CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 4:43
Back on JRE after years: nerves, vomiting, and fear of being canceled
Joe welcomes David Choe back after a long gap, immediately teasing his anxieties about saying something life-ruining. Choe admits he got so nervous driving over that he pulled over and vomited, then confesses how much he worries about cancellation despite having a quieter life now.
- •Choe’s return after ~5 years and his intense pre-show anxiety
- •Physical stress reaction: pulling over on Van Nuys Blvd to puke
- •Fear of cancellation and social-media pile-ons vs older-style backlash
- •Choe’s surprising claim that being “canceled” can feel like fuel
- 4:43 – 7:23
Compliments as a discomfort exercise—and a custom 'Ghosts on the Beach' gift
Choe asks Joe about his comfort level receiving compliments, then delivers an extended, heartfelt set of praises as a therapeutic practice. He follows it with an on-air gift: a shirt he painted inspired by Joe’s ‘ghosts on the beach’ bit.
- •Choe uses compliments as an intentional discomfort/therapy exercise
- •Joe’s reaction to intense praise and the awkwardness of receiving it
- •Choe gifts Joe a hand-painted shirt referencing “ghosts on the beach”
- •They riff on why ghost stories never happen in fun daytime settings
- 7:23 – 11:27
Quiet new life, social fear, and talking to a sculpture to prepare for podcasting
Choe explains he’s largely stepped away from public life and feels conflicted about being back on-air. He tells a story about rehearsing for the podcast by literally talking to a sculpture in public—then getting caught doing it.
- •Choe describes building a calm, private life off-mic
- •Ambivalence: phone call vs public episode vs visiting Joe in Texas
- •Preparation ritual: practicing conversation with a sculpture
- •Insecurity about memory, quickness, and comparing himself to other guests
- 11:27 – 17:27
Self-hatred loop: anxiety mornings, ‘I am enough,’ and using suffering to create art
Choe opens up about daily self-criticism, difficulty accepting compliments, and his therapist’s attempts to counteract it with simple practices. The conversation turns to the classic question: does great art require suffering, and what happens when an artist chooses happiness instead?
- •Choe’s persistent self-talk: “you’re a piece of shit” and compulsive self-deprecation
- •Therapy tools: saying five good things; writing “I am enough” on a mirror
- •Choe’s view: transcendent art often comes from pain; comfort kills creativity
- •A turning point: experimenting with joy/peace and becoming happier than ever
- 17:27 – 38:07
‘Buck wild’ podcasting: unreleased episodes, roleplay, and glossolalia experiments
Joe praises Choe’s old podcast as riveting because of its raw, humiliating honesty. Choe describes unreleased recordings where he roleplays extreme scenarios, records for hours with absurd constraints, and even experiments with speaking in tongues-like gibberish.
- •Joe’s endorsement of Choe’s past podcast as uniquely compelling
- •Choe kept recording episodes even after pulling them from release
- •Extreme bits: “kidnapping” himself in roleplay; intense self-interrogations
- •Gibberish language episodes and the concept of glossolalia
- 38:07 – 43:16
Multiple ‘Daves’ and self-therapy: inner parts, psychodrama, and healing vs monetizing
Choe frames his personality as a bus full of different ‘Daves’—confident, ashamed, cruel, experimental—each taking turns at the wheel. He explains psychodrama therapy and jokes about turning his most chaotic recordings into a Patreon, while insisting his main goal is healing.
- •‘Collective’ identity metaphor: many personas inside one mind
- •Psychodrama explained as replaying and rewriting traumatic scenes
- •Self-run psychodrama: recording himself crying, yelling, and negotiating
- •Joe suggests monetizing the chaos; Choe emphasizes recovery
- 43:16 – 50:44
Korean pride, Parasite night, and pandemic-era anti-Asian racism at red lights
A story about LA traffic on Oscars night becomes a discussion of racial identity and ‘perpetual foreigner’ framing—people congratulating Choe for Parasite simply because he’s Korean. The mood turns when Choe recounts racist gestures and ‘go back’ remarks during the pandemic, and the fear of escalating to violence.
- •Parasite wins Best Picture; strangers congratulate Choe for being Korean
- •Family dynamics: mom assumes he knows Korean celebrities personally
- •Pandemic incidents: eye-pulling gesture and ‘go back to where you come from’
- •Debate over rhetoric (“Chinese virus”) and how leaders influence behavior
- 50:44 – 1:08:53
What’s the best response to hate? Joe’s violence-avoidance framework
Joe argues the safest move in real-world confrontations is often to disengage, because you never know who’s armed or unstable. He reframes Choe’s ‘freezing’ as wisdom and explains how hate acts like a contagious mind virus meant to infect you emotionally.
- •Fight/flight assessment: escape is best if it’s available
- •‘Freezing’ can be strategic when the situation is unwinnable
- •Comedians don’t necessarily clap back in real life—stage ≠ street
- •Joe’s thesis: hateful people want to transmit their misery to you
- 1:08:53 – 1:22:21
The ‘invisible’ traveler: hitchhiking, strangers confessing dark secrets, and real danger
Choe reframes being overlooked as an ‘Asian superpower’ that lets him move through the world with less suspicion—often causing strangers to open up. He shares how hitchhiking led to extreme confessions and recounts a deeply unsettling night with a cowboy-hat man in Louisiana.
- •Invisibility as access: people open up because they don’t view him as a threat
- •Hitchhiking as a way to see the world and hear raw human truth
- •Shocking confessions from drivers (violence, abuse, taboo admissions)
- •Louisiana story: being housed by a man who later admits predatory intent
- 1:22:21 – 1:31:39
Teen expedition to the Congo to find a dinosaur: war zone reality check
Joe recalls discovering Choe through a Vice segment about hunting a brontosaurus-like cryptid. Choe tells the original story: at 18–19, pre-internet, he flies into a civil-war Congo chasing Mokele-mbembe, confronting Ebola fears, violence, and sheer ignorance of conditions.
- •National Geographic spark: Mokele-mbembe as a living dinosaur legend
- •Logistics by deception: visa stories, brutal multi-day Aeroflot routing
- •Arrival into chaos: civil war factions, disease scares, and isolation
- •Choe’s mindset: pain-driven, reactionary, drawn toward danger zones
- 1:31:39 – 1:43:39
Lost in the jungle: near-murder moment, then pygmies ‘from the stars’ rescue
Choe describes getting hopelessly lost in dense jungle with a German companion who becomes antagonistic and selfish with rations. In a breaking point, Choe nearly kills him with a rock—then they’re suddenly found by pygmies who guide them out and interpret Choe as a being ‘from the stars.’
- •Becoming lost for days to over a week with dwindling food and sanity
- •Conflict escalation with the companion and a near-homicidal impulse
- •Encounter with pygmies: communication via drawing and shared food
- •Mythic framing: villagers say Choe “comes from the stars”
- 1:43:39 – 1:51:21
Returning via Vice and chasing evidence: tracks, photos, and ‘maybe it’s a log’
Choe explains how his writing and art led to Vice inviting him back years later to film. They look at alleged photos and tracks, debate credibility, and consider how hard it would be to fake footprints—while acknowledging alternative explanations.
- •Timeline: early Congo trip vs later Vice return with a crew
- •Discussing purported sightings and a doctor’s claim of seeing it
- •Examining photos and footprints; skepticism vs possibility
- •Reality check: misidentification theories (e.g., turtle/log) and scale
- 1:51:21 – 2:15:37
Tanzania’s Hadza: living with hunter-gatherers, bow hunting, gut biome, and brutal baboon hunts
Choe describes fleeing to Africa during personal rock bottoms and finding perspective among the Hadza in Tanzania. He recounts their humor, endurance, homemade bows with poison tips, unique microbiomes studied by scientists, and the harsh reality of hunting—especially intense baboon kills with dogs.
- •Motivation: escaping modern life to learn gratitude and humility
- •Hadza lifestyle: nomadic, low waste, constant movement and community humor
- •Hunting tech and skill: powerful bows, poison, animal tracking, honey-guiding birds
- •Diet/biology: scientists studying unique Hadza gut microbes via fecal samples
- •Graphic hunt accounts: baboons, dogs, endurance running, and cultural eating practices
- 2:15:37 – 3:51:38
Trying to recruit Joe to Africa—and closing on elephants, hunting ethics, and Neverland Ranch
Choe repeatedly urges Joe (and Jamie) to visit Africa with family, pitching a safer, curated version of the experience. The conversation broadens into hunting ethics (including elephants), then pivots to Choe’s visit to Neverland Ranch and the mistreatment and intelligence of elephants—ending on the surreal idea of elephants painting.
- •Choe’s invitation and logistics pitch: observe vs hunt, family-friendly options
- •Joe’s hunting framework: eating what you hunt and discomfort with some animals
- •Elephants as emotionally complex, majestic creatures; ethical tension around killing them
- •Choe’s Michael Jackson/Neverland story: depressed captive elephants bending steel bars
- •Elephants’ intelligence: painting behavior and humanlike emotional capacity
