: Welcome to the aggressive life. According to psychology today, the average four-year-old laughs 300 times a day. The average 40-year-old only four times. In fact, I think that's inflating the numbers. The average 40-year-olds I know are not laughing four times. Four times? And we wonder why we're stressed out, stretched thin, over-medicated. over listless, over and under anything healthy, unhealthy, all that stuff. There's a power in laughter, freedom and lightness to counteract all the things that weigh us down. Now to many of us, we've forgotten how to laugh, but thankfully today we're connecting with a funny man. In fact, if he doesn't make us laugh, it's time for money back guarantee. Although we're not paying him for this at all. So you might, there might be actually give people the first four laughs of the day. That's true. I see our guests. I'm already upping his quota right now. It's really, really good. Rajiv Satyal is a comedian, podcast host and speaker, Cincinnati-born, but LA based. Rajiv is the first person to perform standup comedy on all seven continents. I am fascinated to know that there's anybody on Antarctica that can laugh at all in his comedy career. He's worked alongside legends like Dave Chappelle, Kevin James, Tim Allen. He's been featured everywhere from NPR to the Wall Street Journal, to the TEDx stage. He's got hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. He's sold out shows that stretch across the country. Rajiv's TV clean acts make him one of the most versatile comics in the bidness. And when he's not doing standup, he's writing TV ads. He's hosting multiple podcasts. One of them, he gave us the permission to replay. Not too long ago, we might talk about that as well, a podcast with Kirk Perry and him sharing his faith. He's got multiple podcasts. He consults with everyone from Google to the NFL, but he wasn't always a standup comic. He spent the first six years of his career at P&G, which I know he wasn't hitting his four laugh a day quota at P&G. I don't know that anybody I've met at P&G laughs four times a week. My word, if you're outside of Cincinnati, those of us in Cincinnati, we love P&G, bedrock cornerstone of our community, great for the economy. But people there, I don't know, they create a lot of diamonds by swallowing coal, if you know what I'm talking about. He was there and today we're gonna hear that aggressive story and talk with Rajiv about the power of laughter. Welcome to the aggressive life, Rajiv Satyali. It's great to be here. I messed up your last name again, didn't I? You added a syllable, which, you know, maybe, maybe you want to go satyal, you want to go four, maybe you're doing four syllables a day. Well, maybe just say it again for us here. Just so we got it all right. Rajiv Satyal. Okay, there you go. Great. First of all, tell me, you got laughs on all seven continents, Antarctica. Tell, how did that work? I have, I did. It was quite something to sail down there. I hitched a ride with 60 Indian doctors. They had chartered a boat and I went with them. I didn't tell anyone I wasn't a doctor. They just assume when you're Indian. And I get to ride all the way down there. There's one lap, there we go, there we go. There you go, three more to go. Get all the way down to Antarctica and I performed for the people on the ship and some penguins, so, you know, diverse audience. That is, that's really cool. So did you ever have a, when did you have a goal to be a comedian? I mean, go. Being in the corporate world at a buttoned up place, numbers focused like P&G, to doing what you're doing right now, that doesn't seem like a natural iteration or evolution. Why? You know, I think I did kind of go very left brain to right brain, very technical to creative. And I was majoring in pre-med, then I got a degree in engineering. Then when I was at Procter & Gamble, I started in purchasing. Then I moved over to marketing. And then I worked at an agency. And it just kind of became more and more creative over time. I don't know, I think there are a lot of us out there who could do a lot of things decently well and people always say, oh, that's really great. It's not really great because it's hard to focus and find something you wanna do. Man, well, that's, I mean, so many of us, we only make career changes when we absolutely have to and then we kind of stay inside of the same discipline, hoping and thinking we're gonna make more money if we build on that expertise. So taking a flyer on a different career like that, it's pretty impressive. Was there fear you were dealing with? Was there what? A lot of fear. When I moved, actually, my friend Catherine, her brother ran Fiji Water out here in Los Angeles. He was the president of it. And I got a job as a brand manager of Fiji Water, one of two brand managers. And, you know, I worked there for 12 weeks. It wasn't supposed to be an internship. When you say 12 weeks, it sounds like an internship. And it was an I, you're fired, quit situation. We both went our separate ways amicably. But I didn't have the guts to make the leap without a job. I think just to cut the cord at P&G and move all the way across the country, that's scary stuff, man, even at the age of 30. Right, no question. And you list Pete Sampras as a big force for your career. Why? Well, I have an entire story I've written out that I could read to you, but I don't know if I want to. Well, I don't think I'm for you. Are you not good enough to tell the story? You just have to read notes? Is that the way it works for you? That's the way it works for me. You think after 17 years of full-time comedy, I'd be able to tell it to you straight up. But it happened a long time ago. It happened in August of 1998. And this is meter days before I was gonna perform stand-up comedy for the first time at Go Bananas Comedy Club in Cincinnati. Have you been there? Yeah, I have. Okay. Have you laughed four times when you went? I definitely at least laughed four times, yes. That's good, you got your money's worth. So there's no money back there until you're good to go on that one. And you might be aware that in Cincinnati, in Mason, Ohio, they have one of the world's largest tennis tournaments. Yes. And really one of the biggest on the planet. And I was a ball boy there. And I met Pete Sampras when I worked in the player locker room. And I ended up doing my comedy act for him. He was the first person for when I ever did standup comedy before I even got up at Go Bananas two weeks later. He asked you, do comedy for me, or you just dropped some lines and he was like, keep going. How'd that work? There's a whole story to it, but basically the year before that in August of 97, it was a particularly dreary week. And usually that's a good time in society. It's hot, right, August, but it had rained nearly every day and a lot of the top seeds lost in the early rounds. And there was one bright spot. There was actually the seven foot tall Charlie the Tuna mascot goofing around with kids. Charlie the Tuna. It was one of the... one of the sponsors there and he was sneaking up behind people and hitting tennis balls and goofing around with kids. And I was talking to some of the ball boys, a position I held for a couple of years actually, and I kissed enough ass to get into an indoor job where I worked in the locker room and my buddy Neil, he goes to me and goes, you know what you should do? You should ask Pete Sampras to wear that Charlie costume and go hit tennis balls on center court and then he could pull the head off and surprise it's Pete Sampras. That's awesome. And I rolled my eyes at him and I told him that was the stupidest thing. And like any guy taunting, you know, Brian, guys taunt you. And he goes, he knew exactly what to say. He goes, I knew you didn't have the balls to say that to Pete. And I was like, man, did you just call me chicken and, you know, like a chicken of the sea tuna and I had to do it. And it went from there. So, I mean, I can tell more of the story, but that was the genesis of it. Did he do it? Did Sampras put on the suit? He did not. He did not do it, but here's what ended up happening. A few months later, I'm watching ESPN, probably like October of that year, 98, 97 rather. And one of their funny sports commercials comes on, the San Diego Chicken, that mascot, a mascot for the city, is walking around messing around with people in the studio, sports center. And the chicken goes out to get a drink of water and he pulls the head off and it's Pete Zampras. Oh my gosh. I'm not joking. That is what happened. I felt like Kramer and Seinfeld where it was like... the beach. He stole my idea, Jerry. And the phone rings. It's Neil. He goes, Did you see that ad? Next year, you're gonna have to approach Pete Zampras. I had to wait 10 months when you're young. That's a very long time. And it went from there. So I walked up to him and I kind of ribbed him for stealing our idea. And he just kind of said, I said, well, that's too bad. Because I was going to put it in my act. Because are you a comedian? I go, well, I'm working on being one. He goes, tell me a joke. I got I need to get my notes. I told him that too, Brian. See, I told him I need to get my notes. And he just goes, you're gonna need to be a lot faster than that if you're gonna be a comedian. I said, Pete, let me get my notes. I've never even been on stage yet. I went to go get my notes and I brought them into the training room, a 10 foot by 10 foot space. And I did about 18 minutes of comedy for Pete Sampras when he was the number one ranked player in the world. Did he laugh? He laughed with me, at me, probably at me, a little bit more than with me. We had a sports medicine doctor in there and he started to tell his own jokes. And Pete goes, hey, hang on a second. I'm trying to listen to Rajiv. And that guy was a jerk and that made the whole thing worth it for me. I'm like, you know what? Pete Sampras needed to hear me and not this other guy I'm in. Well, I'm glad you said that because I was a quasi tennis fan when my daughter was playing competitive tennis and right around the time when Sampras was there. And so I would watch the, you know, the big grand slam tournaments and stuff. And it was always surprising to me that at that point, the greatest tennis player in the world, the most, uh, you know, most grand slams. People just didn't like the guy. He just wasn't a very likable guy. And you look at the people who are there today, like who doesn't like Federer, who doesn't like, you know, what's the Spaniard always? Nadal and these guys. Nadal is always picking his butt, you know. And even Djokovic, who's, he does it. That's his routine, you know. He picks his butt back there, you know. And Djokovic, who is the least likable, but Sampras could never figure out how to be liked. You know, he's very standoffish and that's why this story is so surprising. I grew up as an Andre Agassi fan and Agassi was very effusive and you could go talk to him and you know, he was in his world. He was also ranked number one during the 90s too. But you know, Pete was a hard guy to approach and you know... walking up to him was hard, man. It's like you talk about the aggressive life, like being aggressive and getting up there to talk to him. You imagine talking to the prettiest girl in your school when you're a sophomore in high school. This is 10 times that, man. I got posters of this guy all over my wall and I'm gonna go walk up to him and ask him to like put on a Charlie the Tootle mascot outfit. That was hard to do. When I did that, I pitched him on that idea. He just stared at me and walked out of the room. And it took a lot of charm for me to, I think to get him to open up. But when he did, he was super cool. I've been really fascinated by stand-up over the last few years because I think what my day job, I do day job, preacher, teacher, you know, I do a lot of public speaking. I think of all the different disciplines of speaking, whether it is, you know, a college professor, a motivational speaker, you know, whatever. I think stand-up comedians have the most for me to learn from. in terms of, I think, the demeanor that you have, the way you think through a set. Whereas a college professor, they're just going through their lesson plan, at least the ones that I had. So I'm really fascinated by watching stand-up comedians. And I think through the preparation process that you all must go under. It's probably similar to some kind of process that I go through. So tell me, like, your first time getting up, was that the scariest time, the first time? How did you know how to prepare your notes? All that kind of stuff. I think the scariest is the time you go up after you bomb for the first time, right? Because the first time I killed, I did really well. I was brimming with confidence, Brian. I had just performed for Pete Sampras, my idol, and it went well or well enough. And so I went on there. What do I care what Bob from Kenwood is going to say? I was up in front of that crowd ready to go, and it was a sold out crowd. The second time, I bombed. And I think it's because you, the first time you don't really know what you're doing, you're having fun. And so getting up after that, and I think that it's true for any speaker, any performer, is after you have a performance that is not up to par, not up to snuff, and it could be a bomb or it could be like, I just wasn't there today. I mean, it wasn't bad. I just, I think that's the hardest thing to get up and do it. And with standup comics, You got to make people laugh the entire time, you know, especially when you're on stage. Off stage people have questions, they want to interview and we tend to be philosophers off stage, but on stage, man, people really want to laugh. And so when you see a funny person talk, you're like, oh, this person should do standup. No, because the expectations are totally different. Like if you're a preacher and you're funny, that's great. It's an added bonus, but people are not coming to watch you make them laugh. You're a funny guy. That's right. But if you had to only make them laugh and then attach a message to it, it's a lot different. Yeah, that's probably part of what I'm jealous with you and your craft is, you know, whether you're doing well or not in real time. And when you're done, you know, I don't really know. And I know that I might've had people laugh a couple of times. It's important to have some humor here and there, but sometimes I'm dealing with a topic that is very meaty, very heady. And I get the, um, just the deer in headlights look, which is different than the board look. It's the, oh my gosh, I'm thinking of things I normally don't think about here. This look they're giving me looks very similar to when I'm bombing. I think I'm just making them think about things they haven't thought about before, but still I get off stage and I'm like, I think, I don't know. And you're exactly right about comedy. That's a great thing, we're spoiled. There's a measuring stick, right? It's also like any movie you watch, like you watch a drama. You know, I don't know, are people enjoying it? Are they checked out? It's hard to say unless they're weeping actively and it's very difficult for people to do that even in a movie, but comedies, there's laughs. You can see if people are enjoying it. And that's the great thing is, but you get addicted to that laugh. And so if you want to move away from it and you get to the point where I am where it's like, I'm looking at my earlier stuff because I'm recording a special and I'm looking at my early setup punch jokes. And they're honestly funnier, even though it's earlier, and I become a better writer later, it's because you're doing like, you're doing setup punch, man, like you're giving them jokes. Later, when I talk about the birth of my son, people are right there, like you're saying, they're right there, they're paying attention, they're watching, there's some laughs, a lot of smiles, but it's not as funny. At the end of it though, they feel like they got to know you, and that's kind of interesting, because back in the day, we didn't know anything about Rodney Dangerfield and Bob Hope, but these days, people want to know their comics, they want to know who they are. It seems like today when I look at comedians, at least the ones that show up on my feed with the little clips, maybe it's just my sick twisted nature and they're feeding me sick twisted things, but I'm getting a lot of stuff of comedians who are pushing and talking about things that we think shouldn't be talked about. They're saying things that shouldn't be said. Is that a normal thing for comedy right now? Or is that just the ones that are showing up at my feet? I'm enjoying them. The ones that are showing up, they must know I'm enjoying them because I play Bill Burr all the way through and the rest of them, the little snippets. Is that a comedy like normative thing? And is your comedy like that? I haven't heard a whole sketch of yours. I'm sorry, I should have done that in preparation. That's okay. I haven't listened to all of your sermons. Oh, so offended. Not all of them, not all of them. Look, Bill Burr is on my Mount Rushmore of comics that have influenced me. I mean, if there are four of them, it would be Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Rest In Peace, Louis D.K. So I would say it's those four that I feel are, in that Venn diagram overlap, are very successful, very funny, and actually say something. And it's hard to do all three of those things. And I love Bill Burr. I think he's fantastic. You know, Dave Chappelle talked about how with the freedom of speech being clamped down, I don't know how political or not we wanna get here, but left, right, wherever we're going with this, I blame the left a little bit more for this. There's kind of like the thought police. He said actually that we have the responsibility as comedians to speak recklessly, to speak recklessly. And if we're not the ones pushing the envelope, who's going to? Because I can't get fired really, I could kind of maybe get canceled. Louis CK is canceled, he still makes millions of dollars a year. So if we're not the ones standing up and saying something, You know, people who work at companies, sometimes they may not be able to laugh at a joke at a corporate gig, because they're like, oh, well, what if my boss sees me laugh, right? That's laughing versus I'm the one up there telling the joke. That's the difference between comedy and humor. I mean, comedy speaks and humor listens. When somebody has a sense of humor, that just means they can take it in. Just like you have sight and you have sound, you have a sense of humor, you can listen. But if you can speak, you've got something that you can say, that's comedy. I've listened to, I've heard Louis CK speak or be interviewed since he got canceled however many years ago that was. And you know, I guess if someone's gonna get canceled, masturbating in front of women who don't want you to masturbate in front of, I think that's probably a cancelable offense. I think we're canceling a little too easy, but I think if I was gonna cancel somebody, okay, I think. I love what he says in his special, what he addresses it afterwards. I think it's called, sorry, the special. And he goes, you know, the thing about me, he goes, a lot of us have our things. Brian, you were talking about how maybe you have a sick, twisted mind, or a lot of us have that. He goes, the difference with me is everybody knows what my thing is. Obama knows what my thing is. That's funny. So I've heard him, he was talking about his craft, and I actually was mesmerized. It had the, it had some of the best transferable principles to my job that... I've heard like one of the things he says, he said, look, I tell young comedians all the time. He says, I tell them, don't pay attention to social media. Don't pay attention because they're not your fans. The people you pay attention to are the people who actually drive your shows, who buy a ticket, who sit through it, who cares everybody who doesn't care about you think. And I thought, boy, a lot of us in church work. we're a fall and pray the same thing. We're not thinking about the people who are actually part of our church, we're wondering about what kind of Twitter storm might happen over what we do X, Y, Z. And I was really, really pushed by that. And he said a bunch of things. I was taking notes and I told Dyrd, I said, look, I don't know if we can land him or not, but I want to get Louis CK on this podcast. And then we had this whole internal discussion over, well, can we have him on the podcast without talking about this? And I, it's a fair question. It's a fair question. I would- I'd like to have that discussion, I think. But like, we always, we always have to dot the I's and cross the T's. Can I not just have a conversation with somebody about something else? Do I have to always go and like go to the depths of their pain and go to the depths of this and that? I just, I just think that maybe one of the reasons why we don't laugh enough is we're just too darn serious and thoughtful. We just, I don't know, man. I'm trying to cue you up or tee you up. You want to say anything about that? I know I agree with you totally. I think that we, it ties back in with your first point, your opening point, Brian, about we don't laugh enough. And I think that the way that I look at it, I agree with you, Lucy Kay is one of the most insightful people you can listen to. And his specials are incredible. You really feel like you get to know him and all that. But I think we spend so much time. either being offended or filtering or whatever, and trying to figure out, like you're saying, what other people are thinking of us. And we lose that ability to laugh. Like if something happened to you, like you stub your toe on the couch and you yell an expletive, and I do all the time. The thing is though, you're supposed to step outside yourself. Like if you saw that happen in a movie, you would laugh. Right, like you just think of your movie, your life as a comedy, and maybe you'll laugh more. Like we all, we're the protagonist in our own story, and that's fine. But every now and then you have got to laugh at yourself. And I think we've lost that. I don't know why or when, but we've lost that ability to laugh at ourselves. And that's dangerous because what do they say? Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. And I think there's a lot to that. Like, and it's a self lesson. I have to remind myself every day to take my own medicine and laugh when something really stupid happens to me and I get all angry about it. It's like, don't get angry. It just, you're fine. Just laugh. You can laugh it off and be okay. Your parents were first generation immigrants from India, right? Correct. Yeah, I'm just trying to think through that dynamic as well of you charting the course that you're charting and them being supportive, being not supportive. How did they process that? Very supportive, you know. But there's a difference between supporters and believers. And supporters are people who kind of have to support you. They're your family members, they're your friends. You know, they're in it with you, whether they want to be or not. Your wellbeing is tied to theirs. And they support you. They're gonna show up, they're gonna, to your point, buy a ticket, sit through the show, all of those things. But belief is something that happens to people's eyes. You can see it after a strong set. And you know, if you do a nine out of 10, people are like, Whoa, that was really good. It was great. But at 10, they're speechless. They're just struck dumb. And I've had people come up to me like, I knew you were funny. I didn't know you were that good. And of course, those are my best shows. I've had go the other way too. But you know, in your best ones, and Steve Martin talks about this in his book, Born Standing Up, you, anybody can have a great night. The key is to make your floor higher, right? To make, to be consistently good every night. And to... Make sure that you've got it. Your ceiling can go higher, but your floor should not be so low. You should be able to consistently do this. It's your craft. Oh, I like that. And be able to do that. That's what's really, so they become believers when they see you and they go, my gosh, you can actually do this. And you have to earn that support. You don't really have to earn like, they should support you. They're your family. They're your friends. They should support. They owe you that, I think. But they don't owe you their belief. They don't owe you their confidence. You have to earn. Were you the funny kid growing up or did you develop that later? Yes, at the age of nine, there was a kid named Ryan Price in my third grade class and he was really funny. And I told him, I was like, I want to be funny. It was Ryan and Willie and I, and I'm still in touch with Willie and the three of us would hang out. And Ryan's like, you're not funny. You're not gonna be funny. That's just not, it's not in the cards. I'm like, no, but I'm gonna be funny. And I would read joke books and do all this kind of stuff and whatever. And one day I finally made him laugh with like some very third grade pedestrian joke, but he laughed. And I go, you left. He goes, congratulations, you're now funny. And he was just joking around or whatever else. But it gave me the confidence I needed. And then he moved away, and I became the Kloss clown. Yeah, there's probably a sense of power that you have there. I can control this. I can evoke emotion. That had to be pretty intoxicating. It was the same year, you know, months apart from that, you know, our class bully, John, you know, he came over to me one day and he's kind of like punches his fist together. It's like, what's wrong with you today? I was particularly down. I mean, it was usually pretty up. And I go, I don't know, man, I'm just a wimp. That was a big word in the eighties, a wimp. And he looks at me and he just goes, do you fight back when you're picked on? I go, yeah, he goes, then you're not a wimp. And he walked away. And I realized even right then, Brian, I was like, This is a significant moment in my life. The class bully doesn't think I'm a wimp. And that instilled a lot of confidence in me between Ryan and John. I don't know, I became a funny guy who was not afraid to mouth off as my teachers would find out. Boy, that's really interesting. I wonder if, you're how old, Rajiv? I'm 47, I was born in 1976. So, you know, folks like us, we lived a bit more under the threat of violence. on the playground, seeing fights was much more regular than it is today. And there's certainly bullying today, for sure. But I mean, just good old fashioned people getting hit in the face was a normal occurrence. I've wondered if being in an environment like that, which of course, I'm not saying we should all be around people get hit in the face. I'm not saying that. But I'm wondering if being in that sort of environment maybe offers us a bit of toughening up that helps us to laugh a little bit. a little bit more and not take everything so seriously. Where maybe the younger generations, things are a crisis for them that are not a crisis. I mean, what's a crisis is, what's a crisis is when I or my friend I was with was waiting to get picked up at football practice and we were 10 years old and two kids just started beating the snot out of Dale. That's bullying, that's bullying, spitting on them. And I'm there like, I'm just, kind of happy you're not doing it to me, but I'm not really stepping in to help Dale. I mean, that's a cry, that's Christ. I just wonder if, because we were around those kind of things, if it's, I don't know, maybe be a bit more resilient when difficult things are said because it's not as bad as getting hit. I don't know, have you thought about these things at all? Jonathan Haidt talks a lot about this, you know, he's up in New York and I'd follow him into a fire I mean of all the people that I think are a North Star for for his opinions of things that he says He's a sociologist or psychologist. I've read one or both of his books I think and he talks about this like it's the kids that were born, you know and came to maybe born in 96 97 he calls it IGEN the people right after it well now they're called zoomers, I think and You know, they are very fragile. And the thing with human beings is we're anti-fragile. And that's the thing about jokes is being able to tease people and roast people. They can take it. They can take it. They want to be roasted. And you roast the ones you love and you rib each other. And we did that as a family. We did that as friends. And we busted on each other relentlessly. We still do. I don't think punching people is a good idea to your point. I don't think that necessarily, but maybe the threat of it or knowing that you can't go too far, but then that's kind of, we've come full circle now with Chris Rock getting you know, slapped and Dave Chappelle getting tackled. And there was a woman out in Jersey, you know, she's not that well known or wasn't before this, but someone threw a beer at her. You know, that's, that's pretty dangerous stuff, man. If you're not expecting it, someone throws a beer can, I don't know if it's a can or a bottle or what it was at your head. Cause you just hear the story last, someone threw us a beer. Yeah. And someone throws a beer at your head. It's probably going to hurt, man. So I think, you know, I think that we, we, we have a free speech based society. But we're anti-fragile and the more that we treat ourselves like we're fragile and we're just gonna break and fall apart, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So yeah, I've thought a lot about it. Have you seen any studies of those of us who grew up in those previous generations, are we more or less prone to laugh than the younger generations who are, as you said, fragile, to use your words. I'm not judging younger generations here. Is there any, do you know, is one generation more likely to laugh than the other? I don't know for sure that's a very good question as to whether there have been studies done. I know when I performed at Amherst and then Brown, this is right before the pandemic, maybe a year before the pandemic actually. And I had all my friends warn me, they're like, you're walking into like a liberal hotbed. You're going to go into like the place where people get canceled. I mean, you're going to Massachusetts and you're going to do your jokes. And like you said, you haven't heard a lot of my sketches and sets. I work clean, but I work on the edge, meaning I do talk politics, I do talk religion, I do talk sex, but I just don't swear. So for me, it's like going in there and doing jokes about religion and race and whatever. People like, dude, you're not going to make it five minutes in. It's going to... But I did. I did an hour. In fact, I did more than my contracted time. And I picked on everybody. And there was a woman in a headscarf, a Muslim woman, you know, and she... I made fun of her. You gotta make fun of everybody because if you're making fun of the white guys and the black kids and the brown, that you gotta make fun of everybody equally and that's what they want. They wanna be included. It just depends what the joke is and at the end of the day, people have to get the sense that you're not mean-spirited, you're good-natured. If they think that you're being mean-spirited, they're not gonna laugh. If they think you're being good-natured, they're gonna laugh. I like that a lot. I was wondering, I got introduced to you through that great podcast that you had with Kirk. occasionally, Rajiv has a number of podcasts. One of them is he does former P&Gers who have moved on. And it's for P&G alumni. What are they doing in their life right now? What's going on? Which is a really rich list, because it wasn't too, too long ago that the company you wanted to work for wasn't Apple, wasn't Microsoft. It was P&G. It was like the best of the best wanted P&G. That was probably 25 years ago, which is not too, too long ago. C level suite after entrepreneur after entrepreneur has ties back to P&G and has fond memories of being 22 and having their first, you know, assistant brand manager job and all that kind of stuff. And so he's got a deep well these points. What's your story? What's going on? It's really fascinating podcast. So the one with Kirk was about faith in the marketplace. And I was like, Kirk's a good friend of mine. And I've I've thought about having the podcast to talk that, but I listened to it. I was like, I don't need to ever have him on. I just need to talk his faith. I just need to get your permission to play it. And you were very gracious to do that. But the thing I was thinking about the whole time is he was sharing, you were just giving him line to talk and talk about his Christian faith with you as a Hindu, and there wasn't any sense with you of, oh, I don't stop. I'm not enough. I'm not enough. And there was, there was a strange. openness, I don't know, is openness, curiosity, or just at least, uh, non-fragility about the topic of somebody else's faith that isn't your faith. So I thought, man, Rajiv is putting on a clinic here for how it is to actually want to hear somebody else talk about something you don't believe in, where most of us are just wanting to stop our ears for something has a voice against us. When you went into that, was that like a pep talk you had to give yourself of, okay, I gotta make sure I don't cut them off. Or is this just your persona? Or is this part of comedy? Is to be comfortable with uncomfortable ideas? I think there's something happening in your psyche with that that we need to somehow bottle and just infuse into the bloodstream of the average American. Wow, that is a really high compliment. I already thought it was a huge compliment that you played it and syndicated it to your listeners, but to hear your words really touched me. Dude, it was great. It was freaking great. It's freaking great. And then when you had an easy out like, okay, I let him say my piece. I'll let you say your piece. Now let's go. You'd ask him another question. Let him do another thing on faith. And it was like, it wasn't you were like, you were trying to escape it. You were encouraging. I was like, wow, wow. So speak, please. Well, thank you. I mean, that I'm caught off guard by how nice that is, honestly. I really think it's having a deep curiosity, understanding why people do what they do, what are they doing? I read a Psychology Today article a long time ago when we get down on ourselves and we journal, the advice was don't ask yourself why you're feeling a certain way, just ask what you're feeling, just ask what. Because why becomes a judgment. And so you just ask. Kirk or anyone else, like, what do you believe? And you go through all these different scenarios and you just listen. And I think people just, you know, they don't listen. I think they covered this in Fight Club back in 99, where it was like, it's nice to hear someone listen. And then Ellen Abana Carter's character goes, oh, you mean instead of waiting for your turn to speak. And I think that's it, that there need to be silences and you need to give people room to run. And I think my interviewing style has gotten better because I've let people. talk more. I think if you make all your points, you leave nothing for the other person to say. You got to ask something and leave something and give them some rope so that they can have some fun instead of trying to be a know-it-all and I want to show you all these things I know. It's like you get to a certain point, maybe you're just confident of going, well, I already know what I know. Now I want to know what you know. Yeah, that's something I was impressed with is you sort of mentioned it. We most of us listen long enough so we've earned the right that now we can speak. And, you know, I kept waiting for an appropriate thing for you to have done was, okay, let's get now. Let me tell you why Hinduism is what everyone should be, you know, that would have been totally fine to do that. It was totally fair. People, someone like me would have appreciated to hear that, but that you weren't doing that was like, no, I'm just kind of, I'm not letting you speak and I'm just curious. And I don't, I don't need to have an answer or give my two cents. It was. It was really strong. Thank you. No, that means a lot. There was a man, a Christian man who had studied with my grandfather over in India, in the northern part of India. And my grandfather was a semi-holy man and the man wanted to convert from Christianity to Hinduism. And then my grandfather asked him, this is probably back in the 60s when all this was the rage and the Beatles and everything else. And he asked the man, my grandfather asked him, how much do you know about your faith? How much do you know about Christianity? And the man says, well, not much. And my grandfather says, well, I would encourage you to learn as much as you can about your own faith. And if at that point you feel the need to convert, let me know. But I don't think you should leave something without knowing where you are. The semi-holy man, was it the Christian guy or your grandfather? My grandfather was the semi-holy man. He prayed a lot. He had people come to him for advice. He was kind of the old wise man in the village. But I think most people would leap on the opportunity to convert this guy, a young guy, impressionable, whatever, And, you know, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. People have a different take on that. But I think his counsel was great in that, if you're a Christian, learn everything that is about Christianity first, and then make a decision as to whether to leave the faith. I don't think you should leave if you don't know what you have. You mentioned a couple of people in your podcast, Casey and Catherine Basil, who I know. You mentioned them, Kirk. You've been around a lot of articulate, articulate Christians, what do you find makes a, for a good Christian conversationalist and what makes for a bad one, what makes for a good conversation that we probably have, we got, we for sure have more Christians than Hindus listening to our podcast right now and more Muslims and more. Yeah, we for sure do. So let's keep on the Christian thing. What, what, what, what, what makes us. What's a good conversationist, a good listener, and what's a bad one? What are some of the pitfalls that we get into? I think the good part is you can feel the energy of someone who really is exhibiting the grace of Christ, right, someone who really is listening, someone who is trying to understand. You know, my best friend, John, is a devout Christian, and, you know, he makes no bones about the fact that he'd love for me to convert. He really would love that, and we've talked about it many times over the years, and I've said, you know, it's not something I would do. That said, I mean, we still are best friends this many years later. We don't agree on politics, we don't agree on religion, but we do have these deep, very roving conversations where he'll just listen. And he was one of the few that when he would call my house when I was a kid, and I have two brothers and two parents, and whenever anybody would pick up the phone, he would talk to them. He wouldn't just be like, get Rajiv. He'd be like, oh, hey, hey, Mrs. Satyal, how are you? How was your day at school? and how are the kids doing and what's going on with you. And he would talk to them for five, six minutes. And my parents like, wow, he's one of the few people that really talks to us and listens. And I really think that it is a lot of that. It isn't just preaching and saying the same old stuff over and over. I think it's just trying to meet people where they are. And I think, again, too many of us, whether we're Christians or Hindus or anyone else, we just go in with what we wanna say. We have our talking points. We have all of our minds made up. And if you disagree with us, you're an idiot. And that's just not gonna win too many people over. That's pretty rare to be a, you call your best friend, someone you don't share anything with politically or religiously, how can that be? Because we're from the 80s, man. We're born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s. That's how it used to be. And now it's just really hard. I think that the strain of politics, politics is the new religion and it has changed a lot, whether it's the woke left the MAGA right, they're not traditional liberals and conservatives. I think liberals and conservatives could have reasonable differences and try to figure out some middle ground, and they did. And we can get into whether that's right, wrong, whatever, and how it got to where we are. But I think that a lot of people on the woke left and the MAGA right, they don't argue in good faith. It's just very hard to have a reasonable conversation with someone who holds such an extreme, maybe not even an extreme point of view, but they're just not going to change their mind. And most traditional conservatives and traditional liberals I know are intellectually curious. And the other people, it's just a cult. Yeah, right. Right. I'll just do a podcast. One of the podcasts I listen to is called Pivot. Are you familiar with it? I am. Yeah, that's Scott Galloway and Carrick Swisher, right? It's kind of like a cross-cultural listening experience for me, because those folks are so different than me, especially Carrick. just very, very different, very, very different beliefs. But it's like, it's not just they have a really interesting take on the news, but they have great bandwidth with one another. And I hear like, oh, so that's what someone on the way left thinks and how she talks. I would say Kara's on the way left. Scott is probably left of center. Yeah, he's just left of center. But they got into this discussion on the most recent one I did about gun control and comparing America with England and with Japan, who eliminated their guns and the differences and culture. Scott had some really, really fascinating and probing, penetrating insights, which me, as a gun owner, I've got a bunch of guns. I like guns. I've got a bunch of them. I found really compelling. I was like, boy, that's a real. And I thought, oh, I should send this to XY. I can't stand to it. They're just not up for hearing anything that they don't agree with. Not hearing up any way. Just can't handle it. And it really bummed me out when I thought about it. I would love to interact about these thoughts with somebody who actually thinks like me and has the same gun collection I have. and see what they think. But as I went to my mind, like, okay, who would that be the people I know who I'm not a, I'm not a massive gun aficionado. I'm not, I'm not, I'm really not. But I have them and I use them. It was hard for me to think about somebody who actually has them and uses them, who could have a level headed discussion without just, oh, it's a right, it's America. Gosh, whatever, man. Whatever. Bum me out. I think it's important to engage with people's best arguments. I don't know if Kara Swisher said that or somebody said that like, Try to think of, and with jokes it's the same thing too. I met a guy in LA the other day and he's seven foot five, seven foot five. So what's the question you don't ask him? Don't ask him how tall he is. Everybody asks him that. So try to think of the first and second things that everybody else is saying. And try to think of the third thing. And I think it's exactly right with platitudes too. Well, America, freedom. All right, we got those arguments. Give me the deeper one. Give me the thing after that that you believe in your own words. And I think it's hard to do that. People just are not, I don't know if they don't wanna change their mind or what, They're not willing to move on. They just don't, I guess they've already made up their mind and that's where they are. I don't mind if you're not willing to change your mind. I mind if you're not willing to hear someone else's mind. That's really what bothers me. I could not agree more. We did a couple of days out in Palm Springs and most of us were left of center all the way to really flaming liberal. And one morning a guy asked us, and I thought this was a brilliant question. He just goes, okay. On what are you a closet conservative? Like, just give me an issue where you go, you know, put on this. And I tell you, Brian, there were people who were deeply Christian. There were people who were pro-gun. There were people who were pro-life. You know, it was like a CPAC convention. It just wasn't all the same person. Like they were human beings like Chris Rock talked about how he goes, you know, on crime of a conservative on prostitution, I'm a liberal. You know, you're kind of like, all right, you know, I'm a human being. I have, I contain multitudes like Walt Whitman. I mean, there's a lot more to it. And if you probe through all of it, gosh, man, there's gotta be something where you go, okay, I can kind of see the left's take on this. And, you know, When I volunteered at Mercy South Hospital, I listened to a lot of pop, a lot of hip hop, and a lot of the girls there listened to classic rock, the Fox. 94.9 was what it was back then. And I hated that music. I found it so boring and so dull and so drab. For four hours a day, I had to listen to this crap. And one day, a song by the Beatles came on. Oh, okay, I know that song. One day, a song by the Stones came on. Oh yeah, I know that song too. And then, you know, a Doors song would come on. And then the next day, I'm like, I want to hear that Doors song again. Next thing you know, I'm a full blown, huge classic rock fan, just massively just into classic rock and I still am. It's because I got exposed to something that I now you put on your headphones and I would never I would never have learned who the guests who were I would never have gotten into any of the stuff that that I got into and I would have missed out on decades of great music. It's because I was forced to your point about getting hit in the face. I was hit in the face with this music and I think it's exposing ourselves to different points of view. I mean, otherwise that's why we're in America. Like that's what's truly great about this country is that in every other country in the world, you have maybe, maybe one city in each country that's diverse. Here you've got 15 of them. Learn, go learn about other people and other cultures. It's interesting stuff, man. And otherwise I said that to a friend of mine, I go, I just, I can't stand when it's just like an entire group of one type of person, he goes, so you hate countries and I'm like, okay, all right, I guess I hate countries. Oh, that's funny. Today's podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. It's a product I use every day. 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So go get you some and let's get back to the show. We were talking about open-mindedness. I want to circle back to something you said earlier. You talked about your best friend. You said, oh, he would love to convert me. And in this quote, you said, that's not something I would do. That's not something I would do. So what do you mean by that? Because it sounds close-minded. It sounds like there's no argument that God could stick his finger in the middle of the room and move a table. I'm not, I'm honest here right now. I'm honestly not trying to convert you though. I would love that. That would be an awesome podcast. Right now I could have the Hindu comedian accept Christ and I baptize him digitally in front of everybody. And John would be so pissed off after decades of trying to get this to work. John, you suck, you suck. You just don't know how to answer the right, ask the right questions. You're not funny enough. You're not whatever enough. It takes someone like me to get the job done. John, what the hell are you doing? He's a funny, maybe gave me too much CS Lewis to read. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Oh my gosh. The CS Lewis cult. I don't. Oh my gosh. I worry what wrong. I think so. I think someday someone's gonna actually put a committee on me and say, wait, wait, wait, wait. You've never finished an entire CS Lewis book. No, I find him incredibly meandering and incredibly wordy and I don't get it. Oh, you cannot be a pastor anymore. Like, I'm sorry. Sorry, I don't get it. This was many years ago that I read Mirror Christianity. Look, I say it's not something I would do and I leave the door open because you just never know. You just never know. And I do feel like at a certain point, Hindus, we're really wishy washy. This is the way I describe it. Like our religion has been here for 5,000 years. And we just believe that All of it can be true. It's the elephant. You've heard that parable before, I'm sure, where different men are feeling the different parts of an elephant. And there are just different paths and there are different dimensions to things. I think with Einstein, his whole theory of relativity proving that it could be one time here and one time somewhere else, well, then all bets are off. Then so many things are possible beyond our comprehension. There are 26 dimensions. I'm sure there's a way in which we're all right, and I'm sure that there are probably ways in which we're wrong. I don't dispute the basic tenets of Christianity, and the more I read about Jesus Christ, you're just kind of like, wow, I mean, there's not anything he said where I'm like, no, but that's wrong. I mean, I don't think that there's anything where I poke at it. And you might have heard that part where I was interviewing Kirk and I was talking to my friend Catherine about this. Like, well, what if Christians brought to the table? Aren't they just too much of Johnny come lately? It's like, we've been here for thousands of years. And she said, you know, love and grace, that's really missing from the Eastern religions. That's not a huge part. I just finished a book called Why Buddhism is True. I just finished it. And a lot of it is about non-attachment. And the question becomes, you know, but is that the goal? Do you want to not be attached to things? And he addresses that. And you know, man, I just think you take a little bit from everyone's faith and I think they're all, we're all right in certain ways. And I'm probably not saying anything that people haven't already said, but that's kind of my, my take on it is the Einstein stuff and the Arby's, you know, Arby's said different is good. So. I don't understand the Einstein stuff. Explain that to me. So, you know, when Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, so many things are possible that we can't even really believe. Like it's one time here, it's literally another time somewhere else. I don't just mean time zones. Like time is measured differently. And that's why when people are like, well, what's the beginning of the universe? I'm like, well, that's before there was time. I don't need to know more than that. I'm good. I got it. Like it's just beyond our comprehension. We're not going to get it. And we're not going to know. the answer to this. No one's gonna be able to convince me intellectually. But then I have a friend who is a Muslim, Uzzur, and he just says, well, you're missing out on the idea of what it is to know something. I don't know God through my mind. I know God through my soul. Like, I just know that Islam is right. And I said, well, what do you say to John? And I've wanted to get those two guys together for the longest time, because they're so funny. They're such good debaters. I would love to get John and Uzzur together. And one knows Christianity is right, and one knows Islam is right. I don't know. I'm the first one to say I'm, you know, I say I'm spiritual, not religious, but then I sound like a woman who says, I'm not angry, I'm just upset. Yeah, it's got, I think the age of arguments, I don't mean like emotional arguments, but the age of, well, here's this point and here's that point. I think that stuff's important, but I think that that age is pretty over, at least with the folks I interact with. I think it's. Mostly now, where's the power? Where's the powers? Are there healings here? Are there emotional healing, physical healing, spiritual healings? It's like, everyone's got their arguments, but I'm just seeing God do more in the things that just can't be explained. I'm just seeing unleashing of that with me. And so that's why I'm like, man, there might just be something that happens in the form of a miracle or the unexplained. you know, that might get your attention. We'll see, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's, anything is possible. We have had members of our family, Morgana Buddhist versus Hindu, not, yeah, just a cousin, but a good friend of mine converted to Christianity. He was a lifelong Hindu. So it happens, man. It's not impossible. And I think to close it off and say there's just no way, no way ever. But then, you know, I mean, but if, you know, John won't convert to Hinduism, so I wouldn't call him closed-minded, I would just say that he found something that works for him. He believes it's the truth. And John would say that too? Would John say, it's just something I would never do? Would he say that? That's a good question. I'd have to ask him that, but I don't, I would imagine knowing him as well as I do, that if I said, would you ever consider converting out of Christianity, I would imagine he would say, there's no way I would ever do that. Interesting. All right, enough spiritual talk. I do this all day. I do spiritual talk all day every night. I love it. I came on to be with the funny guy. And we've got to start wrapping this up. I think you're good enough. I think you're good enough to do the lightning round. Some guests, I just don't take them through the lightning round. The lightning round is when I give you a topic, and you've got to answer it like, whew, like, fast. Are you up for the challenge? I am ready like Thor. Let's do the lightning. All right, here we go. The key to capturing a crowd's attention. Silence. First of all, you played by the rules. You answered it quick. One word, I like that a lot. I reserve the right to ask a follow-up question. Talk more about that. What do you mean by silent? How do you determine to use it? People tune out when they hear a speaker who's very sing-songy, and I think to stop and pause and look them in the eye and be very deliberate with what you're saying, it's much easier to pay attention to that. And I did a political show where my director told me, You know how you're speaking right now with the script, it's word perfect? Do that on your 20th show, do that on your 50th show, because what ends up happening is people start talking like this, and they go, um, like, whatever, and then before you know it, they sound like they're not even interested in what they're saying. So play with the four things you could do with your voice. Tone, pitch, speed, volume. Use all of them. Go loud, go soft, go faster, go slower. Change the tone of what you're saying. Change the pitch. Go up real high. Jerry Seinfeld's funny because he's always talking up here like that. Am I right? That's a funny register. When you want to be serious, take it down and do a lower register. People are going to take you a lot more seriously. You've got gravitas. Your voice is one of your best instruments and if you use these four things, people will pay attention. Yeah, even just the silence of having the adequate pauses. eliminating the ums and the yeahs. I was developing some young communicators once and I was at a meeting. I was in a meeting with them. They were giving presentation and so, yeah, I mean, I walked up on stage, I took a $20 bill, I put it on the thing. I said, you get to keep this $20 bill if you can finish this presentation without saying um. And they couldn't do it. They couldn't last two minutes and they were done. And they were like, gosh, I can't believe I did. And both those guys have mastered it now though. It's just like, I think as a speaker, just one little thing, you master not saying ums. Okay, good. Now we can go to the register and other stuff. That's really good coaching. All right, here we go. That's great. I love how you went about that. That's awesome. I use the notes function in my phone and I put a tick mark. I was trying to eliminate saying like, and I did it. I said it 50 times in a day. And by day seven, I was saying it zero. Right. Because I forced myself to always take out my phone and mark a tick. You get tired of doing that, right? Well, then you stop saying like. Well, I thought it was a great idea too, but I heard from others they thought it was a form of bullying. I support it. I was like, come on, man. I'm not allowed to coach people publicly now? OK, whatever. Let's just get off it. It could have been worse. You could have masturbated in front of them. Oh, that was, yeah. That's it. I need to get a sign in my office. It could have been worse. I could have masturbated in front of him. Yes, that resets the bar. We're talking about the ceiling and the floor. That's a new floor right there. Just don't go beneath that. Oh, gosh. Okay, comedian. Back to Light and Run. Comedian that makes you laugh the most. Chris Rock. Career goal that you are chasing. I want to host the Oscars. Most important characteristic or skill for a successful comedian to have? You got to be funny. Most aggressive mistake you've made and what you learned from it? Not following up with people once they showed interest. Deep insecurity maybe prevented me from. you know, maybe not wanting to bug people or what it is and not being aggressive enough. So this is why I love being on the aggressive life because I think I have a lot of confidence and I think confidence stems from security and and and arrogance stems from insecurity. But I think there have been times where I didn't follow up and I should have. Great. Okay. The last question I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you one more question before this which something I'm excited to talk about. The last question, just give you a heads up for it, it's gonna be I ask everybody this what else do you want to talk about that we haven't talked about if there's anything. But here's the one you just mentioned it. So I haven't processed this with somebody who's knowledgeable like you. But you've mentioned his name, Chris Rock. Chris Rock. Let's talk that incident, if you don't mind, because I actually haven't talked to many knowledgeable people about it. Man, I gotta tell ya, I think Will Smith's getting a bum rap. Huh, okay. I'll give you my perspective. my perspective, and I'd love to hear your pushback. And then where it goes to Chris Rock. I just thought Chris Rock, what was his most recent comedy special, I just think he just offered, he knows Will Smith is twisting in the wind. He knows that his career is in the balance. He knows that he's been getting publicly shamed for a year. He knows that Will Smith has reached out and he has returned his calls and made apologies. He knows all these things and he knows people waiting for him to say the first thing that he's going to say and man, he just, he just threw more gasoline in the fire. There wasn't even like throw gasoline in the fire and then like, but you know, I know Will, it just, man, it just, it just seemed really, really low rent to me. I mean, go, go low blows for humor. Let's talk about the unspoken side. I love that. I just was thinking there should have been some, some pinch of dignity that was given back to Will Smith. I just thought, I thought it was a low rent move. You know, I don't disagree with a lot of what you just said. I mean, as a comic, I was on stage later that night talking about it. And I was deeply offended and appalled that somebody would assault a comedian because it is crossing a line in society. And if we have free speech, you know, then people need to be able to listen. And we need that. That's a privilege. That's a privilege that we all have to write. We've enshrined it as a right, but it's a privilege and it can be taken away. And George Carlin talked about this. We have no rights. They're all privileges. They can be taken away in. We're not saying that they should be because we believe that they're endowed by our creator, that's the basis of the constitution in America. But I do feel that Chris Rock's doing his latest special, which I didn't think was super strong, in Jada Pinkett Smith's hometown of Baltimore, and he always drops the mic at the end, but throwing the mic the way he did and really just going hard at her and Will to the point about the grace of Christ, it showed the opposite of grace. And I think that it probably did engender more empathy for Will Smith. And that's too bad because what Will Smith did was really wrong. But I think that's being lost in that because Chris Rock, as much of a class act as he was that night, I would agree with you that I think his special was fairly classless. And it was a year to process this. I mean, if it was like two days later, a month later, but he, he knew like his words were weighty here. I just, I just disappointed with him. I really was. And I think. Obviously, Will Smith is a towering man who's got muscles that Chris Rock doesn't have. Going up and slapping a little guy like that is low rent. Obviously, he got the best of him. Obviously, he shouldn't have done it, all that stuff. And I don't know, man. Chris Rock has been cracking on his wife's medical condition. He's been calling him GI Jane that night. It's like, I don't know. Can you find some other stuff and you're gonna do it here right in front of her on national TV? I don't know, man. Maybe we would be nicer to one another if we had the threat of getting smacked in the face. Maybe the reason we're so off with one another is there isn't the threat of physical violence. Well, this ties back into what you're saying growing up in a different era. I mean, I think words to words, like, you know, people keep saying that there's... Silence is violence and words are violence. No, getting smacked in the face is violence. Right. And I don't condone violence. I do think that, like Chris Rock had said a long time ago, you know, ain't nobody above an ass whooping. Right? So there is something somebody will say. We all have our limits. And I do think that Will Smith would have been a lot more effective if he would have just gone up on stage and screamed at him or grabbed the mic or done something else to like really make his point against words with words. But I'm a writer and a performer. I deal in words. I deal in ideas. Comedians are the only people. And this is your point about what else should we talk about? I think this is a fascinating topic and you brought it up in such a good way that it led to this. This is not what I was going to say, but let's go with it. Comedians and preachers, we went to go see Billy Graham speak. I went to go see him at Paul Brown Stadium and I went to a 9-11 Memorial and a Billy Graham speech before I even saw the Bengals play there. And it's really crazy that finally I saw that. Even though being a Christian is something you would never do. Right. But I'll go see Billy Graham with my mom. Right, exactly. She's like, let's go see Billy Graham's here. I'm like, this is hilarious, but I would never do it. Yeah, it's not something I would do. Right. Yeah, but I didn't say I will never do it. I said it's not something I would do, but yeah, it leaves the door open a little bit, but I hear what you're saying. So, you know, watching this guy speak, you know, this great man speak, and, you know, comedians, people like that, we're the only people, Brian, you and I, people like us, if I can put myself on your level, which I won't, but I'll just say this that We can fill a stadium with just our thoughts. There's nothing else like that. You gotta be the Bengals, you gotta be the Rolling Stones. You gotta play instruments and songs that people can sing along with before you can sell 50,000 tickets. Well, guess what? I mean, Gabriel Iglesias can do it, Russell Peters can do it, Steve Martin did it. There are people out there who can sell 45,000 tickets on Billy Graham just to hear somebody's. thoughts and feelings, all it is is a man and a mic. They're just standing there talking. That's how powerful words can be. That's my message to Chris Rock and Will Smith, words matter. Yeah, that's a good word. Yeah, that's a good word. There's just a, there's a microcosm in that incident about our culture. For me, it isn't about, you know. two guys who were cracking on each other in a smack. And that's important to talk. But for me, if an anthropologist was to come to America and unearth the remnants of the 21st century, they would see that situation and the news clippings and all that stuff and say, hmm, this tells us a lot about this culture right here, this incident, people's reaction to it, everything. I just think we're not talking about it. as much as we should. We're just keeping it on the violence level. We're not talking about the other things, but what it says about us. It's funny you say that because I was having the discussion with the director who directed my political show and we were talking about Brett Kavanaugh and being on the Supreme Court and what he did and was it wrong, was tackling a woman or whatever it was at a party a long time ago. And we were arguing over how serious it was, how not serious it was, whatever else. But then we got to this very interesting discussion, At what point do you develop character? And I was like, this is the conversation that people should be having. It shouldn't be sound bites. It should be long form discussions about this kind of thing. The guys with whom I went to school, John, Chris, Dan, they wouldn't do that when they were 15 or 16 because they were the kind of people you would put on the Supreme Court. Forget about John's politics or Chris's politics or anyone else. They just have the character to be on that court. And should somebody who tackles a girl or a woman at a party be on the Supreme Court? I don't know. Maybe he developed character later, maybe he didn't, but that's not the point whether he did or not. That's not the binary choice I'm presenting. The deeper discussion about when do you develop character, if we could take the conversations higher or deeper, whatever direction, and talk about that stuff, my gosh, man, what a better society that would be instead of this person slapped that person and this person tackled that person. Yeah, we know that, that's a play-by-play. Give me the color commentary. Right. All right. anything you want to talk about or we should be talking about that we haven't. And by the way, this is one to advertise yourself. It says talk about whatever we can talk. No, let's talk deep. I've been asking you stuff. So I would love if you had something stimulating that I can play off of. We can talk about that's great. And then make sure we close it with you giving advertisements for all your stuff. Okay. That's, that's great. I, let me, let me think for a second here and think what I want to ask you. There could be nothing you want to talk about either. That's fine. No, but there is. This is a question that I love to ask people. When did you, Brian Tome, when did you know you were good at what you do? Yeah, this is a good story. If we're to, I'm just going to keep it on the speaker level here, the speaker level and not the leader level. I was on the football team in my high school. And I don't know if homecoming games are as big of a deal in the high school world as they are back in 1983 when I graduated. But they had this big thing tradition in my high school where the last Friday at the end of day, they would have all the football players come into the auditorium or come into the gymnasium with their football jerseys on. And during homecoming day, homecoming that day before homecoming, they'd get like four football players to address the student body. And it was really obvious who the first three should be because they were the most popular. They were the most, you know, most respected athletically. Like we were clear like these three like definitely have them, but they needed four. And they're like, all right, Tom, that's good. We do it. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'll do it. So, you know, I was last place. The cheerleaders picked these people. It's not like they had master planning skill about how to organize event. They just put me forth. I wasn't hitting cleanup. And first three guys said some things. It was all fine. And then it came to me and I basically, I basically called out the student body. They were, we had been perpetual losers and no one cared. People were just doing stuff. They didn't care about the assembly, all that stuff, which I understand. But it kind of got under my skin. So I called the whole student body out. I said, look, what we need from you is we need your support. And if you're not going to support us, then I don't know what I said. I called out. I don't know what I did. Anyway, the whole place listened. And then I was done. I didn't think much of it. And the cheerleader said, hey. tonight at the bonfire where they throw a dummy of the opposing team into the fire. Think about that. You would take it. You would take a life-size dummy of Plumboro high school with all purple. And then you would throw them into the fire and you would chant, we're going to destroy them. I don't know what we were saying. And we're going to send them to hell or I don't know what it was, but this is what you would do. High schools would do this in 1983 and no one was shamed and no one was threatened to just. kind of what happened. So I said, hey, would you give the little speech before, and then you throw the football guy into the bonfire? I was like, wow, OK. So that's when I went, OK, I got something here with my voice here that I've never even thought about, I've never developed, but there's something there. So that's the story. Wow, that's great. It's a long time ago. So that's great that you developed it at such an early age, and you knew that. Yeah, and then it was just reps, right? reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, reps. So there's a lot of people who have just a fantasy to be a speaker in the Christian world and lead a big church and all that stuff. And those folks, just many of them, don't want to put in your reps. And I just tell them all, hey man, you're 22, you want to do this? You need to just start being with junior high kids and leading Bible studies and like doing two, three a week and not even preparing for them. Just pull them out of your hole. You know, that's what I used to do. Just like make stuff up. But you have to develop your own voice. You've got to get repetition. And that same, I'm sure, it is with the comedian world. You're doing your craft all the time. I just don't find many people have the work ethic or the patience. They want to immediately be a star on Instagram, immediately have crowds. And I don't think that's the way our craft works. And I actually think, in my world anyway, God actually makes a decision to come against you. and not give you quick and sudden fame. And if you do happen to squeeze through the cracks, you're always the one that falls in as a public disaster, always. You're so right. To me, the word is compelled. If you're compelled to do it, I'm compelled to write. I'm compelled to speak. And I just do it. I have to write. I have to get it out. And if you don't have that, you don't have that respect for the craft. to figure out, okay, I've written this thing, how do I make it better? Oh, this sentence structure could be better, this could be stronger, I could move this here. If you don't love doing that, well then it's probably not the thing for you. If you just wanna get invited to cocktail parties and that's your thing, well then you could do that, probably climb a different ladder. This is a very hard ladder to climb. It's a fun ladder to climb, but it's full of humiliation and full of a lot of negativity on your way up. You gotta find a way to laugh through it. So how does somebody find you, follow you, buy things from you, whatever. Just, just tell us how, because I know a lot of people would love to know more. I appreciate that. funnyindian.com. If they go to funnyindian.com. I beat a billion people to that website. I own it. I own it. I own funnyindian.com. You beat a billion people to it. That's really funny. What, what year was it that you, uh, you got your foot in the queue? I think I got that in 1998. I think it was right about the time I went up on Echo Bananas and I own a lot of the iterations of it. Funny Pakistani, funny American, Rajiv Sethial.com, my own name, Rajiv Sethial sucks.com in case I get back worse. I got a lot of the real estate, virtual estate around it. Go to that website, drop me an email. It has all the links to my social media. Probably the biggest one for me is Instagram. I have FunnyIndian on there, so instagram.com slash FunnyIndian or just type in FunnyIndian Instagram or LinkedIn or any of those places and you'll probably track me down. But I do respond to emails and I love when people sign up for my newsletter, but it all starts at funnyindian.com. I do a lot of corporate events to your point. I work clean and I found a lot of connections between jokes and ads and I've given a lot of speeches about humor, about diversity, about innovation, about personal branding. You know, so anything you want to know about, I don't know, 47 years on this earth, working in politics and marketing and engineering in comedy and acting has taught me a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're a learned man. Hey, hey, hey, hey, aggressive life team. Hey, let's remind ourselves here. This is not the interesting life. That's not called the instinct life. It's not called the fascinating thoughts life. It's called the aggressive life, man. I'll tell you what, there's something you heard here. So you have to actually do. Like if you're way south of four times a day, you need to figure out how to freaking laugh more often. I mean, do that, do that. Maybe, maybe you're gonna work on your own speech patterns. Maybe you're gonna think about in your own presentations, whether it's a presentation work or whatever, have you been thoughtful about the verbal tics you might have or the physical tics you have? Let's take that maybe up a notch. Maybe, maybe it's going to be. you're going to actually ask and listen to somebody who thinks something different than you do and aggressively listen instead of aggressively proselytize. Which proselytizing is fine, the right time, right place, but what's really not good is when we're just in the habit of just convincing everybody that we're right. Maybe you're gonna do that. I don't know what it is, man, but there's a lot of rich stuff here today. Let's go out and enjoy our lives and let's change our lives. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Hey, thanks for listening. For all things aggressive living, why don't you head over to bryantome.com? Find my new book, Move, A Guide to Get Up and Go Forward, as well as articles and much, much more. And no matter where you listen to podcasts, why don't you take a second and leave us a rating? Leave us a review. It really, really helps us drive new listeners to show. We want to help as many people as possible. Just like we may have helped you, we want to help others. So why don't you help us out. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram at Brian Tome. Aggressive Life with Brian Tome is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.