Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

   2. SWSteven Wright0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience. (rock music plays)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) (laughs) It was fun hanging out with you last night.

   4. SWSteven Wright0:14

      Yeah. Yeah, that was ... You know when you're in one of those rooms backstage, it's the same.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      Yeah.

   6. SWSteven Wright0:24

      It's the same vibe. It's the same fun. Even if you don't r- you don't know the actual people, it's connection.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:35

      Yeah, in a good room, yeah. Yeah, we're all having fun.

   8. SWSteven Wright0:39

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:39

      Tell- telling jokes. It's a nice ... The setup is so nice too, because where the green room is, it's in between the two rooms. So you can go to one room and watch-

   10. SWSteven Wright0:49

       Oh.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       ... and then you can go to the other room, like because we have a balcony setup.

   12. SWSteven Wright0:52

       Oh, I didn't notice that.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:52

       Yeah, it's very nice. It's very, very convenient. And it- That actually was the projector room for the theater, so we converted the projector room for the theater into a green room.

   14. SWSteven Wright1:03

       Very cool.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       It's in a perfect- It's a perfect position because it's in between the two rooms.

   16. SWSteven Wright1:07

       So you got people going, leaving, going-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:08

       Yeah.

   18. SWSteven Wright1:09

       ... coming back from the set.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Yeah.

   20. SWSteven Wright1:10

       And then they can- you can see them doing it on the monitor.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       You can see them on the monitor, or you could just step off-

   22. SWSteven Wright1:16

       Get off.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       ... into the balcony 'cause we have that comics balcony, so you could watch. Like if you're on stage, I could just sit up there and watch. I don't have to go downstairs. It's very nice. It's a fun vibe, right?

   24. SWSteven Wright1:26

       Absolutely.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:27

       (clicks tongue) It's great for me-

   26. SWSteven Wright1:28

       I- I-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:29

       ... to watch someone like you appreciate it, like go and, and check it out and go, "Wow, oh."

   28. SWSteven Wright1:34

       Yeah. It's like, uh-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:35

       It sucks that-

   30. SWSteven Wright1:36

       You know, right from the beginning, the same, no matter where you go, I mean, if it's a good place. I would've stayed longer, but I didn't want to, uh ... Is this going now?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yes. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      did a set. So Teddy Bergeron went up and just like showed everybody how it's done. And for people who don't know Teddy Bergeron, he was so smooth.

   2. SWSteven Wright15:08

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      So relaxed.

   4. SWSteven Wright15:10

      Yes. Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      And he had this command of the audience and the stage with his presence and his performance that I'd just been thinking, "I can never do that. How am I gonna do that? That guy's so advanced. He's so good." So that's how I got started. And, and I got started by friends, friends talking me into doing it.

   6. SWSteven Wright15:29

      Oh, you fucking... You just... They said, "Why don't you try it?"

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:32

      Yeah.

   8. SWSteven Wright15:32

      Like they, they pu- pushed you, like l- got you to go, like?

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:37

      Yeah, it was... Uh, th- My friend Steve who's... Um, still w- one of my best friends to this day. Uh, we were hanging out and he was just like, "I think you should be a comedian." It was like when I was teaching martial arts actually. So I was like making them laugh. I'd make my friends laugh when we'd go fight in tournaments and I'd make e- everybody laugh before we're about to spar, 'cause it was like everybody was real nervous, you know. So it was... For me, it was a nice opportunity to get attention and, uh, cut the tension, you know? (clears throat)

   10. SWSteven Wright16:04

       That's how it got started.

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:05

       Yeah, that's how it got started.

   12. SWSteven Wright16:06

       But I think, uh, a lot of... Y- you know, just 'cause someone's funny hanging out doesn't mean they could do that. I mean, you obviously have done it. But the big difference is, like if you're in a bar with someone hang-... And the TV's on and... There's a lot happening, going by. The waitress goes by, someone drops something, you c- someone says something about that, something's on the TV, something goes by, truck goes by, there's all these things. But when you go on the stage, there's nothing happening.

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:38

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SWSteven Wright16:38

       So just 'cause you can do that with your friends doesn't really mean then you could go do that, 'cause when you walk out, there's nothing.

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:46

       Right. It doesn't mean that you can do it, but if you can't do that with your friends-

   16. SWSteven Wright16:52

       Oh, yeah, definitely.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:53

       ... you probably would never be able to do it.

   18. SWSteven Wright16:53

       If you don't have that-

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:54

       Yeah.

   20. SWSteven Wright16:55

       No, yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:55

       You're either funny or you're not funny. And if you can be funny with your friends-

   22. SWSteven Wright17:00

       Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:00

       ... it's just a matter of like how can I figure out how to be funny-

   24. SWSteven Wright17:03

       Yes.

   25. JRJoe Rogan17:03

       ... in front of everybody else? Yeah, that's where it's tricky. And to me, the most interesting thing about the art form is that no one can tell you how to do it. You do it very different than I do it, and we both do it very different than Seinfeld does it. And Seinfeld does it different than Louie Anderson did it. It's like everybody's got their own little weird way to do standup and you kinda have to figure that out on your own.

   26. SWSteven Wright17:27

       It's like a fingerprint. Everyone's mind is like a fingerprint.

   27. JRJoe Rogan17:30

       Yeah.

   28. SWSteven Wright17:30

       You have your own fingerprint and then you gotta figure it out.

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:34

       And also, if you look at art forms that are very popular, like standup is obviously a very popular art form, people love to go see it, there's no real courses on how to do it. There's no real structure of it. Like everything else, whether it's music, songwriting, literature, fiction, non-fiction, there's all teaching. People teach people how to do it. People who've done it already, they teach you how to set up your, your stories and how to, you know... The... There's ways to learn almost every other art form. But even acting-

   30. SWSteven Wright18:07

       (sighs)
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:01

   2. SWSteven Wright30:01

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:01

      ... you own it. So like zebras, lions, tigers. There's fucking str- stray kangaroos, like kangaroos get out.... my wife saw a fucking zebra. She was driving, and she's like, "I saw a zebra."

   4. SWSteven Wright30:17

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:18

      "There was a zebra on the side of the road."

   6. SWSteven Wright30:21

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      Somebody had a zebra, and it just got out. (laughs)

   8. SWSteven Wright30:24

      What if it's a zebra from Texas?

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      I don't think it is.

   10. SWSteven Wright30:27

       But-

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:27

       I think it's probably born in Texas.

   12. SWSteven Wright30:29

       Not that zebra, I mean in general. You're saying you can own l- the land and then you own the animals-

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:36

       As long as the animal's-

   14. SWSteven Wright30:36

       ... if they're not from Te-

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:37

       ... from another country.

   16. SWSteven Wright30:37

       Why, though? Why? Why?

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:38

       Doesn't make any sense.

   18. SWSteven Wright30:39

       Why? Why? (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       It's not even just... It's so crazy, it's so crazy that it doesn't even make sense because they're not even exotic animals. Like, for instance, elk. Like, elk hunting in most of the country is, like, a very... It's a difficult tag to acquire. It's a very prized, uh, hunt 'cause it's delicious meat and, you know. So, that's very specific with the regulations. In Texas, you can hunt elk 365 days a year, and you own the elk because the elk were brought into Texas even though they used to be in Texas. So, they were in Texas, and then in the 1800s, they wiped them out, and then when they reintroduced them, they said, "Well, you ain't from around here."

   20. SWSteven Wright31:18

       Oh, my God.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:18

       "So, we own you."

   22. SWSteven Wright31:19

       That's a loophole.

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       It's a loophole.

   24. SWSteven Wright31:21

       A giant elk loophole-

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       Giant elk loophole.

   26. SWSteven Wright31:24

       ... in Texas.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       You could do that with some animals. You can't do it with eagles. You know, if you started hunting American eagles here in Texas, then people would crack down. Like, "Hey, enough."

   28. SWSteven Wright31:33

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:33

       "Enough, Texas. Settle down." "Oh, we own these fucking eagles."

   30. SWSteven Wright31:37

       We own these eagles.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yeah, yeah, yeah. You…

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

   2. SWSteven Wright45:00

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta shut it off sometimes because-

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      Yeah.

   4. SWSteven Wright45:03

      ... if th- y- peop- you always got radio or phone or something, and you, sometimes you have to have nothing because nothing isn't really nothing. R- r- you gotta, like... It took me years to realize that doing nothing was really good. It was really doing something because your mind thinks differently when you're not going, when something's not going in.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:29

      Yeah.

   6. SWSteven Wright45:29

      Like, you can really think more.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:32

      For sure.

   8. SWSteven Wright45:33

      For a l- for a long time, I thought, "Well, I'm not doing anything," and I th- and I like it, and I think of things sometimes. A part of me thought, because of society, it's like, "Well, what do you mean you're doing nothing?" It has a negative-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:44

      (laughs)

   10. SWSteven Wright45:44

       (laughs) You know what I mean?

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       Yeah, yeah.

   12. SWSteven Wright45:45

       It has a negative thing, and then it took me years to think that, no, this is really something. And then I started looking up nothing. (laughs) It sounds like a George Carlin.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:55

       (laughs)

   14. SWSteven Wright45:55

       I started looking it up, and it showed the benefit of silence and just knowing-

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:01

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. SWSteven Wright46:04

       So you would drive with no radio, and you, you, you just, your mind didn't have to-

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:07

       Yeah, especially early in my c- my, uh, the beginning days of standup. I drove a lot because I delivered newspapers. So, I was driv- in the mornings and deliver my newspapers, um, and I'd do it with no radio on a lot of the time. And some of the best ideas that I had came from just doing this manual labor, chucking these newspapers out the window and just driving around. Then your, your mind is free to think about other stuff. Instead of, like, constantly having entertainment bombarding you, it's like-

   18. SWSteven Wright46:34

       Yeah, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:35

       ... you know, I'd listen to, like, Charles LaCordiara on the morning radio, but, but if I just shut it off and listened to nothing, then I got s- some of my best ideas.

   20. SWSteven Wright46:44

       Because you're doing this mundane thing-

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:46

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SWSteven Wright46:46

       ... with the paper, which is almost like the... So the gears in your head, it's, it's doing something, but that allows another part of your brain to, like, go on its own, you know?

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:56

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SWSteven Wright46:57

       Because you, because you, you're distracting enough... I don't know. It's fascinating how it works. You, it's focused, but you're not. You're focused on this boring thing, then your mind is playing because creativity to me is playing. It's like a child with finger paints, you know? Just, just, like, it's always very, been a very playful thing to me. I've never, like, thought, "Oh my God, I need more... I need five more minutes." It's just like... Because creating is thinking. You can't stop thinking. If someone says to you, "You can't think of any more comedy right now. You'll be arrested," you couldn't-

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:35

       (laughs)

   26. SWSteven Wright47:37

       (laughs) They wouldn't know if you didn't say it.

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:39

       Right.

   28. SWSteven Wright47:39

       But you can't stop, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:40

       Right.

   30. SWSteven Wright47:41

       It's like a machine going down a hill.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   (laughs) …

   1. SWSteven Wright1:00:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      (laughs)

   3. SWSteven Wright1:00:01

      You're hanging out with them.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:03

      Yeah.

   5. SWSteven Wright1:00:03

      You're hanging out with them.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:05

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. You don't know their names, but they know you. And they know you inside and out, you know, especially because of podcasts. They really know you. Like, they know you know you. They listen to you talk for hours and hours and hours. They know who you are. You can't fake it, you know? And so, they're excited about that too. It's just a- it's a weird, like, extra connection that people have to comics now because of podcasts.

   7. SWSteven Wright1:00:29

      ... yeah, than, than what they're really thinking on, not on stage. 'Cause before, it was just what the, the show would be.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:36

      Yeah. They also like the fact that sometimes, like, we'll bring up stuff in a podcast, and then I'll write it down, and then that'll become a bit. Like, I'll have-

   9. SWSteven Wright1:00:44

      Right, and they like-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:45

       ... something will pop into my head, and they'll, "Ah, I remember when you first talked about that," and now it's like your closing bit, 'cause you figured out how to turn it into this five-minute chunk, you know?

   11. SWSteven Wright1:00:55

       How long have you been doing the podcast?

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       Um, 14 years? Is it almost 14 years?

   13. SWSteven Wright1:01:02

       13 and a half, yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:05

       13 and a half years.

   15. SWSteven Wright1:01:05

       Wow.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:05

       Yeah, yeah.

   17. SWSteven Wright1:01:05

       Amazing.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       Crazy.

   19. SWSteven Wright1:01:08

       That must be one of the first ones that you have here.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

       Uh, the first one was Adam Curry. He was number one. He's the Podfather, and then-

   21. SWSteven Wright1:01:17

       Podfather.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       And then, um, Corolla had one-

   23. SWSteven Wright1:01:19

       Oh, yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:19

       ... when he left radio, and Marc Maron had one, and there was a couple other that I had heard about, but it was, uh...

   25. SWSteven Wright1:01:26

       (sighs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:26

       Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith had one real early on. Um, but it was, uh, fairly... Yeah, a fairly small amount of people.

   27. SWSteven Wright1:01:36

       And what-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       Yeah, Tony.

   29. SWSteven Wright1:01:36

       What, what drew you to it?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:39

       Just having fun. Um, what drew me to it was, like, I used to like to do, uh, radio. I used to like to do, like, Opie & Anthony 'cause it was a bunch of comics-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:15:48

   Section 6

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      and they kind of lived like Indians. And they w- ran around, and that's Quanah Parker. So, Quanah Parker, his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was really young, she was nine years old. Her family was murdered in front of her, and they took her in, and she eventually became, um, the wife of the chief, and they had a baby. So she was white, and she had a half Native American baby, who was Quanah Parker, who was the last Comanche chief. And he was big for a Comanche, and just, like, very, very fierce guy. That photograph of her, uh, sucking, uh, having her, her kid, um, sucking on her nipple is a very famous photo, because she would do that in front of people, and they thought that was, like, so uncivilized-

Episode duration: 2:30:20