This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. One of the rules I said for myself when I started this podcast is that I was only going to talk to people that I wanted to talk to. And for the most part, i'd stuck to that, except for the episodes where there
was just me talking to myself. But I will say this, My guest today is someone who I've known tangently and I'm a fan of and I've watched him work over the last maybe almost twenty years since I started Late Night fifteen years something like that. He is a very unusual mind. A stand up comedian, but much more than a stand up comedian. Is I think you're about to find out, Moshi Kasher.
In the body.
What I have to say to you?
What she is this?
I haven't seen you for a while, and you've got new glasses.
I'm glad you noticed.
I did get in glasses yet, and they are about to be all glasses.
And are the glasses that you can see people behind you. They look like they might be glasses, but they've got the little mirrors and you can see people behind you.
You know what's I'm talking about.
What I can say about that is this. They were made in Germany, so the possibility that they're doing survey valance is higher than if they were American glasses.
Well, I think nowadays, I think we're all under a little bit of surveillance.
We signed up for him, man, We signed outside with these things that.
I thought you were talking about, cash Fattel and a new surveillance apparatus of the United States government which has never been more sophisticated and impressive.
Tell me about this I don't know about it.
About me and Cash Hottel. Well, Cash is an old college buddy. He's running the FBI now and uh, he kind of I'm on his email list and I'm getting a lot of the intel and he's up to some really interesting stuff. And I'm really glad you had me on your podcast because that's all I want to talk about today.
Don't you really know Cash Hotel?
No, I wish, I don't wish I know. I hope he doesn't know who I am. I never want him to know my name.
He knows who you are. He knows when we are sleeping, and he knows when we are away.
Said, yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That he's Santa. He knows some are on the North List, so.
Right, he has an audience nice list and it's it's actually just a it's an Elon musk X feed and he just looks at it. And the coal has had it as a U is back too. They're digging for coal.
Yeah, I I had about that. What do you use cool for?
Now?
See I grew up in Scotland where coal was very popular. We used it for all sorts of things. We made houses out of it and toys when my I think my first Christmas present was cool. But the it's cools for power stations.
I guess that's it.
And I'm glad that you're coming to me for questions about the power infrastructure in the United States because.
I'm the right guy. Listen, I grew up.
I grew up Jewish, so our our Christmas presents were made of gold and they were just telescopes so we could see into the houses of the gentile families.
Oh. Nice, tiny little telescopes as well.
Little telescope made a little telescope golden foreskins.
I'm glad you mentioned growing up because I'm always fascinated to talk to you because you got you go clean and sober, like before most people get started on their journey of excess if they're going to have one.
What was the name of your book again?
And I read it ages ago, but it was about somebody that got clean and sober by the age of sixteen or something.
Oh, it was my That's my first book. Casher in the Rock, The True the True tale of Yeah, the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict to criminal mental patient and then turned sixteen turned sixteen.
There you go, Yeah, I remember it. I'm glad you remember it too. It was.
It's a fascinating kind of thing because I I feel like you may have you should be able to sue someone.
I think if you've gone through all that by the time you're sixty.
Well, who would it be? My mother?
Probably? Yeah, I think probably it should sue your mona.
You know, I've officially been sober such a long time from such a young age that I don't even find it impressive anymore. From about age twenty to about age thirty five, I was like very proud of it, like it's been it's been fifteen years and I'm only thirty years old. Now I'm forty five and it's been thirty years, and I get embarrassed trying to talk about it at like dinner parties, because it begs so many questions that I don't have good answers to.
Well, it's interesting thing.
You bring up an interesting well, because I've been sober for over thirty years as well, And it is an interesting thing because I don't people say, you know, we'll say thanks to me, like do you miss it, and I'm like, miss Wacker, probably I don't even know what you're talking about, you know, it's yeah, I mean, it's such a fucking long time ago. What happens is though, I think. I mean, I I describe myself as an alcoholic. I don't know how you identify, but that's kind of
and I feel like that's still what I am. It's just it's not connected to It's more a description of the type of person that I am, the type of you know, mental aberrations that I have are connected with being an alcoholic. I mean, look, I can get back to drinking pretty fast if I if I made a terrible error of judgment. But it doesn't come up in my daily life. But oh, do you think about it at all about drinking again? Yeah, drinking or using or anything like that.
Well, I'll tell you.
I'll answer your first question by saying, during those glory years when I would brag at parties about how long I had been sober, because it really was something I thought was so cool and unique and different about me, because I was so young, and I really was proud of it, and I was proud of the muck that I'd pulled myself out of But as I have gotten older, and I'm sure it's not a coincident, it's coincided with me feeling less sort of confident about declaring how long
it's been. Is this idea of I no longer understand the word alcoholic, like I understand the framing that you're giving over and I think in the program it becomes a sort of spiritual state of being, my orientation in the world. It's the way that I interact with the universe. It's the adjuta I feel if I'm not caring for myself, it's you know, scrambling thoughts, blah blah blah, which I have all of those characteristics, but so do a lot
of people. But I got sober so young. I was fifteen years old when I got out of rehab for the last time, almost sixteen and for I would say probably twenty years. I knew in my bones that I was an alcoholic. But now I don't know if I know what an alcoholic is. And I mean, obviously I know that their alcoholic behaviors drinking too much, compulsive drinking, being unable to stop drinking once you start. But if I was nothing about me is the same from when
I was fifteen. So the idea, yeah, there's one spiritual state of being that still is totally true and definitive for me is harder with each passing year for me to wrap my brain around.
Yeah, I can identify very strongly with that.
I think the thing that I pivot around, which is maybe slightly there or a slightly different way of approaching it to you, is that I I it's kind of I like take the allergy kind of things, like if I was allergic to peanuts when I was five years old, I'm allergic to peanuts.
I'm sixty two years old.
The allergy I've changed a great deal in that time, but the essential allergy to peanuts remains fundamentally true and unchanged.
And I feel like that with me. Alcohol is kind.
Of like that is it's still the basic. The first drink is the one that gets you drunk, not the third one, not the tenth one. And if I get to the point where I introduced the allogen into my system, then I'm no longer food in the wheel.
That's kind of how I feel about it.
And that makes total sense, and I don't refute it actually in the set, I have a new book out that came out last year.
I think you'd actually really like it.
It's called Subculture Vulture, a memoir in six scenes, and in each sub culture that I examined, these are like the kind of six worlds that I've spent my life in. I do a history of that world, and then I enter the history. At a certain point it becomes about my time in that world. And the first chapter it's
actually I don't know, they're actually longer than chapters. It's like the first novella is about my time in AA and I talk about this whole process where I went through this brain melt at about twenty years sober, where it just became harder and harder for me to understand what I meant when I declared myself alcoholic. But I I understand what you're saying to that idea, like, once you have crossed a threshold into alcoholism, you become allergic in a way that is permanent. And not to say
I think anyone should drink again. I certainly don't, and I'm still sober. But allergies even changed from fifteen to forty five. I mean, even within the framework of the analogy, you could say, well, I was allergic to I was allergic to the peanut when I was fifteen, but now I'm forty five and my chemistry has changed. But I use an analogy in the book. I think you'd like to describe what alcoholism is is I have two problems. Right,
The alcoholic has two problems. They are it is strawberries and mind fuck, Like you need both in order to really be an alcoholic.
Right.
Strawberries is the analogy you're using, Right, It's like, every time I eat a strawberry, I break out in hives, I leave my wife, I go drunk driving. You know, I have an allergy for strawberries. And if all I had was the allergy for strawberries, it would be very simple to know what to do in the face of that, which is just don't yeah that you're right, avoid the strawberry.
Pats strawberry.
Yeah right, I'm sure you already know where this is going. The other problem we have is mind fuck. Mind fuck is every time you look at a strawberry, all you can remember is the beautiful, delicious flavor of that sweet nectar within that strawberry.
You must have another strawberry. You take another bite, and.
The allergy is back, but I don't even know if I believe in that analogy anymore.
Well, you know, it's kind of like it's whatever works in the day. I think I know that I know that it is. It is something. And I'm sure you've heard this as well. There are two things that I hear more bullshit about in my life than everyone. One is addiction and addictive people, especially if they're being described by people who have opinions about it but have no experienced that, or people who.
Are in the active throes of it.
Man talk a lot, right, It's either people who don't know what they're talking about or people who do.
Both of them are full of shit.
I'm full of shit, right. And the other one is aviation.
Hello, this is Greig Ferguson and I want to let you know I have a brand new stand up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy and I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there? Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't look. I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't
do it, then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours.
Aviation is something that I became.
I was terrified of flying for a long time, and I thought that, as people of my strike kind do, I thought, the best way to come back this clearly is to learn how to fly. And I got a pilot's license and I and I kind of went through all of that, and I learned so much about it that now when I like, when you read a report about, you know, a drunk guy on plane forces emergency landing, and you go, it's not an emergency landing.
They just landed the plane because there's a drunk guy on it. That's not an emergency. That's just fucking unpleasant.
And then or the is like turbulence. The plane dropped a thousand feet.
It didn't. It didn't drop a thousand feet, And it's weird.
It's like a plane traveling at six hundred miles an hour going through you know, rough air moves maybe an inch, a couple of inches, maybe a foot maybe if you're a real you know, real mind blowing turbulence, but thousands of feet it's just bullshit. And what I think is interesting is that we now live in a world where there is no I don't know, I don't know if I trust any source of information, even the ones that I go to that I supposedly trust.
I'm like sometimes when I hear stuff, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. If that don't doesn't there right to me. I think we've become very suspicious.
I think we should be very suspicious because information is because okay good unbelievably less less reliable, and cash for tell is.
A part of the issue, but it's true.
Here's the I've been thinking about this last night because I was working on a new bit about this very topic, which is that everyone is stupid. I think we all know that everyone's stupid except for you and me, right for breaking Emosha kind of the only two intelligent people left. But the stupidity has a different harmonic these days. For you know, two hundred thousand years, stupid people were like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of just like a stupid guy, Like I'm just a dumb old guy, and I go
to other people for information. Stupid people now are like, I'm actually the smartest person in the world, Like I actually know every single thing that there is to know. That is the that's the disease of the modern era is that the no one will admit that they don't know anything anymore, and it expresses itself. This is the bit I'm working on is about homeschool and I'm like, I've never met a person who decided to homeschool their kids.
I hope you don't homeschool your kids. I've never met a person.
Decided who decided to homeschool their kid where I'm like, yes, you are an educator. I have always thought you had it in you. I've never seen it never.
That's a fascinating approach, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think so I have this It's not an argument, but I have this different point of view with my wife. My wife sees conspiracy, not conspiracy fees, but she always thinks, like, you know what these guys in Washington are up to?
Or do you know what these guys are doing?
And I'm like, I have a I think her view of the world like they're up to something is rather touching an optimistic view of the world, because I don't think any of these buggers are smart enough to be up to annon. I think they're just basically bumping around going oh what now, Oh what now? And I don't think I have a very hard time being believing in any form of conspiracy theory because I like you. I think most people said you and me are are British humid.
There's a tradition in Judaism. It's called the midrash, right. The midrash are extra canonical anecdotes about Biblical figures and the story of the Bible. Right, so they're they're kind of like oral stories that were passed down that are not like fully canon, but are our extra cannon right, like like the strange story, Like I don't know if you ever heard the story of a Abraham coming and breaking all of the idols in front of h that his father used to worship.
I don't know if you've ever heard that story.
I don't know that one. I know the one I'm going to murder my son. I'm not good to murder my son. That's not anyone that's in.
Unfortunately, that one's that one's in. That one's in the original text. Unfortunately that made it to the main script. But this is like an extra thing, which is like when when God revealed himself to Abraham. Abraham came to his father's you know, idol worship barn and broke all the idols. And for my whole childhood I thought that was in the Bible, and then I found out, Oh, it's not in the Bible at all. It's just an extra story that people kind of tell. Anyway, what's my
point of saying all that? There's all these midrash midrashim they're called, and they're a great quote about the midrash, about the midrashim, which is, if you believe all of the midrash you're a fool. If you believe none of them, you're a bigger fool. And that's a religious idea and judy I have always ported that idea over into conspiracy theory if you believe, but I reverse it, which is,
if you believe no conspiracy theory, you're a fool. If you believe all the conspiracy theories, you're a bigger fool.
Yes, I think I think I can absolutely concur with you on that. But the problem is, of course, is picking the ones to believe and not to believe it. And they also the the agenda, which is interesting. You use Judaism as of course though you would do. But it's because, of course, the the Jewish people are always accused the anti Semitism is always based on a oh these guys are up to something. Oh there's an agenda like to that. That protocols of the Elder's at Zion stuff.
That's greatest, Like that's the greatest work.
It's it's so crazy.
It's like I remember here in a while ago somebody was banging on about the ad.
It's actually I think it was on Bill Maher's show.
Somebody was talking about, yeah, I don't suppose they like that on the Hollywood cocktail circuit.
And I'm like, Hollywood cocktail circuit.
Well, you heard synagogue when you when when you heard you've got synagogue?
I know what I thought, how dare you accuse me of that? What I thought was that do you know anything about Hollywood? The idea that people are hanging around socialized and that they they're not they don't do that. It's Hollywood is is the most work you.
Know la Hollywood.
I'm not talking about the Hollywood Boulevard and stuff, but I mean that's a whole different community. But they do the idea that that people in the Hollywood hangout because they like each other in the show business community.
I don't see a lot of that. I wasn't aware. Maybe they just didn't like.
Me, or that we get you mean that we all get together and kind of like lay out the plan for controlling the culture.
For movies and show business and stuff.
Right, we're gonna we're.
Gonna be pushing our gender agenda in twenty twenty seven.
That's the plan. Right.
Nobody's that sophisticated, And I totally I agree.
I get so frustrated.
I mean, obviously, you know it can be bigotry, can be frustrating in all of its forms. But it's so frustrating that, you know, when if in the computer programming world, in the tech world, there's a lot of Indian program there's a lot of computer geniuses that are Indian, but nobody's talking about the grand conspiracy for Indians to control the tech universe. But every time the Jews do some stuff, they go, ah, this is a part of a large Nebula plan.
No.
I mean, when I deny the Jews are overrepresented in Hollywood circles, I would in the Hollywood cocktail scene. I would not deny this it's not like we plan. It's like that's an industry. Different industries have different groups that go to them, and that's the way it is.
It's an interesting thing.
Have you noticed we talked about the allergy changing and the alcoholism change, and have you noticed your approach to Judaism changing as you go? Do you become a parent obviously as well, and you know your perspective on these things.
Has it altered?
All right? It's altered.
I mean, I love to even get into this part of the conversation, but it's altered a great deal. And it's altered a great deal because for the same reason that a lot of things have altered in our society that Judaism, Jewish identity has been swallowed whole by political agenda, and the self definition of the Jewish culture has become intertwined with the Israeli Palestinian conflict in a way that
is so heart wrenching and exhausting. It's hard for me to say exhausting because I'm not living in the most acute pain of that conflict, but the idea that war and politics and government has been infused into my origin stories, spiritual and cultural identity is an endless heartbreak and one that I so I find it harder in some ways to access and in some other ways maybe easier to access.
But as I get older, my relationship with my religion and with my I guess ethnic background has become more complicated and more difficult because of forces beyond my control. The same thing, by the way, is true of my relationship with being an American citizen. It's more complicated, more heartbreaking because of forces that I'm not directly involved in.
But I get I'm sort of endless sleep pulled by the external definitions of what it means to be an American, what it means to be a Jew, what it means to be an American Jew, and I hate being forced into ideological foxholes against my will.
Yeah, I think that that is unfortunately as a great steaming truck of various similitude.
The I remember when I.
Years ago, I was shooting a movie in Moscow in Russia, and I grew up in the UK during Scotland during the Cold War, and so we were. I was of the belief that the Russians were ready to eat babies, and all the stuff you hear about whenever you create the other they're always eating babies and having you know, human sacrifices and stuff.
And I believe that about I didn't.
I mean, you get old enough, do you think, well, that's probably not entirely true. But then when I went to Russia and interacted with Russians for the first time in Russia and realizing that a lot of people in Russia were not in any way, shape or form Hi waivers for for for the Soviet Empire. You know that they they weren't Stalinists, they were kind of and I think that it's the creation of the other. Used to be geographic, like you could create the other because nobody
knew who they were. Now you kind of I think what you do. I think what it's done in the in our digital cartography is you you take the other and you give them a label. And I think the minute you give any group of people a label, then we're getting in trouble.
That's when that's when it gets inhuman. Yes, that that is.
Step one in uh empire building, in warfare is to identify the enemy and then make them a non human enter right, it's a they are vermin, they are rats, they are terrorists, they are Nazis. They are pedophiles. Well, some of them were Nazis. To be fair, those people were Nazi.
But they were those Nazis, they were Nazis.
But but I think, I see, I think it's even it goes back even further than that, or it begins earlier than that.
I think, what I think, you're right with that.
But I think and what it does is the first rule of the ttalitarian, the aspiring tyrant, I think is to go after the comedians. Now, I think that what you what you do is you tell you say which, And both the left and the right in this country are very guilty of this.
The jokes that you can't tell, the jokes.
That you can tell, and that if you which kind of negates the skill of the tailor of the joke. Because I am always impressed buy a comedian who tells a joke that you can't tell technically, but actually is so good that this individual he or she can tell that joke you think of. There were people like I love, the comedians I admired like Joan Rivers was a great
one for this. She could say a thing that was that's totally not acceptable, but it was acceptable because the way she put it right that She's not the only example. Of course, there are many great comedians that do it. But I think when you start saying this area of human life is not subject to humor, that's when totalitarianism begins, because you can't have an iconoclast. If you want to be an icon you have to go after the iconoclast. And I feel that I.
Wipe that's really interesting. But yeah, once you stop having a sense of humor about your self, that's when you get into the territory of I am It becomes I am God. You don't make fun of you don't make fun.
Of the Lord.
That's really interesting. I think like comedy. I always thought in the early days, like when somebody would start telling a joke about certain topics, the Holocaust, slavery, these things, you'd go, Okay, I hope this is your best joke, right, and then when you see a person pull it off, you go, wow, impressive, and what has happened? I think with comedy and listen, I would not be a shiller of my book without mentioning that we're now touching everything,
almost almost every topic that's in the book. The sixth scenes are are AA, Judaism and comedy. That's three out of six so far, and.
We do it.
I think we should do the whole six. So we've done, We've done judaism. We're not in COVID about COVIY.
Well, what's happened now what feels very obvious to me is, and it's changing so rapidly I can't even keep track of it, is that people have fallen under the illusion that to your point, I think your point is well made. You know, any joke is any topic is on the table as long as you can pull it off. But now a lot of comedians think the fact that I'm attempting to pull it off is work. It makes it validates the whatever the topic is. The fact that I
was brieve enough to tell the Holocaust joke. It doesn't need to be good or funny, it just needs The real revolutionary work is the fact that I'm telling it. So you see these jokes that are offensive without without any point, and on the other side you see the reaction to that is jokes that are progressive and political and lift every voice and you know, raise the glass ceilings. As I say, there are jokes on that side that they punched through the glass ceiling so hard they've touched
the g spot like they're Ted Talk. You find these like ted Talk as humorless. You find a lack of humor on both sides of the ideological comedy aisle from people that think, well, if I'm on a stage and I'm saying some pro choice messaging, it doesn't really have to be funny because it's righteous.
And on the other hand, well.
If I'm on stage and I'm saying something racist, it doesn't really have to be funny because it's really punk rock that I'm being racist in today's society. So both of these things, I say, I can't stand both of them. Need to You can do anything on stage, I say, right, but it's got to be funny. It's got to be good enough.
I think that's right. I think that's what it is.
But I think my feeling is to add to this and they will move from the third part of your book to the last three pleases, because I feel like that's.
The structure of a conversation is taking today. And I like that idea. But I think there are too many comedians.
One thousand percent.
There's too many, and not all of the First of all, crowd work is crowd work, and that's fine, but credit work is no standough. Cody's credible, now see, I like.
I liked when you said you couldn't make a joke about any topic. I liked when you were when you said that Jews control Hollywood. I was willing to accept all these things, Hollywood cocktail party. I think we all read between the lines. But if you start impugning crowd work, I was just thinking about this today, Craig. It's like, yes, it's stand up comedy. It's a different version, it's a different it's a different version of stand up.
It's like saying, I was just thinking about this today.
Jazz.
That's not music. Beethoven last music.
Music.
You were rejecting the analogy, you were you were supporting the analogy.
Like Beethoven.
Beethoven writes a symphony and it's it's written, and it's perfect and it's beautiful, and that's music. Coltrane writes, writes a riff and then goes off on a tangent and creates something in real time that will never be recreated. And it's also music. It's just a different kind of music anyway, Listen. I love crowd work very much, and I know.
Yeah, that's why I was needling here. Yeah, I mean I didn't. I did break off for a reason because but you but you're really.
Good at crowd work, thank you know, there's a there's a different see I think, yes, uh cool train, you know, refs on something and it becomes remarkable. But you know, you don't give a a saxophone to someone who's never played one before and they make five different weak noises and.
And give it a fucking Netflix special. It's not it's not right.
And ps.
The way that you start playing the saxophone to get to John Coltrane level is you start in band and they say play this song. Oh says you're not going off on your weird sun raw ask you know, squawking riff on day one listen.
I agree.
But you know what I always say, everybody that says crowd work isn't real comedy hasn't seen a real crowd work master at work. I know that you were just fucking with me, and and they don't. There's a lot of short trip given to how many horrifying written jokes there are out there, there's a whole lot.
Totally agree, I mean, and I think though that the what I I guess my objection to the idea, the delusion that and.
You brought up. It's perfect.
You don't start, you don't day one, go and do crowd work, you know, go up and learn how to do the job and then do crowd work, because if not, you're going to do things like, Hi, where are you from?
Oh that's stupid? Did you have that s?
Get there?
I mean, that's that's how my comedy career started. When I started comedy, I was very loose and my friend Louis Kats one of the great joke writers, one of the best dirty joke writers in business, came up to me. He's a dear friend, and this was on early days. He goes, listen, you haven't He was maybe a year or two ahead of me, and he goes, you haven't been doing this long enough. He was basically saying, you haven't been doing this long enough to be as confident
as yours. Like, you're not actually as good as you are confident, right, It's like you think you're better than you are because you've got all this confidence. He's like, stop fucking around on stage, go write jokes for two years and I somehow I took him seriously, I really did.
I like, I folded that instinct in and I went and I just started like trying to figure out how to how to write, and then came back with all of these things that I had written, and then started to unpack the performer that I would become, which is you know, I always say when I'm at my best, you know, I look at my set list, I go, wow, I didn't tell half of these I didn't do half of these bits I planned on doing because I was so floating in space. But one hundred percent, you have
to learn how to It's just like Picasso. You got to learn the form before you can deconstruct the form. So I've now compared myself to Picasso, to Coltrane, and to Beethoven.
You are the Beethoven.
I don't feel like I'm open in this for a couple of reasons.
One, I feel like, you know, take the Late Night, which is one of the chapters in my sixth chapter book, that Late Night. I learned how to do Late Night for the first maybe eighteen months of doing it, and then I made a fucking good colleagues try of deconstructing that form for the next eight and a half years, like throwing everything I could to make it luke as fucking absurd as I felt that it was.
I really think that's what made your show special was it was like, we've seen this form and now Craig's
doing so many like it felt experiential. Your show felt like a reinterpretation, and I think, to me, that's like when I'm excited on stage and when i'm honestly when I'm excited to watch her performer is when I'm like, oh wow, this show is one part his act, his or her act, and one part a gift that he's or she has given to me as in the audience that will only exist in this universe and or on Instagram for the rest of time.
And get me a Netflix question.
All right, So that's comedy.
So we've done alcoholism, judaism comedy.
What's chapter four? Novella four?
Novella four is the rave scene? Did you do that? You're in UK?
I've seen, you know, I kind of passed me by, but Sober just before xtasy was invented, so I kind of missed it.
You know, Yeah, it.
Was really well here I did the opposite. I got sober fifteen years old, and you know, about maybe nine months, six months, nine months into sobriety, I stopped being whipped by this monkey on my back and looked up. You know, my whole illusion, my whole fear, and I'm sure you relate to this. I think every alcoholic relates to this. Is like, if I stop drinking and getting high, there'll
be nothing to do. I'll have nothing to do. And as I like, the problem with that kind of thinking is it's a very diseased brain that produces a thought like that, because it stands to reason, if you stop drinking and getting high, you'll have nothing to do.
It means airgo. All you do is drink and get high.
So yes, yeah, there's perfect logic to that if you're a drug addict and alcoholic. At about nine months sober, I looked up and I realize, like, oh my god, I'm sixteen years old. I can't go recovery bowling with these Vietnam vets for the rest of my teens and twenties, Like I got a find something to do, and what the cool part of AA One of the beautiful parts of my recovery journey was I like, when I lifted my head up out of the bottle and looked out
into the world. I suddenly realized that if I stopped drinking and getting high, what there was to do was everything else. And I decided to like spend my life trying to find that everything else. And the first thing I found was the rave scene in San Francisco. Was I walked by a flyer on a telephone pole. It was a big, big, massive rave. This is not like the underground parties that got really famous in the UK, where you had to call a number.
This was like a big commercial rave.
And I got twenty dollars from my mom and I bought a ticket to this rave and I went by myself. I don't know, I truly don't know what drew me there. I wasn't a dancer. I was like a kind of like a gangster.
That was my thing. I was like kind of a kind of a you know, like you.
Were a gangster.
No, I mean I was. I had an accent. I had no but I had an accent. I had a Southern accent when I was fifteen. I'm not from the South. Is that kind of painted picture?
Yeah, I've told myself some stories too.
So I go to this party by myself.
I remember I went to an NA meeting the night before, just before across the street there was an NA meeting.
I walked across the street.
I told all these like black like middle aged, you know, recovering addicts, like the freedom of sobriety is bringing me to that rave across the street. And they were like, we do not know what the fuck you're talking about. And I walked across the street and I had I remember I had a I used to use a cologne called Escape by Calvin Klein.
Ok.
It was a terrible scent of the early nineties. And I remember I stuffed this bottle of Escape into a sock as I was waiting in line, and I was like, just in case, you know, I got a kind of thwap flap.
Somebody with this sock Blackjack that I've built.
I mean, that's just like the this is the brain I'm bringing into this first rave. Like and I remember I walked into the first the main room of this party called Cyberfest in nineteen ninety five, and I put down the bag containing the popo rescented Blackjack, and I walked into this party and I just like I had a as profound a spiritual experience at that first party, as I did getting sober, it was a reconstruction. It was a reformation of who I was as a human being.
I started pure a wedding around the room and dancing, and this couple, this gay couple, came up to me and they grabbed me on either side and they picked me up in their arms and like, you're beautiful. And I was like, I was like, what these motherfuckers, these gay motherfuckers hugging on me and I so I was like, I know what I got to do. And I grabbed both of their heads, pulled them close to me, kissed them on the chicken go you're beautiful too, Like I'm
telling you, Craig. In one evening, I turned from like identity crisis addled wanna be gangster who thought he was something that he wasn't to soft puro wetting.
Techno dancing.
The next day, I dyed my hair blonde and twirled it into little b York buns and put Baretts in my hair. I mean, it was an absurd It was absurd, but it was a kind of alchemical shifting of my identity that was as profound as anything I've ever experienced, and I spent all of my twenties throwing raves, djaying at raves, and eventually becoming the world's first clean and
sober ecstasy dealer at raves. So it got dark later, Okay, yeah, oh that went It went to a little bit of a kind of minor note there.
It kind of went.
Like that.
In fact, a lot of the book is about that, is like, you know, I got you go into this thing.
It's like religion.
You know, you go into a thing, you have a come to Jesus, like you know, baptism moment. It redefines everything about you, and you spend two decades in it trying to like drink it. Like every scene I've ever been in, I've tried to like eat it, you know, like I want to own it.
I want to be the man I want.
And then by that process of trying to eat it own it be the man, it starts to curdle the thing a little bit. And then you're twenty years in and you're going, hmm, what was it that I what was it that I found here? Honestly, the book was awesome because I got to remember all the beautiful magic that I found in each of the universes that I occupied.
That's an interesting thing. How did you? How did it end then the rave scene?
Was it because of the sober ecstasy or was it something else?
It was a little bit of that.
It was you know, there's a funny story.
So I started djaying that was like, you know, that's alpha, you know the alpha human in the rave thing?
Is is the is the DJ And so I wanted to do that. I wanted to do that. Did you do this?
Did you point people when they were dancing? I feel like that's an essential move.
I would do this like almost like I can't hear and then oh I can hear, and then I point, Then I point, yeah, right, okay. And I started to
really become defined by that identity. And about ten years into the rave scene, through a very complicated series of strange events, you know, I was throwing these bigger and bigger parties, and eventually the person that I was working with kind of was a con man and stole all the money and absconded, and so I was sort of became kind of persona and no grata within the promoting
rave world that I was in. And as a result of that, all the DJ gigs that I'd been getting started to dry up, and I was and I was also getting older. You know, I was also becoming older.
I wasn't sixteen anymore.
I was in your pointing finger.
That're like, why are you pointing at the ground?
Then you really can't hear things either.
Here.
When I started going to raves in San Francisco, I was sixteen and I was the youngest person there.
I was among the youngest.
And when I stopped going about ten years later, it was the median age. And so it was there was that, But something very funny happened, which is that I was having this identity crisis and my ego was just being bruised all the time. I wanted people to want me, but nobody wanted me. This is before comedy, so I didn't get the attention that you know, a comedy will provide you. So I just was like, my performing life
was drying up. Nobody was booking me anymore. But I still had this identity of like, I am Mosha DJ Mosha, and that was my name. And I picked up a flyer to a rave, right And I was in the middle of this identity crisis, and there was a DJ on the lineup called DJ E Mosha E Mosha.
I go, E Mosha. That's not you can't. You can't do that. I could. I couldn't.
I couldn't like become a comedian and call myself E. Craig Ferguson. I think you would have a bit of an issue with that. So I gathered up all the flyers of all the raves I'd ever been to, and I went to this rave and I confronted the guy.
I go, where's E Mosha?
And they're like over there. I go to the guy, I go who are you? And he's like, I'm me. I go, well, I'm Mosha, I'm DJ Mosha.
That's me. Oh yeah, cool, I've heard of you. Yeah, you fucking heard of me.
You have my name?
And I go, well, what's the deal, Like, is is your name?
Are you Jewish? Is your name? Mosha?
Is your And he goes no, I just thought it sounded cool, and go, yeah, it fucking sounds cool. It's my cool sounding fucking name. And he's and I go, look, you gotta you gotta drop it, like you have to drop the name. And he's like no, and I'm like no, not, no, yes, you gotta drop it. It's my name, and he's goes. I think I'll keep it. I go, okay, look I'll battle you. Okay, we'll do a DJ battle, you and me.
This is is exciting, Well.
It doesn't as exciting as you wanted to. I go you and me versus the crowd. The crowd decides whoever wins keeps the name, and he goes nah. I think now, I think I'll just keep the name. And I'm like, I don't know what to do here. I could either beat this guy to death or impotently walk away.
Guess what, Jopson I chose. I impotently w choice.
Walked away, and I'm pretty sure I just gave up on DJing altogether in that moment. And to this day, I'm not convinced. I've never seen Emosha on a flyer since I'm not convinced Emosha wasn't just a guardian angel that's sent from the heavens to transfer me from one scene to the next.
Go Ahead works from mister wonders to perform.
Indeed, what is not when you transition out of DJing and then the next one is going to be comedy?
Then is it comedy.
The next one, well, comedy was in there, but the other world that and I do want to say anecdotally, when I wrote this chapter in the book, I bought myself a DJ controller and I started DJing again twenty years after the fact. If anybody wants to listen to some of my mixes, they're on SoundCloud. But anyway, the next one's Burning Man, and they're very related. They're very related.
The Grave Gay.
Yeah, this year I will go, and it will be my twenty fifth time going. I think i've I've been going for a very long time, and I worked there for a very long time too, so I've seen it go from the thing it was to the thing it is, and I'm watching it become the thing.
It will be, which is not as exciting as I would hope.
I think it becomes like everything, like punk rock, like Christianity, like anything. It starts so pretty good, and then you know, people get involved, and too many people get involved and turns into something else the original idea and get lost in the mix a little bit. I don't know much.
About Burning Mine, although that I know, I always envisaged Burning Mine and I've never been, but I always imagine it being like fifty fifty five year old man out of shape, walking around wearing shirts and no pants, cooking.
I believe it's called you nailed it, and that is what that's what keeps me coming back twenty five years later.
So that is a burning man. And then well, I'm waiting for it to be you became a parent, and that's what the world is?
That?
What is that? What happens?
I would say, that's the phrase the frame, the true framing device of the whole thing. Is that really I didn't even realize it until I was done with the book.
Is it really?
The book is a and it kind of connects back to what we were talking about earlier, that the book is really a an archaeological artifact that I'm leaving to my daughter so that she can know the things that life threw at me. Because and this is sort of what I talk about this at the end of the book, because when we were growing up, Craig, this is true for you, it's true for me. Your life felt very accidental.
Your life felt very like if I go to this bar with this guy and I try cocaine, then I become a cocaine guy and a drinker.
And then I end up in AA and then I meet my wife.
And then if I go with this other guy and I smoke pot in the forest with that guy, then I become a hippie. And then I become a bassist in this hippie band, and then I become Fitch. And if you know, it was all this very like accidental stumbling from scene to scene, and the Internet and social media has made not that process impossible, but that process much more difficult because culture has become sort of the
aperture has shrunk into really one thing. There's this like monoculture that you know, you pick up your phone and your algorithm tells you what's cool, what's culture, what you should think, what you should believe, how you should dance, all of these things. And so in a way I didn't do a section on parenting, but in a way, the whole thing is for my daughter to like, go, here are all the things that made me me.
And I hope, I really.
Hope that you find things that are uniquely you and find a path that is uniquely yours, that doesn't get handed to you, but that you stumble into.
Do you have a strategy for that for your daughter? Do you do you, I mean, I'm I'm I mean, I'm a real hard as that. My kids and social media.
I mean they're on select sites, but very it's I'm not cool with it.
Do I have a strategy for avoiding social media or for her right?
Yeah, you start to realize I'm sure you realize this too, Like a lot of it is about expos using them to things you like and then seeing if they like them too, And then you start going. After about ten activities, they're all of a sudden seven and you're like, oh my god, I'm like running out of time here to like I can't I can't do judo and surfing and camping and circus camp.
Eventually they're going to run out of.
Options and they're never I keep waiting for the thing where my daughter looks at me and goes, this is me, you know, and I haven't.
She's seven, she's young.
But I keep I'm just curious at that moment because it didn't happen for me until I was much older, that moment where you click into your kind of like your destiny, Like.
Was that you was that comedy for you?
Was that the only time that note at all? I still don't. I'm not entirely convinced it's something I want to get involved in.
But the.
My oldest kid, my son, when he was about like very young, like a toddler, he became fascinated with Airly Disney, uh you know the old the like the real old kind of you know, the black and white kind of Airly Disney stuff. And he would watch it over and over and over again. And he was always fascinated with anime. He loved cartoons. Oh kids love cartoons, of course, but he loved them in a way I had never seen
them love it. He's now he graduated from the School of Vision Arts, New York and he runs an independent animation studio with his friends.
And that's the dream.
That is the dream that your child goes. Here's who I am. And not only do I love it, I'm going to be great at it. I will be great at it. That that to me, I'm jealous of that. I mean, listen, I'm so excited to see what the world brings to my daughter's consciousness and life. I don't put any pressure on her like that. It's all internal me wrecking at her.
No, No, I didn't either.
Half of my experience of her is looking at things she does and going, uh oh, is this like me?
Uh oh?
Is she gonna turn out like me? Uh oh? Like she's got a lot of me in her.
But I think that's so awesome that your son, like early on, found that like little tickle, that became his life. And I think about that, by the way, with comedy, like I can't leave. This is what's different about this scene versus the other ones is that I'm twenty two years into comedy. I pay all of my bills with it. This is permanent, so I had better find a way.
I'm not going back to grad school. It's too late, So I had better find a way to make it feel refreshing, make it feel useful and meaningful and not really that's a challenge for me. I don't know about you, So I have a compared drink.
I have a perfect solution for you. Stop using the word comedy. What do you use because well, I just I do comedy, But I think that what you are. And this is one of the reasons why I I hate to say this because it sounds so part of the Hollywood cocktail circuit, but I.
Am a fan of you.
But I'm a fan of you are one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you today. You are an interesting person.
You're air, you die and a thoughtful and you have a brain which causes you difficulty, and you use everything in your power to navigate through the universe.
And comedy is a very useful tool for that. But while limit yourself.
You know, and I think the good comedians, good comedians to me, no I'm not talking about you know, the ones that we don't need to talk about.
But good comedians to me are just socratic philosophers. That's all they are. The history goes all the way back to Epictetus and.
Before, and what it is is you see how you perceive the world, and you present it in such a way that other people are stimulated by. Comedy doesn't have to be the only way to do it. It's just it's a convenient platform for a philosopher, which is what I believe you are and it's what I aspire to be. You're a philosopher who struggles in the world and your perception the absurdities of it provide you with comedy. But there are particularly and I noticed this after I became
a parent as well. There is an incandescent level of beauty that I never loved anyone until my first kid was born. I thought I did, but I was like it was just you know, I was like, oh, you're nice. But when my first son was born, maybe not even when he was born, like about six months in because when the little baby's like ah, but when they start, you know, being human, there's a whole different perspective. And
one of the I have a tattoo. Yeah, I have a lot of tattoos, but this little tattoo here is where I wear my watch, and when I forget to wear my watch, that's still there. What it is is the planet Saturn, and the planet Saturn is the bringer of old age. So even though the different not wearing my watch, I can look at it and go Saturn of course was the god. Yeah, yeah, and and right. But in the the Planet Suite, we're talking about music.
In the Planet Suite by host, you know that's God like down darn darn Dad for Mars, the god of war and all that. And there is a piece of music called Saturn because he does all that. Like you wrote your book about all these things. He wrote his his suite of music about all the different planets and in the piece of music Saturn the bringing.
Of old age, it's a very odd, weird piece of music.
It's almost like it is like an ambient Brian Ino type piece of music.
Is a very strange piece of music.
And the aging.
Process, I think is that it's fucking weird. And I think that the only way the way I.
Stay enthusiastic about things is the fact that it's just getting stranger.
You know.
I now have friends contemporaries. I'm sixty, I'm going to be sixty three years old in about a month. I have friends who just like fucking die, just like roll over and I'm not talking to be drug overdoses and stuff, and just like life over doses. Yeah, they just run out.
Of fucking you know. And it's right. And I think that if I have any delight in making and having a little bit of successes, that allows you to do the thing that you do but also do other things too. I think you've been doing that since you were sixteen. I think that's that's entirely you.
Know, Like I will be a DJ mosha, although and I have to say, and I was going to say this, when.
You brought it up. I never heard of dj e Bosha. Where the fuck is dj e Bosha? So you know a lot of good data.
Well he's probably doing comedy now, probably, Yeah, Craig, what you said, uh is beautiful.
It's like it's one of the things.
And I do need to say, Hollywood Cocktail Party that I'm a fan of yours as well and have been for a long time.
But what you're saying is so true.
Like I've been thinking about aging lately myself, because like I'm at the age where the youth is starting. I can it's starting to not be applicable to me, and I want to fight that. I'm still in the fight at phase, you know, like like cling and one of the things I can And I feel this way with my career, and I feel this way with my life path. I feel this way with the raising of my daughter. Is like there is no way out but through there is no there. I can fight aging, but I cannot
stop it. I can and there isn't a way out but death, and so a thing that I am unable to affect any meaningful leverage upon, I may as well embrace. I'm still by the way figuring out how to embrace it. I'm not going to claim that I am, but I'm starting to process that idea like life goes in one direction time. I mean, I don't fully understand time and space, but it seems to me that time is linear and you must only continue to walk because the other option.
Is to fall off the edge.
I think so.
I think though the.
Time is linear physically, I think that that's correct. But I think physicality is not all there is that. I'm not talking about life after death or end like that. I mean, I don't know about that, just like no one.
Else doesn't, but I I do kind of.
I do kind of, and I am interested in the in the notion of I don't know if you you ever you're familiar with Brian.
Cox, doctor Brian Cox, the.
Some some scientists, the handsome siety is very handsome, very cool, very clever. I think he's an astrophysicist, but I'm not sure. I mean, he's some kind of expert on all things time. And he did a beautiful show for the BBC about time Somewhere in space time. It's called if you get a chance to find that you should watch it. It's beautiful because it's because it is. It is absolutely poetic,
and he talks about time. He does a very interesting thing about because it's I suppose it's wrapped up with Einstein. But he gets into a supersonic jet and flies west into the sunset, and of course he's flying west into the sunset faster than the speed of sound, and as he flies into the sunset, the sun stucks to rise because he's traveling fast in a direction where so it's really about where you are in the universe effects.
Right, crime is yeah, and find I know that. Think it's called of relativity. I understand that theory completely. That's the sixth section of my book is about the theory.
Of relativity and my work on it.
Do you know this?
This blew my mind and I don't understand that, so don't ask me to explain it. But I'm sure Brian Kax talks about it in this special Which is that that time, the linear thing that we are describing, the thing that makes us older, and the thing that you know makes the sun go up and down and space in like the thing that you look up and it's up there, but it's also over there and down is the same thing. The thing that makes your Grandma old and die is the thing that contains Saturn.
It's like, what the fuck does that mean?
But according to the theoretical physicist, that is true.
Well, I think if you're wrestling with those questions, then by all means.
Do crowd work.
But amen, amen, Amen is a good word to end with. It's great talking to you, catching up with you again. I love talking to you, and I do remain a big fan. You are the only crowd work guy that I can watch and go.
All right, I suppose that's.
There are some other masters out there. Listen, I'm gonna leave you. I've loved talking to you. I always do, and I'll leave you with We never discussed the sixth scene, so i'll leave it with you so that so you can ask.
Me back someday we can talk about it for an hour. But it's the world.
We'll start with the sixth episode, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Maybe you can write another book.
About space time right about the six six other things.
That's interesting. I'd have to get a lot of living done anyway. It's the world of the deaf and American sign language, my mother and father and.
Of course your parents.
Yeah, and I spent a long time as a sign language interpreter. So it goes through the whole history of sign language and American sign language and the education of the death and anyway. The book's called Subculture Vulture, and I'm very proud of it, and.
That's all really good.
I can't speak sign language, but or can't sign sign language, but I used to be a bit better after because I had I was helping a guy get Solberg who was deaf, and so the only thing we could do was, you know, he could rip let read a bed. But he was tall, I mean, he was profoundly there, you know, so he could do that, and he taught me some sign language.
I've forgotten most of it.
The only thing I remember is British sign language is a different language to Americans sign language.
It was fascinating.
I thought it was weird, and then when I heard this, it was weird. And that's weird, which I think is very witty, and that's odd.
That's weird.
Odd.
Yeah, well, I.
Think it's it's a very funny thing saying language. It makes me laugh. It's it's and it is very witty.
It is very funny, and it used to be much more in your face. I won't do it, but I want you to guess what the sign for Asian and Chinese was when I was a kid.
It's probably no good.
Thankfully, deaf Chinese immigrants moved to America and.
Were like, Uh, what the fuck is the sign for Chinese.
No, we've got our own sign okay, and they've updated the language.
But all all right, get out of here.
It's great to see and you're the best. Yeah. Great seeing you too. I hope I see you again. Somewhere along the space time continuum.
You will somewhere to space time, not before