Beauty Standards, Twitter & AI Girlfriends - Mark Normand

Mark Normand 0:00 If I kiss you, that doesn't make me gay. I just did a gay thing for a second. And if I make a racist joke or say a, a, a bad word, I don't mean that thing, I just did it for a second.

Chris Williamson 0:10 (laughs)

Mark Normand 0:10 You see what I'm saying?

Chris Williamson 0:11 Yeah. But how many gay things do you have to do before you become gay?

Mark Normand 0:14 I think it's all up here, it's like being a woman. I- you identify.

Chris Williamson 0:17 So you can suck a (beep) and be straight?

Mark Normand 0:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:19 Yeah?

Mark Normand 0:19 'Cause sucking (beep) is, it's just a physical act.

Chris Williamson 0:22 Right.

Mark Normand 0:22 But actually wanting to suck a (beep) , that's when you're gay.

Chris Williamson 0:25 Interesting.

Mark Normand 0:26 Blow, you could blow me right now and I won't call you gay, I promise.

Chris Williamson 0:31 (laughs)

Mark Normand 0:32 Wait, are we on?

Chris Williamson 0:34 Yeah, sure.

Mark Normand 0:34 Oh, geez, I didn't know that. All right.

Chris Williamson 0:36 Let's say that we're on.

Mark Normand 0:37 Okay.

Chris Williamson 0:37 Marc Norman, welcome to the show.

Mark Normand 0:38 Hey, comedy.

Chris Williamson 0:39 (laughs)

Mark Normand 0:39 Uh, I didn't know if I was gonna trash those other comics you just mentioned, so I had to, had to make sure.

Chris Williamson 0:44 (laughs)

Mark Normand 0:44 Um, good to be here.

Chris Williamson 0:45 Thanks, man.

Mark Normand 0:46 New studio.

Chris Williamson 0:47 Uh, yeah, different. We're in a new place. I like this place, it's very, very cool.

Mark Normand 0:50 Sexy.

Chris Williamson 0:50 Yeah, it is. It's kind of like what I imagine the inside of a, of a dildo looks like.

Mark Normand 0:55 Hey, this is the flesh light right here.

Chris Williamson 0:57 Ribbed, yeah, ribbed for your pleasure.

Mark Normand 0:58 (laughs) Smells weird too and it's a little sticky.

Chris Williamson 1:02 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:02 But, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03 Um, so you're seeing Tom Segura at some point I think while you're in town.

Mark Normand 1:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07 He's just finished a 300 date tour.

Mark Normand 1:09 Woo.

Chris Williamson 1:11 What do people who have never been on tour, that look at comedians that are traveling the world and think, "Oh, that's cool."

Mark Normand 1:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16 "That'd be good to do." What do they not know about what tour life's actually like?

Mark Normand 1:20 Well, there's, there's a couple different kind, there's the... And the two extremes would be Segura and Bert, which and they're friends, they're yin and yang and, uh, Bert is a drunk, fat guy who's partying, whereas Segura has a trainer every morning at 8:00 AM. He doesn't really drink, he eats well, he, he's, uh, playing the piano, he's writing. So that's really the tour life, you know, just which one are you on that spectrum? And I, I'm more towards Bert and I'm worried 'cause I'm gonna die. But that's really, that's really what it is. Touring is grueling and it looks fun, we show you Instagram of us on a jet or, or at the big arena with the chandelier and the, the, the curtains, but it's a lot of get up, "What are we doing today? Oh, we gotta go to the airport. Oh, the airport's in a different language, we gotta figure this out." It, it's a lot of logistics and that part sucks.

Chris Williamson 2:14 It's-

Mark Normand 2:14 But it's fun.

Chris Williamson 2:15 Yeah, I, I don't know, I guess the reality from the outside is tons of travel.

Mark Normand 2:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:19 Loads of packing and unpacking.

Mark Normand 2:21 Yes.

Chris Williamson 2:21 Being in and out of hotels.

Mark Normand 2:23 Nightmare, it's all a blur. It's like that montage in Fight Club where he's just going from place to place and you're like, "Who am I? Where am I? What's going on? Uh, I gotta write a new joke. Is that joke..." So you, you're on the flight and any moment you have, you're like, "All right, I gotta rest and think about my act."

Chris Williamson 2:38 Yeah. I, I, I guess, um, Ryan Long was talking about this as well, the, the reality of tour life is so different to what people sort of idealize it as.

Mark Normand 2:46 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:46 And what I think most guys are doing at the moment is these little weekends, right? You just-

Mark Normand 2:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:50 ... jump out, spend a weekend, two nights, three nights if you can.

Mark Normand 2:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:54 And then you come back and it's like, "I kind of have a life, but then I don't have a life and then I-"

Mark Normand 2:57 Yes.

Chris Williamson 2:57 "... have a life and I don't." But you're going to Australia?

Mark Normand 2:59 I'm going to Australia for a month, but those weekends are, that's ideal because you get to escape. You hate your girlfriend, you hate your husband, you hate your wife, you hate your apartment, you hate your city. I live in New York and it's just hobos and, and shit on the street and subways. So then you get to go to Denver and you're like, "Ooh, I'll smoke weed."

Chris Williamson 3:16 (laughs)

Mark Normand 3:16 "I'll go get a hike, I'll do shows and then I'll come back." So it's perfect. It's like a built-in marriage saver.

Chris Williamson 3:23 Have you heard of digital blackface?

Mark Normand 3:25 Ooh, wait a minute. Is that where you act Black online?

Chris Williamson 3:30 Kind of, yeah. So this is from CNN, "'If you're white and you've posted a GIF or a meme of a Black person to express a strong emotion, you may be guilty of wearing digital blackface,' writes John Blake. Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly 'Sweet Brown' Wilkins telling a reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, 'Ain't nobody got time for that.'"

Mark Normand 3:49 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:50 "Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on America's Next Top Model. If you're Black and you've shared such online images, you get a pass. But if you're white, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism, you may be wearing digital blackface. Simply put, digital blackface is 21st century min- minstrelsy." Minstrels-

Mark Normand 4:12 Minstrel.

Chris Williamson 4:12 Minstrelsy.

Mark Normand 4:13 Minstrelsy.

Chris Williamson 4:14 Yeah.

Mark Normand 4:14 Wow. I mean, I thought I was being inclusive by adding some Black people in my memes and my GIFs. Isn't that diverse? I'm diversifying my GIFs.

Chris Williamson 4:22 Appropriating.

Mark Normand 4:23 I guess so, geez.

Chris Williamson 4:25 I asked Jordan Peterson what, uh, color emoji he uses.

Mark Normand 4:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:28 And he, and he said Black. (laughs)

Mark Normand 4:29 Oh, really? (laughs) That's funny. You can't get in trouble. I mean, we're all using the eggplant, that's black.

Chris Williamson 4:35 Is it? Oh, do you mean based on size?

Mark Normand 4:37 Size and, you know, it's a dark shade of purple.

Chris Williamson 4:40 Hue?

Mark Normand 4:40 But, you know, mulignan is what Italians call Black people, and that means eggplant. That's the, uh, that's the N word-

Chris Williamson 4:46 You're kidding me.

Mark Normand 4:46 ... for Italians.

Chris Williamson 4:47 You're kidding me.

Mark Normand 4:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:48 And it's what? Mu- mu-

Mark Normand 4:49 Mulignan. Like, "These mulignans over here stole our truck." That's-

Chris Williamson 4:54 And it means eggplant in Italian?

Mark Normand 4:55 It means eggplant in Italian, but that's their N word.

Chris Williamson 4:58 Wow.

Mark Normand 4:58 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:59 Italians don't give a fuck.

Mark Normand 5:01 They don't give a fuck and it sounds cool. Mulignan, it just sounds pretty. Meanwhile they're being hateful-

Chris Williamson 5:05 It's way less offensive than hard R-ing your way through some-

Mark Normand 5:08 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:08 ... like racial tirade.

Mark Normand 5:09 Exactly. They also call, uh, retarded people, ritardi. No, I'm just kidding.

Chris Williamson 5:14 (laughs)

Mark Normand 5:14 But, um, that would be, I'm sure they got a cool word for that too.

Chris Williamson 5:18 But, yeah, digital blackface, man, you gotta be careful out there.

Mark Normand 5:21 Well, they know number one threat to America is white supremacy according to our president, so, uh...

Chris Williamson 5:26 That's an interesting one.

Mark Normand 5:27 I, see I like this stuff because it just shows that we're not that racist. If we have to look this far to find racism-

Chris Williamson 5:34 Yeah.

Mark Normand 5:34 ... that's a good sign that maybe we're not as racist as we think we are.

Chris Williamson 5:38 So, I learned about this idea called concept creep, which you'll probably be familiar with, but the way that it's sort of come across or been used I guess in, um, the modern world is, is super, super interesting because let's say that there's a, a bar of racism that needs to be, or there is a, a demand for racism that is-

Mark Normand 5:55 A bar of rac- That's called a biker bar.

Chris Williamson 5:57 (laughs)

Mark Normand 5:57 All right. Sorry. Ah.

Chris Williamson 5:59 There's a demand for racism that needs to be met, and if racism isn't getting-

Mark Normand 6:03 Ah-ha.

Chris Williamson 6:04 ... bigger, what you need to do is expand the definition of it in order to maintain the supply.

Mark Normand 6:08 Perfect.

Chris Williamson 6:09 Yeah. So concept creep is when the demand for racism outstrips the supply of racism.

Mark Normand 6:13 Yes.

Chris Williamson 6:13 Which means you need to continually make more and more things racist to keep that level high.

Mark Normand 6:17 Wow. See, I love when these, these smart people come up with terms.

Chris Williamson 6:21 Yeah.

Mark Normand 6:21 'Cause it just solidifies it all right there, it succinctly explains it.

Chris Williamson 6:25 Well, if you think about, there are a number of people whose basically entire careers, you know, this CNN reporter, th- they need to write an article.

Mark Normand 6:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 6:32 John Blake needs to write an article for CNN for today.... gonna write about?" It's, uh, uh, "Well, you're the racism guy."

Mark Normand 6:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:38 Like, you specialize in racism.

Mark Normand 6:40 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:40 You gotta go, get out there, find yourself some. Digital blackface, and that's now the thing. But yeah, I think looking at-

Mark Normand 6:46 That's fascinating.

Chris Williamson 6:47 ... looking at, uh, the increased, um, dilution of what different types of bigotisms and f- phobias and whatever is-

Mark Normand 6:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:57 ... the reason for that is that there is a lack of supply-

Mark Normand 7:00 Yes.

Chris Williamson 7:00 ... but still an amount of demand.

Mark Normand 7:02 It's kinda like, uh, crackheads. Well, like you start out with a good, good solid crack rock and then eventually like, "Maybe if I mix baking soda and a frog's ass-

Chris Williamson 7:11 (laughs)

Mark Normand 7:11 ... and like, uh, peroxide, I'll get high." And it's not actually drugs anymore, but you just, you need to open it up a little more to get high.

Chris Williamson 7:19 Right.

Mark Normand 7:19 'Cause you can't get the crack.

Chris Williamson 7:20 So you're saying modern day racism is like poor quality drugs.

Mark Normand 7:24 Yeah, it's stepped on.

Chris Williamson 7:25 Right. (laughs)

Mark Normand 7:25 You know, it's been, it's got baby laxative.

Chris Williamson 7:27 I want this pure racism.

Mark Normand 7:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:29 Where's the pure racism that we, you know, that good, old-fashioned, Colombian-

Mark Normand 7:33 Yes.

Chris Williamson 7:33 ... direct from the source...

Mark Normand 7:34 Jim Crow, that was pure cut cocaine. You know, Jim Crow, KKK-

Chris Williamson 7:39 (laughs)

Mark Normand 7:40 ... the, the, what do you call it, the hoses with the dogs, civil rights stuff, that was, that was pure cut, and now we're stepping on it with fucking baby powder.

Chris Williamson 7:47 Digital blackface.

Mark Normand 7:48 Yeah, exactly. (laughs) Exactly.

Chris Williamson 7:49 Digital blackface is baby powder for that. Right, I

Chris Williamson 7:53 sent you, earlier on, a video about Dove.

Mark Normand 7:56 Yeah, that was great.

Chris Williamson 7:58 So for the people who haven't seen it, Dove is on a mission to challenge and change female representation in video games and help make gaming a positive space for women and girls, so they've created this video of a, like superhero, girl superhero, and they, she slays this, this evil baddie and then she gets back into the changing room and takes her armor off and gains 80 pounds.

Mark Normand 8:20 Yeah, that was odd.

Chris Williamson 8:21 Im- Immediately. And then like sits down, puts her hands behind her back and realizes, "I don't need to wear the armor that is holding me in." And then she goes out and like keeps on fighting but now she's 80 pounds bigger.

Mark Normand 8:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:31 Um, female characters in games do not accurately represent the diverse gamers of the world and are often heavily sexualized and created within narrow, unrealistic beauty standards. 74% of girls feel unrepresented in video games. Um, I'm looking forward to the Call of Duty Lizzo skin dropping.

Mark Normand 8:49 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:49 I wanna unlock, I wanna unlock Lizzo from Call of Duty. (laughs)

Mark Normand 8:52 It's too big of a target.

Chris Williamson 8:54 (laughs)

Mark Normand 8:54 For terrorists it's too easy. But here's my thing with it, a couple of things. I love the idea of the animator being like, the director's like, "We need her fatter." He's like, "Ah, shit, all right."

Chris Williamson 9:02 (laughs)

Mark Normand 9:02 So he has to make her bigger. But also, I get it, look it's all, I'm all about helping women and having them being represented, but aren't we going... It's, it's getting hackey now. Like, Miller Lite, Bud Light, all these, uh, Starbucks had a big commercial with the trans, and you're like, "Well now it's just hack." The whole thing with the marketing and, and, uh, stuff like this, like this kind of art, you gotta go a new way. Isn't that the whole point of, uh, being original? Like, y- when they zig you zag and they're all zagging.

Chris Williamson 9:33 Everybody's going in the same direction.

Mark Normand 9:34 Yeah, so like, to me, it's not even about the, the woke shit or whatever you wanna call it, it's like, you're just being unoriginal now.

Chris Williamson 9:41 It's boring.

Mark Normand 9:42 It's boring.

Chris Williamson 9:42 Well, I think the main concern that people have-

Mark Normand 9:44 And predictable.

Chris Williamson 9:44 ... it's kind of the same as the, uh, like supply demand problem for racism, which is, it doesn't seem genuine.

Mark Normand 9:51 Yes, it's forced.

Chris Williamson 9:52 Yeah.

Mark Normand 9:53 Completely forced, completely, what do you call that? Uh, starts with a C.

Chris Williamson 9:58 Contrived?

Mark Normand 9:58 Thank you. You nailed it.

Chris Williamson 10:00 Fuck yeah.

Mark Normand 10:01 Wow.

Chris Williamson 10:01 What's happening? What's happening together?

Mark Normand 10:03 Yeah. Where our periods are synced.

Chris Williamson 10:04 That's a menstrual cycle, exactly.

Mark Normand 10:06 (laughs) Minstrel (laughs) cycle.

Chris Williamson 10:08 Menstrually cycled.

Mark Normand 10:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:10 Um, so, yeah, I, I think it's just that people don't believe that this is, is this actually coming from a place of genuine sympathy or is this coming from, what's it called? Woke-washing.

Mark Normand 10:22 Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 10:23 Woke-washing. So I learned-

Mark Normand 10:23 Madison Avenue.

Chris Williamson 10:24 Yeah, I learned, uh, what was the fucking thing? Woke-washing is allowing brands to monetize virtue signaling, it conceals the less altruistic business practices. So Miller Lite and Bud Light, you know, is two good examples that you brought up there. They'll, uh, where are they getting the tin from? Is anybody looking at the aluminum that goes into the cans? Is anybody-

Mark Normand 10:44 Of course not.

Chris Williamson 10:45 ... like looking at the production processes? Are they meeting sanitation standards? Are they doing all the rest of it? And it's like, no, but they gave Dylan Mulvaney six, a six-pack with her face on it.

Mark Normand 10:54 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:54 That's like enough to, "Look over there, look over there. You don't need to look over here," type of thing.

Mark Normand 10:57 Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 10:58 And I think with the Dove thing, Dove maybe actually does feel a little bit like, um, a company that for a long time has been fighting for different beauty standards.

Mark Normand 11:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:07 They've done stuff with Skkin.

Mark Normand 11:08 That's true.

Chris Williamson 11:09 Um, uh, like trying to get representation for different girls. But if you're gonna fight the good fight, it doesn't feel like video games are the place that girls are looking-

Mark Normand 11:18 Yes.

Chris Williamson 11:18 ... to find their representation.

Mark Normand 11:20 Exactly. And they, there was no soap in that commercial.

Chris Williamson 11:23 (laughs)

Mark Normand 11:23 There was not one bar of soap, not a lather-

Chris Williamson 11:25 It was filthy.

Mark Normand 11:25 Not a lotion.

Chris Williamson 11:26 She looked filthy.

Mark Normand 11:26 Nothing. Yeah, exactly. It was just video gaming, and I'm like, I don't know, it- it's also weird that we have to shoehorn women... Sure, there are women gamers, I'm sure, but like-

Chris Williamson 11:35 (laughs)

Mark Normand 11:35 ... it doesn't feel like that's their, their big, uh, demo is these, these fat ladies. Like, like advertise on, uh, Vanderpump Rules. Like every lady I know, my wife included, has like six girls over, they're all watching it, I walk in, they're like, "Shh." You know, Vanderpump.

Chris Williamson 11:51 Selling, Selling Sunset or some other bullshit like that.

Mark Normand 11:53 Yes, yes, and I-

Chris Williamson 11:53 Yeah, what's the, what's the bigger girl on Selling Sunset?

Mark Normand 11:56 Exactly, exactly. But she's not there, which is also probably why it's doing well.

Chris Williamson 12:00 (laughs)

Mark Normand 12:00 You know, if it goes back to the Barbie, it's like Barbie's unrealistic and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, but who wants a realistic toy?" You know, but women think, they're gonna think they have to look like that. I'm like, "Maybe they wanna look like that." Or maybe, you know, uh, that's, that's okay if you wanna, like I, every superhero I had was jacked. I don't want a fat superhero.

Chris Williamson 12:19 Well, that was-

Mark Normand 12:19 I'm not jacked.

Chris Williamson 12:20 ... someone, so I put this out on Twitter earlier on and someone replied and said, um, they can't wait for a version of Kratos, you know, from God of War. Are you familiar with that guy?

Mark Normand 12:30 No, no.

Chris Williamson 12:30 It's like ja- just like a jacked god, god figure type guy.

Mark Normand 12:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:34 Can't wait for a skinny fat Kratos-

Mark Normand 12:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:36 ... or, um, Solid Snake-

Mark Normand 12:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 12:39 ... from, uh, f- to be creeping around but he's lost a foot due to diabetes.

Mark Normand 12:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:42 Like, I don't know, just, there, there seems to me-... i- if you need, uh, if you're so narcissistic that you need direct representation-

Mark Normand 12:49 Yes.

Chris Williamson 12:49 ... in your avatar in a computer game, there are bigger problems than simply having a fuller figured avatar are going to be able to fix.

Mark Normand 12:56 Yes, completely. And it's just human nature. We like to look at attractive things. I mean, every president who won has been taller. Every, I think maybe except for one, but it's always a taller guy who wins.

Chris Williamson 13:08 You're kidding.

Mark Normand 13:08 Full head of hair helps. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's in men too. Like we, we want our men looking the right way as well.

Chris Williamson 13:15 What was that? Was it Nixon? Did he do some famous, uh, debate?

Mark Normand 13:20 Yes.

Chris Williamson 13:20 And he was sw- one of them was sweaty and the other one wasn't sweaty?

Mark Normand 13:23 He did one on radio and won against Kennedy.

Chris Williamson 13:25 Right.

Mark Normand 13:26 'Cause you couldn't see h- how good looking Kennedy was. And then when, they w- TV aired it, Kennedy won.

Chris Williamson 13:32 That pretty privilege, man. Yeah, I don't know. I, I think it's just, it's such a shame that you have conversations that get captured by, like, th- there are much longer levers than trying to fix-

Mark Normand 13:43 Yes.

Chris Williamson 13:44 ... whether or not girls are being misrepresented in video games.

Mark Normand 13:47 Exactly. And let's talk to the ladies, see what they think also. It just, first of all, it feels so forced, but, oh, I forgot my point. You said something.

Chris Williamson 13:57 (laughs)

Mark Normand 13:57 Say, say what you said again. Maybe it'll jog it.

Chris Williamson 13:59 The, it, it-

Mark Normand 14:00 Oh, I got it back. Thank you.

Chris Williamson 14:01 (laughs)

Mark Normand 14:01 That's all I needed was your sweet, sweet en- uh, English voice. So, oh, I lost it again. Say it again. Start talking. Oh, I got it, I got it, I got it.

Chris Williamson 14:14 (laughs)

Mark Normand 14:14 So, that was real. But, uh, you mentioned the, the tin can. Where's that coming from?

Chris Williamson 14:19 Yep, yep.

Mark Normand 14:20 And then, like, here's a perfect example. Kaepernick. Everybody's blowing Kaepernick, he's kneeling, he hates police. I get it. Nike, the biggest example of all sweatshops, you know, we need the Asian fingers to make the shoes and all that.

Chris Williamson 14:33 Yeah.

Mark Normand 14:33 And you can overlook that because you're looking at the guy with the afro who's got the fist up and you go, "Hey, I'm a good person." But when you say to people, "Well, what about the sweatshop people?" They go, "Ah." And you're like, "No, no, no."

Chris Williamson 14:45 No.

Mark Normand 14:45 "You're not allowed to go 'ah' at me-"

Chris Williamson 14:47 (laughs)

Mark Normand 14:47 "... with the sweatshop and like Kaepernick." You have to, if you're such a morally good person and superior-

Chris Williamson 14:53 Correct.

Mark Normand 14:53 ... you have to agree to both. But they just, they just shut one out and that's where I get pissed.

Chris Williamson 14:58 Well, hypocrisy is just like the perfect, um, tool that people want to point out on the internet, right?

Mark Normand 15:04 Yes.

Chris Williamson 15:04 Because for the first time ever we have this, um, locked in stone history of every single thing that we've said precisely as we said it at the times that we said it. And it allows you to say, "Well, hang on, you're making this point now, but I can see that that's not exactly aligned-"

Mark Normand 15:20 Yes.

Chris Williamson 15:20 "... with what you used to say previously."

Mark Normand 15:21 Right.

Chris Williamson 15:22 So, one of my smart friends, the one that taught me about concept creep, he also taught me that in the modern world, our opinions and our deeds have never been further apart.

Mark Normand 15:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:32 In the past, any opinion and any deed would have ended up being stress tested at some point.

Mark Normand 15:36 Ah.

Chris Williamson 15:36 If you say that you're a good person in 20,000 years ago around the campfire and yet every time you go out hunting you don't bring back meat for everybody else, you just bring it for your family, eventually someone's going to go, "Well, come on, you keep, you keep saying that you're a good person."

Mark Normand 15:49 Right.

Chris Williamson 15:50 Whereas on Twitter, no one ever actually ends up scrutinizing the way that you show up in the real world.

Mark Normand 15:55 Ah-ha.

Chris Williamson 15:56 You can be the most empathetic, pro-female person in the world and you go home and beat your wife.

Mark Normand 16:01 Yes.

Chris Williamson 16:02 And nobody knows. Well, for the most part, nobody knows. And then when people get rumbled for it, that's why it feels so satisfying to us.

Mark Normand 16:08 Yes.

Chris Williamson 16:09 I, I think that it's because we have this sense that a lot of the people who push virtual, real virtual beauty or push digital black face as something that should genuinely be cared about-

Mark Normand 16:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:20 ... are just doing performative empathy. I don't think that we believe that it's true.

Mark Normand 16:24 Completely right, but the problem with the, the empathy is like when you're on the other side of it, well, like let's say you're Ellen who, you know (censored) . And her thing is like what you said because she was the happy, dancey, nice lady and then when we found out she was a, a koos, everybody flipped on her because she was performing. Uh, but the problem is Ellen could be like, "Well, I donate a million dollars to charity, I do all this, I help the homeless, I help old people," but we just know about the (censored) thing.

Chris Williamson 16:51 Yes.

Mark Normand 16:51 So you don't get that redeeming part and we love... Sam Harris had a great point, he said, "If, if the first time you hear about somebody is when they've done something wrong, maybe don't jump to hate them." That's the first thing you've heard about them? What about all the other good shit they did? But we don't care about that. We just go, "Oh, Michael J. Fox said 'fag' in '88, I've never heard of this guy." Like if you're some young person, "I've never heard of Michael J. Fox, I hate him now." And you're like, "You hate him now 'cause you heard one thing about him on the, in a headline?" But you just... yeah, you totally disregard his whole other life? It's crazy.

Chris Williamson 17:28 It's a shame that we sort of jump to conclusions so quickly and this difference between opinions and deeds, the fact that you're able to behave in one way and say a different thing and people will care about what you say more than what you do-

Mark Normand 17:42 Yes.

Chris Williamson 17:42 ... 'cause what you do is never seen.

Mark Normand 17:44 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 17:45 But it also means that when you do try and actually put some empathy across, that gets scrutinized too.

Mark Normand 17:50 Hm.

Chris Williamson 17:50 "Oh, well, maybe you're just doing this becau-" "No, I genuinely care."

Mark Normand 17:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:53 "I care about this movement or I care about this group of people. This is me being earnest or, or vulnerable or open and not for some perverse reason. I'm doing this because I actually care about a thing."

Mark Normand 18:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:03 And immediately people use the same, uh, idea, the methodology, the skepticism they have about all the other shit from all of the other people that have been doing the concept creep supply-demand bullshit and then they apply it to you and you go, "Well, God," like, uh, and I think that disincentivizes people from doing-

Mark Normand 18:19 Completely.

Chris Williamson 18:20 ... genuine-

Mark Normand 18:20 Completely.

Chris Williamson 18:21 ... like, altruism as well.

Mark Normand 18:22 I agree. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a tough time. Makes people just not want to do anything and just hang back so they don't get yelled at.

Chris Williamson 18:29 You seem to be quite a positive person generally.

Mark Normand 18:32 Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Chris Williamson 18:33 How do you avoid getting drawn into cynicism and there is this sort of culture of negativity and, and cynicism-

Mark Normand 18:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:41 ... on the internet. What's your prophylactic against that? What do you... what, what condom are you wearing?

Mark Normand 18:45 Well, I hear the, uh, the old post and ghost. I- I'm big on that and uh-... my friend, he works with Louis C.K. a lot, so he gets a lot of hate, you know. So he just started blocking everybody and he's like, "I don't even hear them anymore. Like, anybody who says one thing, I just start blocking them on Twitter or whatever." And, uh, so it just eventually he kind of like cleaned it out.

Chris Williamson 19:06 Mm-hmm.

Mark Normand 19:06 And I'm like, "That's pretty good, but you still have to go in and, and read it to block it."

Chris Williamson 19:10 Yep.

Mark Normand 19:10 So I don't wanna do that, so I just kind of, I let it go and I'm, there's, I'm sure there's fires going on all over and I just try to put it out of my mind.

Chris Williamson 19:18 And that protects your mental space relatively well, it seems?

Mark Normand 19:22 Relatively well. I mean, I've definitely had my, my weeks of like sleepless nights where I'm like, "This guy said this." Ugh, it taps into some fucked up thought you had about yourself and it validates all the evil thoughts you have and then it just, it just mushroom clouds in your brain and you're in the shower going, "Uh, maybe I am attracted to kids," you know?

Chris Williamson 19:41 (laughs)

Mark Normand 19:41 Or whatever the fuck. And I'm, I'm not but, uh, you know, people can just get in your head and... You know, w- when I was 15 I was like, "Am I gay? Maybe I'm gay. Am I gay?" And I had this friend who was super hot and ripped and I blew up. No. But I had this friend, he was super hot and I kept being like, "Am I attracted to him? I don't know. I don't know." And it's the sa-... You can do that with anything. Like, "Am I racist? What the hell?" And I'm like hanging out with a bunch of Black guys last night at The Mothership and you're just like, "What am I t-... I'm not racist." But you just, your brain can go to these fucked up places, especially mine. Mine can really turn on me.

Chris Williamson 20:15 It's so funny that you can question your own like sense of self-

Mark Normand 20:20 Completely.

Chris Williamson 20:20 ... because of what somebody's just prodded or poked you in the direction-

Mark Normand 20:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:24 ... of at the right time.

Mark Normand 20:24 And that's really what Twitter is. It's this weird little prodding and, uh, as Colin Quinn describes it as you're giving yourself schizophrenia because it's literally eight million opinions and you're just absorbing all of them. And that's what schizophrenia is, just 800 voices going off all the time and you're like-

Chris Williamson 20:40 Crowdsourcing personal insults from the internet.

Mark Normand 20:42 (laughs) Yes, yes. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 20:43 Yeah. What was it that Sam, Sam Harris said? That, um, uh, being on Twitter is like the most malignant form of telepathy ever that only allows you into the worst of everybody else's thoughts.

Mark Normand 20:52 Wow.

Chris Williamson 20:53 Like, classic, classic wordsmithing from-

Mark Normand 20:56 He's the king.

Chris Williamson 20:56 ... Mr. Harris. Yeah.

Mark Normand 20:57 He is the best. I mean, there's not a lot of positivity. There's not a lot of like, "I had a great day today. Just had a hell of a turkey sandwich and I got a great... My ass got eaten."

Chris Williamson 21:05 (laughs)

Mark Normand 21:05 You don't really see that on Twitter, you know? It's just, you know, "Ah, this guy's racist. He's a b- a piece of shit." Whatever.

Chris Williamson 21:11 Yeah, that's an idea for a future tweet. You can throw that out, talking about-

Mark Normand 21:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:14 ... whatever it is that you've eaten and then wha- when you've been eaten.

Mark Normand 21:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:17 Yeah, I think avoiding the cynicism thing is... It's a tough one, man, and I really, I'm really trying to sort of slowly nudge myself away from it. I'm really trying to rail against it.

Mark Normand 21:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:25 I'm just seeing what happens if you do try and give people a little bit more hope. You know, uh, Michael Malice. Are you familiar with Michael Malice?

Mark Normand 21:32 Oh, yeah. Yeah, smart guy.

Chris Williamson 21:34 Yeah, so he, he wrote this book about, um, the period fr- from sort of 1920, 1910 up to 1990 in Russia and it's all about the, the absolute terrors of communism and famine and all sorts of crazy fuckery. His point was we thought that this was the worst that the world could ev- ever get, this is how low things sank, these are the terrible stories of famine and prisoner mistreatment and children and all this sort of stuff, and the good guys won.

Mark Normand 22:05 Oh, great.

Chris Williamson 22:05 So his, his argument, it was called The White Pill, the book, and the reason for that was that he said if you think that the evil people always win, (clears throat) here is the most stark example of the evil people losing.

Mark Normand 22:17 Oh, thank God. But the problem is it took 90 years or whatever you said.

Chris Williamson 22:20 Sure.

Mark Normand 22:21 That's the problem, is you want it to happen next week but it, it takes so long and then, you know, like Black people were marginalized and oppressed and all this and now I feel like they're doing, doing well, uh, but now it's kind of like, "Fuck Whitey," so we're gonna be in that for a while, then that'll go away, but it just, it just sucks when your, your life and your adulthood is like right in the middle of the shit part.

Chris Williamson 22:44 That's a really good point. I, I often, you know... There was this really interesting study I remember seeing ages ago that looked at the difference if you were born in I want to say 1920 or 1930.

Mark Normand 22:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:55 And if you were born in 1920, you grew up during the formative years when you needed nutrition, being the Great Depression-

Mark Normand 23:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:04 ... then by the time-

Mark Normand 23:05 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:05 ... that the war came around, you were conscripted to go and fight.

Mark Normand 23:08 Yes.

Chris Williamson 23:08 And then let's say that you survived both of those traumas. You finally came out and, like, died in the '70s or some shit like that, let's say. Whereas if you were born in 1930, you got to... You weren't conscripted, you came out the other side, you got to live most of your glory years through swinging '60s-

Mark Normand 23:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:24 ... '70s, psychedelic revolution-

Mark Normand 23:26 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:26 ... you know, uh, i- increased equality, all this sort of stuff. And, um, yeah, I do wonder sometimes, in retrospect, what am I going to think about the generation that I was a part of?

Mark Normand 23:35 Totally. Throw in a pandemic, throw in 9/11, throw in, uh, the George Floyd stuff. Like, it's a wild time. But, you know, the '60s were wild. They had MLK got shot, they went to the moon, uh, Vietnam. So there, there's always, uh, there's always bad shit but the problem is this is new bad shit with the internet. This is all unprecedented.

Chris Williamson 23:56 Yeah.

Mark Normand 23:56 You know?

Chris Williamson 23:56 Novel, novel problems.

Mark Normand 23:57 Yes, yes. So we're s- not only are we figuring out how to deal with it, we don't know what the hell it is and it's, it's all new and kids are killing themselves and girls are depressed and, you know-

Chris Williamson 24:07 Hey, have you seen that?

Mark Normand 24:07 ... are addicted.

Chris Williamson 24:08 That 60% of teenage girls say that they have persistent or regular feelings of hopelessness.

Mark Normand 24:13 Unbelievable. It's so sad and... You know, like the '60s you mentioned, growing up then or in the '20s and then the '30s and the Depression and all that, World War I, II, I bet they were happier.

Chris Williamson 24:24 You think?

Mark Normand 24:25 I bet they were happier because you had a goal. It's like Depression, got to get bread, got to get food, got to get some water. Now I'm in World War I. Got to stay alive, got to stay alive. Now it's World... You got to stay alive, you know? The, the, the air raids. Rah, rah. You know, I think that was at least somewhat we have a common enemy, we got a common goal to survive. Now it's just like this looming cloud of sadness and like, "Did I get enough clicks and is this person gonna drag me online?" And, you know, it's this, it's this weird kind of ungrabable sadness.

Chris Williamson 24:58 Yeah.

Mark Normand 24:58 Whereas before it was very like-... "The Russians are gonna shoot us."

Chris Williamson 25:01 Yup.

Mark Normand 25:01 Or "Hitler's bad," or whatever.

Chris Williamson 25:03 Ambient anxiety.

Mark Normand 25:04 Hey, that's good.

Chris Williamson 25:06 There it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Normand 25:06 We're in AA.

Chris Williamson 25:07 And, but it's the, uh, uh, I totally get the, um, the directionlessness. The fact that you don't have a single, call it an enemy or a life goal or-

Mark Normand 25:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:14 ... you know, direction that you're moving toward means that you kind of just get distracted by everything. And, uh, I think m- a lot of people have this sense that a lot of their mental time and their sanity is taken up worrying about things that probably don't matter.

Mark Normand 25:26 Yes.

Chris Williamson 25:27 Right? The, just the number of cycles that your brain goes through per day having thoughts that tomorrow you're not going to be glad that you had.

Mark Normand 25:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:33 Can't remember who, who it was that says, um, uh, "The bizarre thing about life is that it has to be lived forward, but only makes sense in reverse."

Mark Normand 25:40 Ooh, that's good.

Chris Williamson 25:42 And when you think about the fact that, you know, you look back over the last five years of your life, uh, maybe from 10 years ago until five years ago, you can kind of, "Oh, yeah, well, I understand. I was, I was here, and that's why I was here, and then this thing happened, and then th- uh, that changed me," and then whatever.

Mark Normand 25:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:55 And then you look at now and you go, "What the fuck am I doing?"

Mark Normand 25:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:57 Like, "Why, what, why, what, what are all of these different contributing elements, and am I doing it right? Am I doing it right?"

Mark Normand 26:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:03 "I might be doing it wrong, and I-"

Mark Normand 26:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:04 "... Should I be doing it? Should I even change it?"

Mark Normand 26:06 Exactly. I know, it's, uh, it's tough because you know, you know when you get into a, a relationship and you're like, "Man, I, I wanna get out. I hate this girl. She hates me. All we do is fight." And then you break up and you're like, "I miss her. I love her so much. The relationship was perfect." And I think we're gonna look back on it like that. Like, right now it's like this looming, what did you say? Ambient-

Chris Williamson 26:26 Ambient anxiety.

Mark Normand 26:26 Ambient anxiety, which sucks, and I, it, it's always in my brain, and I hate it, and I can't shake it. But, I think when I'm 80 I'm gonna look back and go, "Man, the internet. Those were wild time. Porn, uh, OnlyFans, uh, Stormy Daniels, Rachel Dolv-" We're gonna look back and go, "Wow, that was fucking nuts." 'Cause we're not gonna remember all the ambient anxiety.

Chris Williamson 26:44 You still gonna be thinking about Stormy Daniels when you're 80?

Mark Normand 26:47 Oh, I, I like to jerk off to her 'cause I, I know her. It's fun to jerk off-

Chris Williamson 26:50 (laughs)

Mark Normand 26:50 ... to someone who's on the news.

Chris Williamson 26:51 (laughs)

Mark Normand 26:52 You know? You get to see the CNN story and then go right to her, like-

Chris Williamson 26:57 You can text her. You can text her straight away.

Mark Normand 26:58 (laughs) Yeah, yeah. So, uh, it's, it's a kooky time, but I think you gotta just press on. And my thing is, I use the internet, like, you wanna fuck with my head? Well, I'm gonna use you and get everything I can get out of you. Meaning, like, post clips, do podcasts, share everything, reach a bigger audience. So there are perks. It's like fire. It can burn your house down, but it can cook you food.

Chris Williamson 27:21 Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I think, um, loo- looking at how to use the internet more healthily is a, a challenge for everybody that's trying to make anything, right?

Mark Normand 27:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:32 Because as soon as you post something, there's inevitable criticism.

Mark Normand 27:35 I know.

Chris Williamson 27:35 And posting Ghost's not a bad solution for that. Or just do a, uh, SAM and completely torpedo your entire account, and just exit, exit the internet at large. That's another solution, I guess.

Mark Normand 27:45 That's, my friend did that and he lost 30 pounds. He's, like, h- happier. He sees his kids more. 'Cause when you really look at your phone and think about it, like, you get that screen time thing, oh, what a kick in the balls that is.

Chris Williamson 27:58 Definitely.

Mark Normand 27:58 That hurts. My wife's always like, "I have no time," and I'm like, "I watched you look at TikTok for two hours."

Chris Williamson 28:03 (laughs)

Mark Normand 28:03 Two hour ... You could've watched a movie, you could've read a book, you could've flown to, to, to Florida.

Chris Williamson 28:10 Uh, or, or not.

Mark Normand 28:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:11 AI companions are being created to fill the role of sexy and playful girlfriend.

Mark Normand 28:17 Uh-oh. This is bad.

Chris Williamson 28:17 Amouranth is an OnlyFans content creator who is one of the most followed women on Twitch, and now she's releasing an AI companion of herself called AI Amouranth so her fans can interact with a version of her. They can chat with her, ask questions, and even receive voice, voice responses.

Mark Normand 28:32 Oh, no. I mean, guys are fucked.

Chris Williamson 28:34 (laughs)

Mark Normand 28:34 Young dudes are fucked. It's not good because you used to, young, uglier, you know, what is it? The top percentag- 10% of guys who all get laid, and then the rest are just incels, school shooters, and, uh, you know, basement dwellers.

Chris Williamson 28:48 McMillan fans.

Mark Normand 28:48 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 28:49 (laughs)

Mark Normand 28:49 Yeah, exactly. So those guys are all gonna turn to this. Uh, the, the path of least resistance always wins.

Chris Williamson 28:56 So, one of the pushbacks that I spoke to, one of my friends, William Costello, about this, evolutionary psychology guy, the problem you have with AI girlfriends-

Mark Normand 29:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:05 ... is that there is no prestige associated in having one because there's no process of selection.

Mark Normand 29:11 Ah-ha.

Chris Williamson 29:12 It's the same way, it's the same way as saying, um, "I subscribe to Amouranth's OnlyFans account. Aren't I so special?" And you go, "Well, anybody who has the price of a spare cheeseburger per month can subscribe to the OnlyFans, so it doesn't-"

Mark Normand 29:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:26 "... make you special." So-

Mark Normand 29:27 Yeah, that's good.

Chris Williamson 29:28 ... his, his thought, like his slight white pill that's in there is it should be able to salve people that are very lonely, but it's not going to take the place of genuine females because it's not sufficiently satisfying. There's no prestige because you're not being selected, and the selection thing is very important.

Mark Normand 29:44 I completely agree. And that's good that we, if we start praising these guys, like, "My AI girlfriend's hotter than your AI girlfriend."

Chris Williamson 29:50 (laughs)

Mark Normand 29:50 Then we're fucked. But the fact that it's not impressive is a good sign 'cause that means it won't be, it won't be, uh, praised.

Chris Williamson 29:57 With AI Amouranth, fans will receive instant voice responses to any burning question they may have. Whether it's a fleeting curiosity or a profound desire, Amouranth's AI counterpart will be there to provide assistance. I got a Chris bot made, not that people can access, but that I can use for asking it questions on Q&As, and, uh, I used it, and the ease that these guys can do, so they can just take every podcast episode that you've ever been on-

Mark Normand 30:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:23 ... run that through a language learning model, and there you go. There's a moderately accurate Mark, Digi- DigiMark.

Mark Normand 30:29 Oh, my God.

Chris Williamson 30:30 Mark bot.

Mark Normand 30:30 That's a bummer.

Chris Williamson 30:31 Yeah.

Mark Normand 30:32 Sorry, folks.

Chris Williamson 30:32 Yeah.

Mark Normand 30:33 You don't want two of this.

Chris Williamson 30:34 (laughs)

Mark Normand 30:34 That's not good.

Chris Williamson 30:35 Could you imagine how ridiculous a AI version of you would be?

Mark Normand 30:40 Oh, God. I know. I'd be late, first of all, but, uh-

Chris Williamson 30:43 (laughs) Even the AI wants to be late. Yeah.

Mark Normand 30:45 (laughs) Uh, but I heard a comic go on stage, 'cause all these comics are worried about AI, and he did, "I'm gonna read a, uh, a joke I wrote and a joke that AI wrote in my voice, and you see if you can tell." And he, and he did both, and his joke was so much better, and it made me feel a lot of relief.

Chris Williamson 31:01 Uh, you're still, uh, light years ahead of what the AI bot can write?

Mark Normand 31:05 Yeah, because joke, comedy's all context, you know? And-... computers can't feel context and I think that's, that's a big part of it. Uh, a computer can have a twist and a set up and a punch but it doesn't, doesn't have that little ... You know, when a joke bombs, as a comedian you go, "Well, that bombed," and that gets a laugh. But a- I don't think AI could do that.

Chris Williamson 31:25 Someone said on a podcast I was listening to, "We'll know that AIs are fully conscious when it exits the interaction and regrets not saying the funny thing that it should have done as it's on its way down the ass."

Mark Normand 31:37 (laughs) Wow, that's brilliant.

Chris Williamson 31:39 Yeah.

Mark Normand 31:39 That's killer. But, like, here's a great, here's a great old joke. Uh, you know the... This is Junior Stopka's joke, brilliant comedian. He goes, uh, "The Holocaust actually had a lot of mentally-challenged people in it but you never see pictures of them because they're all smiling." And it's a great joke but AI could never be that twisted to think of that. And that's why I love comedy.

Chris Williamson 32:02 There was a, uh, a... Is it called Dark... Is it called Dark Bot?

Mark Normand 32:07 Uh-oh.

Chris Williamson 32:08 Which it, they tried to do a, a version of ChatGPT but the whole thing was trained on the Dark Net as opposed to on the surface web.

Mark Normand 32:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:16 So this is all of the fucked up, only access, custom access forums and, like, dark versions of 4chan and shit like that.

Mark Normand 32:24 Mm.

Chris Williamson 32:24 And they trained this thing on that. And, I don't know, maybe that'll be able to do the, the fucked up jokes. I'm not sure. But-

Mark Normand 32:29 Maybe, I hope not.

Chris Williamson 32:30 ... I think I would be worried if I was a YouTube thumbnail creator, if I was a middling, uh, legal sort of litigation person or-

Mark Normand 32:43 Yes, that's the worry.

Chris Williamson 32:45 ... if I was... Yeah. Or if I was, like, maybe a, a radiologist that's looking at scans that are kind of relatively easy-

Mark Normand 32:52 Ah.

Chris Williamson 32:52 ... to break down. So those kind of, you know, they're still quite complex jobs, but those jobs that are a little bit more automated-

Mark Normand 32:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:59 ... I think comedy is probably gonna be one of the ones that's safer a little bit longer at least.

Mark Normand 33:03 Totally. And you like a guy or a gal, you know, you go, "I like Ali Wong," you know, even if, uh, "I don't love that last joke she said," or whatever, you just like her or you relate to her or you connect with her. And I think with a radiologist there's no, none of that.

Chris Williamson 33:16 Yes.

Mark Normand 33:17 You know?

Chris Williamson 33:17 So it's not just the context of the joke, it's the context of the person that tells the joke.

Mark Normand 33:20 Completely. You know, people go, "Joe Rogan, that's my guy."

Chris Williamson 33:23 Yeah.

Mark Normand 33:23 "That's my guy. He's, he's, he's... He fits for me," you know?

Chris Williamson 33:25 Would happily laugh at something even if it was totally shit.

Mark Normand 33:28 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 33:29 Just because they've, they've got this warm feel-... Yeah, I mean, I, I saw Joe do a set, it was maybe the first one that I saw of him, and, uh, at least, mm, I would say 20% of it was storytelling.

Mark Normand 33:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 33:41 You know, there, there was... It was humorous or whatever, but it was like, he did this bit about... Is it k-... What's the animal that's got... The females have got like a clit dick? Is that a coyote or a...

Mark Normand 33:50 Oh, is that, um, a laugh... Hyena?

Chris Williamson 33:53 Hyena? Maybe, yeah.

Mark Normand 33:54 Maybe a hyena.

Chris Williamson 33:54 Maybe a hyena. And you're like, you're hearing him talk and it's kind of entertaining.

Mark Normand 33:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:58 But we're like 90 minutes into learning about the-

Mark Normand 34:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:00 ... you know, like the unique physiology of female hyenas or something.

Mark Normand 34:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:04 I'm like, this is just a, a miniature version of, of the podcast.

Mark Normand 34:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 34:08 So it's not necessarily even to do with the joke.

Mark Normand 34:11 Right.

Chris Williamson 34:11 So a lot of the time people go because they just feel comfortable-

Mark Normand 34:14 Yes.

Chris Williamson 34:14 ... listening to this person speak, "Oh, this is familiar."

Mark Normand 34:17 Also, you know Joe actually gives a shit about that.

Chris Williamson 34:20 Yes.

Mark Normand 34:20 And that makes you give a shit a little more. Like, he's not, "This, this is kind of funny." Like, he's actually interested in that hyena clit.

Chris Williamson 34:27 Yes.

Mark Normand 34:28 So that helps.

Chris Williamson 34:29 (laughs)

Mark Normand 34:29 (laughs) Um, but like Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, I don't know anything about Tom Hanks, but we love him. We love Tom Hanks. If he's in a movie, you just... It bumps up the box office tenfold because we all love Tom Hanks. We know zero about him.

Chris Williamson 34:42 Yeah.

Mark Normand 34:42 Except that he's been a retard, a, a military guy, a baseball player, you know, an astronaut, but I don't know anything about... Does he like chocolate? Is he a pedophile or whatever, you know? But you like him.

Chris Williamson 34:55 Have you ever been down the Tom Hanks is part of the Illuminati rabbit hole?

Mark Normand 34:59 I don't wanna go. That's terrifying.

Chris Williamson 35:01 Oh, well, we're going, so-

Mark Normand 35:02 I don't even know what the Illuminati is.

Chris Williamson 35:03 Me neither.

Mark Normand 35:03 It's the guys in a room with masks on fucking?

Chris Williamson 35:05 This one, if anybody wants to look at it, google, uh, Tom Hanks glove Instagram photo.

Mark Normand 35:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:13 So there's a sequence of people that take photos, famous people that take photos, and I think Tom was taking photos of lost gloves.

Mark Normand 35:20 Ah.

Chris Williamson 35:20 That was his thing. So he'd see one on the street and he'd take a photo and he'd put it on his Instagram. And in a bunch of the different photos people had found a chalk text that had been written-

Mark Normand 35:29 Mm.

Chris Williamson 35:29 ... on the floor below it and it's downtown fucking Denver or some shit. So, you know, it could just be anything. But people then started putting these codes in on the internet and bro, it's such a rabbit hole. It's fucking-

Mark Normand 35:41 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:41 It's terrifying. It's so interesting.

Mark Normand 35:43 That's terrifying. Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't wanna go.

Chris Williamson 35:45 You seen Tom Hanks' son, Chet?

Mark Normand 35:47 I love that guy.

Chris Williamson 35:48 Wild dude.

Mark Normand 35:48 Hilarious.

Chris Williamson 35:49 Absolutely wild dude.

Mark Normand 35:51 I love that guy. Good for him. He, when he, when he stopped that lady, he's like, "Yeah, yeah, I don't give a fuck." And she's like, "You just think it's this, this..." He's like, "Yeah, that's what I think it is." And I was like, "Yeah, fuck this lady."

Chris Williamson 36:01 Have you, uh, have you ever had people kind of try and, uh, no, um, flummox you in... I don't know how much newsy, interviewee, real press shit you do.

Mark Normand 36:11 Not a ton, but I- I've definitely had people like, "So you think this?" And they keep trying to gotcha you and you're like, "What are we doing here? I thought we were just gonna hang out and talk or, or be funny." And they're like, "But you, you... So you're saying..." A lot of, "So you're saying." I'm like, "No, I'm not saying that at all. Stop telling me what I'm thinking."

Chris Williamson 36:25 (laughs)

Mark Normand 36:25 You know, but that's what we do because they want that clip or they want that, that win and it's a real bummer, you know? "So you, uh, you think ivermectin is whatever?" I'm like, "I'll just say it's a Pulitzer Prize winning drug, it's taken by millions." "Oh, so you don't think it's horse p..." I'm like, "You haven't heard of ivermectin until two days ago and now you're, like, wildly angry about it?" You know, like, I'm not the weirdo here. You're the weirdo.

Chris Williamson 36:49 (laughs)

Mark Normand 36:49 I, I, I'm, I'm agnostic. I don't give a shit. I'm neutral.

Chris Williamson 36:52 Speaking of, uh-

Mark Normand 36:53 I try to stay neutral.

Chris Williamson 36:55 ... Forrest Gump and Tom Hanks, one of my friends is running across America at the moment.

Mark Normand 36:58 Mm.

Chris Williamson 36:59 So he's doing, uh, 64, 65 days, 50 miles a day, so I think a few thousand people have been to the top of Everest.

Mark Normand 37:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:07 300 people have run across America.

Mark Normand 37:09 Wow.

Chris Williamson 37:10 Yeah. So he's gonna be the fastest .......................... Will Googe. Um, if-

Mark Normand 37:12 Will Googe?

Chris Williamson 37:14 Hey. Uh, if people wanna go and check him out, they can google Will Googe in support the run and shit like that. But he's in... Where is he now? He's in the Appalachian Mountains-

Mark Normand 37:22 Wow.

Chris Williamson 37:22 ... in Pennsylvania. He's going from, uh, LA to New York.

Mark Normand 37:26 Good for him. Have you heard this new thing taking over where people do a 12-hour walk?

Chris Williamson 37:30 Yes, one of my friends did this on Sunday.

Mark Normand 37:32 Really?

Chris Williamson 37:32 Yep.

Mark Normand 37:33 And they say after about six, seven hours, first of all your feet are bleeding, you know, but your brain goes to these places 'cause we're so used to just being constantly entertained, phone, screen, computer, TV, Netflix. But it just go, "Oh, third grade teacher. Oh, summer camp." And you just go to these crazy memory banks and it's pretty wild.

Chris Williamson 37:53 All of the times that you were molested is gonna come back up.

Mark Normand 37:55 (laughs) Yeah, yeah. I don't need to walk for that.

Chris Williamson 37:58 (laughs)

Mark Normand 37:58 Um, but I think, uh, th- this is the new craze is this like shutting down, Amish, uh, full on-

Chris Williamson 38:06 Disconnect.

Mark Normand 38:07 ... disconnect.

Chris Williamson 38:07 Well, what's that, what's that Jewish thing that people... Shabbat is it? What's the thing where they-

Mark Normand 38:11 That is something. Shabbat shalom?

Chris Williamson 38:13 ... where they do, uh, they don't use any-

Mark Normand 38:15 The Sabbath.

Chris Williamson 38:16 Kind of, I think. I'm pretty sure it's called Shabbat.

Mark Normand 38:18 Okay.

Chris Williamson 38:18 Anyway, it's from Friday evening until I think Saturday and they don't turn on any lights, they don't do any work, they don't blah, blah, blah. But I'm pretty sure that in really, really hardcore, uh, Jewish households for some of the things that they need to do, they have... It's almost like a Shabbat servant-

Mark Normand 38:36 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:36 ... to do things like turning on-

Mark Normand 38:38 Yes.

Chris Williamson 38:38 ... and off the oven.

Mark Normand 38:39 It's a weird loophole.

Chris Williamson 38:39 I mean, I haven't made this up, right?

Mark Normand 38:40 No, no. They'll-

Chris Williamson 38:41 Right.

Mark Normand 38:41 People in Brooklyn, these Orthodox guys, are like, "Can you come in here and turn the light on?"

Chris Williamson 38:45 You're kidding.

Mark Normand 38:45 I swear to God.

Chris Williamson 38:46 You're kidding me.

Mark Normand 38:46 'Cause they can't do it. So some, some kid in the neighborhood's like, "All right," and just flips it on.

Chris Williamson 38:52 That's so funny.

Mark Normand 38:53 It's so silly. Religion is, has so many dumb loopholes and stuff like that.

Chris Williamson 38:58 Where are you living now in New York?

Mark Normand 38:59 I'm in the West Village, um, Manhattan.

Chris Williamson 39:01 Okay. So is that on the island?

Mark Normand 39:03 On the island, baby. You know, Greenwich Village. That's Bob Dylan, Bleaker Street, Washington Square Park, uh, the Comedy Cellar, the whole thing, NYU.

Chris Williamson 39:11 Did you purposefully pick the distance from that to the Cellars-

Mark Normand 39:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:14 ... so that you didn't have to go too far to work?

Mark Normand 39:16 Well, I've always wanted to live in the Village just being a kid growing up in the South just thinking about it, uh, Greenwich Village, wow, you know, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, all the other, uh, rapists.

Chris Williamson 39:25 (laughs)

Mark Normand 39:25 But, uh, you know, they would all play these coffee houses and, and all that stuff. So Beatnik and folk music and all that. So I, I always loved it. So I moved to New York, lived in Brooklyn, way out, got mugged, got beat up, all that shit, bedbugs, and then slowly moved my way to Greenwich Village.

Chris Williamson 39:43 I saw this story

Chris Williamson 39:45 from some girl in New York. Women are wearing a safety layer over their outfits in public to deter creepy men with many labeling it's sad but necessary. This girl captioned the clip, uh, "The real fit is underneath." Apparently it's because of weird men on the underground. Others who hadn't heard of this trend expressed how sad but necessary it is. This is sad. Someone else called it, uh, what's it called? A f- s- fashion safety layer or the men blocker.

Mark Normand 40:12 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 40:14 But there's all of these stories about just how bad New York subway is at the moment.

Mark Normand 40:19 Totally, yeah. It's pretty-

Chris Williamson 40:19 Have you been on it recently?

Mark Normand 40:20 Yeah, I go every day. It's pretty dicey. You know-

Chris Williamson 40:23 Really?

Mark Normand 40:23 We just had-

Chris Williamson 40:23 Like, what's it like? People that live in, I don't know, London where the underground is absolutely fine or-

Mark Normand 40:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:28 ... Tokyo where it's also absolutely fine, what, what's the experience of getting on the subway like at the moment?

Mark Normand 40:32 Well, the thing with the subway is there's a, there's a... The hobo count went up way m- way high after the pandemic and so the subway is a place where you have a trapped person. Like, you know, you bump into a guy on the sidewalk on Broadway and he's like, "Give me your money or I'll kill you," whatever. You're like, "All right." Just keep walking. But the subway, you're waiting for the train or you're on the train. So I think hobos have been like, "I can get people there." The doors are closed, you know? You'd have to run up the stairs or wait for the subway to stop. So I think it started out as like, "Now they're on the subway, I can get money out of them," but now it's kind of like, "I'll also fight you."

Chris Williamson 41:06 Why did the population increase?

Mark Normand 41:08 I think all the people moved out or stayed indoors during the pandemic so the homeless kind of got a little more brazen and like, "We have the city to ourselves."

Chris Williamson 41:18 What was that award ceremony where there was tons of homeless people? Was it the Golden Globes or the Oscars or something and they had to sh-

Mark Normand 41:24 Probably.

Chris Williamson 41:25 They had to shift a ton of-

Mark Normand 41:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:27 ... people out that were living in there? There was like a bunch of homeless people.

Mark Normand 41:30 A lot of tent, tent homes and stuff and they had to-

Chris Williamson 41:32 Yeah.

Mark Normand 41:33 They had to shovel them all to the side.

Chris Williamson 41:34 Get out of the way of Leonardo DiCaprio's coming-

Mark Normand 41:35 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 41:36 ... with his 24-year-old girlfriend.

Mark Normand 41:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:36 And then once he's gotten through, they're fine.

Mark Normand 41:38 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 41:39 Yeah, well, there was that story about that guy who restrained a, a dude that was under warrant and arrest and all this stuff and now he's, it's not looking too good for him.

Mark Normand 41:49 That guy went from hero to, to murderer in like one second.

Chris Williamson 41:53 Yeah, fuck.

Mark Normand 41:54 Brutal.

Chris Williamson 41:54 And that's not uncommon to see. Well, I mean, I'm sure that someone killing somebody on the, or r- restraining somebody to death, uh, is uncommon but like aggression and, and physicality and stuff-

Mark Normand 42:04 No, not uncommon at all. People getting pushed on the tracks. Uh, just getting... I have friends who just got randomly punched in the head, you know? It's just, it's just crazy people out and about mingling with millions of New Yorkers. So it's, there's gonna be some tension, some friction.

Chris Williamson 42:20 It's wild, the, especially if you think coming from the UK where we have the underground tons, you know, it's not as big as New York but it's not far off. Loads of tracks, everything's complex, different layers. It's the same, it's the same system.

Mark Normand 42:32 Yeah, the Tube.

Chris Williamson 42:33 And it's lovely.

Mark Normand 42:35 Yeah, it's great.

Chris Williamson 42:36 It's like an almost pleasant experience.

Mark Normand 42:37 Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:38 Borderline pleasant.

Mark Normand 42:39 No, this is, uh, this is like head on a swivel all the time.

Chris Williamson 42:42 I had a conversation with a friend a couple of nights ago and he was in, he lives in Tokyo and as he gets on a train he was having to text me on WhatsApp in response to my conversation through his AirPods-

Mark Normand 42:56 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:56 ... because nobody speaks. You're not, you don't speak.

Mark Normand 42:58 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 42:58 No one speaks.

Mark Normand 42:59 Is that right?

Chris Williamson 43:00 No one speaks.

Mark Normand 43:01 Wow.

Chris Williamson 43:01 And he was so concerned. Like, there were some things where he was finding it, it, we were talking and he was laughing so I could hear him stifling a laugh, doing like a whisper laugh whilst on-

Mark Normand 43:10 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 43:10 ... the subway 'cause he didn't wanna make any noise.

Mark Normand 43:12 That, that's a little much.

Chris Williamson 43:13 Yes.

Mark Normand 43:13 You know, I'd rather be somewhere in the middle of the choking out-

Chris Williamson 43:16 (laughs)

Mark Normand 43:16 ... and the texting. But I, I... That leads to a lot of repression too. Like I-

Chris Williamson 43:21 My point, my point being that you can be very civilized.

Mark Normand 43:23 Yes.

Chris Williamson 43:23 Like with the right culture you're able to control-

Mark Normand 43:25 Completely.

Chris Williamson 43:25 ... behavior pretty well. So for people to say-... it's inevitable if you've got a ton of people living in a city and they're all going to be underground. You know, the- like they, they, it's just, it's par for the course. What do you expect them to do?

Mark Normand 43:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:37 You go, well, like, e- behave in any way that the rest of the world does-

Mark Normand 43:41 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 43:41 ... maybe?

Mark Normand 43:42 Yeah. I know. Uh, it'd be nice, but that's just not part of the culture. And as much as we shit on America and America's racist and full of hate and bigoted and gun-toting fat people, which there are, we're pretty considerate and pretty, uh, lenient with, uh, nut jobs.

Chris Williamson 44:00 (laughs)

Mark Normand 44:00 Where in China or Japan, I feel like if some guy's wearing tattered clothes and smells like shit and going, "Ah, I'm gonna kill all of you," they'll just fucking knock that guy out, put him in a sack, tase him-

Chris Williamson 44:10 (laughs)

Mark Normand 44:10 ... and throw him over the bridge.

Chris Williamson 44:11 No, he's gonna make your shoes.

Mark Normand 44:12 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, or that.

Chris Williamson 44:13 Strap him to a desk and make your shoes. There's this, uh, company called Nine Line Apparel and they just did... The owner just found out about... They did a, a test on the fabric of a particular, um, garment supplier and they were able to trace all of the garments back to Uyghur workers.

Mark Normand 44:31 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 44:32 And it was sustainable, so it was supposed to be sustainably sourced, but it's not. And, uh-

Mark Normand 44:35 Wow.

Chris Williamson 44:36 Yeah, it's fucking crazy, dude. There's like millions of people maybe strapped to, literally tied to desks, just sewing cheap-

Mark Normand 44:46 Unreal.

Chris Williamson 44:47 ... fast fashion stuff. Right now, 2023. Right now.

Mark Normand 44:50 Unreal. And no one cares. No one's doing a thing about it. Not one tweet. Meanwhile, in America, nobody wants to work 'cause they're like, "I need healthcare, I need dental, I need free coffee, I need snacks, I need vacation time." Like my wife used to work at LinkedIn. I would go there. It was beautiful. I would hang out there. It was like pillows everywhere and espresso machines and candy and a, and like a, a, what do you call, ice cream booth, you know, and you could just go... I'm like this is... The chefs were making lunch every day. It was incredible.

Chris Williamson 45:20 Meanwhile, you got-

Mark Normand 45:22 Meanwhile, the Uyghurs are tied to the desk.

Chris Williamson 45:23 Yes. They're strapped to a desk.

Mark Normand 45:24 Yeah. They got the fucking suicide net outside the Apple company, Apple factory.

Chris Williamson 45:28 Have you seen, uh, the South Park episode where Cartman gets a job?

Mark Normand 45:33 No.

Chris Williamson 45:33 Oh, it's phenomenal. It's from this newest season, so.

Mark Normand 45:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:37 Uh, Butters gets a job at an ice cream parlor and Cartman's jealous because he wants a job as well.

Mark Normand 45:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:42 Butters is his referral and says, "That's okay," like, "you can come and work." But everyone's like, "Dude, he, this... He's not gonna last."

Mark Normand 45:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:47 And someone makes a bet that he won't last for two hours. And five minutes into the shift, the boss comes over and Cartman's sat on his phone and he says, "What are you doing?" He says, "I'm taking a mental health break."

Mark Normand 45:56 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:56 And then another five minutes later he says, "Oh, uh, it's, um," it's like, "take it easy Tuesday" and then, "I'm looking forwards to walk out early Wednesday."

Mark Normand 46:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:05 And like, it just... By the, by the end of it, he's ringing Butters from home whilst he's taking a mental health leave day saying, "You do know that we're earning all of this money for the ruthless guy that owns it, and we're the ones that are doing the work. We really should own that place."

Mark Normand 46:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:18 And, uh, they're on the money man. Like-

Mark Normand 46:20 It's... Those guys, they're, they're such geniuses 'cause they nail everything and are funny and they never do interviews or anything. So you don't really know how they think, but they just, they got it, they get it right every time.

Chris Williamson 46:30 Shit on everybody.

Mark Normand 46:31 Yeah. It's-

Chris Williamson 46:32 Yeah.

Mark Normand 46:32 It's beautiful and no one fucks with them 'cause they're a cartoon.

Chris Williamson 46:34 Yeah. Well, unless they put a image of Mohammed up, which they did-

Mark Normand 46:39 Ha, that's true.

Chris Williamson 46:40 ... for a little... You remember that?

Mark Normand 46:40 Yeah. That got ugly.

Chris Williamson 46:41 It was like what, eight years ago or something?

Mark Normand 46:43 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a whole nother... He's like the ultimate Karen, Mohammed.

Chris Williamson 46:47 (laughs)

Mark Normand 46:47 You know, he is like, "Hey, how dare you? We're gonna shut this thing down."

Chris Williamson 46:50 But it's not him.

Mark Normand 46:51 Oh yeah, it's true. But the, his, his, you know, lackeys.

Chris Williamson 46:54 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Normand 46:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:55 That is a... It was... They did Andrew Tate as well, appeared in the-

Mark Normand 46:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:59 ... in the last episode of South Park this season. So they started with, uh, Prince Harry-

Mark Normand 47:03 Oh.

Chris Williamson 47:04 ... and ended with Andrew Tate.

Mark Normand 47:05 Beautiful. I mean, there's a wealth of comedy out there now. It's so good. Meghan Markle and, you know, Dolezal, as I mentioned, Trump. It's just-

Chris Williamson 47:12 What's happening with Dolezal?

Mark Normand 47:13 She's on Only Fans.

Chris Williamson 47:15 You're kidding me.

Mark Normand 47:15 Oh, I'm a subscriber. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:18 Well, do you know what she's doing?

Mark Normand 47:20 Uh, you know, fingering, tits, the whole thing.

Chris Williamson 47:23 Fingering, tits?

Mark Normand 47:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:24 Yeah.

Mark Normand 47:24 Well, she's, she's going all in. She's, you know, it's a fetish and, and I use her as gifts 'cause it's not Black-

Chris Williamson 47:30 (laughs)

Mark Normand 47:30 ... but it counts, you know. It's, it's close enough.

Chris Williamson 47:33 So

Chris Williamson 47:34 I saw this story about, uh, Prince Harry has lost a legal challenge over his bid to be allowed to make private payments for the police.

Mark Normand 47:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:41 His lawyers won a jurisdictional review of the rejection of his offer to pay for protection in the UK. Uh, a judge ruled not to give the go-ahead. Home Office lawyers have opposed the idea of allowing wealthy people to buy security from the police. So I wasn't really too sure about how I felt about this.

Mark Normand 47:55 I don't know. What is it? Can you, uh, translate that?

Chris Williamson 47:57 So Prince Harry no longer has his normal protection from being a royal because he lost his royal status. He, it seems, has security concerns when he travels to the UK. So his plan was to just pay for police-

Mark Normand 48:13 Mm.

Chris Williamson 48:13 ... to come with him so that there would be a degree of protection-

Mark Normand 48:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 48:17 ... but also so that it didn't chew into the police's budget for whichever-

Mark Normand 48:21 Oh.

Chris Williamson 48:21 ... area of the country he's in.

Mark Normand 48:22 Got it.

Chris Williamson 48:23 So you'll have seen at, um, the Mothership.

Mark Normand 48:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:26 There is a, like a low-key couple of cops that are on site.

Mark Normand 48:30 Sure.

Chris Williamson 48:31 And they're paid for privately.

Mark Normand 48:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 48:32 But they're, you know, official cop. I'm gonna presume that they're not... They're probably off-duty, still sanctioned-

Mark Normand 48:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:39 ... I think. I don't really know how it works. Up until I'd seen that, I'd never really heard about anybody being able to pay for private police protection. But it actually makes a good bit of sense, because if you don't, if you don't allow somebody that's going to be heavily scrutinized and, and cause loads of, you know, guffaw amongst the public to actually have some protection, they're gonna have to go in any case to do-

Mark Normand 49:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:03 ... crowd control. So just let them pay, I guess. I don't-

Mark Normand 49:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:07 ... know. That's what I thought.

Mark Normand 49:07 But they said no.

Chris Williamson 49:08 No, they said no. I think there's a big, a big problem, especially in the UK of allowing... Like, wealth in the UK is really, really looked down on, especially ostentatious wealth.

Mark Normand 49:17 Really?

Chris Williamson 49:17 Yeah. So if you were to say, "I'm going to use the money that I've acc- accrued to buy the usage of what is typically seen as a, a public service."

Mark Normand 49:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:27 It's one of the reasons why people in the UK forget that you can get private healthcare.... because the NHS is there. So they would happily wait six months for their cancer to metastasize.

Mark Normand 49:38 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 49:38 So they can get their scan for free.

Mark Normand 49:40 Right.

Chris Williamson 49:40 Then think about paying for insurance. They'll pay for their dog's insurance. I mean, English bulldog, that'll be a hundred bucks a month or a couple of hundred bucks a month.

Mark Normand 49:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:48 But they won't think about doing it for themselves.

Mark Normand 49:50 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 49:51 Uh, and I think that the UK has a bit of a problem with people using wealth especially to sort of chew up services and show they care.

Mark Normand 49:58 Wow, well, hey, I mean, you know, this kind of feels like the, the defund the police people who immediately call the police right when anything goes down.

Chris Williamson 50:04 Uh, what's his face? You know Coleman Hughes?

Mark Normand 50:06 Yeah, I like that guy.

Chris Williamson 50:07 Yeah, he's great. He was on CNN a couple of nights ago and they were talking about why have we got these increases in crime and homicides and da, da, da, da, da. And it got toward the end of the segment and Coleman was like, "I have an idea."

Mark Normand 50:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:18 They were like, "What is it?" And he said, "Refund the police." And they cut the segment short-

Mark Normand 50:21 Ah! (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:22 ... shortly after that. They were like, "Oh, we're gonna have to, we're gonna, we'll leave it there, Coleman. Thank you."

Mark Normand 50:26 See, that's what bugs me, not to spin off into another thing, but that's what bugs me about the times we're living in is, uh, I don't, you know, I, I get that we can have certain opinions but we should at least be able to discuss everything. Like I know that's a different, differentiating opinion than CNN, you know, they have to go with the narrative or they have to go with the checkboxes. But let's hear them out, you know, like, like you bring up drag queens. And I don't give a shit about drag queens. I don't have kids. It doesn't affect me. But just bringing it up, my friend was like, "Oh, dude, dude, let's not even go there." And I'm like, "Why not?" That's the weird part to me.

Chris Williamson 51:00 Over dinner or something?

Mark Normand 51:00 No, no, on a podcast.

Chris Williamson 51:01 Okay.

Mark Normand 51:01 But that's why it, it weirds me out. I'm like, so we can't talk about it? The not being able to talk about it to me is weirder than the actual activity.

Chris Williamson 51:08 Mmm.

Mark Normand 51:09 And that's what no one is understanding. You know, they're like, "Oh, you got a problem with drag queens or you like drag queens?" I'm like, "No, no, I'm neutral but I'd like to discuss it and see if we can get somewhere."

Chris Williamson 51:18 It's an interesting situation.

Mark Normand 51:18 It's an interesting situation but then they're like, "Shut it down, shut it down." Or, "Cut that out." I'm like, now that's the scary part, the cut that out. What are you so scared of? What is that feeling like, oh, this is, this is bad. Uh, we're in the red. Shut it down. Abort. And I'm like, that's what worries me.

Chris Williamson 51:34 Well, it's because nobody is not allowed to have an opinion on everything anymore.

Mark Normand 51:38 Mmm.

Chris Williamson 51:38 Like everybody has to have an opinion-

Mark Normand 51:39 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:40 ... on absolutely everything. And, uh-

Mark Normand 51:43 And I just wanna learn. I'm an idiot so I wanna learn more but they just, uh, uh, like trans is a big one. So what's up with trans? If this is that then what is up with that? And you go ah, bup, bup, bup, bup. And you're like well now, now I'm really interested.

Chris Williamson 51:54 (laughs)

Mark Normand 51:54 It's kind of like when I was a kid. I was, I was, was an atheist. And you know you go, "So wait, if heaven is real and heaven is, uh, blissful eternity, then are you old in heaven 'cause that wouldn't be blissful. I'd rather be young. Also, is my grandma in there and is she old or is she young?" And you start asking and they go, "Ah, shut the fuck up. Yeah, how dare you, uh, you know, talking the, the name of God and all this shit, you know, the Lord's name in vain." And you're like, "Oh, you have no answer." And I feel like that's the same with all this stuff and I, I just wanna learn. I'm not trashing heaven. I'd love to go to heaven but I wanna get to the bottom of it and they get, they start getting angry. And that's what worries me.

Chris Williamson 52:32 My friends got this, uh, theory of bespoke bullshit. Many people don't have an opinion until they're asked for it at which point they cobble together a viewpoint from wim and half remembered hearsay before deciding that this two-minute old makeshift opinion will be their new hill to die on.

Mark Normand 52:46 Ah! That's fucking perfect. Who is this guy?

Chris Williamson 52:49 So, yeah, it's the same dude. Old Gwynder-

Mark Normand 52:50 This guy is on fire.

Chris Williamson 52:51 Gwynder Bogle, yeah, he wrote this phenomenal article on... He's like, I forced this guy onto the show probably every three or four months or so and he's basically a digital ghost apart from tweeting aphorisms like that and writing awesome Substacks. And, uh, I just like drag him kicking and screaming-

Mark Normand 53:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:08 ... place him on a podcast and then he scurries away and learns more good shit and then I drag him back and bring him back on again.

Mark Normand 53:13 But here's the question. Why does he have to be a digital ghost? Because he's, doesn't want all the backlash and the bullshit but like we're just trying to learn.

Chris Williamson 53:19 It does seem that way. It does seem that way. The, um, the, the fact that everybody feels like they need to have an opinion on everything means that, you remember the, uh, silence is violence?

Mark Normand 53:28 Oh, that was a good one.

Chris Williamson 53:29 Or silence is compliance-

Mark Normand 53:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:31 ... thing. It's like well, if you're, if you're pushing people to take a particular position and you can only allow them to either be for or against a thing-

Mark Normand 53:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:40 ... you're going to lose all of the interesting stuff.

Mark Normand 53:43 Yes, the nuance.

Chris Williamson 53:43 And people are just gonna check out of having conversations.

Mark Normand 53:45 Completely.

Chris Williamson 53:46 They're not gonna bother.

Mark Normand 53:47 And it's only silence is violence if you don't, if you're not saying my thing. You know like, it, it's like when people go, "We need more diversity." And you're like, "What do you mean?" They're like, "You need more people who look like me." Like oh, you want, you wanna be on the show. You know, you don't, you're not thinking about the, uh, uh, Pacific Islander-

Chris Williamson 54:01 (laughs)

Mark Normand 54:01 ... you know, or the wheelchair guy. You're thinking about you. So I get that. We're all selfish at the end of the day but you get to be selfish and m- mask it with this guise of, of, uh, moral superiority.

Chris Williamson 54:11 Yeah, the performative-

Mark Normand 54:12 It's pretty genius.

Chris Williamson 54:12 ... the performative empathy thing is one of the reasons why I think everyone... I, I, I do think it contributes to cynicism because it's so hard to work out whether someone is being genuine or not.

Mark Normand 54:23 Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 54:24 Is, is this person actually doing the thing that they say that they do because they care?

Mark Normand 54:29 Yes.

Chris Williamson 54:30 Or are they doing it because they know that it's an effective c- current social trend to ride off the back of?

Mark Normand 54:37 Exactly, exactly. And you can see which way the wind is blowing and most people I think just go, "I'll go that way because I don't wanna deal with getting yelled at and backlash and be labeled."

Chris Williamson 54:46 I also remember, what is it? Only 10% of Americans have a Twitter account.

Mark Normand 54:52 Oh, wow.

Chris Williamson 54:52 So 90% of Americans don't have a Twitter account.

Mark Normand 54:54 Wow.

Chris Williamson 54:55 Which means that, you know, and that, I think on Twitter it's around about 95% of tweets are created by less than 20 or 10% of the users.

Mark Normand 55:05 Mmm.

Chris Williamson 55:06 So even there is a small cohort of people from the world who are on Twitter and within the people that are on Twitter there is a small cohort of them-

Mark Normand 55:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:15 ... who produce almost all of the content.

Mark Normand 55:16 Right.

Chris Williamson 55:17 So the overwhelming majority opinion that you see is actually unbelievably unrepresentative.

Mark Normand 55:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 55:22 Incredibly small and biased.

Mark Normand 55:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:25 'Cause all of the people that tweet a lot, you know, there will be something in common that everybody has and it's like you see someone post a, something negative-... uh, or there's a flood of negative comments and you go, "I wonder what all of those people have got in common?"

Mark Normand 55:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 55:36 'Cause they will. There will be some things, some elements of personality-

Mark Normand 55:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:40 ... that will contribute to have that be the case.

Mark Normand 55:41 Totally.

Chris Williamson 55:42 It's not a representative sample.

Mark Normand 55:43 No, no but they, they swarm. Uh, they'll swarm on you. And it feels like a million people. Yeah, Jonathan Haidt called it death by, uh, little needles.

Chris Williamson 55:53 Mm.

Mark Normand 55:53 You know, just like, you know, one, one needle prick, you're like, "Oh, that was weird." But a th- million of them coming

Mark Normand 55:58 at you, that hurts.

Chris Williamson 55:59 Jonathan Haidt's doing some interesting stuff. He's saying that he's writing his entire book publicly at the moment.

Mark Normand 56:04 What does that mean?

Chris Williamson 56:05 So he, he's got ... I think it's maybe a Substack or some other sort of mailing list. And he's got this book that's gonna be out at some point in the future and each maybe few pages or each chapter as he writes them, he's just publishing.

Mark Normand 56:18 Ah.

Chris Williamson 56:19 As he goes.

Mark Normand 56:20 That's pretty cool.

Chris Williamson 56:20 And then he's getting feedback in the comments and then presumably will be making adjustments before the final book.

Mark Normand 56:25 Wow, it's like comedy. It's like standup.

Chris Williamson 56:27 Yes.

Mark Normand 56:27 Wow. He's doing a live act and then editing-

Chris Williamson 56:31 Yes. A b- until he does the spec-

Mark Normand 56:31 ... based on reaction.

Chris Williamson 56:32 You did a special.

Mark Normand 56:33 I did one, yeah. It comes out July 25th on Netflix and they let me say everything.

Chris Williamson 56:38 (laughs)

Mark Normand 56:39 They ... I mean, I really go hard. Um, I was shocked at no notes. So I think maybe things are changing or maybe Netflix wants 'cause any press is good press.

Chris Williamson 56:48 So when you mean notes, it was you were able to submit it and they didn't say, "T- t- we can't have that joke." And you-

Mark Normand 56:53 Take the R word out, all that. No. Holocaust, trans, it's all in there and, uh, everything's a joke, everything gets a laugh, but it's, uh, it's all the, all the hot button topics.

Chris Williamson 57:04 Uh, I asked Schulz this question. Do you think that there's any joke that is so extreme that it shouldn't be told?

Mark Normand 57:14 I don't, but I'm a comedian who likes fucked up jokes.

Chris Williamson 57:19 He said, uh, "Is it funny?"

Mark Normand 57:21 That's ... I completely agree.

Chris Williamson 57:23 And I was like, "Uh, yeah?"

Mark Normand 57:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:25 It's like-

Mark Normand 57:26 And I ... Oh, sorry. I would-

Chris Williamson 57:27 But app- apparently it matters. It matters if it's funny.

Mark Normand 57:30 Funny is everything. It's a standup comedy show at the end of the day. Even if someone has a non-offensive joke that isn't funny, I say get rid of it.

Chris Williamson 57:37 (laughs)

Mark Normand 57:37 It doesn't matter if it's offensive or edgy or whatever, or, or not edgy. Get rid of it either way if it's not getting a laugh.

Chris Williamson 57:43 Mm.

Mark Normand 57:44 Funny is a, is a, you know, what's that Oscar Wilde? "If you're going to tell the truth, you better be funny or they'll kill you." And I think that's so true. And I would say the same for these people who, who their whole act is like, "I was molested. I was the, a victim of racism." And you're like, "That's easy. Anybody can get molested or be a victim of racism."

Chris Williamson 58:02 (laughs)

Mark Normand 58:02 That's easy. What, what you the hard part is the getting a laugh. Anybody can get molested, that's not an accomplishment, you know? (laughs) It's just, it sucks-

Chris Williamson 58:11 (laughs)

Mark Normand 58:12 ... but we gotta get the, the ha-has in there. That's what's standup comedy is, that's why it's an art form and that's why it's fun. It's the whole point.

Chris Williamson 58:20 Yeah. I, uh, I was using this example. Did you see True Geordie? Do you know who that is?

Mark Normand 58:25 I, I've, I've heard of him, but I don't know-

Chris Williamson 58:27 A YouTube guy from the UK and he does podcasts and-

Mark Normand 58:29 Big guy? Tough guy?

Chris Williamson 58:30 Yeah, big j- tattoos-

Mark Normand 58:30 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:32 ... forehead. And, um, he's from the city where I used to live and, uh, he-

Mark Normand 58:35 Hates Jake Paul.

Chris Williamson 58:36 Hates Jake Paul-

Mark Normand 58:36 Yes.

Chris Williamson 58:37 ... I think. Not a massive fan of Jake Paul. Um, he told a joke, him and Andrew Tate had had a run-in for quite a long time, and someone asked on a livestream forever ago, uh, "What do you think about Andrew Tate's recent conversion to Islam?"

Mark Normand 58:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 58:53 And Brian, True Geordie, said, uh, "He should prove it to us all by blowing himself up." And-

Mark Normand 59:01 (laughs) That's a good line.

Chris Williamson 59:02 That's a good joke.

Mark Normand 59:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:03 It's a legitimate joke and Andrew said the same, he was like, "It was obvious misdirect. He was playing off tropes." Like, it's just, it's classic joke.

Mark Normand 59:11 Classic.

Chris Williamson 59:11 Yeah. Uh-

Mark Normand 59:12 Love it.

Chris Williamson 59:12 And he got within 24 hours, uh, MyProtein dropped him, Gymshark dropped him, PokerStars dropped him and he was banned on Twitch.

Mark Normand 59:19 Wow.

Chris Williamson 59:21 Within 24 hours.

Mark Normand 59:22 See, that's, that's horrible and what annoys me about when people are like, "He's got money, he'll be fine. Shut up. He's fine." You're like, "He lost all that. That sucks. That's over a joke." So when they say like, "Oh, shut up with your complaining, you can't ... Oh, comics can't say anything." Look, I still say everything I want, but this guy said one quick zing about a guy who's pretty well hated and he still got in trouble.

Chris Williamson 59:45 Yeah.

Mark Normand 59:46 That sucks. I hate the whole, "He'll be fine." 'Cause you're like, okay, so let's say you call Michael Jordan the N-word at a game. "He's a millionaire, blah, blah. He went to work the next day. He's fine." So that, that doesn't matter? You could ... It still should matter. I don't get why, uh, calling someone a bigot and then calling someone the N-word is, is, uh, not the same.

Chris Williamson 1:00:10 Well, the, the problem that you have, especially if you look at, I don't know, someone's quality of life based on how much money they're able to earn or how much money they've got in the bank account completely disregards the fact that status is so important to the way that we feel about ourselves.

Mark Normand 1:00:26 Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:27 Right? If you have this massive downfall-

Mark Normand 1:00:29 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 ... in terms of everybody hates you and there's all of this bad stuff, and you know, if someone's righteously indignant about the joke that you made against their religion or their race or their disability or their advertising campaign or whatever, they're gonna be unhappy.

Mark Normand 1:00:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:43 But like, that person is gonna suffer a lot.

Mark Normand 1:00:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:45 You have to be really, really fucking hard-nosed to go through a massive downfall.

Mark Normand 1:00:50 Totally.

Chris Williamson 1:00:50 What is it that, what was it that Rogan said, like the way that he dealt with his little, uh, his thing a couple of years ago was, like, a moderate dose of mushrooms pretty much every single day.

Mark Normand 1:00:58 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:58 Like, that was one of the framework, like, training a lot and I did a ice bath and my diet was clean.

Mark Normand 1:01:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:04 And I took a lot of mushrooms.

Mark Normand 1:01:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:06 And you think, "Well, I don't know, man." Like it-

Mark Normand 1:01:09 That's a lot of stuff just to get through the day.

Chris Williamson 1:01:11 Yeah, to, i- precisely. From somebody that's got an awfully long way to fall.

Mark Normand 1:01:14 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:01:14 You know, like, it's accrued a good bit of status and, and goodwill below them.

Mark Normand 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:18 And still there's all of these things that you need to do. "Oh, he'll be fine." Well, mm-

Mark Normand 1:01:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:24 ... I don't know, like the daily psychedelics and the, the ice bath-

Mark Normand 1:01:26 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:01:26 ... and the training suggests that it's not just the sort of thing that you can-

Mark Normand 1:01:30 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:01:30 ... easily get through.

Mark Normand 1:01:31 I, I think it's horrible. I, I think calling someone a, a tranny is mean, that hurts their feelings. I get it. It's funny, but I get it when they're like, "Hey, we gotta stop saying that word." And I think the same goes for people who just call everybody racist or a bigot or a transphobe or whatever when they're not.

Chris Williamson 1:01:47 Yeah.

Mark Normand 1:01:47 ... you know, like if I, if I kiss you, that doesn't make me gay. I just did a gay thing for a second.

Chris Williamson 1:01:53 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:01:53 And if I make a racist joke or say uh, uh, a bad word, I don't mean that thing, I just did it for a second.

Chris Williamson 1:02:00 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:02:00 You see what I'm saying?

Chris Williamson 1:02:02 Yeah.

Mark Normand 1:02:02 And that's what bugs me.

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 At what point, at what point do you become gay? How many gay things-

Mark Normand 1:02:05 I think when you're attracted to men.

Chris Williamson 1:02:06 But how many gay things do you have to do before you become gay?

Mark Normand 1:02:09 I think it's all up here. It's like being a woman. Identity, you identify.

Chris Williamson 1:02:12 So you can suck a dick and be straight?

Mark Normand 1:02:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 Yeah?

Mark Normand 1:02:14 Because sucking a dick is a f- it's just a physical ac- act.

Chris Williamson 1:02:18 Right.

Mark Normand 1:02:18 But actually wanting to suck a dick, that's when you're gay.

Chris Williamson 1:02:21 Interesting.

Mark Normand 1:02:22 Yeah, so blow ... You could blow me right now and I won't call you gay, I promise.

Chris Williamson 1:02:27 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:02:28 That mustache, I wanna jizz all over it.

Chris Williamson 1:02:31 Yeah, I've been trying to sort of really, uh, channel my 1970s Miami cop.

Mark Normand 1:02:37 Hey, it looks good.

Chris Williamson 1:02:38 Oh, good. Yeah, fuck yeah.

Mark Normand 1:02:39 I'd sit on that face.

Chris Williamson 1:02:40 Hey, I'm a, I'm a Rangers

Chris Williamson 1:02:42 fan. I'm a Texas Rangers fan now.

Mark Normand 1:02:44 Oh, nice.

Chris Williamson 1:02:44 Good at baseball. What do I need to know? Of what, like about-

Mark Normand 1:02:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:02:47 ... American sport? What are the, the skills that I need to be able to watch American sport well?

Mark Normand 1:02:51 What do you mean the skills?

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 Well, like-

Mark Normand 1:02:52 You gotta be fat, you gotta be drunk.

Chris Williamson 1:02:54 Yeah, these things.

Mark Normand 1:02:55 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:55 Like what is there? What should I ... Because I haven't been to a baseball game-

Mark Normand 1:02:57 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:02:57 ... since I've moved here. What should I expect?

Mark Normand 1:02:59 Get a cold beer. Uh, you gotta learn the hey, batter, batter, batter.

Chris Williamson 1:03:02 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:03:02 And then there's also the whole culture of like trashing the guy from the stands. Like, "You call that a throw? I've seen better throws on a pillow or whatever."

Chris Williamson 1:03:11 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:03:11 "On a rug." You know, and uh, that's all fun and games. And then maybe you can catch a fly ball, that's big. Then you gotta give it to the retarded-

Chris Williamson 1:03:18 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:03:18 ... cancer kid with the bald head. So there's all kinds of tropes. Um, it's fun. It's fun. You go out in the sun, take your shirt off, live it up, man.

Chris Williamson 1:03:27 Fuck yeah.

Mark Normand 1:03:27 It's the American pastime.

Chris Williamson 1:03:28 Fuck yeah. I'm excited.

Mark Normand 1:03:29 Bring sunflower seeds.

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 I needed ... I decided that I needed a, uh, I needed something. I needed a sport and a team that I could follow and Texas Rangers owned by ... What were the reasons? We wanted, um, place that had a nice stadium, place that wasn't more than three hours away, place that was owned by racists.

Mark Normand 1:03:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:43 And it turns out that George, George Bush, the, the Bush family's just heavily invested in the brand new stadium for the Rangers.

Mark Normand 1:03:49 I love it.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 So we got all three.

Mark Normand 1:03:51 Oh, you're gonna have a blast. Uh, I went to, uh, when I went to Australia one time, I went to the ... I don't even know the name of the sport. Quicket? Quidgit? What-

Chris Williamson 1:03:58 Cricket. That was the thing that-

Mark Normand 1:03:59 Was it cricket?

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 Be, go careful here. This is the sport of my childhood.

Mark Normand 1:04:02 No, no, that wasn't cricket because I know cricket. That's got the paddle.

Chris Williamson 1:04:05 Yep.

Mark Normand 1:04:05 This was more of a soccery rugby kind of thing.

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 Oh, Aussie rules football.

Mark Normand 1:04:09 Maybe that was it.

Chris Williamson 1:04:10 Yep.

Mark Normand 1:04:10 And it was amazing.

Chris Williamson 1:04:11 Yeah.

Mark Normand 1:04:12 Went to the big stadium, the whole play, "Oi, oi, oi!" And it was incredible.

Chris Williamson 1:04:15 Super hardcore. Have you seen, uh, hurling? Have you seen that?

Mark Normand 1:04:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:17 The Irish sport?

Mark Normand 1:04:18 No.

Chris Williamson 1:04:19 So you've seen lacrosse?

Mark Normand 1:04:21 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 With the nets, the nets and the thing and they, they like run like that.

Mark Normand 1:04:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 So imagine that, but instead of it being a net and a little ball, it's a wooden, like a big hockey stick.

Mark Normand 1:04:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:31 And they run sort of balancing the ball on the hockey stick.

Mark Normand 1:04:33 What?

Chris Williamson 1:04:34 But it means that they can swing this thing unbelievably hard. It's ju- uh, none of the players have got any teeth. It's like-

Mark Normand 1:04:40 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 ... it's kind of the same as ice hockey without the ice or the skating.

Mark Normand 1:04:46 Wow.

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 And it's absolutely ruthless.

Mark Normand 1:04:48 But you, you have to balance it while running?

Chris Williamson 1:04:49 While running, yeah. So they do this. It's fucking crazy, man. Hurling. Look it up.

Mark Normand 1:04:52 And they can hit you with the stick?

Chris Williamson 1:04:53 Uh, they swing through a lot of the time. Yeah, you gotta kind of-

Mark Normand 1:04:55 Oh my Lord. No helmet?

Chris Williamson 1:04:57 Uh, I can't remember. I feel like the goalie's got a helmet, but not them so much.

Mark Normand 1:05:02 Wow.

Chris Williamson 1:05:02 And then there's Gaelic football, if you've seen that.

Mark Normand 1:05:05 Mm-mm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:05 Which is literally like halfway between rugby and football. So they have the rugby stands with the, the thing.

Mark Normand 1:05:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:12 And the bottom bit has got a net-

Mark Normand 1:05:13 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 1:05:14 ... and got a goalie in it.

Mark Normand 1:05:14 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 1:05:15 So you gotta try and score in that. You can get it over the top and there's other bits and pieces.

Mark Normand 1:05:18 Cool.

Chris Williamson 1:05:19 They play here, they play here in Austin.

Mark Normand 1:05:20 I love it. Well, what about UFC? That's, to me, that's my favorite.

Chris Williamson 1:05:23 Is that where you're spending a lot of time watching at the moment?

Mark Normand 1:05:25 That's my number one. I like a one-on-one, like I like tennis too. I like one-on-one, I like the mental part of it. I like the different ... Like this fighter is better than this fighter, but he can still beat him because of the style differences, you know. I love that kind of stuff and I loved learning, you know, Nate Diaz is a character. Conor McGregor is a character. Uh, Stylebender.

Chris Williamson 1:05:45 Yeah.

Mark Normand 1:05:45 You get to know them, whereas football is just a bunch of nameless, faceless helmets.

Chris Williamson 1:05:50 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:05:50 And I like that where you, you can kind of get to ... It's more like standup.

Chris Williamson 1:05:54 I went to Colombia at the start of the year to get stem cells, so I spent a full week in Medellín.

Mark Normand 1:05:59 Wow.

Chris Williamson 1:05:59 And my in-clinic, like patient partner was Aljamain Sterling.

Mark Normand 1:06:04 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 1:06:05 So I got to spend a full week with him.

Mark Normand 1:06:06 What's he like?

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 Fucking cool dude.

Mark Normand 1:06:08 Yeah?

Chris Williamson 1:06:09 Very just like a chill, not ... Like it, it's a compliment, but unbelievably normal.

Mark Normand 1:06:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:15 Like incredibly normal. And I get the sense that if I'd spent the week with Sugar Sean-

Mark Normand 1:06:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:20 ... he would have been less normal. With Conor McGregor it would have been less normal. But there are ... You know, this is, you know, getting toward being super, super dominant within ... What is he? Three-time defending champ now, I think?

Mark Normand 1:06:32 Yeah, something like that.

Chris Williamson 1:06:32 Of the 135 belt.

Mark Normand 1:06:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:34 And, uh, next fight is gonna be against Sugar Sean. So yeah, he, he was really, really normal. Super nice guy. Texted his team on the night that he had the fight and wished him good luck and stuff. And that's fucking cool, man, what they're doing. Um, haven't ... Hasn't the UFC partnered with WWE?

Mark Normand 1:06:51 Oh, is that right? I hope not.

Chris Williamson 1:06:53 I'm pretty ... I'm absolutely certain. WWE, UFC, I promise you that I'm gonna bring this up.

Mark Normand 1:06:58 I hope it doesn't get too wrestly.

Chris Williamson 1:07:00 Uh, yeah, where are we? Uh, the ... Yeah, the WWE-UFC merger.

Mark Normand 1:07:04 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 1:07:05 Yeah, this is a month old now. World Wrestling Entertainment, WrestleMania is the biggest event, da, da, da, da, da. Uh, on April 2nd, the second day of WrestleMania, CNBC broke the news that the WWE is to be sold to Hollywood talent ent- uh, uh, agency Endeavor Group Holdings. Endeavor, which also owns the UFC, is to merge the two iconic complementary global sports and entertainment brands to form a new $21 billion plus live sports and entertainment company.

Mark Normand 1:07:34 Oh, no. They took the money.

Chris Williamson 1:07:35 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:07:36 Dana White, you cuck. Goddamn it. I hope there's not a ... I don't wanna see Justin Gage get hit with a folding chair.

Chris Williamson 1:07:43 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:07:44 Like how far are we gonna take this? I hope they don't mesh too much.

Chris Williamson 1:07:48 Bring the Dudley Boys back and they're like, you know-

Mark Normand 1:07:50 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:51 What is it? Uh, Royal Rumble, but in the Octagon.

Mark Normand 1:07:53 Right, now Rogan's gonna have to be a s- the new Slim Jim guy.

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:07:57 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:58 (laughs)

Mark Normand 1:07:58 (laughs) Oh, boy.

Chris Williamson 1:07:59 Yeah, funny man. I don't know, I feel like everything kind of descends towards WWE. Well, it's interesting because WWE basically what they did was, they realized if we got rid of the sport element of the sport and we