SPEAKER_01
you know, when you're younger, certainly in my case, when I was younger, I was under a lot of pressure because, you know, I didn't know what I would possibly do in my life if this didn't work out. You know, I do, I wasn't cut out to work in an office or the boss and all of this stuff because I was just really, you know, had a tough time with the idea of like doing repetitive tasks and being, you know, yelled at by somebody. Right. So I just knew that that was not going to work for me. So it was kind of like a life and death kind of thing.
You know, like, I got to make this comedy thing work for like, I'm, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Right.
SPEAKER_03
Welcome, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
We've got a comedic legend, a Canadian legend on with us, Mr. Tom Green.
SPEAKER_01
And thanks for having me. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
This is awesome. Very cool.
SPEAKER_02
This is a real treat, Tom. I mentioned this to you via email very briefly when we were connecting in advance of doing this. But I mean, I grew up and I know Greg is probably in the same boat, but I grew up a huge, huge fan of your all of your different work.
And, you know, I felt like it kind of hit me at the right time in my life. And I don't know whether you've heard this from a lot of people over the course of your career, but like, you know, I was sort of a kid that I didn't quite fit into, you know, one bucket or another for most of my life. I just I kind of came from different backgrounds and mixed race household and didn't really know like where I fit in perfectly growing up.
And I always just felt like laughing and comedy was an escape and like a way that I was able to connect with people and a lot of your early work, like your song, some of your movies, your show. It really brought together like a cool community of friends when I was growing up and young. And so I feel personally very grateful to you for a lot of what you put out into the world in, you know, during your career.
SPEAKER_01
Awesome. Awesome. Well, it was a weird show.
You were a weird kid. I'm a weird guy. We, we celebrate weirdness of the pleasures all mine.
It's a treat for me to be here as well too. This is a real treat as well for me. I'm enjoying this.
This is fun. It's cool to meet you guys. You know, we met through a mutual friend and I appreciate you have me on the show to talk about, you know, stop.
What are we talking about? Yeah, what is it that we're talking about?
SPEAKER_03
Well, it's an extra treat for us to have you because, you know, we've got thousands of listeners who are entrepreneurs who are builders investors. And we don't often have, you know, I call you a person from the arts, because I think you do you do more than comedy. And, you know, we've been following your career.
And one thing that's, I mean, here's what I want to cover. There's two things I want to cover today. The first thing I want to cover is authenticity and how it seems to be that you've just kind of done your own thing and been really authentic and attracted people who've like Sahil and myself who've connected with that.
And the second thing I want to dive into is your, your move from, from Hollywood to Canada and why you did it. Sure. Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
So, so maybe we can start with, I mean, yeah, maybe we can start with asking you like a specific question. Yeah, yeah, let's start with what do you think? Have you always been weird Tom?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think so, I think so. I mean, I think everybody's weird. Everybody's weird in their own way.
And, you know, you've got a channel channel that into, you know, when we're young, we're figuring out who we are. And I was always kind of a class clown, I guess you would call it a goofy kid. But, you know, I think like when you talk about authenticity, I presume you're talking about with the Tom Green show and the internet and the way we sort of present ourselves on social media.
And I think, you know, I was growing up in a time where, you know, before video cameras, there really wasn't a lot of pure authenticity on television. It was hard to get that because you know to make television there's so many cameras involved and lights and budgets and huge crews. So, you know, when you're making Gilligan's Island, right, it's hard for it to be completely authentic people are playing characters and not really playing themselves.
And so when video cameras came along and all of a sudden you could go film your actual life and do real stuff and and do it with a small crew or no crew and do it with zero budget and no outside corporate influences or rules. And so that's when I think that, you know, TV started to change and that was the beginning of reality TV was what was my show was doing was running into my parents house with a video camera and one Frank's on them. Before anyone had done that kind of thing.
And now we've got, we've got social media and the internet where everybody's got a camera in their pocket and people are, you know, it's just normal to be authentic, I think on camera now but it's still not not an instant thing you know as soon as you start to put a camera on yourself and start talking to an audience. You do take on certain expectations you do take on certain, you know, a certain persona. And so, you know, trying to figure out exactly how you want to present yourself is still kind of a tricky thing I think it
SPEAKER_02
strikes me that like over time, the way you laid that out makes a lot of sense to me that like over time authenticity of creation has sort of expanded like in the early days of television and movie it was like everything was perfect you had these like perfect lives, beautiful people, you know, like, you'd create a fake storyline around some conflict so that it could get solved and everything would be bright and perfect again. And, you know, if your life didn't feel that way in your own life, you didn't it didn't click right like you didn't feel the sort of connection or community around that type of work and then you know I think you I think like jackass I think some of the other like early days of almost this like kind of feeling of like misfits coming together, you know, you called it being weird but like you know, it was, you know, you felt this level of connection because it felt authentic and it was real and it wasn't perfect it wasn't this like perfectly filmed beautiful settings etc it felt very raw and real and now over time I think that has continued to expand to now like you know tiktokers Instagram youtubers who present something very authentic and real, and are able to, you know, amass these big followings and build these really neat communities around that.
SPEAKER_01
For sure. I mean, you know, the audience is much more media literate now than they were 20 years ago. So, you know, it's harder for people to suspend disbelief when they're watching you know, imperfectly executed acting and imperfectly executed scripted shows now there's so much great scripted stuff on TV now and there's such incredibly brilliant scripted stuff out there that that's good enough for people today but you know I don't think that you can kind of get away with sort of a half ass scripted show anymore and expect people to watch because everyone's making their own videos now or for their has a friend who is or has even tried to do with themselves and they kind of understand a little bit more of the technology and what's involved so you know you think about like the early days of film when they would, you know, they would film a train coming towards the camera and everyone in the movie theater would get up and run because they thought there was a train going to hit them you know like that's how how people just didn't know how to process what they were looking at whereas, you know now, you know now now it's like we've seen you know the real housewives of Beverly Hills screaming at each other on TV we've seen so much real drama real, or whether that's real or not you make your mom mind about the real people without a script, you know, expressing themselves.
You know, sometimes it's a little bit harder to believe some of that some of the traditional ways of when we make TV in a traditional way it comes off a little force sometimes right and people are hit to that they're savvy to that so. So it's a it's a really exciting time actually I think it's continues to be an exciting time.
SPEAKER_03
One of the things that I've observed is there's a certain amount of pressure for creators entertainers or frankly anyone on the internet to mimic how other people are creating content. And one of the things I noticed about you is it, it never feels like you're kind of looking at other folks and being like, hey, this is what's working on tick tock this is what's working on TV. This is what's working on comedy this is what's working on music I'm going to go do that.
Is that something that you consciously think about.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, I do for sure. I mean, I get bored easily. I don't really like when I watch television, or when I watch the internet, and I see these new formats and these new things happen, right.
It's it is funny to see how it becomes very sort of formulaic, and then everybody copies and repeats and copies and repeats, and it goes in cycles. And I usually attribute a lot of my thought process creatively to the changing technology. When a new technology comes out I like to be the first person to use it.
So then maybe I'll be doing something creatively with a new piece of technology that nobody's really started using yet. And then therefore I'll create something different, and maybe stand out from the pack of things that are out there with people using maybe just a slightly older piece of technology, you know. And then sometimes that catches on and then everybody starts doing that and then that becomes more more of the standard and then then a new technology comes up.
And when I started my first foray into show business outside of stand up comedy I'd started doing stand up comedy when I was 16 years old in Canada, and you know, most traditional comedy, you know, thought billion type of comedy get up on stage and have a microphone. This was the technology the microphone like, but then rap music started becoming popular I really got into rap music the beastie boys run DMC public enemy, all of these incredible, 80s rap groups. And I was really early on excited about that interested in that.
And I think you'll find this interesting actually, because it's a computer thing. You guys are computer guys right your computer guys. We. So I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, and my dad was in the military, but when he stopped working in active service in the military continued working for the Canadian Department of National Defense doing cobalt programming computer program. And so he would take me down to the office there and you know you'd see the giant computers with the tapes wheel and use explain it and put in the cards in the cobalt cards and you know this is like early days you know no one had a computer at home yet I'm looking at these computers.
And so Ottawa got a thing called, we had the internet basically in Ottawa in the early 1980s before anybody had the internet, it wasn't called the internet was called the Naboo network. It was a local company in Ottawa and they would deliver video games and chats and all the stuff through your cable, your cable television you got a box and you plugged it in. And so a lot of government sort of contract big companies like Correll were here and again doll and cognose and all these companies, and all sorts of high tech stuff.
So, you know I was a little kid and we were on the internet wasn't called the internet it was called the Naboo network but you know I think like a couple thousand people in the city had it. We were doing this stuff, you know, on the internet, and it kind of really made me start really finding an interest in technology and then I had my friends were also really interested in this kind of technology. So when rap music started the first thing I thought was well how are they making these beats they sound really, you know, fresh and and where's this electronic music coming from so I started going down to the music store and I get a summer job and I started by drum machines and keyboards and samplers with my partner and you know landscaping job that I saved up and started making rap beats when I was 15 years old 16 years old my parents basement.
They weren't the best rap beats in the world, but I was the only kid in Ottawa. Basically making rap beats. Maybe there was one other guy actually was pretty good too, but not many people were doing this.
So that's when I kind of we ended up getting a record deal he sort of started going out and performing my friend and I from school we got a record deal with a and m records became a big thing in Canada and it was a big success and here I was at 18 years old and I had a record deal and performing with all sorts of, you know, concerts and it was, we were on the radio. And I realized that the reason that happened was because like this new technology of sampling was new. Nobody was doing it yet.
I was doing it before anyone else. And so that's when I kind of learned like, if you're the only one doing something, you're going to be the best at it. And that's why I like to kind of find the latest camera or the latest microphone or the latest way of shooting video or recording video or streaming podcasts or or distributing podcasts and try to do it before anyone else and then if you if it if it works, and you're the only one doing it, then you're like the best at something, you know, until everybody else comes along and starts doing it and then some people adapt and find ways to do it better than you ever could have done it but you were the best for a minute.
SPEAKER_02
What do you characterize yourself as like highly curious, highly curious like what was pulling you into these different areas, because like even I mean when I watch your YouTube channel which by the way I find. I don't know if the right word is like, I find it meditative. A lot of your videos like very relaxing.
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people compare it to that asm asmr a lot of people compared to the asmr stuff that yeah, which is that stuff. And like one of the videos. So that's like, that's like sort of an example like of something that I'm doing.
Last year I went out in a van and a van I traveled around the desert at the beginning of COVID. And, you know, you can't really see really when you watch the videos you can't really instantly see what's different about it but what is truly different about that, which I think is not completely what other bloggers are doing and things like that but what's slightly different about it is I have this van that has this incredible battery system, high tech battery system and it's called battle born batteries are made by this really great company and they have this high energy and they power this entire recording studio that I built in the van so I had you know this microphone and all this great audio equipment keyboards and drum machines and all this stuff. I was scoring the soundtrack out there in the desert for the videos.
And so the soundtracks when you say meditative, you know those soundtracks were made in the exact location that the video that you're watching was shot. And so it when you're out in the desert by yourself in, you know, BLM Bureau of Land Management Land in, you know, Utah, in Valley of the Gods Utah, all alone and you feel like you're in a John Ford movie. You get up in the morning and you make a cup of coffee.
You're there with your dog Charlie, your trusty sidekick Charlie, and who's named after travels with Charlie, John Steinbeck travels with Charlie. And then you start shooting drone videos over these landscapes and start shooting videos with your Sony a seven s3 camera and you're swapping out lenses and getting all these cinematic shots. And then, you know, you fire up the recording studio and you make the soundtrack to the video you just made.
And if you're really vibing right. It does kind of become sort of an experience really was what I was trying to do with that. You know, the videos aren't, aren't, aren't really funny, you know, they're not most hilarious videos that you've ever seen.
They're not funny at all really they're just kind of more like an experience but, but what's fun about it is, is I brought my audience along with me on this sort of a show last year that was really kind of a beautiful thing where I was, you know, bonding with my new puppy who I was two years old and got during this pandemic and we're out there all alone. And, you know, straight straight up editing the video then in the van, you know an Adobe Premiere on my laptop, leaving the camp area which is in the middle of nowhere and once you get out to the highway, uploading it to YouTube from my phone through a hotspot. So the whole thing's all happening in real time.
And it does become completely different way of making television or making video where usually there's no cameraman there. I'm doing my own audio and plugging everything in myself. So that was kind of a special thing and I think those videos are really kind of a special thing.
Like I said, you got to have like, you can't it's not for short attention span. It's, you know, you'd see it's almost like the kind of thing that you want to know if you're somebody that smokes marijuana. I don't know if you've ever done that before but you need to sit back and you might want to smoke a joint watch it maybe it might be more fun to watch that way.
Or have a beer or something.
SPEAKER_02
It's like a journey. It's a journey. It's a journey for the viewers more so than like a transaction, which I think a lot of content, you know, today feels really transactional.
This is much more of like, you're taking people on a journey which I love. I also just found like there's a video you have on there of like talking to strangers on the street. And I think about that a lot because I love talking to random people.
It's like probably what I get the most energy from in life is just talking to people and doesn't matter who it is like you can learn something from anybody. And what struck me about that video and I would encourage people to watch it because I thought it was awesome. It's, you know, it has humor infused in it because it's like you have some funny conversations with people, but you have this way of kind of digging into someone's life and with like very simple and not, you know, not like prying questions, but you like follow up very interestingly and quickly on things and it's clear that like your curiosity kind of comes out as you're just talking to people on the street.
So I was that was why I asked the question of like, do you consider yourself a highly curious person and that's what's driving you to these things or you just interested in the world around you like what what is it that kind of motivates you around that.
SPEAKER_01
I mean interaction with people was always the funniest part of the Tom Green show and MTV and my early public access show and I mean I just find people, you know, bring it when you're talking to a person that you've never met before on camera. There's a spontaneity there. That is, it's a natural thing to do yourself to humor people are naturally funny and and then there's sort of an energy to when people are being interviewed on camera certainly when they're being caught off guard or weren't planning on doing an interview that day and they're walking down the street and all of a sudden they're being interviewed by somebody.
There's a nervous energy that is fun there that you can capitalize on I guess. You know, you know, you know, stand up comedy you know it's like when you do stand up comedy and you do crowd work and you're talking to the crowd there's a nervous energy in the room and creates tension it creates drama so. So that's what I love about interacting with people on the street and you know, I think I think I probably will be doing a lot more of that in the future.
I mean, I was out in the van last year was me by myself with the dog but but you know it was all that was also me just kind of really learning and experimenting with the new cameras and some cinematic techniques with the new, these new cameras that are just incredible and just sort of figuring out technically how to film everything but but yeah I know I love I love talking to people on the street.
SPEAKER_03
I love, I love hearing what you're going to do next, because to me that's kind of where things are going. And there's a, you know, a famous tech saying in our world which is the technology is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. So I think a lot of what you're saying which is like meditative sort of longer form video that's going to take off more interactions with people that's going to take off.
And I remember watching you in the, you know, 2004 or 2005 time frame, timeframe, when you were recording a live podcast from your house in in in Los Angeles. And this was before, you know, podcasting was a thing. And I actually remember hearing.
Joe Rogan admitting that one of the reasons he got into podcasting is he saw that you were doing it and and you are curious about it so could you talk a little bit about your experience in Hollywood in Los Angeles, starting an internet TV show when there were basically no internet TV shows.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well it was, you know, it was 2002 or 2003 2003 probably when I sort of got the idea to do it, because I was, I'd stopped doing the show on MTV. And I just thought, you know, well, I remember asking some people is this technically possible to get a switcher that I cut multiple cameras live and stream live video on the internet and and just started again basically asking technical people that I knew what was possible and, and it was just possible to start streaming we actually worked with this company out of my friend Barrett Lyon, who is from San Francisco at a company called Bit Gravity that he had created a streaming platform. And we were now because this was before YouTube so we were, you know, there wasn't live on YouTube there wasn't even YouTube yet I don't think it quite that's just maybe just started or hadn't quite started yet.
So we were streaming live to the front page of my website on green dot com and switching cameras on this thing called a video toaster, which later became a tricaster, which is a company called New Tech made this tricaster. I started to film Nelson from there showed me that so I started meeting all these people that are kind of working there. You know, Barrett was this tip of the spear of streaming video, you know, CDNs content delivery delivery networks right and then, and then you know, tricaster was this company out of Austin, Texas or San Antonio, Texas and they're making these really great switchers that you could run a bunch of video cameras into and cut them live while you're streaming on the internet.
So, you know, it was possible to do it so we did it and it was really fun and it was really crazy, because it was the only live talk show on the internet and people were. We could for people could phone in and I had a phone on the desk that was just ring and I would answer it and, you know, we would take calls then we hook up Skype. We put the three Skype computers we ran them into the tricaster so we'll take video calls.
And it was just like nobody had ever seen anything like it and it was really, really fun really, really crazy. And a lot of viewers, a lot of viewers, millions and millions of people watching totally not monetized, it's trying to figure out how to get an advertiser. Nobody knew anything about buying an advertiser on the internet show.
You know, and it was, it was interesting but the thing that was really kind of cool about it was, you know, I was in Los Angeles and the comedy community I invited all my friends and also all people that I was fans up up to my house. Almost everybody came, you know, so all of a sudden I'm hanging out with Norm MacDonald and Joe Rogan and, and, and, you know, Bob Saget rest in peace Norman Rob Norman Bob who the pink good friends of mine. And, and, yeah, it's just sadly both passed away this year but I meant about the hours and hours of shows with both of them and so many others I mean literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who come do the show.
And, you know, I'm not saying that's where they got the idea to do a podcast but it was interesting that like, pretty much most of my regular guests sort of will come up. I'm not you'd see it every time they'd walk in they'd see the lights on the ceiling, you'd see the cameras, and you'd see them go. Oh, shit, I don't need to deal with all this bullshit anymore.
You know, you know, I'm trying to sell my TV show to somebody and I'm not gonna let me do what I actually want to do and all I need to do is get like, you cameras and couple microphones and do my own show right. And that sure enough like so many of them are still currently doing their own show podcasts and things like this so so it was pretty cool. Yeah, I was that was kind of what that that show in many ways more than the technology is really where it may have influenced podcasting because everybody who would ever want to do a podcast in the comedy community, all at once, all got to see a whole setup, you know, and it was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03
It was first of its kind. And like I remember watching, you know, seeing some of these folks come to your house and being like, not to like not not I'm not I'm not I'm by the way I'm not by anyways saying you've got the idea from me or whatever I'm saying it's interesting because I mean you know Adam Corolla,
SPEAKER_01
he's got one of the biggest podcasts in the world. He came up all the time. Steve Oh, right.
Got a great podcast now in this van. You know, Dr. Drew came all the time, podcasting all the time, you know, like all these people that were were norm went on to do an incredible internet show.
And so, but it was kind of like, you know, it was just, it was, it was all happening at once right but this just happened to be a place that people could actually go and touch it and feel it and taste it and actually do it right.
SPEAKER_03
So then, and then it became sort of an obvious next step if somebody wanted to do that they would go set up their own studio at home. So, totally yeah it felt I remember, you know, watching and just being like wow like you can do this with the internet you can have high quality guests and you can have people call in. I remember, you know, once, you know, I think the thing that I think the thing that was.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I think the thing that was the thing that I thought was even more than the technology that I thought was really maybe the thing that people hadn't done before was two comedians, just talking to each other, as opposed to, you know, it being sort of one guy is the television host, and then they have guests coming all the time, instead of just two comedians talking to each other. You know, and that's what the show was. And they're doing a reverent things like taking phone calls, and we also had the internet running through so we could watch the internet and fuck around and talk about the internet have beers and all of this stuff, two comedians talking to people, putting on a performance in the sort of in the guise of it being an interview like we're playing talk show here, but it's not really a talk show just me talking to Steve or me talking to Dr.
Drew or me talking to Norm McDonald, and we're sitting at a talk show desk
SPEAKER_03
but really we're just goofing around. Yeah, it felt like, you know, a lot of shows you watch it's it feels very much like the people on the show are, you know, talking, you know, to you, or at you versus to you know two people talking with each other and you're just kind of a fly on the wall, it felt it felt very much like we were just hanging out, you know, the viewer at least we're just kind of hanging out with, you know, you guys, you know, it felt like it was me, Norm McDonald and Tom Green kind of all hanging out even though I was just behind a computer screen.
SPEAKER_01
I think sometimes like, I don't really think it gets credited as being the first podcast because we didn't call it a podcast, that name hadn't really been invented yet. But the other thing is, you know, podcasting really became more like radio streaming to the internet. And I was trying to stream television to the internet so one of the subtle differences which I still to this day and somewhat kind of a little bit baffled that this didn't stick or that this people are still doing this.
Everyone's were in headphones, doing these podcasts and talking into radio microphones that are on stands right that's right this is a radio thing we're doing right now, which doesn't really lend itself to the visual medium, you know, because this is blocking your head this is blocking your head. So, you know, we, but it's a little extra technical step involved in order to do television, you know, you have to have wireless microphones, you know, it's like about as complicated or less complicated than plugging this in but it seems more complicated. And, but it's interesting, you can really see how things do get replicated people see, you know, like, everyone's doing the microphone the headphone thing now so it sort of becomes the format.
I think Web o vision, which is what we call it we didn't call it a podcast we called it Web o vision, but it was a podcast was me trying to make a gorilla sort of version of David Letterman show in the house so we were thinking visually. We didn't want, we didn't want to have headsets on, we wanted to be able to get up and move, you know, we didn't want to have wireless mics, we didn't want to be stuck sitting in front of a mic, you know, we get up and go, you know, have a drink in the kitchen and camera would follow us you know there's,
SPEAKER_02
there's a little bit more of a TV visual element to it. Did you find it fun, like did you find the, the Hollywood, you know, the kind of hustle and bustle of like, you know, big entertainment business, did you find it fun and fulfilling at the time.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, I did. I feel like, I feel like, like I just left Los Angeles after 20 years I've moved to the country so I'm living out on a farm here you know in the wilderness I've got wolves up here it's it's it's an it's incredible change right.
And I think we're living in a new world now where you can be anywhere physically and not have to actually live in Los Angeles you know, I want to, I want to try to sell a TV show or an idea, I don't have to get in my car and drive in rush hour to Santa Monica to have a meeting in a boardroom with, you know, five television executives, you know, we could just have a zoom call from wherever we are in the world. That's a lot of that's really changed during COVID. That's when it's sort of a light bulb went off for me, sort of a huge, a huge big influence of things happened for me like convergence of things happened at once which I don't know if confluence is the right word.
I'm not sure if that's the right word. I'll give it to you happened at once. A bunch of things happened at once that made me think you know I don't think I have to live in Los Angeles anymore you know and my, you know, my family is up here my parents are getting older I want to spend time with them I want to spend time with my brother and my friends up here.
I was COVID happened and all of a sudden I didn't leave my house for a year but I was still doing business and I was having meetings on zoom calls every day I'm like wait I could be anywhere right now I don't have to be in Los Angeles right now. And, and, and then when you talk about authenticity, and I started to think you know I think probably better if I'm going to be doing videos on television and social media and shows and things like that that I continue to do here I probably be better off to be where you actually want to live right where you authentically want to be. I'm not in Los Angeles because I have to be and this is where the businesses but I actually would rather be living out in the woods, you know, and working on the farm and, and I like to take photography doing photography of you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and just being close to my family and stuff so I feel so much better here.
So that's kind of I think that's kind of honestly, I think is really where things will probably go next is people are going to realize okay. Do what you want to do in life. Build a life that you really authentically love and want to do.
And if you want to be somebody that's making television or making comedy. You know, you're going to be documented in a funny way or do it in a funny way but do it from an authentic place now you don't have to be in Los Angeles just because that's where they shot, you know, gilly guns island and Seinfeld and I love Lucy, you know, we don't have to be there anymore, you know, go go where you are where you really from that's what people want to see people want to see people doing real stuff. They want to see people trying to be something else that they're not right.
I'm not a Hollywood guy I lived there for 20 years I had fun there I learned so much there you know I got to go do stand up comedy every night down at the comedy store and think of in the lap factory and all these great comedy clubs and surround myself with so many amazing, you know brilliant people. And so I got to do that for 20 years, and I learned so much doing that but I just kind of, I just don't think I want to spend the next 20 years there.
SPEAKER_03
I think I want to enjoy my old age. Do you do you think if you're, you know, an up and coming comic. Do you think it makes sense to almost do like a college degree, you know, three four years in Los Angeles to sort of learn as much as you can and then go back to where, wherever makes you happy or would you.
Yeah, what are your thoughts there.
SPEAKER_01
Well, see, I think you can move there too early to like, I didn't move there as a struggling comic. I started the Tom green show and public access in Canada, and developed here in the comfort of being in a small town without the intimidation. I was in a small town with a million people in Ottawa but it wasn't it's not a show business town right.
So I wasn't surrounded by all these other people trying to do it, which gives you a certain amount of confidence, right, because you're feel like an experiment a little bit more. So I always tell people when they ask me questions like this I say when I don't think you should just move to Los Angeles I think you should try to do, especially today you know try to try to develop your craft whatever it is, where you are, where you got your support system around you. And, you know, you may never have to go there.
SPEAKER_02
This is kind of similar to the, you know, you know Mr beast. Yeah, I assume everyone kind of knows him at this point, you know, very famous 23 year old.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, unbelievable. But he I only really found out about him late in the in the game but I watched his Joe Rogan episode and this very very amazed by him.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but he kind of has a similar, you know, story like I think he still lives in Greenville, North Carolina where he's from, and he like bought a warehouse that he basically does all this stuff out of, you know, in Greenville like he's kind of turned down the idea of like being an old man in the scene he's like, I'm a small town kid I'm going to stay here and you know, you know, higher friends and like work with people I like and sort of be in that atmosphere and if I need to go to LA for some like reason and I can do that, but he's kind of opted out in the same way that I think, you know you did in those
SPEAKER_01
years. I mean, I've got to speaks to the savviness of our audience now, especially in these, you know, not to open up a can of worms here but in these very politically divided times. And so, you know, people maybe, you know, have started to voice their displeasure with the, you know, the authenticity of Hollywood and celebrities and there's a little bit of a divide now, especially in the United States.
So, so, you know, people can, you know, can tell when somebody is, you know, making your videos in LA, even as even as like a, you know, watching social media, watching TikTok, they've got TikTok houses, you know, kids from all over the country to LA so they can make videos in LA so it looks like they're in LA right but the end of the day that's going to have diminishing returns because you know how many times do you need to see a palm tree, and before you stop being impressed by it right. You know, maybe it's more impressive to see somebody doing something very unique to their part of the world that's very real very honest you know, so many unique things here to this part of the world, but I can go film. Right now I could go and catch a large mouth bass, you know, not going to catch a large mouth bass on on on on Kuangga.
Wasianica Boulevard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's kind of you know, and that's unique to me I grew up catching large mouth bass I know I know I want to use a you know a Rapala jitterplug floating lure, you know, you got to get them under that log. And just under the log and just just after sunset or just before sunset you know you know and there's all these little details, no little details are the things that make up the story that people find interesting to watch and they learn something from so.
SPEAKER_02
So, so the, you know, you know, there's that was my favorite part of your most recent video, by the way on the farm, or the, you know, like the farm life where you were, you were naming off all the different types of fish that could have been in that pond. And your knowledge of the different types of fish like I grew up fishing on a lake as well actually in Connecticut and. Yeah, that was pretty amazing.
It kind of reminded me it had a little bit of like Bubba Gump vibes from from from Forest Gump movie where he names all the different types of shrimp that he.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well I can name like large mouth bass, small mouth bass, perch, sunfish, northern pike, walleye, some say pickerel, lake trout, speckled trout. You know, go on and on is crappy there's mud pout, there's all sorts of fish.
SPEAKER_02
I love it. Did you ever experience burnout. This is like something I'm just fascinated by with, you know, high performers and people who have kind of like gone from fast paced culture and and kind of adapted to like slower living.
Did you ever feel burnout and did you.
SPEAKER_01
Did you wrestle with it. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, honestly, like, I think that happens like internally in your in your head as opposed to that doesn't really.
I mean, I, I push myself. Now, even though I'm living in the country I get up in the morning and I got stuff I'm trying to do, you know, you know, I'm trying to actually still create things. And as I've gotten older, I've learned how to manage that, that anxiety, and that kind of pressure, right.
And I think, you know, when you're younger. Certainly with in my case when I was younger. I was I was under a lot of pressure because you know I didn't know what I would possibly do in my life if this.
There didn't work out, you know, I do I wasn't cut out to work in an office or the boss and all of this stuff because I was just really had a tough time with the idea of like doing a repetitive tasks and being, you know, yelled at by somebody. Right. I just knew that that was not going to work for me. So, it was kind of like a life and death kind of thing, you know, like, I got to make this comedy thing work for like, I'm, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for the rest of my life right.
And that's a really scary terrifying thing, especially before you had anything happen. And then once you get some success, then you want to make sure that you are able to manage it so that you don't screw it up, you know, which you know I've had, you know, various degrees of success at that, you know, but at least, you know, keep it going. And, but now that I'm older, you know, it's not as there's not as much pressure because you know I'm 51 years I turned 51 years old and January 30 5150 years old now.
And I realized like there's just really so much left less of my life left to ruin, you know, like I can't really I basically, I'm basically like if I really screwed it all up right now like I could still probably kind of close to, you know, and have a pretty comfortable death, you know, it would be it would be, you know, you know, well, maybe I got 2025 years if I'm lucky, I'll be fine, you know, but when you're 20. You know, a lot of living you got to do ahead ahead of you that you got to be careful that you don't screw up so. So I do feel that it's easier to kind of like kind of calm the nerves a little bit as you get older.
And also kind of learn how to understand your own personal self more as you get older so that I know when I get anxious, if I take a walk, or if I feel depressed, you know, maybe I drank a few too many beers last night, you know, maybe I'm going to not have a drink for a few days, some exercise and I know I know living out in nature has been hugely helpful for me in that department too because I find personally when you walk in nature, if you walk in the forest. I explain it scientifically, I, you know, I'm not really researched this I've read little bits about it, I can't not enough to remember it and repeat it but I do feel that you pick into sort of a natural sort of, you know, you know, animalistic kind of place where you know just your senses are turned into a different place and you become very more focused on on the moment, you know when you're walking through nature and hear the sounds of nature smell the smells of nature, walking through the forest, looking, you know, in the little heightened state of alert, you know, there's bears out there, you know, so you're kind of in a survival mode, right, and that takes you out of the anxiety of worrying about the future or the sadness and regretting thinking about things in the past, you know, you're not thinking about the future of the past you're thinking about what's going on right now at this moment, you know, trees the wind, the smells, you know, and the beauty of it, right, the beauty of it is all around you. It's a distraction, right, so I find it so much easier to stay positive and also continue to work and do things when I live in a place like this where I can step out my front door and not be, you know, when you walk down the street in the city sometimes you kind of just kind of still want to ignore all that noise and the cars and stuff and still in your head about all the things you've got to do that day or all the things you didn't get done yesterday.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think, you know, I'm out in nature right now. And I was talking to a 92 year old man yesterday who lives down the street. And Greg loves talking to old men.
SPEAKER_02
By the way, this is like, this is one of Greg's hobbies in all seriousness is one of Greg. Greg, big thing.
SPEAKER_01
So what's that way you're talking to me?
SPEAKER_03
And by the way, you're going to live way longer than 2025 years, especially being out in the country.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, laughing makes you live longer man.
SPEAKER_01
I like to think so I'd like to think that the relaxed lifestyle will be helpful.
SPEAKER_03
100%. Yeah, so I was chatting with this man and, and, and he was like, we were talking about being overwhelmed. And he was I told him that I used to, you know, briefly lived in New York City and he was like, people in New York City are overwhelmed by the city.
I'm overwhelmed by nature. And I thought that was a really beautiful way of putting it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So much more beautiful, positive thing to be overwhelmed by it's it's, it's, it's your minds. And all the like I said all your senses are firing but they're focusing on something that's beautiful and not something that's stressful like, you know, jackhammers and ambulance sirens and smells of, you know, burning garbage.
SPEAKER_03
And it's weird, right? It's weird like sorry, sorry, I saw this morning that the average rent price in New York City for the first time past $5,000 a month. And it's kind of weird how it's $5,000 a month to live in New York City. Meanwhile, like, you know, a kilometer away from where I am it's 500 bucks a month to get a to get a beautiful spot in nature.
Canadian by the way, $5,000 a month to live in New York City I just found out this fun fact.
SPEAKER_02
Guess how much it costs to be buried in New York City. So how much does it cost to die in New York City.
SPEAKER_03
Yes, I don't know 20 grand.
SPEAKER_00
I'm what my question.
SPEAKER_02
Higher $55,000 is the average amount that it costs to be buried in New York City.
SPEAKER_03
So go for it. I mean it's completely insane. Why would you want to be buried in New York City just to honestly serious question.
SPEAKER_02
I don't know. I just like if you were I don't know if you're from there. It's like maybe like premium burial spots I don't know there's just not enough space like not enough cemeteries and stuff there.
I do think it's just like figuring out which baseline setting creates energy for your life because I know people who are like, I feel like they can't handle solitude right like I personally I think I buy into that quote that's like you know all of man's problems would be solved by like, you know, being able to actually handle solitude and you need to go look up what the exact quote is. But it's something to that effect where like, we have lost as society, the ability to experience and to embrace solitude and silence and so a lot of people you fill that void by just having chaos around you and that there's just loudness in your mind all the time and that's comforting for a lot of people because the silence is scary. And I think once you learn to embrace solitude I think people very rarely go back.
At that point then it's like, you know, I live in the suburbs right Greg like you know this I live outside New York City. I love having silence, six days a week and when I want a little chaos, I can go get in a car and in 25 or 30 minutes have chaos and like, you know, refresh my like chaos engines and I can go back to the way that I want to and then come back to the silence. But that ability to actually experience and like flex your solitude muscle, more regularly, I think it's such a massive unlock for your happiness and fulfillment in life.
SPEAKER_01
For sure, for sure, absolutely. And I think it's also like when you're alone. You, your mind has time to think of ideas that you might not have thought of otherwise, because you're, you know, you've got some, you've got a vacuum of time to fill right so you're not distracted by all of these, sort of, day to day, sort of, you know, necessities of this getting from point A to point B, you know, maybe, maybe if you're alone and you were just have a little bit of space to breathe you you might start to think I mean, that's kind of the intention I continue to do stand up comedy and I would say I stop for a year or so during COVID by starting up again my touring so I can I go off to this I'm going to be going off to the cities and do and stand up and I'll be I'll be I'll be going to LA in New York I'll be going to I'm going to come see you do a stand up in New York for sure.
I'll go I'll be I'll be going everywhere next year and the year after that and the year after that. And I'll go out you know, maybe I'll go for two or three weekends a month maybe I will take a month off now and then but I'll go when I feel like doing it. And, but then when I come back home I'll be in this sort of nice place place where I can think and write and breathe and relax and enjoy.
SPEAKER_03
What's your, what's your vision for yourself in the farm. Call it in five years so you know, it's January, you know January 1. You know, 2027.
Where do you want to be.
SPEAKER_01
It's funny because like there is a version of what I want to do here which sounds sort of a lot like what I was doing 2003, to be honest with you know it's like and it also sounds a lot like what I was doing in 1994. You know, I, I do, you know, I do have a podcast it's called the Tom Green podcast. You know, it's the name you cannot came up with.
But, and I haven't, I've been doing it. I've been doing it earlier last year I took a little time off and I'm going to be doing the studio here I actually have a barn here to Barnes here, 200 year old Barnes that are really, really cool. You know, structures and I'm going to be setting up a little hangout spot in there to in the loft of one of the barns to do some podcasting and streaming and, and sort of enjoying interviewing some of my friends here in the area who are out there.
There's a lot of people in the area who are outdoors enthusiasts and farmers and fishermen and hunters and gardeners and, and computer experts and videographers and, and actors and all sorts of people up here in Canada interesting people will pop and buy and so I'm, you know, looking to sort of enjoy living here and making it my creative hub I guess and doing my, my films and my television shows and my podcasts and and enjoying enjoying enjoying the nature.
SPEAKER_02
I'm excited for your podcast man I'm looking forward to to seeing you kind of come back into that world and will personally be watching to to see how you're innovating because as Greg said earlier on I do feel like you've consistently been out in front of, you know, and really creating and crafting what the future of creative work looks like so I'm super excited to see that I'm also going to have to buy tickets for your New York show.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure absolutely yeah if you go on my YouTube channel like you can switch you just if anyone watching, you know if you're, if you're inclined to go check it out, you can watch those band videos we talked about as you scroll back. Depending how deep of a dive you want to take you're basically seeing my life basically in reverse unfolding before your eyes and, and so, you know it's you know you and you know my podcast is on there it's funny at the beginning of the pandemic I built a studio in the house in Los Angeles I was doing my podcast there and people calling in similar to how we're doing now. And, you know I had all sorts of great interviews with friends of mine and, and, and, you know, sort of just in the right at that time when I decided that I was going to move but you know it's kind of been then all of a sudden it was like, no no no I'm up here so it's it's kind of a neat little a little rewind you can do on there and you can see all these different sort of experimental sort of things that I've been doing so.
SPEAKER_03
So it's it's YouTube.com slash Tom green.
SPEAKER_02
I think right. Yeah, you also, yeah, I would recommend people hungry. Yeah, I would recommend people Google you as well and there's just like a lot of cool stuff in your background the other thing that's hilarious about Googling you Tom by the way which I mentioned to Greg when I was doing research, you know in advance of chatting.
When you search Tom green on Google. The first one is you it's a Wikipedia page, your Wikipedia page. The second one is Tom green polygamist, and it is a American Mormon fundamentalist from Utah, who was a practitioner or a plural marriage.
So I got a real kick out of that when I was going through. But anyway man I mean seriously thank you so much for taking the time. Super excited to to continue to follow along and see all the cool stuff you're going to be up to in the coming years and excited to to bring my wife out for your
SPEAKER_01
comedy show to because we're both big fans. Yeah, that's awesome man. I appreciate it.
No thanks for having me on I can't wait to to tweet this out to everybody and and I'm on Twitter I'm on tip talk to go follow me there everybody Instagram.
SPEAKER_03
You know, I'm on all the spots. Yeah, your latest, your latest Instagram post I think was a brick of cheese I think that was it was basically just some cheese is that correct. I posted one sense then about right before we went on the air I posted I was out with my chain saw this morning.
Cutting some lumber up. So if you want some some cheese and some some chainsaw images, meditative stuff, you need to follow Tom green on YouTube on Instagram on Twitter on tick tock. He's a refreshing refreshing content in your feet I promise that.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was an AI was an AI drawing that was created by when I wrote the word cheese into that. What's it called the dally dally yeah yeah, I wrote the word she I wrote the word cheese into dally and then I posted it and then I said cheese.
SPEAKER_03
What's the BS thing about dally and we were actually saw how and I were just talking about this before, which is, when you put something into dally, dally owns the rights to that content.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that is BS because because a lot of times you would think that the, you know, the word choice is really the creative. And so I wrote, I wrote, I wrote comedy yesterday, and into dally, and, and it's a posted it's a post right before the cheese, and it drew this Picasso like drawing of a face in front of a microphone looks like this beautiful artistic thing right, but I feel like it might have done that because it was confused by the word comedy and it didn't know how to draw comedy. And you know if you're right, she is it's going to drop cheese right that's pretty easy assumption to make but comedy, how do you draw comedy, and it did this really interesting sort of almost like impressionistic, the castle type painting of a, figure with a microphone.
And then I posted on Instagram and said, comedy. And then of course everybody's saying wow that's such a great art you're such a great artist you know of course I did not tell anybody that it was an AI computer that did it, but I'm telling them now so it's fine. I had this idea that it would be funny to go on and do an AI post every day for a week.
Yeah, there we go yeah show everybody that we got the picture if you're on YouTube and you're watching this.
SPEAKER_03
This is the picture Picasso. And here's the brick of cheese.
SPEAKER_01
There's the brick of cheese absolutely.
SPEAKER_03
Delicious cheese. The internet. We love it Tom Green we love you.
Thanks for coming on.
SPEAKER_02
We appreciate it man. Thanks guys. Thank you man.
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at high at trwh.com. Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast. Until next time, we will see you soon.