccine that Bill Gates pays $60 for, the vaccine that has earned Glax, Co, Smith, Klein and Pfizer $20 billion in the past eight years. Bill Gates doesn't mention that his private public partnership to provide vaccines to third world countries, those two pharmaceutical companies sit on the board of directors. Bill Gates, because he has so much money, he has earned the right to dictate the price of a vaccine. Why does he get to dictate the price? The price of vaccinating a child now is 68 times more expensive than it was in 2007, and this study says that's partly because Bill and Melinda Gates have become the largest buyers of vaccines, and they refuse to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. Why? Because pharmaceutical companies sit on the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Why do they sit on the board? Because Bill and Melinda Gates are one of the world's leading promoters of privatization, especially in the fields of health care and education. Leopards don't change their spots. Bill Gates has always believed in corporate supremacy. He will always believe corporations can do a better job at providing health care and education than we the people can, because he grew up in a bubble. And no matter how many third world countries Bill Gates visits, he still lives in a bubble. I'm sure he thinks he's doing the Lord's work, but it's not up to Bill and Melinda Gates to decide that buttressing Monsanto and Merck is the Lord's work. I think all of us should get to decide on what exactly the Lord's work is. That's why we have a democracy with transparency. You know, Ronald Reagan sold arms for hostages because he genuinely believed he was doing the Lord's work. And why did he think he was doing the Lord's work? Because Ronald Reagan was a senile cretin. George W. Bush genuinely thought the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators.  You can be president of the United States, the CEO of Microsoft, and still be dumber than a bag of Trumps. Just because you can bully your competitors into a $100 billion fortune, it doesn't mean your brain or your heart is in the right place. The report goes on to say that Bill and Melinda Gates believe money and technology can solve all of the Third World's problems. It says that Bill and Melinda Gates don't believe justice is what solves Third World problems, which is why Bill and Melinda Gates have no problem dealing with authoritarian regimes that, through corruption, create the economic conditions that foster disease and famine. If you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy, then you should support those institutions that allow the money to flow down from democracy, from freedom. But Bill Gates, just like America these days, he believes in authoritarian regimes. He believes authoritarian regimes are the most efficient. History has shown that not to be true, but authoritarian regimes, like Donald Trump, offer quick fixes. They're cosmetic adjustments that temporarily create the illusions that the trains are running on time, when in fact the only reason the trains are running on time is because nobody can afford to buy a ticket. They're empty. It's go time, folks. Trump is in the Oval Office. Do you believe in democracy? I do. Do you believe in competition? I do. Do you believe in a free market? It's messy. It's sloppy, but I believe in it. Do you believe in paying taxes? I do, because it's the only thing that works. It's the only thing that's efficient. Trump is a bully.  They are authoritarians, just like Jerry Sandusky. They're big and powerful. They're liars. And you and me were Dottie Sandusky refusing to ask questions because it's cleaner. It's safer. Don't raise your voice. Folks, authoritarianism, it never ends well. It's not neat. It's not clean. It's not safe. Bill Gates is a college dropout.  And what worked for the shareholders of Microsoft doesn't work for public school students. It doesn't work for third world people dying from hunger. He doesn't get to unilaterally decide how to solve all these problems. Bill Gates made his fortune being an unapologetic monopolist. Now he's greenwashing his money the very same way by being an unapologetic monopolist, acting unilaterally, working with corporations instead of government with zero transparency. He's spending our money. That money at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that's our money. Microsoft has not paid its fair share of taxes. Is Bill Gates' heart in the right place? We've been programmed to believe so. But who cares if Bill Gates is in the right place? Who cares if he tears up when he talks about mosquito nets?  George W. Bush's heart was in the right place when he decided to give the Middle East democracy or capitalism or freedom, depending on what day of the week it was. I don't care about their hearts. I care about their brain. Bill Gates was a college dropout. He doesn't get to decide unilaterally on how money in-pan taxes gets to be spent. Because the most important thing a government can do is levy taxes. And the most important thing a democracy can do is debate how that money gets spent. You and I are being taxed. We're providing tax subsidies to Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, GE. And they return that favor by parking the money that belongs to us overseas and spreading the lie that corporations are more efficient than government. They spread the lie that corporations have to pay a 35 percent tax rate when the truth is they only pay about 20 percent if they pay any at all. Now everyone who is listening to me right now, you already know this. You know what money means. You know what it means to work for money so you can do the things you love. And we know when it's enough. We know that money buys the time to learn and learning is about teaching and teaching is learning. And that while money dissipates and gets wasted, knowledge only grows. The people listening to me right now, we know that because we're the teachers, we don't care about titles, degrees or fame. Well, I care about fame.  Well, I care. But you, the people listening, you don't. We care mostly about what someone knows and what they're doing with that knowledge. That's why we listen to podcasts because we're off the grid, essentially. We have our internet that we're off the grid. We're willing to get completely off the grid, go without everything, except our books, our magazines and each other. We're turning off our TVs, turning down the noise. We're amazed by not what we know, but by what we don't know. And we don't care where somebody went to school. We care where somebody is teaching because we are all teachers. And good teachers listen. We listen to our students and then help them realize for themselves when they're wrong. We know that students don't learn from tests like the common core is preaching. They don't learn from grades. They learn from the aha moment when the teacher gave them enough time and space to figure out things for themselves. Kids learn, people learn by knowing what books to read and what questions to ask. And that is how you battle fake news.  You can't argue with someone when you're trying to teach to the people listening. You need to gently nudge Americans into the light. If you're listening to me right now, you know right from wrong. You don't need to win any arguments. You need to teach. You know universal healthcare is a right, not a privilege. You know television is destroying minds, turning us into obedient consumers instead of citizens who know that when their neighbor is healthy, when their neighbor is working, everyone benefits. You all know that. You know there's no argument. You know paying taxes on all your income is the moral thing to do. You know that war is wrong. Anger is an infirmity because you're teachers. You don't lord your knowledge over people. You share it because the simple act of sharing knowledge not only reinforces what you already know, it makes you question whether you know enough. If you're listening right now, you're accomplishing what so many Americans, including me, struggle with. The ability to listen instead of speak, to listen. Listening is sacred. To bear witness. To bear witness is a noble act. You need to listen to everyone because listening gives people the greatest gift, the gift of saying I acknowledge that you're alive and that you're thinking. Don't judge. Listen. Bear witness. The reason Trump supporters are so angry and violent, it's because nobody is listening to them. Listen to these people. Don't fight them. Don't argue. Listen and walk away because listening and not answering is teaching.  Listen, ask questions, but don't try to win because you're a teacher and a teacher never wins. A teacher helps someone arrive at an idea an idea based on facts.   Ask him questions politely. He's your uncle. When he says something that you think is crazy, say, how do you know that? Are you certain that's true? Hey crazy uncle, can you teach me? Let's google that and find out if what you're saying is true. Don't try to win. What is your goal? What is your goal here?  What is your goal? You don't need to win an argument on Facebook.  That is your goal. That's it. You just need to provide enough doubt so that Republicans can't energize their base using fear and anger.   Maybe, maybe even make him come over to your side, but you don't need him to become a progressive liberal. You just need him to stay home. All of us are miserable. We're all, all of us are miserable now because we're terrified. So go back to what is sacred and what is sacred other people's struggle.  He is afraid of losing whatever he has. Not his mind. He lost his mind years ago. So respect his fear. This is the richest country in the world. This is the richest country in the world. And yet everybody is convinced they're financially up against the ropes because we have been convinced to value everything based on money, based on whether or not it's worth money or makes us money. How many times have you heard people say, I have my kids stop taking singing lessons because she's never going to make it. Make it? You mean make money? Singing is sacred. You should sing because you're bad at singing, because you're not a good singer. But since Reagan, we have attached money. We've attached the profit incentive to college, farming, healthcare, news, even charity, even charity has become profit driven. The head of Red Cross makes a couple of million dollars a year. Money is good. Providing work for people is sacred. Collecting taxes and making sure those taxes are spent properly, that's also sacred. But I was raised to believe that the things we do where there's no money involved, those are the most sacred. Not anymore. Not in America. If you can't make a profit, it has no value. That's why schools are being privatized, healthcare is privatized, charity is privatized. It's why Bill Gates has the audacity to believe that you can run a charity like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as though it's a corporation in bed with other corporations that create the problems charities are supposed to solve. This is not normal. This is sick. You know it's sick. So teach. Teach. Every day, teach.  Stop worrying about making money. Do your job and spend less than you make.  What do you need? And if you're listening, you know the answer to that question. You need time with the people and the books you love. The rest is noise. Stop worrying. Stop listening to the voices in your head. Listen to others. Don't argue. Don't fight. Teach. If you are listening to this show and having a good time, copy and paste it into an email and share it. This is going to take a different direction. I was planning. Oh, I was planning a completely different show with Kathleen Madigan, who joins us from Nashville, Tennessee. Hello, Kathleen Madigan. First of all, I love you. I know you more from your stand-up than I do from our personal interactions. I've seen you in clubs. We've hung out in Ireland. We'll get to all that. But one of the great things about being a stand-up comic is I can watch you on television and respect your work. And that's all that matters between us, right? Yeah, you can make sure I'm still alive. That's all you have to do. Yeah, but in other words, I don't have to worry about running into you or talking to you on the phone and saying, oh, we haven't spoken in six months. What's up? All you have to know is that I respect you. And that's all that matters, right? That's what I go to sleep with at night. And it's enough. It's plenty. I'm saying like with standard... David Feldman likes. That's what I say to myself. David Feldman likes me. That's not... You know what I'm saying. That's how stand-up comics bond. You know, that's how it works. We don't have to...  No, it should pick up right where it left off. If you're normal, that's how it should work.  Yes. Yes, exactly. But in terms of friends and family who are not comedians, they don't understand that we go long periods of time without talking to people and like to pick up where it started. They have higher expectations out of a relationship. And I learned that on Oprah. Some people, all relationships starts with definitions. What do you mean if we're friends? Here's what I mean. And I think without any coaching, all comedians have agreed on the definition of, I will see you when I see you. And that's it. And it's fine. If everybody could roll like that, there would be a lot less people with their feelings hurt. I don't think we do good with feelings. I don't really care about feelings. It's just thoughts. I care about thoughts. I don't care about feelings. My feelings were hurt, really hurt. You didn't call. Well, I didn't have anything to say. So, you know, your feelings shouldn't be hurt. Grow up. I don't want to see you. Is that too harsh? Is that too much of my father's speech? Well, are we... Can I tell what you did in Ireland to make me laugh so hard? We're going to get to that because I'm on edge right now. Are you still there? Okay. Yes, I'm here. Are your things still, are your skypes still working? Okay. Now, I'm going to ask you a couple of leading questions here about my Skype. Okay. Have you ever seen me be paranoid? Have you ever seen me angry? Not for real. Right. I'm a pretty... I mean... Yeah. Right. Thank you. You know, I... Yes. Right. Okay. So, on today's show, I went after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I don't want to get into it, but you'll hear the top of the show and you'll hear me going after Bill and Melinda Gates and how they don't pay taxes and how they shouldn't be donating their fortune to third-world nations because it's not their fortune to give away. It's our money. It's... They didn't pay their taxes and they're ruining the planet, by the way, because he's a corporatist trying to solve the world's problems, coordinating everything with pharmaceutical companies in Monsanto. So, I went after Bill Gates and then I... Aren't you glad you agreed to do... That's a light subject. That's a very light subject to start with. Hi, honey. Would you like some coffee? Bill Gates is ruining the world. What? Damn him and those mosquito nets. And then I went after... I thought he was giving water to people. Okay. But I'll believe you. Hey, when is the last time you had water?  And I was like, what? Water is involved? No. Yeah. That's funny you would know that. No, I'm not. There's water and beer and I don't know why people can't give me any credit for that. Okay. So, what happened? Did somebody yell at you for this tirade of yours? No, no. I'm just... I'm having... Because I'm not well psychologically because of what's happening in the world. Although, I'm pretty sure Hillary could have won or Bernie could have won and I'd still be out of my mind. I don't think... I like to blame Trump for my mental illness. Okay. So, here we go. I'm not paranoid. And then I went after Steve Jobs and said Apple doesn't pay taxes and I talked about Foxconn and the suicide nets and the women who make your iPhones and our products are made at gunpoint in China. Okay. Now, I'm looking forward to Kathleen Madigan. Now, I got Kathleen Madigan on the show and we set the interview for Tooth, Herdy. Right? And what happened? Yes, we did. And what happened? And I wrote back Tooth, Herdy and then Open Mail. That's what I did while you did that and it was slow and I already had gathered I'm not going anywhere so it's fine. Okay. So, I'm alone in the studio today and I'm doing this... That's even more dangerous. There's no one there to tell you to stop. Who's next on your list, Santa Claus?  Do you know how many children wake up on Christmas without presents? I'll give you some statistics. Next week, the Easter Bunny myth, legend or Tooth's disappointment. I think you're right about those people though but I'd have to hear your podcast but that's the thing I could be swayed easily. So, yours could say one thing and then I could listen to another one and I go, David overreacts. You know, if I listen to the other side, it just depends on who I hear and what time I hear it. Hang on. Let me... My head is spinning now because I actually wish that were my act. Just attacking Santa Claus in the Easter Bunny. I really do. I wish... Okay. So, Skype, we do this interview via Skype. Skype used to be... I think they were a Swedish or a Finnish company and they were doing very well and then Bill Gates, Microsoft bought Skype. Right? Is this true? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.  Now, I'm trying to get you on the line and I've just attacked the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and my Skype doesn't work. Maybe that's why. Well, there you go. And hang on. I'm doing this on a MacBook Pro which is only two years old. The other person you attacked. And that's... And suddenly my two-year-old MacBook Pro and my Skype are not working. Literally... What have we learned today? What have we learned today? Five minutes after I went after Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Apple and Microsoft. Well, we've either learned one of two things. You're right. Oh, you have an older inflated source of importance. One of the two. You know, and you're worried about your Skype not working. And Kellyanne Conway says the microwave is recording my actions and I'm a little more concerned about that. So, you're worried about your stuff not going through. You should be a lot more worried about what you're putting in that microwave every day.  Well, but hang on, Kathleen, Megan. I know we need to talk about your Netflix special and where you're playing and all that stuff. But you brought up the microwave. Now, you're gonna... This is not the way I wanted this interview to go. But I'm not doing well, okay? And there were... All right. And the WikiLeaks last week. Right. What did they say about the microwave? The WikiLeaks, do they say something? I thought you just made that up. I don't know. I don't believe WikiLeaks because I don't even believe Wikipedia because it said for five years I was married to Carrot Top. Because I didn't care and I thought, well, people want to believe that. But you can't believe how many people believed it. So WikiLeaks, Wiki, Wikipedia, anything Wiki. I don't believe it. Anything that starts with Wiki. Wiccans, I do believe Wiccans. Lord, the singer is a Wiccans. I don't... Really? I don't believe Wiki. Yeah, she... They had a big midnight thing to catch the spell on Donald. She required all the other witches in the world. This was last Saturday. I don't know why you're not paying attention to witch activity. Some men, too. I don't know. I don't know how that works in the witch world. But Lord was in charge of it. So we'll see if it works. We can be royals, that Lord? Yes. She's a witch. Google it when as far as to tweet the recipe for the spell for new witches. Now I'm getting... Now I'm getting scared. Well, don't be scared. I saw it, sir. Okay. So WikiLeaks last week said... And then we're going to... Then I'm done. And the name of this... Okay. What did they say? I mean, I do follow the news. What part? I'm sure... They said that the CIA can listen to our conversations through a Samsung television. I'm not making that up. Right. That's what I... Is it only...? That's what I've heard through my Sony. My Sony television told me that. Here's my problem. Here's my problem of all. There's two schools of thought and they always are competing with themselves in the same human. The same people it says, I don't want to give the government my money. They don't know what they're doing. And then they say that the government's capable of listening. Think of how much you have to edit. Just me yelling at people and talking to radio people. I mean, who cares? There's... You couldn't... You're either saying we have the most progressive adept government on the planet, but these are the same people that say we have the most inept government on the planet. Wow. So it's one or the other. Do I think they can do that? I mean, what do I know? I would say no because I've been to the post office and I see how the government rolls and it's very slow. Very, very slowly. They're still taking papers, pieces of paper, around the country for 52 cents. Now you're going to tell me, is that a front? Because that will be the next thing in the conspiracy thing. The post office is a front to make you think they're archaic, but actually they're like the Jetsons and there's all these things going on, Kathleen. You don't even know. It's one or the other. Would you do a show with me just to make money and we could do it under a Zoom name so we don't sully your sterling reputation by being associated with me? Where we do the Alex Jones thing and the conspiracy and we just make money with that? That would be a... I would totally do it because the fun of it is blowing holes in the conspiracy theories. Okay, my brother and I do this all the time, but he doesn't do Skype as well as you do, so I would prefer you than my brother. My biggest one is Malaysian Flight 370. Now my brother goes, my brother thinks, there's a big thing on my special, I go on and on about it, but he said, I think, and he has all these places where government, apparently we do have bases, that's for real, in all these strange places. There was somebody or something on that plane, they wanted, somebody took it, and then I said, well, Patrick, then what happened to all those people? He said, well, they were killed. And I said, okay, and our father is a lawyer and a judge, and I said, well, then you know the next question, Pat. Did one person do it or were there two? Because if there's two, then there's a 50% chance higher that that information got out. So you're going to tell me one person murdered and buried 234 people. The fun of it though, well, it's usually fun in a bar. It's like a three beer conversation, where you start really finding the holes in this lodge, say, okay, if Samsung, if the government is listening to, and who is it just important people, or is it random? Is it like a Nielsen box? Do you have to register? I don't understand those either. Maybe it's Nielsen that are doing it. Now, was somebody proud and could somebody have been spying on somebody in Trump Tower? Maybe you don't split because he was obviously, you know, he's registering as a foreign agent in places and doing things he shouldn't be doing. Well, maybe him, I think might be on a sale Friday that I laid out the pile of boxes and I randomly picked the one or my whole one. Okay, this is okay. So help me out here. Help me out here. Last night, and maybe I'm losing my mind, but I am pretty sure that my flat screen and my microwave were making fun of my hair transplants. Was your Amazon tech guy?   Of course, it's recording everything we're doing. I said, dad, do you think the government wants to hear about you and mom going to a casino and then maybe playing golf? What would be the point? You're 75.  It was the only point, apparently, of the phone call. And all of my six siblings got the same phone call of, so that's six times, that's 180 minutes. He spent raging about the Amazon. I said, I'll tell you what, dad. I said, I don't know if it's a spy, but I know it's a liar because if you ask it, who is Kathleen Madigan? It says Kathleen Madigan born in 1965. He's an American musician. Well, no, I'm not. No, I'm not.  That's what I know. There's a liar in my kitchen right now. See, I wish I were your father. You grew up in Missouri, correct? Why do I think Missouri? St. Louis. St. Louis, Missouri. I wanted to be, I didn't want to be a comedian.  And I wanted to sit at the head of the table and pound it, just pound the table at dinner and go over the New York Times with my kids and fight and argue and, you know, three hour dinners and I would be respected because I'm a lawyer and a judge and nobody would question me and there would be dinner hour and it was enforced. That's what I want. My father lived out your fantasy with the exception of there were a lot of questions. But see, he got off on the questions. He would be sad if no one had a question. He wants the banter. He wants the debate. Like when I said what would be the point of them listening to the echo of my life? Well, it depends on your situation.  That's an interesting, uh, gotcha, dad. I got it. Okay. In wine, they hear that. Your next claim says you're drunk. That's how it works, Kathleen. Don't ever sign up for those grocery cards either. They could subpoena those records. I think your dad and I would, I think we could be buds. I do. He will talk ad nauseam. If you would like to call him about the echo or if you'd like to hear about what was wrong with NAFTA, that's one of his favorite topics. Really bring how many coal mines kill people and how coal miner my owners are irresponsible people that should be jailed as murderers. You could have that conversation. Plenty. Plenty of topics. This is what I found interesting about getting to know you, especially in Ireland. You could be, except for your act, you could be a Republican. I know that. I know that.  Why? What would add up to this? Well, because you're very... You're going to judge the Midwest. The Midwest, but you're judging that.  Let me just finish here for one second. You can do your act anywhere and everybody loves you. You can travel around the world and people want to see you. And the only way I can deal with that jealousy is, yeah, but she's a Republican. That's the only way I can sleep at night is how can somebody get all this love and be so smart on stage? I'm going, nah, she's too smart. She's manipulating the crowd. That's what a Republican... Well, here's the thing that was delivered from a good time, Charlie. Who doesn't want to hang out with the fun lady at the bar? That's what I am. And that's true to myself too. That's where I'm going tonight. I mean, that's what I do. But if you don't mind, I would... I'm curious because Missouri is a very... Missouri is America. I've played Missouri and you can either be... This is the choice as I remember this. Remember Stephen D.C.? The disc jockeys? Yeah, yeah. Okay. As I recall, you are either a social progressive in Missouri or the Grand Wizard of the KKK, but you just don't know it. There's no gray areas. It's right? I'm making a sleeping generalization. No, like in the cities, I would say in the rural areas, that would be true. Which, by the way, just is inside bar. I don't know if you saw, but the Imperial Wizard... I was in a little headline about two weeks ago, but it was kind of everywhere. The Imperial Wizard... I don't know if there's one wizard or more, but the one wizard who found dead in Missouri killed by his son and his wife. And his body was found in a place called the Big River, which is a place my parents used to take us on float trips and swimming. And then I sent it to my parents and I said, who knew we were swimming with the clients? And I said, please read the article because the mother and the son wanted everybody to know that they didn't kill him because he was a wizard, which clearly he wasn't, or he would have gotten out of that situation. Because of his views, as a clan member, it was because he was not nice at home. Where to God? He really got to Google it. It was just like two weeks ago. Worth every word of reading. Hang on. You can't do... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You can't... It was slow down there for one second. So the Grand Wizard of Missouri wasn't a family man. The Imperial he wasn't good to his family. You know, it's interesting about... This is my theory. This is why... He didn't like just at home behavior. It wasn't about... They really wanted to make that clear, though. It wasn't about him being in the clan. They were good with that. It was about who's in charge of the remote, you know, not enough fear in the house, that kind of thing. Bitch, my sheets aren't white enough. I'm the Grand Imperial Wizard. I can't go out like this. Right. But isn't that always the case? As comedians, haven't we learned that most comedians, and this is why I thought you were a Republican, that most comedians are like the Imperial Wizard of Missouri, in that when a comedian presents himself as a good, honest, decent man, they're hiding some dirty, dark secret at home. I'm squeaky clean. I mean, I cost and all that. I don't know what years mean. I didn't do it. Am I dirty? No. But I also wouldn't say I can be squeaky clean for a corporate game if I need to be. It's from St. Louis.  Do you think Cedric the Entertainer is a Republican? I think you judge me because I'm white. So what I'm saying to the listeners, I think one of the lessons we've learned today is the Imperial Wizard on the surface. He seemed like a good citizen, community. He was active in the community, protecting. Yeah, he was swimming at the Big River. You know, he was civically minded. But at home, he was a nightmare. And so often we hear about this. Do you remember, do you remember Stephen DC? Do you remember when Patton Oswald, before he was, there was a time when Patton Oswald, he still does like me, but there was a time when he respected me. Because, you know, he was starting out. And I still, do you remember? I didn't know any better. What? And he didn't know any better. Well, I have this thing. There's a guy named RJ Freed. He's a great comedy writer. And he just moved to LA. And he says, how are you doing? I wrote back. I said, hey, listen, when you have time, can you call me for advice so I can alpha dog you and tell you how to avoid the pitfalls of Hollywood and keep your marriage together? I know I'm divorced, but it would just make me feel good about myself to just be wise. And there was a time when I gave wisdom to Patton. But it made me feel important. So he became obsessed with Stephen DC because I was in St. Louis in the mid to late 90s when these two disc jockeys called their one of their listeners an N word. Do you remember this? I do. They got a lot of trouble. I think I kicked off the air. No, this is when I knew Missouri St. Louis was unlike America. They got suspended for calling an African American caller the N word. You're behaving like the N word. And I remember thinking, really, a suspension like a two week suspension. That should be it, shouldn't it?  And I guess I didn't pay attention to what happened on the road. So like I heard about it, but it wasn't in St. Louis. And I thought it wasn't shocking, you know, about Patton. This is how before Patton was really big. He had the time to do this. So I was in Missouri. I came in the day after this happened and they spent four hours defending their use of the N word on the show. And I, I taped it. So I came home with cassette tapes. And I told Patton, I said, listen, I've got four hours of these two shock jocks. The day before they got suspended on Monday, they called this woman the N word. The day after they defended it for four hours. Wednesday, they were suspended for two weeks, review these four tapes and Patton, because he didn't know any better sat down and went through all four hours and cataloged it. I have it somewhere in an envelope. This is the blue tape. The blue tape is the first hour. The second is the red. In the red, they begin, you know, he just, he obsessed on it. And he wrote up this whole dissertation on Steve and DC. Okay. Just thought I'd mentioned that. They're probably still in business. You know, I don't even know. We'd have to Google it. I think Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions hired them to run the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. So you are all your, so your father, Kennedy Liberal? Yes, he was an appellate court judge appointed by Mel Carnahan. Yes, he, the Kansas City Star spent a lot of their time and effort to write that my father was the most like liberal lunatic that had ever been in charge of anything. Wow. Like, and the good thing was, my parents really didn't understand history, which means that I went home to their households and I went to the basin and there were like 87 messages and I thought, I'm going to get a beer and listen to all these. This is going to be great. They were like five from the Kansas City Star, looking for an appointment Judge Madigan. And I'm like, Hey, man, Kansas City Star really wants your attention. He goes, Oh God, they wrote that article a year ago. I'm not talking about people. No, you're not. I can tell you, if you called back now, nobody's taking the call. People like me You would not have thought Dick Gregory was a Republican. You would not have thought Senator the Entertainer was a Republican. I'm trying to think of other people from St. Louis. The Slar Brothers? John Ashcroft? Could be a little right at times. Ferguson. Okay. Did you really? Give me a little street. Yeah, give me a little street cred. Low respect. Wait a second. Thank you. Slow down. Slow down. You just dropped a major bombshell. He said, give me respect. How do you go up in Ferguson? Florescent, which is right next door, but my school district was the Ferguson Florescent School District. Like that's where we would go to their swimming pool.  Yeah. Yeah, I can. I'm shocked that we kept a lid on it this long. I'm kidding. If you grow up there, you can feel the tension. I mean, it's almost like tangible. Like it's not even like a, Oh, do you think maybe that those people don't like us and you're there? I don't like that guy and he doesn't like me. I mean, yeah. Yeah, it's not shocking at all. It was very sad because even when I go back to St. Louis, I mean, my family eventually moved away from there and moved to a different part of St. Louis, blah, blah, blah. But they have the best doughnut store in the world. And I'm like, so help me Christ. If somebody sets that on fire, I'm going to get involved. I am scanning every channel. And if I see old town doughnuts going up, going up, I am going to get a call.  Well, so growing up in Ferguson, it's as I read, it's a highly segregated. I'm, you know, I'm, I don't want to trivialize what happened to the poor police. Sorry. Right. Lord Darren. I can, this is why, this is why you're loved. And I'm doing a podcast in my mother's crawl space. She doesn't even know that she doesn't know the creepy part. Well, yes. Right. Well, I was going to make it. I just, you know, and I realize I'm not funny. I'm just dark. That's the other thing I realized. I just say horrible things that aren't clever. So Ferguson, very segregated. And the police were running a shakedown operation in collusion with the judges. That's how they paid their, their salaries. That's how they, the tickets and the whole thing. And yeah, but like any of us that live there could have told you on some level, of course that's all happening. But I didn't know that. Did you really know that? Did you really know that the police really balanced the budget for, you know, certain cities in Missouri by just keeping black people in a perpetual cycle of debt? Did you know that? Well, I wouldn't have said that to that extent. Like I wouldn't have had the time or energy to figure out the end game there. But you knew there was a game. You knew there was, I don't know the rules. I don't know to who the spoils go, but yes, you knew I got pulled over. Things will probably go badly no matter what. And I knew that because I worked at a restaurant with a lot of, with a lot of black people that didn't even live in Ferguson, they came from like more of the inner city where it was even harsher. And they would say we have a worse time here than in the inner city. Like they, at least half the people I worked with at the restaurant were black and they were coming in from somewhere else and they were like, man, what's going on here?  And I thought, yeah, I wouldn't want to be getting stopped here and being black. I don't want to be stopped here being white, but I can imagine it's worse. And I think 90% of the people that lived there would have agreed with that. But what do you, I can't prove that. Right. You know, I can't prove it, but you know it, even though the Michael Brown video that came out today, I mean, me and my brother had said that a hard time. There was something going on in that store and everybody was in agreement and something went weird. Wait, there's a new video. There's a new video. When did it come out today? Michael Brown had been in the store the night before and he, if you watch the video and I agree with what they're saying, he traded them pot for Cigarillos. They pick up the pot, they smell it, he puts it on the counter, they both, these two guys smell it that work there. Then they give him the Cigarillos and then he, he puts them in, they put them in the bag and then he hands them back. So I think the following day, he came back to get them. It was like, but that would be what would be happening on Corner Start. Like we knew in high school, well, if you want drugs, you just go down to that corner store and, you know, trade or whatever. What do you mean he went back to get them the following? I don't understand what you mean by that. He'd them hold the Cigarillos. Like they gave them to them and then he put them in the bag and you can tell he was, he's basically saying, can you guys, I'll be back for these tomorrow. Like it was a big, kind of a bigger box of, uh, and then I think he went back the next day.  But my point was there was a deeper relationship than what we saw on that video and everybody, if you grew up there, you would go, well, that ain't the whole video. I mean, something, there's something more and I don't know what it is. And so from that, when this happened two years ago, we were told that he, I believe the narrative was, he had robbed the place, right? Correct. Correct. So then there was, I'd have to go back because I don't remember if there was a call to the police that said the story had been robbed, just the incident about get out of this. That's where I would have to go back and see if, if, if Darren Wilson thought the cop thought he was looking for, uh, you know, who went back to get something he had left at the store. Okay. And you're saying we would have known growing up there that every, that not every corner store, but you knew the ones, you knew the ones that would tell you liquor. If you were underage, you knew the ones that had pot and you could trade. It's just watching it. I'm like, yeah, well, what else is going on here? Now your school, was your school public? It was the McClure North Star of stars because, uh, I had had enough of Catholic school and the public school had a smoking area. My parents will let me go where I could smoke. And this was second grade, right? 16. You went to, and was it integrated? Yeah, where our neighborhoods, but some were buffed in for me, St. Louis. And I just thought that was terrible because the, for them, because they would get picked up at some godly hour in the morning and then their buses wouldn't leave till all sports were done. And I'm like, well, what if you don't play a sport? This is brutal. Like nobody thought of how to work out in a, in a, you know, make people happy. It just was always like, there was always a thing. Was this quarter busing? You know, I don't even know. Like that year, that would have been like 80, no, 83, 82 and 83. Okay. I'm not sure, but like one of my locker mates was from St. Louis. It had to be either busing or somebody's parent. Well, no, because they had buses. Right. But also East St. Louis, I don't know. It's very possible that all the schools at that point had closed in East St. Louis because it became, you know, just completely, a complete meltdown over there. Maybe this was the closest school to them. Could have been. Yeah. I'll move on. I, you know, busing, as I remember reading, was the Nixon administration burger. It wasn't the Warren court. It was Chief Justice Burger and any. It may have truly been because like for a while in the 80s, like East St. Louis didn't, they didn't have trash pickup. They didn't have ambulances. They had no services at all. It was just madness. So because I was in North St. Louis, that may have been the closest high school. It was open. I'm developing a theory about Missouri and then we'll get to Ireland. I have a theory, I think, about Missouri. Let me run it by you. The Missouri compromise. Maybe you know what the Missouri compromise is. I'm just hear me out. This is my new theory. I think the Missouri compromise may have been 1820 or 1825. And the deal was that we were going to take Missouri into the union in exchange for shock jocks being allowed to say the F word and only suspended for two weeks. Here's the point I'm making. I don't think anybody knows what the Missouri compromise was, including the people from Missouri. I don't think they ever figured out if they were a slave state or not. No, we never didn't. Like if I go to the South, people will say, I can tell by the way you talk, you're a Yankee.  I'm not even sure if we were in the war.  We never got involved in a big fight. It was called fight local. That was a bumper sticker. Seriously, though, I mean, I know we sold slaves on the courthouse steps because they would bring slaves up to Mississippi and then parts of it were union parts of it were Confederate. It's still, they still can't decide. They had a map of Syrian refugees, the whole United States. They said, here's the states that will take them. Those states were in blue. Here's the states that refuse. Red, for no reason explained until the end of the broadcast, Missouri was colored lavender. And it said that their minds, they're going to wait and see how the results come in and how this works out with other folks. And they'll let everybody know. So Missouri, it's interesting because for the life of me, I do and I pride myself on being able to know American history. And I have always had a block when it came to the Missouri compromise. I don't know. I don't know if they were admitted as a free or slave state. Brian, you know, Brian, Kylie, he would know. He would know. My dad would know. I'm sure they're back from golf. Get them on the line.  That's good. I went today. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Let's talk about Ireland. Okay. We were in Ireland. This is how I remember Ireland. I remember you being treated as though it you were JFK. Elected president, and then coming back to Ireland, you were received.  But my family.  Yes, my grandpa's family. They still live there on Parliament Street. I went to lunch with everybody. I was 5,000 miles away from LA and I'm still getting calls. Captain, is there any chance you can get seven tickets for Madigan? I'm like, wow. Wow. 5,000 miles away from home. It's still a relative's going to be on that hotel phone. Unbelievable. Wait, are your grandparents still alive? No, no, no, they're long dead. But it's like kids, he had a sister that stayed and so on and so forth. And then they all had kids. And so there's still a bunch of them there. And that's why they come to the comedy. Well, I at the time was married to an Irish woman. I love the Irish and I wish I were Irish. It's a much safer, happier existence than whatever I am. And I felt very safe there. The girls dressed, I don't even, can't even begin to describe how it's not a Catholic. How do those girls dress? It's not a Catholic girl school thing. I'm not fetishizing this. It was just so sweet and innocent that I kept begging my daughters to dress this way. What are these things that they wear? Clothes? Is that what it's called? Clothes? They cover up their body? What is it? I would call that lack of options. I don't think that that's like, that was before internet shopping. And unless you're going to go to Dublin on the train, you know, there's not a lot of shopping in Kilkenny. But how would you describe those dresses? They're like our 70s. Yeah, like peasant glasses. You know, flowers on them for the store anthropology, which you're probably not familiar with. Everyone looks like they could either join the Manson family or go go to some sort of debutante outside cocktail party. And they, it's just a very, I know what you mean. I can't describe it. Flowers in the dress, but not really. Yeah. And they're covering up their, they're not showing off their. Yeah, well, nothing flusy, but that's from the Catholic schools. I mean, my God, they're having that feeling where you're going to get any respect to a hoe. Right.  I kind of agree. I believe in burkas for men. I don't believe, I think men should just walk around blinded. Since we cannot get past what a woman looks like, we should just wear a burka with our eyes covered. And so women can drip there. I mean, there is a logic to burkas. So we were in Ireland. Here's what I remember. This is what I remember. I remember hanging out with Jim Gaffigan and Jeannie and being very envious of his ability to make an audience laugh without having to alienate them. I remember we were all having dinner one night. I go, let me get this straight.  Yeah, that's how it works, Dave. That's how comedy works.  And Louis was there. Durst was there. A young comic named Orney Adams who has become a very good young man. He's a great comic and I'm very proud of him. But at the time, Orney was, well, let's just say even I had to take him aside and say Orney. This is, I said, you know, America is about to invade Iraq.  And let me tell you something. They didn't side with us during World War II. So they don't have to like us. The main focus was to defeat the English. It had nothing to do with Hitler. You're convoluting the conversation of the bad at the Irish table. I know. But I said, these people, I know, I know. But I said, these people are not on board this fight to liberate the Middle East. It's nice.   I know. I know. As a matter of fact, I was working at the DC improv before we were going to invade Iraq. And my parents called and they said, we were looked at your website and said you're going to be in DC. I said, I am for the Wednesday through Sunday. Well, we're coming up there because we're going to get involved in that protest and you're going to, we'd like you to come with us. I'd like you to give us a room. And I said, listen, you freaks, you have it wrong. You're not supposed to protest when you're in your 60s. You were supposed to have protested in the city. Now is not the time. Mom has a bad knee and you can't hear and you're going to ask me to lead you to through thousands of people in DC and be responsible and we don't have cell phones. But I did say to my dad, I go, do you honestly believe us walking around the White House, whatever we were chanting, you, George is in there. He's going to do it. Do you think this is going to work? No. If I don't do this, and you only, I've never seen my father. I don't think I'd seen my father run since I was a child and all of a sudden he took off and I go, what, where is he going? He just heard Susan Sarandon was speaking over there. He didn't lump with her. And I never, I realized I called my brother and said, I seriously don't think I've seen him run since we were children. It was really, it was like, I don't know. He'll be like watching a cat sing or something. What, what, what's going on for the old people? Oh my, so photographs to prove it fell for the trick. I've been, I, I've been punishing myself. I became a vegan or a vegetarian after that. Yeah. And here, the thing that really annoys me about myself, well, many things, that I tricked myself into believing, well, we were all fed a false bill of goods. We all trusted George W. Bush and Colin Powell. No, the protest, largest protest, every, in Europe, those protests, I've, you know, I've been reading about the protests and the anti-war protests back in 2003 were the large, were bigger than anything they had in the 60s. Believe me, I know they were because I had to keep track of my parents within it. One point, and this was a funny, this was seriously, and I did, I had an old digital camera that, a movie camera and I have movies of it. My dad got, he can't, he really can't hear it at all. And he didn't realize, but- Isn't justice supposed, hang on, I have a joke everybody, hang on for one second, hang on, hang on, let me just take a sip of coffee, hang on. You say your father, the judge, can't hear. Hang on for one second. Let me take another sip of coffee. And the joke is coming up, folks. Here we go. My ad lib is the following. I thought justice was supposed to be blind. I have now made a joke. I have now made an ad lib. And now we can continue the conversation. That's why the Irish couldn't believe they paid to see you. So go ahead.  It was no war in Iraq. Groups like to join in to protest, even if their issue isn't necessarily about that specific issue. Well, at one point, she needed a break, we're sitting down, there's just thousands of people. And I said, you know what, I don't know where he went. He knows where the hotel is. Everybody has a key. That was the plan. Just everybody be back by six if we get separated. And I see him and he doesn't know it. And he's chanting whatever there is. No, no, we won't go to war. But he's in the middle of these Alaskan bears are here. And I thought he probably thinks it really means, mom said, well, is that a gay thing? Are they, are they, do they marry bears? Maybe I don't know. I go, but I'm pretty sure because there's rainbows all over that there's not rainbow bears. Yeah, they're just saying that there's the bears of the gay guys. This is too much to explain. And I want to go home and it's hot. I have two shows tonight. No one gets and no one and the people act like I don't have a job. You do act like I don't have any job, except to quote, stand up and tell stories in a saloon according to my father. That's what I do for a living. You are, you, as I remember, you went to my dad's alma mater, which is University of Missouri to study to be a journalist, as did my father. Yeah, but I didn't go to the good one, but I'm glad to hear he went to the good one. You went to, I went to university, University of Missouri, St. Louis. That's not the fun one. That's not the one on TV. That's not the one known for journalism. Columbia is the one for journalism. Columbia. No, I'm not talking about the Columbia School of Journalism. I'm talking about in Missouri. Neither am I. I'm talking University of Missouri is in Columbia. Columbia, Missouri. Oh, my God. You don't talk to your father that often. No.  Well, I think that's inflating. Well, tell that to Richard. Tell that to Richard Nixon, who you drove out of office through your. I did not want to be a journalist. I just couldn't do science and math. And in the Midwest, they don't present you with many other options. So I went with that. And I thought, well, but I really didn't want to be a reporter. And I knew that. Like I worked for a paper and I got sent to some St. Louis City argument about cable TV contracts. I literally fell asleep when I thought, okay, I can't do this. So then I got a job in a private club like, like the New York athletic club. It was a Missouri athletic club. And I did their in-house magazine, which was all just fluff stories. Like some guy would, some member would come in and go, I climbed Mount Everest. And I was like, winner, man, you're on the cover. Tell me all about it. Who cares? Okay, I can do, I can write a story, but I just didn't like it at all. And it doesn't pay. Did you find yourself doing this stand up accidentally? Not through journalism, but bartending all the time. Yeah. Because like I had old guy locals that would come to my bar, it was like a steakhouse with a real bar and then you know, using autographs. And they would expect me on some level to entertain them. And I don't mean like a call girl. Right. Bill Cosby started that. Bill Cosby was pouring drinks and that started his career and his career ended pouring drinks. Mine hasn't gotten to that point yet, but you never know. Okay. You don't know what I'm capable of. Ireland. Okay, hang on for one second.  I'm very calculating. We're going to get to Ireland. I have one of you on my show, but I figured I had to get Lewis to vouch for the show and vet me. I suffered through two and a half hours of that blow hard. I'm kidding. I can't give him a I can't he and I can't if I if I'm effusive and thankful to him, it makes him uncomfortable. So this to make him happy. I'm saying that I had to suffer through Lewis. Lewis was great on the show and I spoke to him this morning, by the way, and he said you owe him $25 in the referral fee. He could tell that trick. I want $25. Yeah. So yes, because I was speaking to him because he's stuck in the snowstorm and he won't be able to get out. Yeah. Good times. Good planning, Lou. Let's before we get to Ireland, where are you performing in the next two weeks? Well, this week I'll be in Thousand Oaks in California and Riverside, California.  And then, um, gosh, hold on. I don't even, I mean, I know, but I don't know. Hold on one second. I'll give you a couple more dates. No, no. I waited for your Skype. Okay. You're right. And while you're looking up your dates, I should mention that Kathleen's new special is on Netflix right now. It is. Then in April, I'll be in Bloomington, Illinois, Galesburg, Illinois, Detroit, Huntington, New York, Richfield, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Colorado Springs, Denver, two nights, and then Phoenix, a talking stick. And then I will go to Ireland. On vacation. Oh, not to Kilkenny. No, I just go every year on vacation. That's why the festival also fit right into my belly wick. Now, uh, I remember... Louis goes along. Really? Yeah. We just go golf and drink. Wow. What's the hardest you and Louis laughed in the past year? Just like... I can tell you exactly when and when it was on the... We decided to do bucket lists for golf courses that we want to play once in our life. So we went to Pebble Beach and we paid all the money and it's really expensive and they overbook it. I would never recommend it. And on the 14th, it was probably 50. So it's super cold. People, Asian people with cameras walk by just like wandering around the course and he said, what are they doing? I said, the bigger question is what are we doing? I know what they're doing. They want to go take a picture of the ocean because it's losing its mind right now. We're standing here and we had been out there so long and so tortured that we literally just broke down into some sort of nervous breakdown laughter that there was no reason for it. And that was when I said, I don't know. What are we doing is the bigger question. And he goes, yeah, you got that right. And then it just... To this day, neither one of us can explain why. I mean, it took a long time to get it back, like 10 minutes. All right. I'm not going to ask you... I'm not going to ask you about golf with Louis because we're running out of time. You will come back, I hope, right? Well, yes. I had a lovely time. Thank you. All right. As I remember Ireland, and I think you mentioned this on the green room, I remember being loved in Ireland. I remember... Hello? Go ahead. I can't wait to tell Lou that. I remember being just treated as an oddity like John Merrick, like the elephant man. I was accorded respect. I was... People looked at me and said, this... He is special.  And I felt important. Am I wrong? Well, no. There's two things. My sister was with me, my younger sister and Louis. And let's go... Let's run out of here, and we can still see David's show. And it was in one of the bars, I don't know. And the Irish are not... They don't really click in so quick to irony. That's not really their thing. They like it a little more blatant and a little more storyteller-y, obvious. And you said, you know, I haven't noticed many homeless people here, and I don't know what you guys are doing so well that that's not a problem, but it is a problem in America. We have a lot of homeless, and I don't really understand why it's a problem, because like in America, if you find a dog and you take it to your local animal shelter, and within seven days, no one claims it, well, they put the dog down.  I mean, give it at least two weeks.  And Jewish on top of that, when you said after seven days, like I fell off the bar still laughing and Lou's laughing and my sister's laughing. To make it even better, the following day, my sister and I are getting ready to go somewhere, and she said, hey, do you care if I skip your show and go see David Selman instead of you? I go, I don't care. I said, but I thought you said it was uncomfortable. And she said, well, it was.  I don't know what's going to happen, it is. And she got really deep into it. Does that bother him? Like when that happens? Like, does that happen a lot? Or I go, well, because she had seen Andy Kimmler. I go, it doesn't happen as often as Andy. But for whatever reason, you know, you got some drunk Irish people in there and they just didn't... irony is not their thing. Maybe it has something to do with a modest proposal. Jonathan Swift talking about eating Irish babies. Maybe they've never... Before you go, I'll tell you about my son and how he was raised. My son was born right when I became a comedy writer to say off the road, as though the road was called, as though the road wanted me. It's how I stayed out of all the music conservatories. So he...  This kid grew up in a comedy writing room. From the time he could walk, he would just come into the room and he'd go right for the snack room and I would get him jacked up on sugar to impress the writers. He'd go, watch what's going to happen. I'm going to feed him lots of sugar. And then he would spin around the room and then fall asleep. And I guess that's abuse.  Oh, wow. And it was in a steakhouse in Los Angeles on Pico. Was it Andy Kindler's? No. You would love you. I love you. You were available on my 50th. I should have thought of that. This was just a normal dentist and his loving wife who has forgiven him for apparently sleeping with all the hygienists because I made jokes about Dr... Let's just say Dr. Blatt banging all the hygienists because I figured he wouldn't be doing that. And I just wrote all these jokes about the good dentist Dr. Blatt turning 50 and how he wears rubber gloves because the smell of the dental hygienist, I mean, you get the point. And my son came with me. Ray James, Ray James writes all the roasts and he came over and we wrote this roast that I'm telling you was really funny. And I was cutting Ray in on the guy, you know, they were paying me and I figured, well, I'm going to tell these jokes even though I'm ruining his marriage. The in-laws were there, their kids were there, my son is watching, and I ruined this guy's 50th birthday and I'm pretty sure I ruined Dr. Blatt's marriage because I would not stop joking about all the dental hygienists he's gone through. Are you still available for the 50th? So I said to my son, so Ray by then had a couple of drinks and I don't know if you know Ray James, but he delights in this kind of stuff. You know, a son seeing his father humiliating himself as well as the person who hired him for his 50th birthday and so we leave and my son comes home and my daughters are there and they have friends over and he just bursts into the house and goes, dad, he just got paid to ruin a man's 50th birthday party. It is so cool.  They hated him. And then he stayed around. He said, watch son, dad, I'm going to teach you how to get paid for ruining people's lives. And they came and handed me a check and the wife wouldn't make eye contact with him and he took the check and he and Ray proudly, you know, they made me walk a wreck through the room and shake hands with everybody. And they hated daddy. They hated daddy and he ruined this guy's marriage and on the way home, he and Ray were talking about how he got paid to destroy people's lives. That's what's going to come. I don't have anything that inappropriate. Honestly, I know for a fact, I don't remember where I parked my car, but I do remember that I have not done anything like that. I always took my kids to watch me bomb. I never took them to a good gig because I don't think it's important for especially sons to idolize their father. I always wanted them to see me at my lowest because I have clay feet and I would always be driving home from a bad show and there were some bad gigs. There was one gig in, oh, it was a casino near Palm Springs. Let's, I don't, I don't know what the money was. Let's say it was 10 bucks and you would just drive down to the casino and it was, it was on the floor where they were gambling. You would just perform. Oh, right. Like, right in the, right. And I would always take the gig because it was on a Friday night and it was absolutely horrible. And I would bring friends and they would watch me just be hated. And my then wife would say, why do you do this? And I say, because they're off. I don't know. I don't remember what the money was, but let's just say it was 10 bucks. And I would say, because if you asked me, would you drive down to Palm Springs, pick up a check for 10 bucks, turn around and come back? I'd say yes. And that's what's happening. And that's what's happening. And they're going to hate me. And on the way home, you know, if I brought my kid, I'd say, not only did I make 10 bucks, but I ruined two hours of their lives. See, here would be the difference. Like, I didn't do very many college gigs in my career because they weren't in the cafeteria. Republican that you think I am because the Catholic religion taught me to be nice.  I was actively bothering them. And I called and said, I will no longer do these. They hate me. I hate, I don't hate them.  And I decided to change those cardinals. In all honesty, we have to wrap it up. I've taken up a lot of your time. In all honesty, that's a defense mechanism that in the end, I wish they all love me that I didn't ruin that guy's 50th. I wish my sons and daughters could come to a bad gig and watch me turn the crowd around. But I just don't have that ability. So well, if it makes you feel any better, I took my sister's eight year old twin girls and the six year old. I knew he wouldn't get it, but I thought, well, is it Springfield, Missouri, is this fancy theater? And they wanted to come because they heard that it was possible I could get donuts back. So I called theater and said, can you guys go make sure there's a shitload of donuts back there? Whatever kind I don't hear. So they were completely impressed with that. And then my sister took them out to the balcony of the theater to listen.  She goes, you know, Kathleen, that you had been on stage for about 20 minutes. And Claire goes, when does she start? And I go, what? And I asked them, I go, what did you think? What did you guys want that wasn't happening? Just went, well, you know, at home, you tell us knock, knock jokes. And you're very funny, but this was not good. Yeah. Well, okay. She's right. It wasn't good if you're eight. It was terrible. I just, my stories, David, are about children and yours are about adults that live in this world. Yeah, I just I have one more. I have one more. I just want to remember this properly. And we'll have to keep it in because we don't edit. So this I remember doing Conan and bringing my seven year old, he was seven at the time. And I was going to give him the full Feldman, you know, fly to New York, see daddy doing Conan. This was going to be this was going to be, you know, he was going to experience the whole thing. And I was going to be cool because I was in therapy.  And I had, so I bring them with me. And I have a massive panic attack the night before. I run, I run the set with Frank Smiley and Paula Davis. And oh, I remember them. Yeah, I love them.  It's okay. It's a funny set. And I go, but I'm going to, I'm going to bomb. No, you're not going to bomb. It's going to be fine. I'm going to, I'm going to humiliate myself on that. I was having a nervous breakdown because of my son was there. And anyway, I could not sleep. I had been doing Conan a lot. And for some reason, something happened. I turned it into something that it wasn't. And I don't drink and I don't take pills. And I downed an entire bottle of Benadryl. And I'm still pacing. And my son is sound asleep. He's sound asleep. And I'm pacing.  Remember, he said that you're a very nervous man. And I just, I remember, I never forgot I go, man, I'm not a man. No, I was going, no, I'm a coward.  And he went back to sleep. And I'm nothing, I'm nothing. I'm going to humiliate myself. It was just like a complete, so I show up. So I show up to tape and I'm a basket case, just a complete dark circles, Brian Kiley is holding my hand. And I'm a complete wreck.  So I had a joke where I said, you wouldn't know by looking at me, but I have Asian blood on the grill of my car. And Conan's God bless him. Conan's head hits the table. I look over in his head, just hits the table. He's laughing so hard. So it doesn't matter if I haven't said that would have been another one to stump the Irish. Well, why would he tell you something? Well, Conan, I heard is Irish. Well, that's the secret. He's really an orthodox dream. Anyway, so suddenly, you know, 48 hours, no sleep. I'm getting laughs. Come on, let's go. Where's the show? Let's do another. Like I come backstage and it's like Lindbergh landing in France and my son was in the dressing room and they had juiced him up with sugar. That was, you know, he and his face, he looked like Al Jolson in blackface from the chocolate chip cookies. And he and he goes to me, Daddy, that was amazing. I swear to God, Kathleen, this is true. I swear to you, he's covered in chocolate chip cookies. And he goes, that was amazing.  You were great. So that's my son's memory of seeing his father trying to be a man in front of him. And we leave. And I'm like, that was great. I was I offended everybody. I wish I were you. I wish I were you. I wish I could figure out how to make people laugh, laugh, being smart and kind and not dark. I think it's the hardest thing to do is anybody can make it. Dark is the hardest to commit to, though. I couldn't commit to it. I would be terrified. But anybody can be. But anybody can be dark. I mean, that's at the water cooler. No, I don't agree. Oh, it's easy. It's easy. No, I could not go up and say I have Asian blood on the hood of my car. I mean, no, I couldn't. I would be it'd be like jumping off a high dive. No, with my contacts. But that's that's anybody could make that joke. And most guys, I know, do that.  Well, it's worth it if somebody has the guts to do it. Yeah, but it's not.  You have this. I hate to say Irish, but you have a love of words and your facile with your sentence structure. There's a real gift that you have. Kathleen Madigan, how do people follow you on Twitter? Kathleen Madigan. And there's only two. And I'm not the lady that writes difficult articles. It's easy to find. She's a very smart lady. Thank you so much. I love you. Come back. Alright, David, come back. I'll have to go.  And you can sip on Benadryl. When are you in New York? I come up all the time. So I will tell you and I usually just go to the West Bank with Louis, but we will tell you were there and then you come meet us in a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. And they have wonderful, they have wonderful devil bags. Absolutely recommend. Great. Thank you, Kathleen. Alright, David. Take it easy. Talk to you later. Okay, thank you. Bye. Bye. Are listening to this show and having a good time, copy and paste it into an email and share it. Michael Fox is a stand-up comedian, hysterical stand-up comedian. We were at QED last week and I had to follow her. Yeah, I was able to follow her, but she's great. I usually like following bad comics because I look better. Michael Fox is a stand-up comedian contributing writer for some car. She hosts two weekly podcasts this week in Jack-in, which of course, I want to talk about. It's where comics come on and tell us what they're masturbating to and she co-hosts that with Chris Laker and Shaman with Karen Fian. Did I pronounce that properly? Fihan. Fihan. Tutan Fihan. And I think Shaman should be a television show. Thank you. And welcome back. So you've been on the show in a roundtable format and I was listening to Shaman and I realized that I wanted to talk to you one-on-one because I don't think the roundtable is necessarily beneficial to you. I don't thrive in a group environment. Well, I think I'm going to go right for the gender thing. Okay. Why wouldn't you?  When boys are introduced, it changes the dynamic. Yeah. And there's this sisterhood on Shaman that is so powerful and so funny and so relentless. I'm right about that. Yes. No, she's a very, we're very close. We're very similar and I think, yeah, we're funnier together. And I think it's, I think you're powerful together and fearless. Yes. And not ashamed of your hate. You're right. Yeah. I think we were both haters and we joined forces and, you know, two girls hating on you is way scarier because we could back each other up. We can egg each other on. You were talking about your piss pants and how you did a day shift in your, I was laughing hysterical.   I've never heard that expression before. Which episode? That was on, that was on actually this week in Jack and so you're, and you're just a great joke writer and you're really funny and honest. And I want, I have a lot of questions I want to ask you. Oh, okay. Yeah. You were a psych major. I was. Yeah. Were you going to be? Where is that listed? I heard you say that on the show. I'm like, how did that get out? I let it out. Yeah, I studied it. I was, I did, I was not enamored of the study, but by the time I committed to it, it was a little late.  No. There wasn't. There wasn't. I got, I didn't understand how college worked when I went to college. I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't understand what picking a major meant. Like it was just sort of beyond me. I just thought you, it was like a couple of classes, extra classes you took. I didn't realize it was like, oh, you're going to spend years focusing on this one topic. And it got to be my junior year and they're like, you have to pick a major. And I was like, well, I'm not spending more than four years here. So I'll just pick one. And then right after I picked it, I fell in love with linguistics. And so I just doubled in those. You fell in love with linguistics. Yes. Well, that would, if you don't mind bringing up your past, that would explain an old boyfriend, Noam Chomsky. Yes. Or Mikey Kaplan. Mikey Kaplan. He also double majored in psychology and linguistics. It was one of the things that was very strange about our compatibility. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? Sure. Did you know he was into psychology and linguistics before you fell in whatever with him? We were introduced because of it, because linguistics is such an uncommon study that we were introduced by a friend of ours, Victor Varnado, who met Mike at Boston and thought he was similar and found out he studied linguistics. He was like, what a coincidence. So does my friend Micah. And he introduced us for that reason. Linguistics is the study of language and how we speak, right? Yeah. And do you believe that... Very good. Thank you. Do I get a treat? That do you believe that it's innate or that it's taught? Language? Yeah. That's the whole... I mean, our brain is definitely wired to do it. We definitely evolved to be great communicators. That's what separates us from the animals. So you turned to comedy. Are you fluent in another language? I'm not. I actually think I just started downloading a bunch of apps. I know Spanish pretty well. I grew up in Arizona. I grew up in Arizona. I waitressed at a restaurant. These are things that give you the edge. And you were a minute, man. You used to patrol the butters with the rental, right? That's right. Trying to like sneak people in. Trying to get myself into Tijuana. Did you ever go to Mexico growing up in Arizona? You know, a couple times. I'm from Scottsdale. It's not... It's like, you know, still three hour, four hour drive. It's not exactly the place you wanted... We went there a couple times. I went there more as a college student. I quit drinking in Juarez. That makes sense. At least water, right? No, I did. I was there with Evan Davis and Bernadette Laquette. And Evan Davis was sober. And I wanted to be sober. And we were playing... I think it was Fort Worth, Texas. I can't remember the club so long ago. It was literally before you were born. I remember going to Juarez.  Why can't I be as good as this donkey? So you were a drinker just to have sex? No, but I heard you say that. And this is interesting. That was one of the questions I wanted to ask you.  Oh, yeah. For a lot of people. Yeah, and I find I'm divorced, sober, and I have no game because I don't drink. Yeah, you got to develop a different game. You know, you have to find your own fearlessness. Have real eye contact. Could you have sex without alcohol? Oh, sure. Oh, yeah.   Yes. Yeah, on the alcoholism episode of Shaman. So a brownout for a man can be dangerous because you get a woman, the two of you are drunk, you're not thinking clearly. The next morning everybody's sober and that can, is that, can that be a problem? What do you mean? Like somebody wakes up and doesn't remember consenting? Is that the problem you're talking about? Yes. Or just the old cliche of like you woke up next to a dog with teeth. I should be so lucky. The consent issue, of course. I mean that's a very controversial hot topic right now is women who have been waking up feeling like mistakes were made. And now with the rape coming out more and more in the open they're wondering is this something I should say something about or not? How, how it, how it faults am I if I also got drunk? And it's, it is definitely a gray area both legally and morally. Can I just ask you, is this something, because I just, I was listening to that and I, I don't drink and I see and I have children and I see people at bars. I mean this is the ritual that goes back, you know, hundreds, not hundreds maybe since the, I don't know, 50s. Yeah. Men and women meeting at bars. Oh, right. Yeah. But long before. Oh, yes. Current culture but alcohol has been involved in sex long before that I'm sure. Yeah. But I don't think women, I mean, women didn't smoke in public till Edward Bernays paid them to go to the St. Patty's Day parade and smoke cigarettes and it was scandalous. It was against the law in the 30s for women to smoke in public. Women weren't going to bars in the 30s. No, you're right. Women weren't even dating. People were just sort of sold off. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, women were getting knocked up in high school and that was the end of it, you know, and certainly dating culture is pretty new relatively. The dating culture is new. Yeah, it's your, it's an excellent point. It's maybe 100 years old tops, not even. There's a book that I've been meaning to read written by a woman, by a woman, she's a Siamese twin. So the two of them wrote it. Written by a woman, I think 100 years ago, you would have a calling card. You'd come by the house. There'd be like a sofa, like a special sofa that you'd sit on and talk to one another. Oh my God. Without looking at each other. You were, they didn't look at each other? There's a special chair. I forgot what it was called. Oh, and they sort of face away? Yeah. And yeah. Wow. And there'd be no, no, this is like 100 years ago, no sex before marriage. Oh, sure.  Well, if we've been doing things for, let's say, 5,000 years one way, no, I guess that's not true. Yeah, absolutely not.  We didn't even have cities. Really? I mean. Yeah. No, that we created rules and now we're breaking them back down. We're in that process. Are there any rules from 100 years ago that you think either you understand why those rules existed or we should bring them back?      Next thing you know, it spits out whole liter of shits that it has to do its own hunting. It's miserable out there in the animal kingdom.  Which is why I'm a vegetarian. No, seriously.  I think that's actually very noble. That's the least obnoxious reason I've heard someone become a vegetarian.  Oh. So I mean, we evolved past that. Right. I mean, we don't, we don't evolve that voluntarily, I think. Yeah. But so the idea of women and men meeting in bars, drinking alcohol and hooking up, do you think maybe there's something wrong with that? Absolutely not. Because we created these rules to keep ourselves protected or whatever and like figure out who we are to each other. And so now that comes that builds neuroses. There's, it's not animal to follow rules.  What's the alcohol? Breaks that down a little bit. And it lets you, you know, it's a known inhibition killer. And then it frees you up to like go pursue this lion fucking. That's in our nature. Okay. So help me not be a Victorian prude. Help me not clutch my pearls. Because I'm an elder statesman. Okay. I'm an elder statesman. And the role of the elder statesman. What do you want to align? What? No, what I'm saying is I'm an elder statesman. I have kids. Don't bring them to the bar. Right. And I, yeah. Actually, they're probably old enough to drink.  I can't drink. Yeah, it's hard. So if I can't have fun, nobody else can. So what's your problem?   No, but so there's this little tendency in me. And I think it's a function of old age is to say, is to block out the idea that, okay, if I can't have fun, nobody else can. I recognize that that's 99% of where this is coming from. Where what is coming from? My looking at women and men in a bar. Yeah. And thinking I'm an older man. I'm an elder statesman. It's my responsibility to think this can't be good. Men and women going into a bar, drinking and going home with one another, even though this is what I did before I sobered up or tried to do. I'm wrong for thinking that way, right? I mean, I'm sure not all of those people are living their best life, right? Not always the best decisions are being made there. Your, your, yeah, your parenting, probably a lot of people who are making bad, but not all of them are making bad decisions. A couple of them are having one or two cocktails, enjoying their evening, making a responsible, tipsy decision.   Will you have a breathalyzer? Not a bad idea. Has anybody talked about this? I feel like that's got that. That's an idea so good that it's got to have been brought up.  Is that where you're, where you're taking this? Great idea. Because I wouldn't let you operate, if you were my daughter. Sure. Will you, will you help me pay off my college loan? Where does this going to get me? Wait, are you my stepdaughter or my real daughter? I don't know, do they both get money? Well, different arrangement. Sorry. I'll just take a condo and walk away.  And yet you don't, if you're drunk, you can do anything to your body later? Yeah, you're not wrong, but that is our right. That is like, you know, legally, is it, are you saying is it morally right? I mean, is it good? Is it good? Now you're getting to the real deep. What is it good? What's good? Is it, is it good for me not to be able to enjoy what you guys are enjoying? Is it, I go, Saturday night. Alex, will you pour this guy a drink for Christ's sake? Look how miserable he is. Everyb