So who do you think got the better, better deal? You or me? I have a theory that I ended up getting the better deal. I was trying to be generous. Are you recording? Yeah. Oh. David's referring to the fact that we just did my podcast and radio show first, and now we're doing your podcast. I feel like we nailed the podcast, home run, hysterical. And then we went to do the Howard Stern show. I think my podcasting is so intense that I lost my track a little bit during it, and I feel like it wasn't as strong as the podcast, but I'm sure it's better than…  No, but we did two hours straight, basically, or an hour and 45 minutes straight. And I think with the podcast, I think it's much more like free flowing, goes wherever.  I try to make it more linear, which isn't really my style to be linear. So the Stern podcast that you do, the radio for serious, is more like stand-up. You have to meet the audience halfway. I think so. I feel a responsibility to that institution, that it's the Stern brand, and I want to make sure that I'm being representative of that. But that's not the same as doing a podcast, where it's just, these are just my listeners and it's me. We also talked about Trump during the Stern show. Is that going to cause… Do his fans like Trump? Are they on the fence? I think a lot of them do. So that's why I wanted to talk about it. Even though you're touching a third rail. But no, when I say that, I don't want to go on Stern's channel and necessarily cater to what I think they want. I want to do entertainment that relates to them. And I think liking Trump when they don't relates to them. I think it's important that there's a voice that, because I think Stern show kind of avoids the topic of Trump pretty much. I don't think that they come down one way or the other on it, because it's just not what the show is about. And my show is not political, but I also feel like I'm trying to incite something with the listeners sometimes. So by the way, this is Greg Fitzsimmons, Fitzdogg Radio. You should listen to his podcast. I think everybody who's listening to my podcast already listens to your podcast. I think a lot of them found me through you. I was nervous doing your podcast today. Yeah, why were you nervous? Because every time I do your podcast, and of course it won't happen this time, I get an explosive reaction. It reminds me of doing Conan or doing a television show. All of a a sudden, a week or two later, my email is filled up. I don't get recognized on the street, but I go into a club and people walk up to me, hey, I heard you on Fitzdogg, I heard you. And for some reason, you and I, your show, but then you and I have some kind of chemistry. We have great chemistry. I don't know what it is. And I was nervous that we weren't going to have the chemistry this time around. And we did. We did. I thought we did. Yeah. But I was worried because it's a different setting. And yeah, so how have you been doing the podcast? Seven years. I think I've done about 700 episodes or something crazy. I do twice a week. Twice a week. And what is the analog to stand up? There's a clock to stand up. Tell me what your stand up clock is and what is your podcast clock in terms of growth? What do you mean? You started doing stand up and you had to learn patience. Right. You had to learn that there are seasons to a stand up career and it takes a certain amount of time to get to certain levels. Did you have an analog for podcasting? Do you have a certain timeframe where you say four years in it will be this way? Oh, I say. Well, I started by doing the series show first. So I sort of got, I got to be comfortable behind the microphone for a couple of years before I started the podcast. And then it just became this thing where we already had a guest like I'd have Ray Romano come in for the series show and it was an hour long. And all of a sudden Ray was like, that's it. So my producer said, why don't you just start a podcast when you just keep going? So it was never like a plan and I never really envisioned how it would lay out over time. And so the one thing I try to avoid is thinking too much about the money because it comes and goes with podcast. With podcasting.   And then it kind of goes away.  Am I doing a bad job? And I realize it's like the only thing it's like the purest form of entertainment now. It's like all you got to do is be honest and try to connect to your guests and then everything is just going to work out. You can't worry about, you know, like when you're writing on a TV show or even stand up to some degree, you feel like, you know, you're in their club, you're in St. Louis, you're taking all these podcasting is this like absolutely pure, no barrier experience with the listener.  The more brave I am, the more people talk about it and the more people listen. And so it's like, as much as it's a comedy podcast, it's like good comedy.  With podcasting, they can't take it away from you. It's up to you to decide to stop doing it. And the other thing with podcasting is you can do it forever. When I started doing it, I thought, what can I do that I'll always be able to do no matter what? And this is it. This is the one thing. There's no ageism with podcasting. No. And it's also you, nobody's paying you to do it either. Nobody's calling you up and saying, where's the podcast?  All the sudden it's like, oh, I'm creating my own deadlines and I'm turning in my own work and I'm doing my own quality control and promoting my own product.  How hard is it to do a podcast? It depends on the week and the person. You mean the actual podcast? Yeah, because everybody's doing one. Yeah. How hard, to me, it feels effortless. Somebody said to me, is it ever a job? I go, this is all I've got. Right. Why would it? It's not a job. But how hard is it? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by it? Once in a while, but I find the key is if I've got a couple in the bank ahead of me, then I love it. But when I'm recording and airing the next day and I don't have another one in the bank and I'm doing two a week, then I start to feel the pressure of like, fuck, what am I going to do for the second one this week? And then it starts to not be fun. So I try to always make sure that I have a couple of weeks where I get four people in a week and I put those aside and then I can kind of not book people that I don't necessarily want to just because it's the 11th hour and I got to get one done. Why are you looking at me? Oh, I'm the only one in the room. Oh, okay. How much prep do you do? Well, for you, I did more of topics, like when I just had you on, I had a bunch of topics that I wanted to talk about because I feel like I've already talked about your life.  And then if it goes well, then I don't need to research the next one. But if it's like an actress, sometimes I have a booker that gets me people and they'll be like, you know, this woman has got a interesting IFC show and I'll watch it and it's good and I'll bring her in. And then I'll be like, all right, I got to prep a lot because if she sucks, I've got to carry this thing.  I'll have I'll have watched enough of her work that I can refer to that. And then if it's somebody good, I do almost no preparation.  Probably like 15 or 20. Have they been rewarding? I'll ask you, let me drill down there. Have they been creatively rewarding? And then has the audience enjoyed it? The audience loves it because they audience in the room. The audience in the room loves it because they're so okay. They're so used to just being alone and experiencing it in their cubicle or with their headphones on doing whatever they do. And I'm always curious about what people are doing when they're listening to a podcast. I'm fascinated. I always ask me, what do you mean you listen? Somebody just answered. Yeah. And so now they're sitting communally. And I think they're good when you book a guest that's able to perform a little bit because it is a show. And instead of like, you and I are looking at each other, talking to each other. If there was an audience, we would be facing them and sort of glancing back at each other. And so if you got a writer or an actor that's not really acclimated to audiences, the way a comedian would be, then it can be kind of a bummer. Jackie, the joke man, Markling was on the show and we had just done a live episode. I said, do you want to do a live episode with me? He said, I don't think a live episode of a podcast has any merit to it. I said, but there's an audience. He said, radio and podcasting is intimacy. Yeah. The audience is not tuning in to hear other people laughing at you. They're tuning in to hear you and what you're thinking and what your guest is thinking. I thought about that. I think he's kind of, I don't know. I would think if the live shows that everybody does, because I used to do these live in front of an audience at the fake gallery in Los Angeles, the show became more popular when we just went into a studio and talked. Really? That the live shows were not as interesting to the listeners as what we're doing right now. Which is kind of counterintuitive, especially if you're a stand-up comic. Well, I think it goes back to what am I trying to accomplish on this podcast?  When I don't have guests.  Where you're just talking to the listener. You're just talking to the listener, not even to the listener. Who are you even talking to? I'm sitting alone in a room with a microphone with ideas that I've just stated to some degree, some not at all, some I'm literally just spewing off and it's like I don't even think about who's receiving it. I don't know who I'm talking to and there's a beauty to that. It's like the most kind of pure version of looking into somebody's mind. Your mind. Yeah. Then when you put it and then you put a guest there, now you've got me talking to another person so you're seeing it deflected. Now you put an audience there, it's another deflection. So when you see somebody like Bill Burr do his podcast, where it's just him, I think he does it twice a week by himself. It's amazing. That to me is like, who could imagine that anybody would want to listen to that? But then once you do, you can't stop. Like you can't look away because there's something about it that you give the person so much credit that they're just talking alone and you're kind of curious what the machinations of this thing are. But we all agree Bill Burr is one of the greats of all time. Right. Right. If you were his manager, you would say don't do that. Don't let too much sunshine into your creative process. Don't let them see everything. Yeah. You're showing way too much.  Yes. You have to create scarcity. That's where the value is. Right. That's sort of where entertainment changed with the digital age, where it became about, and I was talking about it before, about sending out tweets and that you really are supposed to send out 50 a day and that there is an expectation and a demand for content that is greater than the need for quality.  So the audience knows what it is. The audience wants unfiltered. It's like we don't understand how to write tweets the way young people do because to them, it's not a relationship. They don't take it seriously. And if you're seen of putting too much care into your content, it's almost like anathema. That's what I do. That's why I don't do well on Twitter. I test jokes on Twitter for this show and it smells sweaty.  Right. And Ken guys like us make the transition because we came from a world where stand-up comedy wasn't on TV a lot when I started and it started to become saturated very quickly. And so you did one act for a while before all of a sudden you were selling it out. And there was something that you cared about. You felt like you were investing a lot of time and care into creating a great act. And now, Netflix is switching to half-hour specials from one hour specials. Did you hear this? No. Everything's moving backwards.  And it's not intimate. It's not at all.  That's what I can't get through my head is like, if I'm going to write all these things into my phone that are going to go out to the world, who am I talking to? It's like existential. And yet on their end, you're talking to them. Right. And it is existential and it's dangerous. And I haven't been doing, like I'm doing stand-up tonight, which is real. There are days where I'm just tweeting Facebook and the podcast and answering emails. And it's all in the ether. This is like, I'm having human contact with you. But there are days where I'll do the show completely electronically with guests over the phone where there's no human contact. The shows are actually pretty good that way, because I think I relate to the listener who's once human contact. But I can go like a day or two without any actual human contact, which is not healthy. Do you ever have days like that? You're holding the phone. You're an addict, right? Sure. I'll be holding the phone. I was doing this last night. I kept looking at my phone. I was done reading on my phone. I was done answering everything that had to be, and I kept like that rat pressing the button for the sugar cube. I actually said, you're lighting up that part of your brain right now. You're looking for something. You're looking. There's nothing here. You're done. There's nothing here. There's no email. There's no fan. But you just keep hitting these apps, looking for something to light up the brain. And when I put it down, even watching television for me, which used to be sinful, is better than that effing phone. What's your relationship with the phone? I feel really bad about it because my kids, I'm watching their childhoods get sapped away by these little blasts, these little drips of stimulant. And I see that my son is supposed to be in his room reading of mice and men. And he should be carried away into another place and feeling transcendent about literature. And instead, I know that his phone is buzzing every minute. He's talking to Lenny. He's talking to Lenny. He's saying, tell me about the rabbits, George. And it's like, I just feel like so much of being robbed of them because they're never in the moment. They're never boredom is the great inspiration for... Okay. By the way, this is completely different than the two hours we did previous, right? Because you're the guest and I'm very relaxed now. There are certain things that I thought were absolute truths about show business, podcasting, 10 years ago. Things that to me were just written in stone about human nature. Are we being rewired? I mean, the idea that you talk about speaking into a microphone without an audience, where do you get the courage to run ideas past an audience? Where does Bill Burr? Where do I get the courage to talk into a microphone without any audience and think it's good enough to put it out there? Doesn't that terrify you? Shouldn't it terrify you? There's times where it does. There's times where I can't wait to do it because I feel like I'm overflowing with funny ideas or at least, I shouldn't even say, I never think about anything as funny anymore. I really don't. I think I've transitioned into just thinking, does this interest me? Does this excite me? Does this trouble me? And then I just go from there. But you will never go on stage and keep drilling down without a laugh. You'll go into panic mode and say something to make the audience laugh. Right. But I can go deeper than I used to. I think every year that I do this, I can go longer without a laugh. And is that good or bad? I think it's great. And I think that audiences, if you watch, there's certain performers that can go up there and talk for a long time without a laugh.  That is what I'm talking about. That's one of the rules that I know that's true, but it's one of those rules that are written in stone. You have to get a laugh every 10 seconds. How do I trim? How do I trim? How do I get a laugh here? I'm always looking for that laugh somewhere, that extra laugh. Right. But that's not necessarily what you're supposed to be doing. I don't... I mean, I just know from me what feels right to me is that I've done the faster pastes and I've gotten the rewards from it. And now I feel like maybe I'm not as good of a comic.  It was like, bam, bam, bam, like tight. And now I don't know that I could even write that kind of comedy anymore. And maybe it's because I'm not interested in it or maybe it's because I'm not capable of it. But I know now that it has to... I have to be connected to how I'm feeling about it. Louis Armstrong said, according to Ken Burns, there'd be no jazz if it weren't for Louis Armstrong. He said, when I got older, I played fewer notes, but I played them better. Yeah. He said, when I was younger, I played a lot of notes. Now I play just a couple, but they sound a lot better. Right. For him, it works. So you don't... Suppose you were living in New York because when you were doing the first couple of years, you were in New York doing how many sets a night? Yeah, six, seven sets a night. Isn't that going to inform the stand-up more than aging if you were in New York with your family in a studio apartment? And I got to do sets. I cannot stand living with... I got to get out. So you'd be out every night doing six sets. Wouldn't it be pow, pow, pow, pow? No, no. I think it would be just the opposite. I think that with going on more and more, your confidence... I go on the road a lot, so I'm doing hour-long sets, five, six shows a week on the road. And it's like, you know this, you've got your tool belt. You've always got a hand grenade. If you need it, you can launch it.  You know, they start trying to control you. They start moaning at something and you go, oh really? Hold on, I got an abortion, but I'm going to do it real quick. How's that? Are we back on my page again? All right, good. Like, you know how to manipulate them with different stuff. And for me, it's like now it's just about, you know, if I'm on stage and I feel like what I'm saying is true, then I feel like nothing can go wrong.   It's just the opposite.  And then I think the luxury of doing it longer and longer is that they don't talk if you're really meaning what you're saying.  I remember Larry Brown in San Francisco. Larry Bubbles Brown. Larry Bubbles Brown dragged me to see you. I was in town doing something and you were headlining the punchline. This must have been 15 years ago. He said, you should go see Greg Fitzsimmons. He's hysterical. I said, I've seen them. I've seen them. Let him in Icona. He's great. And Larry goes, no, you really need to see him live. Like, I don't want to go to a client. Let's come at San Frans. I got better things to do than go see Greg Fitzsimmons. Larry goes, you got to go see Fitzsimmons. He's as good as Slayton, which is high praise. So we go to see you. And the thing you're right, because I remember going, wow, you were totally in the moment. I've told you this. Yeah, very nice. The thing I do remember is you're saying this, you told this story that I remember and I don't remember what the punchline is. And I just think you were being in the moment about having to fly home. You had last Sunday, you said, it was Father's Day or Mother's Day. And you had to take your family rollerblading in Santa Monica.  On my day, on my Father's Day. Yeah, with your mother-in-law. Yes. And it just stuck with me. I remember laughing. I can't remember one single joke that you said. I just remember suffering with you about being exhausted and seeing your mother-in-law on rollerblades and just being so weak. I remember that. Yeah, it was like Venice Boulevard and the trucks are driving by and people are honking. My mother-in-law is on these rollerblades. They were missing one wheel and she had a bad back and I ended up holding her arm. I got my daughter's hand in mine. I'm dragging her and it's like, this is Father's Day.   I skated away from them. Left them on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. How old are the kids? Owen's 16. Oh. Jojo's 13. Owen is a very normal good kid. You know, captain of the soccer team gets good grades. Clock is ticking. Cock is ticking. Yeah. And is he your best friend? No. God, no.  That's when it's over. I don't mean a gay thing. It's when they decide that, when my son discovered that his friend Chocta was cooler than I was. Right. That just broke my heart. When he wanted to be around Chocta more than he wanted to be around. And I was so pathetic, I would say things like, was Chocta on MTV? I would literally bring him in and I'd show like old, look at this. Yeah. Don't you want to hang out with me? And I sometimes was able to get him to come with me. I would, this is horrible, like Dom Marrera. I'm opening for Dom Marrera. Bobby Slayton. And how old was he at this point? 13, 14. And I could see the, and my wife would go, let him go. No, I'm not going to get, I'm going to squeeze every minute I possibly could. Do you take the kids to see? The first time I had him come see me do stand-up, it was Denver. And it was a year ago, this past April, he came, the family came to, you know, we're going to go skiing after I did Denver.  He's never seen you do stand-up. No, so he was 15 at the time. My kids saw. He had seen like a couple of clips on the internet. He might have even seen my one hour special on Netflix, but he'd never seen me live do a show. So that's a conscious decision that you made. I was like, it's time. And I do think it was influenced by I want him to see that I'm cool, you know? So I brought him to the Denver Comedy Works, which is one of the greatest rooms ever sold out Saturday night early show.  So he's watching a couple of funny guys go on first.  I was like, oh no, there was no question. There was no question. It's, you know those crowds, you can't lose and then you just strangle them.  And I got off and we're walking down the street to go get some pizza. And the waitress told me that he was wiping tears from his face all the time. From laughter, I hope. From laughter. And he said, usually there's some other liquid he's wiping from his face when he's around you. I don't know if you get that. Do you get that? Do you get that? Do you get that? Okay, go ahead.  He goes, Borat, you know, he's like that was he goes, he was just shaking his head and there was a part of me that was like proud and excited and there's a part of me that felt cheap and like there was like a loss of innocence because he was talking to me the way I've heard people talk to me after shows, which is, oh my God, that was so amazing and you've heard, I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way. You asked him to buy merch, right? I signed a DVD and yeah, I got him, it was so embarrassing because I really felt like you shrug off when people say nice things to you because it doesn't mean anything anymore and I don't want this to sound the wrong way.  He knows that, but you felt obligated to kind of convey that, right? But this is just a side. Yeah, it was like, it was like I wanted him to see that what I do on stage isn't literally, you know, my life, that it's jokes that he's in, he's in a lot of the jokes. He's a huge part of my act and because I think there's something very edipal about watching your son grow up and you start to feel threatened. You feel threatened, definitely, like physically he's bigger than me now and I wonder like if we got into a fight who would win and who your wife would be rooting for, that's right. She'd be rooting for him. That's right. I never thought about that part. Yeah. And so it's, you know, my act, you don't realize until you watch yourself do a whole hour and you go like, wow, I talk a lot about 17 year old girls' pussies.  I didn't say like, oh, this will be my new angle.  And I stop and I go like, am I doing that because I think the audience wants to see that or like, am I fixated on something? Well, you're doing it because that's the taboo.  Right. Yeah, that's probably true. You'd be on your best behavior. Yes. But my friend Fred Reese used to say, there's no politer cop than one on the take. Show me a cop who's taking bribes. And I'll show you this. And I used to say that to my kids when the cops used to come to the house because my wife, there'd be something going on. And my kids would go, that cop is so nice. I go, of course he was nice because he just tortured a Mexican or a Black person. And now they want to feel good about themselves. So they're going to be, you know, public servants to the white guy. Right. Which is true. I never trusted priests. I always felt like I'd sit in church and we grow up very Catholic.   I just never bought it.   But before, so what happens afterwards? Now it's different, right? He knows, has he seen you bomb? He saw me again on New Year's Eve in San Francisco at Cobbs, which is also one of the greatest clubs in the country. And afterwards he goes, so you'll do like a lot of the same jokes. And I was like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess I haven't written a lot this year.  And I think that's every comic's worst fear is that you're going to be seen as somebody who's not writing a lot. Was this a discussion with your wife about when he could see you? She was all for it. Yeah. She was fine with it. Did you have an age in mind? Did you know that this age was coming? How did you arrive at 16? Well, it was 15. I think it was because... Oh, he was 16 now, but it was 15. He was 15 then. I think it was because like a lot of his friends, fathers listen to my podcast and watch my stand up. And so he had heard them talking about it and he was kind of curious. And do you feel that's an invasion of your privacy? No, I think I made a choice when I had kids as a comedian that, you know, I'm going to talk about them and they have a right to see it and not to dictate what it's going to be. But my father was a radio guy and he talked about me as a kid. And I think so I kind of came into the family business knowing that it's a family business, you know, the material. But what I'm saying is your friend, your son's friend's father listening to your podcast. Oh. Isn't that an invasion of your privacy? Yes. It is. Yes, definitely. You would prefer that they didn't listen? Yes. I don't want anybody listening to my podcast that knows me. My wife's never heard my podcast. I mean, according to her, she's never once listened to my podcast in seven years. But so what about like, you've got the kids for the weekend, you got to do a set, you don't bring them. They're five years old. You don't bring them to the comedy magic club. No, no. You don't bring them to the comedy magic club. They walk around Hermosa Beach. They got a great salmon dinner and dessert and all. When they're five? Yeah. No, I always felt like, you know, I never wanted to be doing an act that was made for my kids to see. So I've always... So what?  Oh, okay. Yeah.  He's 16. He can handle it. Well, see, I would have no... I'm trying to think because my kids came from the time they were like, they could walk. They were coming to club. Really? Absolutely. I, we, it was a whole different. We were, I didn't have any say in the parenting. It was, I took orders and rightfully so. And my wife, big Irish Catholic family, and life is messy. Life is sloppy. You can't shield the kids. All you can do is hug them, kiss them and tell them you love them and protect them. But you don't have to protect them from what you do for a living. And if you have to protect them from what you do for a living, then you shouldn't be doing that for a living. Right. So I used to bring them. I remember I brought, I was headlining. Sully McCullough was opening for me. My son was three at the punchline. And we were all sitting in the green room. And I said, I have to go up on stage. I'm going to cry. It was so cute. Who'd, I don't always get somebody to monitor him. But I'd pick a comic. I'm going to be up on stage for an hour.  So I said, there were a bunch of comics in the dressing room.  And he looks at Sully and he goes, the black guy. And it was so sweet. And my son is black basically. All his friends are black. He's the black guy. So we all looked at each other and Sully sat with him for an hour. It's hilarious. Yeah. I don't know. I, my happiest memories were taking my kids. And I always wanted them to see me. This bomb. I would take, remember boarders used to, Jackie Walner, she used, oh, you, well, you were living in LA. Boarders in LA? Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that. It was a great gig. It was in a bookstore. And I always took my kids. So my, those are some of my happiest memories. Really? Taking the kids to boarders bookstore. Yeah. Doing stand-up and bombing. Yeah. Or not bombing, but not killing. Yeah. Or taking them to, what's that horrible, is it Sandman Whale Casino? You're way beyond this. But there was this horrible gig in the desert where you would literally just be driving to the desert to bomb, pick up cash and turn around and come up. I would take my kids to that because it was just so horrible. Really? Yeah. I wanted them to see me fail really badly, as Dennis Miller would say. That's not that hard to do. Why did you want them to see that? Because I wanted them to see me bomb and not care. Yeah. And I was more insecure after I'd killed in front of them. Because of that I'd go, well, what about that joke? Did that work? And then they, they're good kids. My son has since started, you're gonna love this. Doing stand-up? No. Podcasting. Him and his friends started a Santa Monica High School podcast. There's five of them and they get together every Saturday. And I got them all the equipment, the microphones and the recorders. That's amazing. And they get together and they talk about concerts that they all went to, or they'll talk about. One week they talked about atheism versus agnosticism and what they each believed. And one kid is from a Ethiopian family, Muslim. One is from a Jewish kid. And they have these like, it's a very eclectic group of kids. Do you listen to it? I sit in on it. I produce it. Really? Yeah, every Saturday. You should get that. I have to start listening. You know what you should do? And this is great advice. They should grade the girls. They should talk about all the girls in the high school. By body part. By body part. Because I think it would help their body image, the women's body. If they could hear who they think is the prettiest. If the girls don't know, then how will they know? Right.  It's kind of how Facebook got started. Yes. And it's good for body image. I think it's important for just, you know, you can tell kids that there's a presidential fitness exercise test, or you can just tell them they're fat. Same results. And trash teachers. Yeah. Because they love it.  That's right. We'd be Dylan Klebold. And if we had access to this stuff, right? Yeah. It wouldn't be good. I know. We'd be thrown out of school. Right, right. There's no way. No, they're very responsible about it. They're like really, they speak very honestly, and they're very raw, and they're very personal. But at the same time. Do they curse? Not really. No, but they talk about race in a very real way. And you know, they're good, interesting kids. They're like the kids I couldn't handpick more interesting friends for my son to have. Right. And you know, a couple jocks, but not real jocky, not nerdy, just normal fucking. That's why I think the podcast is going to be huge. They haven't put it out yet. They just keep recording them.   I understand that. Yeah. Adam and Eve disposable dishes. Family business. Yeah. Are they going into the family business? Third generation. Hmm. Happiest memories watching your dad going in with him sitting in? Yeah. Yeah. I remember going in and he had this partner, Al Rosenberg, you know, Al Rosenberg. He was a, he was a stern. He was almost stern for a lot of years. He was on with Don Imus for a lot of years. And I would go in and I would watch my, I'd watch my dad and him and they had a, Al was the set. He was a Jewish guy and he would set him up and and they, they would, they just had this amazing chemistry. And I remember just sitting there and thinking like, wow, this is what my dad was born to do. He, he found what he's supposed to do. And it made me feel like that in life is like, you shouldn't stop short of finding exactly what will make you as happy as I'm watching him be right now. Right. And this relationship that he had with Al was so like joyous. It was so like the respect they had for each other and the, the amount they laughed at each other. Did your, and your dad knew Howard? Yeah. He, they didn't like each other. Really?   I think he got it. He understood Howard's MO and, you know, he was, he was kind of fine. My mom hated Howard, probably still does. And, but then when I came on Howard's show, he said to me the first time I came on, he's like, so, so do you hate me? And I was like, no, I go when my, because my dad had died and Howard had eulogized him on the air and he said some really beautiful things about him and how he felt bad that he said all these things about my dad, but that ultimately he taught him a lot about broadcasting. And he's like, you know, he was the most well-liked guy in radio and all these amazing things. And so I was like, all right, well, then we're good. And so I came on and, you know, Howard always treated me. I feel like better than any guests ever. He just always. So what is your dad? Like, what do you, this is an unfair question, but what do you, is there one thing, one piece of advice that you got that gets you through the podcasting? Like there's, somebody gave me, a guy named Henry Morgan gave me this great advice when I was starting out and stand up. He said, if you're bombing, slow down if you're doing well, speed up. And it became this thing that, oh my God, that's the greatest piece of advice I've ever gotten in my life because it applies to everything, not just stand-up comedy. If you're doing badly, slow the F down. The audience doesn't want more of you, they want less of you. Talk slower. And I find in life, when things aren't going well, slow down. People don't want you. Lay low. Don't push. When things start picking up, then you pick up. Interesting. Kind of read the audience. Is there any advice that your dad gave you that you could share? Well, I think what I learned from him is that it's really about listening. It's all about listening. And then I went to acting school and I studied the Meisner technique for two years straight, and which is all just putting all your attention on the other person. And I found that what my father did well was he made people feel funny. He was not a fake laughter. He was a genuine laughter. And he locked in when somebody was talking. You felt like the most important person in the world because he hung on what you were saying. And I find that- Which is dangerous to do because it's live. Right. You're trusting. Right. You have to trust that what this person is giving you is going to make you react in a way that's entertaining. And you have to trust your audience. Right. So I found with podcasting that if I'm in trouble, just listen. Just get out of your head, put your focus on the other person, listen to what they're saying, experience it, and react naturally. And don't force it. You know, don't start coming up with clever ideas or try to ramp up the energy to save it. Just put your attention on the other person. And does that work with stand-up? I would assume it does. I'm sorry? Does it- Yeah, it totally works with stand-up. If I listen to the audience, then I find my rhythm. If I, when I'm not doing well, I realize that I'm thinking about my jokes. And I'm not listening to when the laughter is ending. I'm not looking in their eyes.    Right, right. Interesting. Are you signaling me? We gotta go. That's it?  I'm here all summer. Why don't we talk about what you're doing? Because- Okay. What are you doing? Why are you in New York? Normally you're in New York. Well, the main thing is I'm doing the bell house in Brooklyn on June 3rd, which I'm really excited about that show. How are ticket sales? Ticket sales are a little light. They're a little light. We're looking to beef those up. If you go to fitsdog.com, you can get your tickets to the bell house on June 3rd. June 3rd. There are several dozens of tickets left. You can pick those up. Folks, we just did two hours for Fits Dog, the podcast, and then for Howard, and Greg was complaining that ticket sales are a little light. A little light. A little light. Agent lets me know. Well, I didn't promote it. I haven't promoted it, really. So that's why I'm excited that you're having me on.  So give them marching orders right now. Go to fitsdog.com, go to the website, click on the link, buy the tickets, and then after the show, come up.  I will hug every person that tells me that. But really I'm here because I'm working on crashing the Judd Apatow show with you starring Pete Holmes. So I'm in Brooklyn for three months writing and shooting that. And we've got about eight scripts locked right now. Just gonna punch them up, make them funnier, and then go into season two. That's fantastic. Yeah. That's great. I'm glad you're here. So we're gonna just tear up the town. I love it. Let's spend some time together. We're gonna hang out and you're gonna be my best friend. And in a week, I can't hang out with that. No. This guy is depressed. No, I need a friend. I need a friend in town. Do you have male friends? Yeah. Who's your closest friend? Probably Mike Gibbons, who's the guy I went to call. Oh, you know Gibbons, of course. I love Gibbons. And he's got some big show now. He had a sitcom on the air this past year, The Great Indoors, on CBS, just got canceled. Oh, F. Lasted a full year, got a full order. They canceled that? Yeah. He's one of the few guys, when you tell me that, I actually feel bad. Yeah, he'll get another show on the air pretty soon. Good. Yeah, he's got, his dance card will be full very soon. He's always worked, he's a great guy. And you know what, have you ever worked for him? I don't think so, no. He's pretty, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Everybody raves about working with him. Well, yeah, he doesn't, yeah, he's a good guy. Yeah. I just wish he'd stop smacking women around at the office. It's just like, this has to stop. Well, you got to keep the laughter going on. That's the key. I mean, he just hits everybody. He's worse than Bob Beckel. Thank you, Greg. All right, thank you, David. I love you, having you on the show. Thank you. Thank you.


Welcome to Law and Government for Teens. This is a course of study to empower self-governing citizens of tomorrow to own and operate the United States. Unlike citizens of other nations, the U.S. citizen does not answer to a sovereign government. The United States was created by authority of citizens, and it only exists to serve its citizen owners. This is the understanding of law and government that has not been taught to previous generations. In the lecture portion of this course, I provide information and perspective that open the subject before you. The larger portion of this course will be your efforts in understanding what we have and learning to deal effectively with your citizen presentials. This course is designed to empower students as they become the citizens of tomorrow. My name is Jess Brogan. I'm a performance engineer who happens to have a law degree. What you will see is how, at the founding of our nation, the reins of government were allowed to slip out of our hands. Dusty from lack of use, they still lie idle on the ground before our feet. This is training for picking them up, choosing your direction, and applying the whip as needed to get things moving. You can be at peace with this. It is not revolution. There is no need to revolt against what you own. This is how citizens can establish that management over their nation, which promotes the American dream of self-government. The purpose of this course is to prepare you for effective citizenship, and the lessons provided are designed to give you information and perspective to understand the legal foundations that will apply to you, to your classmates, families, neighbors, and society. Like most human subjects, law involves a large number of sources and serves a multitude of purposes. Our first task is to separate this survey course from the education that some of you are likely to receive later in law school, and that separation is by purpose. The purpose of this course is to provide a citizen foundation for understanding the common law of the United States. The law school purpose is to prepare legal advocates. The purpose of law school is not development of citizens but development of legal practitioners. These are people who can work in our current legal environment and resolve the challenges people face in dealing with the law. Law schools are a success when their graduates become practicing attorneys. It is when their graduates are paid for their expertise and knowledge of current law and procedure. It is an economic purpose that supports the continuation of the school as an institution that delivers professional value to their students. The different purpose of this course is focused on the needs of teenagers, the needs to grow and mature into effective and knowledgeable citizens. It is support for taking an effective part in running our nation. This is intentionally presented to support a student's advancement from being a subject of education provided by others into becoming an effective and independent adult citizen. This course is a success when you are empowered to own and operate the United States. These lessons may also be useful as a review for adults or as an introduction for any adults who find themselves with insufficient foundation to be effective owners of this nation. The focus on these lectures is very different than might be found in graduate law schools. It is knowledge of law itself and the interaction between law and civilization with specific focus on understanding and appreciating the laws that define our nation and its legal systems. The questions we ask may be simple, but the answers are not. It starts with the question of why parents have rules that children are expected to honor. Six year old Terry, in accord with slapstick comedy from an old movie, puts mashed potatoes on a spoon and snaps it forward, throwing the food on his sister Betty's blouse.  Terry is not allowed to eat with a family that day and stays hungry until long after the others have left the table. His food when he gets there is cold. The family is a mini society and parents regulate it for the benefit of all family members. Terry is not allowed to enjoy the society of others at the table when his action prevents those others from enjoying their meal. Terry did not even consider ruining the meal for others, but tried to amuse them. Good intentions often have to be constrained by law. And for perspective, we address the coming of a baby into a family. Parents decide what the baby is to eat, where the baby is to sleep, and where the baby is to go. People who are not competent to make their own decisions have to be dependent upon those who care for them. In the United States, we have not previously been trained to be confident in making our government decisions, and that task has thus been assumed by those who are no better than we are. A new set of challenges arises as the infant grows into a child with odd awareness of his or her surroundings, some knowledge of personal wants and needs. The child soon recognizes potentials for satisfaction. Young children start early to demand attention when it is withheld. They are likely to push away things they do not want and go after what they do. Even young children seem increasingly to be mobile and respond to language. Parents are still in charge of their welfare. Parents are still responsible for the life and behavior of the infant and young child. This continues even where the child engages in early efforts to harness the family environment to meet some of his or her wants and needs. Self-determination still has to wait. But young children do grow and mature. The young child situation only changes when he or she becomes proficient in taking care of personal needs. It is then usually around the age of five that the child can be set into an educational environment. Then educators decide what the new students are and are not to do. The students are given rules in order to see that their behavior in dealing with others and educators is effective. The teachers become the rulers of the classroom and are generally granted in local parental authority a legal term for in place of a parent. As students grow and mature they continue to learn how to best see to their own purposes. Commonly in the 12 to 13 year range student relationships with each other and the educators begins to change. Students are expected to start making some of their own decisions on what they do in relation to others. It is in the teenage years that the slavish dependence upon adults is softened. Sometimes referred to as the age of rebellion teenagers begin to demand the right to make more and more of their own decisions. And now we need to expand our vision bringing what we see in the family to focus on the extended family, the tribe. The tribe is a group of families that live in close proximity. They are able to do things together getting the effect of cooperative and coordinated efforts for the benefit of all members of the tribe. There may be a tribal leader, a chief spokesman for the tribe, but the authority is almost always in a council of family leaders. The families are generally not subject to the authority of the leader but accept coordination for the obvious benefits of being in the tribe. If a family no longer feels welcome they can pick up and leave the tribe accepting the cost of change in order to gain benefits on the outside. The tribal council keeps the peace and can generally make and enforce such rules as seem appropriate to the families in the tribe. There are tribal laws. In wider society beyond the tribe people face other challenges. In larger corporate groups we see the need for concentration of authority in a leader. With wider needs coercion becomes reasonable. Perhaps the earliest such authority is granted to military leaders and ships captains. The survival of soldiers requires that they trust one another to work as a unit. Ships at sea survive because the crew and officers work together to make things happen. In both these cases the environment demands coordination of effort and leaders are granted authority to achieve coordination even over the objection of individuals who might deny that authority. Enforcement is supported not because the authority is right or proper but as a necessity for survival. When we come to territory-driven rules we have a different concept, a concept of public authority. It is that tricky subject of sovereignty that rests in some leader or family. It is authority to take actions for the benefit of having an ordered society. Territorial governance provides a basis for formal law for established rules of conduct and requirements that arise from a sovereign authority. For the student of law the focus must be on the right or privilege of some people to rule over other people. The general assumption is benevolence where the ruler will take care for those he rules as if they were extended family. The simple reality is also family but that the ruler has a family that is always to be served first. The needs and wants of the ruler's family are to be served before those who are ruled. That is human and it's a human flaw in the concept of benevolent rule. All people have their own priorities and putting one decision maker and rule over another comes with this as a natural challenge. We also have early experience with small democracies where people came together in agreement on it as a basis for local government. These had some successes but were temporary ceasing to exist after a time. The probable cause of their untimely failure was difficulty in getting people to agree on the necessary and convenient actions. Outside of the military command and ships officers there was little expertise in assuring useful agreement among a populace. Even if the intent was self-government there was little knowledge available to the democratic populace. Democracies tended to be short-lived. All early legal governance was structured around territory or land. By far the most successful and stable form of government was feudal with a feud being a grant of authority over a territory. Feudal systems of government lasted over a thousand years much longer than even our national republic. The simplest form of feudal governance was example by the city-state. This was a single city or small kingdom ruled over by a feudal owner family that provided governance for the territory under rule. The family leader was the royal ruler with children raised to be rulers in their turn. In more advanced form internal feudal territories are given to subordinate rulers who are then allowed allegiance to the granting authority of the sovereign ruler. Each feudal subordinate was to operate their feudal territory as part of a larger kingdom and to get their family living from that effort. Management authority was granted to these subordinates and they took responsibility for maintaining the king's rule in their territories and otherwise supporting the central rule. The king became the source of law with application through landed subordinates. The entire system of governance worked on the basis of land owner privileges. Where the privilege of being a landed subordinate was supported by enforcing royal rule the subordinate leaders families also tended to inherit their local rule and accordingly brought up their children to be subordinate rulers. When it worked properly the peasants were highly valued by their landed lord because the efforts of peasants were the Lord's source of family income. Having the privilege of land ownership only earned wealth if the people on the land were productive. Only the peasants actually produced value keeping the peasants content and at peace secured the benefit of wealth and feudal aristocracy and so we have the formation of a common law to keep the peace among the common people and to support their safety and dealing cooperatively among themselves. The common law was a people's law. It was supported by those who ruled because it assured their family wealth and prosperity. The feudal lord who tried to abuse the peasants would soon have no peasants. They would abandon his lands to serve other feudal lords leaving the abusive leader with a shrinking income to meet royal demands. A good peasant was highly valued by the landed leader. A good landed leader was highly valued by the royal ruler and the system was accordingly quite stable. The king applied the royal law to keep the subordinate landed lords loyal and supported the common law to keep the common people effective. If a landed subordinate got out of line losing the support of the peasants so that the land suffered neglect or misuse the king could replace the subordinate. The deeper challenge was the competence of the king. There was no way to recover from a bad king. One whose central rule interfered with the feudal grants of authority or put stresses on the peasants to interfere with the operation of the feuds. The uprising of feudal peasants to depose a bad king or ruler is largely a myth. Something that might happen to a city state but not in a well-established feudal system the peasants were cared for. They were the source of wealth for the privileged leaders. In England we have an example of an effective deposing of a feudal king but it was not by the people. It was by the landed barons whose privilege was being challenged by a bad king. If you wish further information you may research the signing of the Magna Carter in the year of 1215. This is long before even the European discovery of the Americas. In our US history many have addressed the revolution that caused the founding of our nation in terms of rejection of feudal rule. This is largely myth. There were no feuds in the American colonies. Feudalism only worked where the feudal baron had to live on the feud with the welfare of the feudal family and royal privilege tied to assuring the productive efforts of the people on the land. There were no landed barons in the American colonies. There were no feudal chiefs who would assure their own wealth and privilege through the productivity of those who work their granted feudal lands. There was rather an attempt to harvest wealth from the colonies as a business venture. The challenge was taxation without the protection of having a voice in British government. The laws of England were largely continued in the American colonies even after the revolution forced separation. This law except for royalty and feudal privilege became the law of the newly forming United States. Much of our law came from common law in England. One primary distinction from other legal systems is that the US common law formally recognizes the inherent value of the common person. In feudal times this was value in the peasant, the tradesman, whose product of activity was the source of wealth or privileged feudal lords. In more modern times it is value in citizens without any need to support any ruling aristocracy. The common law was not the king's law, it was not created by edicts and decrees signed by the king. The common law was built on supporting the peasants as a royal family source of national wealth and privilege. Where ownership of land was the ultimate privilege, harvesting that privilege required a populace to work the land. The common law saw to this purpose. The ultimate source of the common law is a national institution is the king supporting this law because it preserved the people who were the real source for the feudal king's wealth and privilege. A government of productive people has a tax base, a source of income for the privileged landowners.  This common law foundation was formalized in the United States through a written agreement we call the Constitution. This is why our government needs to be focused on taking care of people. Bringing the English version of common law into the basis for the newly forming United States faced one significant challenge. The greatest challenge was sovereignty in the people and especially its impact on the laws of contract and agency. Both of these impacted on the address of the legality of the authorities and processes used to establish this new government. English citizens could legally establish governing bodies through a compact that was already well settled. They could authorize government but only subordinate to the authority of an established sovereign entity. The same was the source for colonial legislatures. While they were recognized as bodies of governance, they were also considered legally subordinate to the governors who had authority from the crowd. The courts of law generally enforced the common law of England prior to the revolution. The London government was months away and the impact of British rule was non-immediate. There was the challenge of practicality and relying upon overseas enforcement of day-to-day applications. The colonial governments other than the governments themselves were people by those popularly chosen. This is our source for a concept of rule by consent of the governed. Such things were largely trashed by the revolution and had to be restored locally by the people in the colonies following the revolution. The lack of sovereignty and government left many matters to chance including the overall authority of government to act on behalf of the people. With constitutional agreement we have effective establishment of sovereignty in the common citizen. This was so new a concept that it had no specific applications. We had the principles of sovereignty but not as might support personal interactions. The only existing influence of sovereignty was upon the common law and it was that sovereign authority could modify English common law almost at will. As long as citizens were dealing with citizens as equals the common law could continue as it had. The challenge came with citizen relationship with government. When the people dealt with governance it reversed their roles. The common law was suddenly elevated to be the source of national authority. It implemented the concept of consent of the governed in a whole new way and elevated it to a previously unheard of status. The compact initiated by our constitutional agreement was to create the supreme law of the land but it still had to do it under authority of an agreement in consent of the governed or it had no legitimate basis. Our first subject for study is the foundation for our US legal system. It is contained in a truly awesome document commonly known as the Constitution. The name does not say at all that this document does set up and empower a government by and under the law but it is not some governing document that sets the authorities and limitations of those who would govern. Empowerment and limitation of leaders is not even within the larger purpose of this remarkable legal instrument. You will find that the Constitution documents an agreement among we the people to how we the people intend to govern ourselves. The American states participated only as citizen representatives. The empowerment and limitations placed on leaders is a secondary matter to the larger purpose of self-government. This is most remarkably noted by discontinuities. Prior to the signing of this document there were no states in the Americas. Only colonial government stripped of their authority through rejecting the authority under which they had become colonies. There were no people of the United States, only former British citizens who had been set adrift by revolution. The idea that this was just people arranging for a new sovereign authority to rule over them would be wholly inaccurate. This was something utterly new. There was no traditional authority in the common people to establish new governments nor for a citizen to empower someone else to be an authority over their neighbors. The story of our foundation just starts with the success of the colonial army expelling the authority of Britain by armed conflict, disrupting our only legitimate source of sovereignty. Colonial development started by assuming sovereignty. It is in the existing elements of government the colonial bodies. These colonial governments had confederated, forming a sort of central government that was subordinate to the sovereign authorities that had been assumed by the states. Rather than being a national foundation, it functioned as a pact between the states, a treaty addressing how they agreed to live in harmony. But of course colonial government bodies had no recognized right to rule except within the strictures of British government. The people did not consider colonial governments as centers of sovereignty and ended up challenging the right of these bodies to tax them. It was in this environment that the Constitutional Convention was put in place by the various colonies to derive a government that would be able to function. It had to have such legitimacy that it could be accepted by the people as the government with authority. And so this convention met with the purpose of establishing a government to such an effect that it could command the support of both the people in the former colonies and those who were part of the colonial governments then providing public services. It is in this environment that we have the bold statement that begins our founding document as we the people of the United States. This is an incredible claim that there are people forming their own government and that this new government is tied to purposes as set forth in the written preamble to the larger Constitution. The common address of this document is that it empowers and limits a sovereign government, ignoring the preamble as some sort of wish list that the framers appended to it as a way to get people to accept its sovereignty. I tell you now that the stated purpose for an agreement among people is not a wish list. As we'll be more thoroughly examined in the subject of contract law, it is the heart of the agreement. The rest of the document, the articles are only there to implement the purpose of the people who enter into the larger agreement. In the case of our government, the preamble provides the public purpose for this new government and the purpose and the purpose that continues to legitimize its existence. Any failure to stick to this purpose goes to the heart of the agreement and would delegitimize the government. We commonly find this document titled the Constitution or the Constitution of the United States. While this agreement can serve the function of defining government in accord with the details of the articles, that is not its basis for agreement. It is an agreement by and among the people and the states as representatives of the people concerning the establishment and ordination of a legal government. The people are the source of government authority, not the enumerated powers and limits written into the agreement. The national sovereignty is subordinate to the sovereignty of the people. Our national government can only legitimately do what people can legitimately do. Wherever the people lack authority to do something, our representative government is also without authority to act. Wherever the people have recognized authority as individuals, there is no power in government to disrupt that personal authority. The clearest of all situations is the authority to form the Union, which is the United States. This is under the authority of individuals who are we the people in whose name the government is authorized to exist. Self-governance is the sacred center of citizenship within the United States. The government created under the terms of this agreement is not in power to redefine itself, nor is it authorized to establish and pursue some new purposes.


We shall overcome We shall overcome A good voice, but this is We shall overcome challenge Hashtag we shall overcome If you are watching this video and you love water maya Please take your phone I mean those of you with good voice and sing this song for me We shall overcome Just sing this song Hashtag we shall overcome Post it on twitter Make sure you tag me I'm gonna retweet Make sure you tag me on instagram And I'm gonna repost This is we shall overcome Challenge Because sometimes I just don't get it God why What crime did Africans commit To give us leaders like this Part of the challenge that the authorities faced Is that they did not want to have Many people living together in one flat So you're right about that And so they were put in a situation Where there are instructions Where which were interpreted as eviction Which were really about social distancing Because they wanted people to live Individually and or The right number of people in each flat So you don't have too much crowding Because you cannot deal with social distancing And you can deal with the spread of COVID-19 When there's too many people living in one space I guess now we all can agree with Benjamin Borumbo That each time I want to fight for African rights I only use one hand Because the other hand is busy trying to keep away Africans who are fighting me This is the saddest reality Of being an African You wanted to observe social distancing By evicting people from their houses Forcing people to do self-quarantine I mean, evicting people from hotels And send them outside And you are giving us an excuse that You wanted to observe social distancing And the foreign minister of Kenya Believed and confidently Started giving such a disgraceful speech Because you don't want to see a lot of people in one room My brother, foreigners in China Even live large than some Chinese people They rent an apartment And every room contains one person Because someone might want to enjoy with their girlfriends So telling me that you evicted people from their rooms Just to observe social distancing That's a big lie I don't want to say anything Just leave a comment Let me know what you think If you are new to the channel Make sure you subscribe Like the video Even some Chinese people came together After seeing what happened in China They came together And made a video And say that Africa is strong God bless you Africa is strong Africa is strong Feizhou, jiayou Africa is strong Feizhou, jiayou Africa is strong And our Nigerian foreign minister Is also busy saying that I need government and our officials That are working closely together Of course it didn't help either That one of the Nigerians Who was asked to be confined And taken to hospital Should be positive But refused to be tested When they got into the hospital Having been positive And they wanted to leave after a week And they tried to restrain him And he bit the nuts Maybe nuts And assorted the nuts Of course this did not help the situation So we are on top of the situation I have to express my profound gratitude To the ambassador of China here in Nigeria He acted immediately and reached The most important element The Chinese government hierarchy The reaction of the government Very very quick And so they are now working together As a team It's unfortunate that The government in Wendong Did not reach out early enough To our authorities Constantly in Wendong And Shanghai and Beijing But now that communication Is established And they are now working together As a team Communicating And letting everybody know That each measures are to assure the safety Of the Nigerians As well as everybody in China And in particular in Wendong province Where this outbreak originated from He had a foreign minister from Nigeria He also believed the lie without a proof Even a diplomat from Sierra Leone Was trying to convince Some of the African students living in Guangzhou To lie about their situation Now something just from the ambassador talk We need for That fuse a little bit the issues then Out of China Yeah, yeah, that's my problem Yes, that is I want to make the The situation don't change You understand? Yeah The situation don't change Maybe we are going to leave them The rest are short That when they are working They will allow the embassy We don't get to know We don't get to it We don't get the understanding And we will work together So I want to tell young Africans out there That we are in this together And we shall overcome this Sunday. Wake up, fight for what belongs to you. And I believe that the future of Africa is bright.  I'm not here to spread hate between Africa and China. But I wish the relationship between Africa and China can be transparent. There should be a mutual respect no matter what. It's a boy Mr. Gayane, baby. Leave a comment, let me know what you think. Don't forget to share this video. If you are new to this channel, please do me a favor. Like I said, we can reach 400,000 subscribers. So please subscribe. It's Easter season. Give me my number. But subscribing to the YouTube channel. And I'm going to see you in the next one. So what do you think about what African and China relationship? African and China relationship. Do you guys still want me to talk about it? I've lived in China, I've lived in Africa. So if you told me to tell you guys about what? The African-China relationship, I'm going to talk from morning to evening. I'm not going to finish. But I just concluded that the relationship between Africa and China economically is very good. But cordially, let me tell you the truth. They don't respect us. That is a thing, man. They don't respect us. When you come to China, this is how it is. They don't, I wouldn't say that every Chinese person don't respect black or Africans. I'm just saying that in this mutual respect, they don't respect us. Why am I saying this? You are my friend, right? You are friends. Because China and Africa are friends. And you always come to me that, hey, please can you borrow me this money? Like I really need money. Today you come, I give it to you. The following day you come, I give it to you. The next day you come, I give it to you. Will you respect me for doing that to you all the time? Even though this is the same relationship between Africa and China, China, Africa is coming to China, every single day for loan. And what did they do? It's like what? They said we win cooperation, right?  And natural resources is something that money cannot buy. You guys don't know? Because I don't like talking about these things because I feel like it's politics, man. Money cannot buy natural resources, man. Because even the price of gold varies every single time.


Hi guys, it's MJ and in this video, we're going to be looking at interest rate derivatives. Remember, this is me studying out loud. It's very opinionated. It's unscripted. So always consult your notes before taking what I say as gospel. But in this video, we're going to be looking at interest rate derivatives and these possibly are one of the most difficult instruments in order to value because what you're basically doing is we're going to be having call and put options. But instead of it on a commodity or a share, we're now going to be doing it with interest rates. And this makes it very difficult. Why does it make it very difficult? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about in this video.  Let's say I have a share or I have some gold. Okay. And there is the price today and there is the price tomorrow. We know what the price is today, but we don't know what it is going to be tomorrow. We can use a derivative in order to lock in the price tomorrow. So if I have a share and I want to have the option to sell it, I will purchase a put option, which gives me the right but not the obligation to sell. And if I have some or if I want to buy some gold tomorrow and I want to lock in the price today, I'm going to use a call option. However, I do assume that you guys are quite comfortable finance. So that is as far as derivative introduction is going to go. Let's get straight into the nitty gritty of interest rates derivatives. Okay. So the behavior of an individual interest rate is more complicated than that of a stock price. Why is that? Well, remember what we were talking about in earlier videos. Interest rates are made up. Okay. There's something that someone thinks, okay, today the interest rate is going to be 10% in another country. Someone must say, okay, the interest is going to be 5% and in another country, someone might say the interest rate is minus 2%. Okay. And why that happens is because interest rates are made up. They're not just made up arbitrarily. You know, there is some thought behind it and how it will impact the economy. But the fact of the matter is that the government or the central banks, they very much set the interest rates in their territory. Now, why is this making it more complicated than say shares or gold? Because interest rates are two-dimensional. Okay. And what I mean by that is when we look at say a share or gold, we're just looking at the price. When we look at an interest rate, we're actually looking at a curve. Okay. And this is known as the interest rate curve because what interest rates do is they tend to vary with time. Okay. So this is time and this is the interest rates. And I mean, these things can vary for a lot of reasons. They could be, you know, because of inflation, expectations, market demand and supply, all these various things.  So before when we came to price, say shares and gold, we were developing an instrument or a formula or a model that needed to output one thing. So it was one-dimensional. And this you're quite familiar with, you know, black skulls model and all that type of stuff. We're predicting, you know, what is going to be the price of the forward price, one-dimensional. But when it comes to interest rates, it's an entire curve. We need to model what the interest rate is going to be throughout time and create some sort of curve. Now, what makes this tricky, okay, is that the volatility at different points in the yield curve are different. So this might be more volatile, and this might be less volatile, which means when it comes to modeling this, the mathematics does get very complicated. Another thing that makes interest rate derivatives quite tricky is that not only is the interest rate going to determine the discounting value, but it's also going to be determining the payoff. So we use interest rates for both discounting and for payoffs. Remember, when we looked at the one-dimensional or the traditional derivatives with, say, shares or commodities, we would take the price in the future and we would discount it, move it back according to the time value of money with an interest rate. Okay, what interest rate was used? Well, that was a lot of discussion, but normally the risk-free interest rate was used. Although, like I said in the very first video, that risk-free interest rate is hypothetical and it doesn't actually exist in practice. So already that causes quite a bit of issues in normal standard or what we call vanilla derivatives. But now when we come to, say, interest rates, not only is this interest rate going to be used for discounting, so we have that problem, but it's also going to be used in the payoffs. In the fact that if the interest rate goes up, then a payoff might happen. If interest rate goes down, a payoff might happen to some of the various parties. So because of all this complexity, I mean, we kind of still take the black skulls model, but we make it even more complicated. I mean, when you look at the mathematics behind this stuff, it is quite crazy and a lot of the proofs behind these formulas are beyond the syllabus. I mean, you're going away from, say, actuarial science and more into something like financial mathematics or what's that fancy word that they use? They call them short-quants. That's what the piece is called. I'm trying to think, what is that short for? Basically, these guys are really, it's more mathematics in the finance and it's the way to deal with all these various things that are all these dynamic links between the derivatives. So I mean, what more can we say about interest rate derivatives? Well, let's maybe talk about the floors and the ceilings and the colors. Okay, so let's use a different color. Okay, you can get a ceiling or a cap. And what this does is you could maybe say you're buying out a house and your payments are dependent on the interest rate.  So what you could do is you could purchase a ceiling, which means that if interest rates, interest rates move around like that, if they go above a determined ceiling, it then makes a payout to you. Okay, and you would want that because that would then protect you from interest rates going really high and then, you know, you defaulting on your house. In the same breath, you can get something known as a floor. So if for some reason lower interest rates is detrimental to you, you can purchase this instrument, which will then make a payout if the interest rate goes below a certain level. So if interest rates are between say three and five percent, you could buy a floor at say four percent. And so if it is at say three point eight percent, it makes a payment to you. You could then purchase both of these things together, have a ceiling and a floor, and that is known as a collar. Now, when it comes to say pricing these things, like I said, the mathematics is very difficult. And it is something that you need to know for maybe the specialist technical subjects, but not necessarily for the specialist application subjects. For the fellowship, you just want to be aware of it. I think for the technical subjects, you might need to be able to actually do these calculations, which is quite tricky because they are quite quite difficult.  Once you have interest rate derivatives, you can start playing around with with bond options. There's actually one way that you can construct an interest rate ceiling or an interest rate floor by having a specific portfolio of bonds and arranging them in a certain way so that if interest rates go up, you sell some of the bonds that, you know, have the interest rate relevant to that. But we are getting quite complicated. And I want to just keep this video more around what makes interest rate derivatives complicated. The main one being that interest rate is used in both the discounting and the payoffs. And in the fact that with interest rates, we're trying to model an entire yield curve, instead of just a one dimensional price, and that this yield curve does have some varying volatility as the curve changes. There is the how do you pronounce this guy's name. And they did it in in 1977. I think it was Vasik. He managed to make a model of this interest rate that took account of the different volatility is was arbitrage free.  But anyway, I think let's end this video here. Next time we're going to be talking about something really fun called securitization. So make sure you you tune in for that one because I really like securitization, which is quite fun because most of the time I've been talking about how I hate all these things. Securitization is something that I absolutely love. So hope to see you guys for that video. Otherwise, steady hot