 They say if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish then he's going to get a fishing license, but he doesn't have any money so he's going to get a job. Few comedians are as idiosyncratic and outspoken about their politics and their personal habits as Doug Stanhope. Because you were just worried about eating a fucking fish and you couldn't even cook the fish because you needed a permit for an open flame. And then the health department is going to start asking you a lot of questions about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts. This is not a sanitary environment and ladies and gentlemen if you get it you get sick of it all at the end of the day not even legal to kill yourself in this country. Stanhope has been entertaining audiences with his bad taste and unapologetically libertarian tirades for nearly 30 years. In the early 2000s he co-hosted the man show with Joe Rogan including an episode where he entered a boxing ring against disgraced figure skater Tanya Hardy. This is Tanya's first fight with a man that won't end up in her getting fingerprinted. Reason caught up with Stanhope at Freedom Fest, an annual event held this year in Memphis where he performed a characteristically uncensored set. We talked about why he's dreading the presidential election season, how he survived COVID's effect on touring, what he likes about psychedelics and why he prefers creative independence over mainstream acceptance. So we're at Freedom Fest which has been held in Memphis. I don't, would you know what, what is Memphis's nickname? I don't know if it's still a murder capital. Okay. I don't, I don't know if it has a, it's going to happen. Something like that though, something murdery. But no, I think they're both music, Nashville and Memphis. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. This is the home of the blues? You dislike, well yeah, I think it's blues, Memphis has blues, rock and roll, rhythm and blues maybe. That country western is Nashville. Yeah, definitely. But you hate music. The Music City Miracle. So it's going to be the Music City. Now, Music City I think is Nashville. Music City Miracle was, oh wait, shit, yeah, that's Nashville. Because the title, that was when the Titan is through that, this, you know, lateral. And Nashville, what was the team, they had a team called the Nashville Sounds. That might have been like a soccer team or something. Sounds like that, like ABA. It's just a really bad, yeah, really bad thing. Wait, no, Tropic Thunder, the Will Ferrell. The Will Ferrell movie, what was that called? Tropic, semi-pro. They were the Flint Tropic, semi-pro. They were the Fort Wayne Tropic or something like that or something. Flint. Flint. You hate music though. Why do you hate music? I don't like that I'm forced to listen to music. It's the only art form that is, you know, 99% of the time you're hearing it without wanting to. Most of the music I know. You do not consent. Right. Music is rape. I'll stand by that. And you have a forthcoming special that you were going to explore this topic in, among others. Yeah, yeah. Is there, I mean, you are famous for being the worst self-promoter in history. Yeah, I was about to not even know the name of this. I taped it in May and I haven't even gotten down to watching it all the way through to give my editor points to, all right, take this from the first show and use the second show. That's a better version. I haven't even done that. I don't have a title. I had a title, but then I dropped the bit. You know, I don't like that bit. I'm not doing it. So without the bit, the title wouldn't make sense. What's fueling your apathy? Is it worse now than it was 20 years ago or 40 years ago? No, and when I look back, I see, I don't see the upset that everyone is, like the fear that they're just cranking out. I've seen everything before. I'm almost 60. So it's never been this bad. And you go, what? Oh, the genders. Do you remember the 70s with the feminism then? And we don't want to be called Miss or Misses, we're going to be called Miss. And everyone's like, well, you can't even open a door for a broad anymore. Yeah, I've seen everything that we're going through. I've already seen it. I think if we just said, okay, everybody opens their own doors from now on, then we never have to talk about this again. But that's what's happening is what was happening in the 70s. Only there's more sources of... I am disappointed that Androgyny, which I am older than you, but I remember Androgyny was going to be David Bowie and Twiggy. So it was going to be thin, beautiful people who kind of looked the same. And instead, it's like the Campbell Soops kids, where it's just chubby people who are male and female, but they look the same and they're just not attractive. Yeah. Brank a nuclear war? Yeah, that's a new one. Yeah, I've never seen that, never heard about it. Inflation. Right. So is there anything you were... I mean, you famously joked about 9-11, I think minutes before it happened, leading many conspiracy theorists to assume you were in on it. But you want to have the first joke whenever a celebrity dies, whenever a natural natural or unnatural disaster happens. Yeah, and that was a lot easier before social media. You have to get to a stage. By the time you get to the closest open mic, a hundred people have already made that joke on Twitter. So is that fueling your apathy that you can't be first? So why bother? I think, well, first of all, I've had a lot of shit happen at home. Literally, I had a house fire. So I've been living out of a hotel for like nine months now. Is that bad, or do you like living in a hotel? Well, I mean, it's one thing, when I lived on the road, I spend half my year in hotels anyway, but you keep your sanity by going to a stable home where you have your shit, and I know where my shit is. But if you keep moving back to a hotel that's your home, and I still have another house in Bisbee, but it's my wife's home, but I don't know where my shit is, and now I have to pack to go to another hotel. What, how did the fire happen? Just a weird electrical fire in the attic, lost nothing, but just trying to get people to work. Again, yeah, hey, we need to talk about unemployment. Hey, work on my fucking house. What, why is it hard to find people to work? Because it's a hippie town. There's a lot to be said for people who, hey, people, you don't want to work. I could stand on a fucking crate waving money in my town, and unless it's like towards the end of the month before people get their disability checked, everyone knows how to do shit, they just rather not, which I don't blame them. You were born in 1967, right? The summer of love, is that why you, or the spring of love, right? Summer of love was 67. I know, I was pretty young back then when I was born. Now what I'm saying is that why you hate hippies. I don't hate hippies. Here's a problem, Nick. I get to a place where I started hating everything, and just even every commercial on TV, watching the local morning news, because it's happy and stupid like Anchorman. And I'd smile a little, and the commercials, which is I hate every, and I want to smash that guy's face in, and I go, all right, this is me. If you hate that many things, it's you. But the problem is, I know I have to be right some of the time. Some of these people do deserve to die, and I'm letting them all go because I know that the rest of them I'm wrong about. What are the things that bug you the most right now, like in contemporary America? I mean, one of the things you're saying is, like, we're hyping fear constantly as if it's new, and it's recycled. But what are the things that really bug the shit out of you? Less and less of shit. I'm trying to think of... Now, nothing stands above everything else. Everything annoys me equally or doesn't. If I could keep the same point of view for an entire 24-hour period, I'd be happy. I would be content. I'd go, okay, that's how I feel about that. But sometimes, I'm punching my laptop screen in rage over you. This is stupid. What are you thinking? And then the next morning, I'm like, get over it. What do you think about politics these days? I mean, you've always been libertarian, but with a small L. Do you know, are you looking forward to Trump-Biden 2.0? I look at it just like I look at football, where, yeah, when the bills were in four Super Bowls in a row, you're like, all right, I can't take. That's what Biden-Trump is. It's not entertaining whatsoever. I lost everything. When once Trump get elected, I just don't get it. I don't get how that could happen. And not politically tapping into anger, whatever. But it's still that guy. It's like if Maury Povich got elected, I'd go, I don't know where I live. I really don't. Did you ever, I mean, you're pretty close to the Mexican border. You know, why is it celebrities, whatever, they're going to leave America. They always say they're going to go to Canada. They never say, I'm going to go to Mexico. That's what I'm going to do in 2024. If somebody wins the presidency, you're moving. I've already looked at it. Yeah. If either of them win, I'm moving to Mexico because it's seven miles away. I'm just going to get an apartment over the border. So it's just going to be me driving to the same grocery store in America, doing the same shit, but I have an apartment for me. Is it kind of great though that Trump won just because it is like Trump or Maury Povich or, I don't know, you know, like. I try to be positive about it, thinking that, okay, this could perhaps open the door for other people. It's going, hey, if he can win, I can win. And like a normal outsider, like a good outsider, not a wrestling villain guy. And he's a billionaire as well. But no, it didn't happen. I thought this next election, the last one, would be full of all these no one, nobody, like Pendulat or someone like that. What, you know, do you expect anything out of politics? No, no president has ever affected my life. If I look back, I was born under LBJ. So again, I don't really remember it, but I remember Carter. I remember hoping Carter would win because I always liked to pick a favorite to this day in sports. I don't follow basketball, but I'll have a favorite team and underdog and I'll root for a, you know. So Carter didn't do it for you. But my life didn't change. Do you think it would have changed, like if Carter had been reelected, would that have changed the course of human events in a way that was measurable? I can't imagine that. But again, I have not had a traditional life where I was racing the kids and they're paying for college loans. I have a ninth grade education and I lived on people's couches anyway. It's not because it was a tough times economically and the plant closed. It's because I was screwing off and I'm going to move to Vegas and I'm going to be a professional gambler. What, what energized you to do that? To do, like, to go to school at ninth grade and, like, leave home and wander around? School, I was horrifically bored, was one of the things that killed me during the, the, the corn times where people go, my kids want to go to school and they miss school. No fucking kid wants to go to school. We would have snow days and you would shit your pants sitting next to an AM radio, hoping they called. Your school was closed for the day. That is, that is like a great memory. Lottery, yes. And now you're trying to tell me your kids really are desperate to go back there? No. So you hated school but then, you know, that you could have gotten a job at the plant or something, right? You chose to roam around the country. Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I, I, it's not like my parents were, they weren't artistic at all, but they, they were all for me going out next. I was going to be an actor when I was 18 and as soon as I was legal to run at 18, I went to Hollywood with $450 in my pocket, took the train across country and went to, and I learned more in three months of what Hollywood actually is, trying to survive. How would you summarize that? It's the trial by fire. It's like boot camp for real life. Like, okay. Oh, these are gay prostitutes. They work out of this. I thought I was getting a really good deal on this share a bathroom, a, a hostile kind of place. Oh, these are, oh, now it's not a woman after all. Okay. So, yeah. The nine years I completed of schooling, paled in comparison to three months of living in Hollywood. When did you realize like, was there a particular moment you're like, I don't want to be an actor. I want to be a stand-up. Well, comedy kicked off. I moved to L.A. in 85 and it was, I had moved at this point, I was living in Las Vegas in 1990 and that was at the height of stand-up comedy. The boom, the 80s boom was just- And you don't think that was because of Ronald Reagan? You think it was independent of who was president? No. Yeah, it was actually George Bush because when I started Open Mic, they started the, they kicked off that first war there. And I remember sitting in a bar that I regulared and having a pen and a notepad, trying to make money out of the war. What, do you remember what your first, first Gulf War joke was? I don't remember any jokes specific to the Gulf War. What was your favorite- My jokes sucked so bad back then anyway. They didn't even have to have truth to them. What was your favorite 9-11 joke? Or what is your favorite 9-11 joke? I had one I really loved and again, my bits are not succinct and camera friendly, but it was, I think six months after the war, it was about the death toll and how they first said as over 10,000 people dead and then it went down and it's 8,000 and then 6,000. And now they're saying it's 3300 people die. At this rate, I believe, oh, that was the premise. When is it gonna be okay to make jokes again? And I went through the death toll limit. So my answer is June 3rd, because at this rate, no one will have died from 9-11. The amount of decline, if this, yeah, by then zero people will have died. What, you mentioned your jokes when you were starting out, it didn't have truth to them. Talk a little bit about that, because like a lot of stand-ups or a lot of comedians talk about being truth tellers. Yeah, I was a 23-year-old guy that just, I couldn't sing at karaoke or I wasn't athletic, so hey, this is a way to get noticed in a bar and maybe get laid because I'm kind of funny. Sea monkeys, I remember. Sea monkeys is a funny reference and I remember writing a bit backwards, sea monkeys started it and okay, how do I make it? And it was something about sexually transmitted sea monkeys or something, I don't know. But so yeah, just- But it didn't have truth. No, no, I don't know. Because they're not really monkeys. It's just funny words to say. How do I get people to laugh? Yeah, so then what is- Now I don't give a shit if they laugh. Now I go, am I amused? Does the audience win or lose in that? I think normally they can tell. If you're enjoying yourself, they're coming along for the ride because they don't know what's funny or they wouldn't have fucking paid you to come in. If they could do this themselves. What, you know, your humor is typically described, and I think this is accurate, as dark. Or, you know, I mean like you like immediately to go into places where most people don't. And Spaces, I guess I understand why you do that. Like you're driven to do that. Why do you think people who are not doing that on a regular basis, what's the interest in, you know, in going along for a ride with somebody who is driving into very dark places? Well, first of all, if people really believe these are the end of times, then we're all living in a dark place and you need to find the funny in it. I would love to see cancel culture go after the people who live in dark places. First responders, EMTs, people are known for having the most caustic, because they have to. Crime scene, detective, hardened, you know, firefighter, and they're making the most repulsive jokes back at the station about your grandmother's corpse that they've just peeled out of a burning building. Yeah, go ahead, cancel them. Yeah, they made funny, your grandmother, just minutes after she died. Yeah, that's how you live. We just had our last podcast of neighbors and friends at one of their tweaker friends of meth psychosis think, oh, everyone's trying to harvest my organs. I'm going to kill everyone in the house. It was an attempted mass murder down the street. And our friend, she's the open mic comedian, she got her heel blown off and I go, oh, this is going to be a great podcast. Finally, we have something fun to talk about. Let's get footloose over here. How did that go over? We had a blast. Yeah. I don't know how. It's the podcast, so it's not like a crowd where you can tell if they laughed or not. But yeah, most of our most listened to podcasts were a suicide, a death, something tragic. And did they, I mean, they found the guy who was involved in that shooting and whatnot, right? Because she was a lady, a gal, yeah. Yeah. And she just snapped or? Yeah, she was, I was used to be pro-drug, but now I'm a little bit more selective because meth heads are fucking the worst. Do you think is the country getting more violent or is it kind of a steady state? Cells ticket, so I don't know. I remember one of the books that really changed my point of view was You Are Being Lied to Disinfo.com is a compendium of different essays about things you think you know. And the first black baseball player was, no, no, they actually had black baseball players during reconstruction, but they don't count that. And just all these, you are being lied to. And one of them was about mass shootings and how it gave numbers about, yeah, they were mass shootings. They just didn't get as much coverage or school shootings. Now I think that's probably not correct because this was in the 90s. I'm sure there are more shootings. But I think people are more on edge thinking that everyone else is violent because that's what they sell on TV. So everyone's in a reactive, like... Someone's on my lawn. Yeah, what do you think is going on then? I mean, is it just TV and the way people talk about stuff? Or is there something changing in American culture? I noticed this when I was just, even as a teenager, you pick up the paper. And I know that I'm reading about the murder, I'm reading about the brawl at the thing and the, oh, the tax rates and the local school union thing. Skip, skip. So yeah, if you eat a diet of all shit. But is it like, I mean, you may be a little too young to remember like Jim Jones. No, no. Okay, yeah. Or the Zodiac killer is a little bit before your time, but son of Sam would have been a thing. And like, you know, you would read just the weirdest things. There was that school bus full of children in California that were kidnapped and like buried underground. It was turned into like part of a dirty harry. I mean, but it seemed like in the 70s, certainly, or then John Wayne Gacy would, you know, come into view or something. There was something totally weird and fucked up happening all the time. Yeah. And I mean, so was that driving the turn to talk about violence and serial killers and stuff like that? Or was it, do they get conjured by the way that we talk about stuff? I don't know. Now you're getting into the murder porn area. And that's mostly a female thing. It seems to be why now we're watching. Well, you say I'm too young to know about these things, but I wouldn't be because they're all popular now. Right, right. Every mass murderer from, you know, Dommer was dominating like Netflix for a month or something like that. Yeah. And people don't watch happy shit. What do you watch? I don't watch almost no comedy. If it's a comedy on television, that's a buzzword for not funny. I couldn't tell you a single actual sitcom that's on a network right now. The only time I ever see commercials is watching football. That's the only thing I watch in real time. Everything else. I can't get this DVR or Netflix. So it's either no commercials or I can fast forward through them. So yeah, I don't watch anything funny because I can't find it. So yeah, I watch whatever is, you know, bingeable. Yeah. You, I guess, you were on Louis C.K.'s show, this is years ago on FX, and you played, was it yourself or a version of him? It's certainly a version of him. It was, he had it as an amalgamation of a lot of comedians that he thought I would do well at, not knowing that, no, he's, I'm playing exactly myself. Right. It was it was me if I hadn't made any money in comedy, but still doing it for your money. And you have a bit that's very funny and you're, I highly recommend your Instagram feed is just great because it's just clips from all over your career that are short and very funny. But you, in one of them, you talk about how Louis got contact by Robin Williams and said like your performance was like a searing, you know, just a great bit about suicide, etc. Like shortly before he died. And what is your bit that's related to that? Now I think maybe I, as much as he was a great influence on other comics, maybe I was a great influence on the last days of Robin Williams life and his decisions. Yeah. That was the bit as far as I know. Yeah. And I mean, do you, like audiences seem to love that. Do you have to give them permission to laugh at that kind of humor? I don't know. I'm not a comedian that steps out of my comfort zone. I'm not a guy that goes to the comedy cellar and works out, you know, a new bit or I performed to my paid audience only. Like this will be interesting at Freedom Fest because there will be people that are not here to see Doug Stanhope. They're here to see comedy and it'll be fun. But I will cherry pick the bits that are Freedom Fest related or maybe mocking of. But still, it'll be, I'm not going to try to drag them into some other part of my reality that's not, that's foreign soil. But it's still, I don't work stuff out. If I have new shit, I'm going to do it tonight at my show that in front of my fans. And I think I worked live under 33 years now. Yeah. At some point. Yeah. I'm going to completely lay back on my laurels. Right. I mean, you could be bad. I had school teachers who were at it for 30 years who sucked. Yeah. So like, but. But the audience tells you already. Right. You know, hey, they're going to pay $55, $60 to get in. They're not, yeah. What went into, you know, one of the things that I think is genuinely fascinating about your career. And I realize like you're not for all tastes, right? But you have a great career and you've also really refused to, I'd sell out isn't the right word because there's people who have made it gigantically big who are doing exactly what they want to and they force networks and audiences to come to them rather than any of that. But what goes into the calculation of, you know, of being like a really independent voice in a form where there is a mass audience. Like, you know, how do you do that? And how do you keep at that? I guess what I'm saying is there's a couple, you know, there are not that many comedians who have the opportunity to go super big who remain true to what they are. Like, you know, you haven't done a sitcom where you are, you know, the bachelor dad who inherits a family of alligators. I haven't turned a lot of stuff down. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, there's things that I wouldn't do, but I have never had to been in a place where I go, oh, the man show was the thing where I went, okay, yeah, for that kind of money, but I had no idea it was going to suck. Like, I didn't know going in that, oh, you could do whatever you want with it and your own voice. So they were saying that. Yeah, and then it was like we didn't really mean that. Oh, filming day. Wait, I thought we had the lawyer said no on this and the censor said no on that. So we're going to go with the other thing that the writers wrote and that sucks. How did that feel? If that's why I left LA. That's why do you live in Bisbee? Because I did the one thing you're supposed to want to do in LA, the only reason you live there is to get a thing. And I go, it sucked. And I'm the only guy that did a TV show that became less popular because I had my comedy career going fine and now people think I suck. So, yeah, I don't need to be in LA. I'd rather live in a small town. I wanted to ask in your book, This Is Not Fame from a couple years ago, which is a great memoir and your uvra, your bookshelf, is building up into a pretty good one. I hope you keep writing them. But you had Dr. Drew Pinsky read it forward to This Is Not Fame. And you said, he wrote, one day Doug may need or have to change. Do you, have you had to change yet? Well, I did quit smoking of February. So this is July. How was that going? I did, it was not nearly as hard as I had been trying. I did blood work for the first time as an adult. I went and actually got a physical because I thought it'd be funny because I, and I thought, oh, this is going to be some, you know, my lifestyle. There's some shit. Now, I'm in really good health. My liver's great. What? Kidneys, fine blood sugar, no diabetes. And the only thing, high cholesterol, not too bad, but triglycerides through the roof. And so I've been trying to do, changed all these diet things, trying to add in sugar just way harder than quitting smoking, just cutting sugar out. I would, yeah. What about drinking? Drinking? I've, yeah, that's where I'm, I'm toying with it. I've been trying to drink a wine, drink less, obviously. And okay, wine supposedly better. They won't tell you a lot of shit. Like when you look up and Google, okay, what alcohol is best for high triglycerides? They're not going to say, and I'm sure someone knows, but they're just going to say, yeah, you shouldn't drink alcohol at all. Alcohol is bad for you anyway. You know, there's, there's someone who knows. What, what about other drugs? How are you, what, what drugs are you favorite? That's so, that's what I'm really, my weak spot is I haven't been doing any hallucinogens and I need to. Yeah, what do you, what's the benefit of hallucinogens? I'd just say, it clears out all your bullshit. Yeah, you slough off all the, you know, the things that you're doing wrong and the fears that are irrational that you're- So I mean, I always think of it as like clearing your web browser cache, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a- Why aren't you doing that? Brain douche. Just because you get to the older you get, the more shit, the more baggage that you're going to have to deal with. And you go, ah, that- Wait, so that's why you don't do that? It's a sink that has dirty dishes. And you, you look at it and you go, I don't want to deal with that. But the longer you don't deal with it, the higher the stack gets. And then you don't want to deal with it more. So I do want to do an ayahuasca binge. I do have a bit about that on the new special, but I just don't want to deal with it like a shaman that ruins it. Yeah, do you worry about like psychedelics are really hot right now? Yeah. Does that fill you with hope or does that fill you with anxiety? No, I think that, I think it's a fantastic thing. That's why the whole, the medical, the tripper tourism that they're doing and how they, and they use this, the bit is in part that they use hallucinogens for PTSD, all these reasons, end of life situation struggles and getting over depression. They use it for everything except fun. Right. Which is what got me into, I want to do it, but have fun. The whole shaman route, they don't want you to have fun. I want to do my own version of it and have a sober sitter, but not a guy with face paint chanting. You wrote in No Anko for the donkey, which is your most recent book, right? The more you experience an age, the more you can count on diminishing returns. What, yeah, do you remember writing that or? No, I don't. Do you believe that? Yeah, I think I get stabbed by that. What's the context? You know, it, got it, was it towards the beginning or the end of that book, but it was part of a passage of... It's kind of a takes one to know one thing where sometimes I'll be watching TV or hear some dialogue and you go, I know the writer, whoever wrote that was probably a high five in himself when he wrote that clever fucking line. Because I'm probably the guy that was high-fiving myself when I wrote that, like, that sounds really fucking smart, doesn't it? Do you feel like there's new stuff that you're going to be experiencing or you kind of, like, have you hit the point where now your life is just kind of a steady state? It might be minor... But that's exactly why I need to do hallucinogens because I do need to... I know there's new and different things to do, but I'm also really good at prejudging what I'm going to hate. I know I know I'm going to... I knew I was going to hate the UK going over there and every preconceived notion was right and I hated it. Yeah. But you've done well there. Yeah, and I have to go back and hate it because it pays well. Well, now that they're money's worth fucking nothing. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I went skydiving. Bingo and we went... It's not skydiving, it's on the boat. Parasailing. Parasailing. And we were hungover. We had partied all night in Tampa the night before and I remember there were three of us or just sitting there. We couldn't have been more bored if it was an elevator. This is nothing. What excites you though? Is there anything... Chaos. Yeah, yeah. When the fucking neighbor just get their foot blown off in an attempted mass murder, you go, okay, that's... Yeah, that kind of stuff is where I thrive. I'm like, all right, rally the troops. We got fun going on. Do you expect that to increase in the coming years? And if so, why? I have no idea. I don't know what's going on with people anymore. I used to... There was some kind of comfort in having a false sense of knowing what's going on in the world and having an opinion like I used to. And now I know that I'm probably wrong about a lot of shit. And so let me stay away until I have a better footing. Does that fit into libertarian thinking at all? Like, I mean, is that part of your libertarianess of like, you know that you don't really know that much? The problem with knowing that you don't know that much and admitting it, people want, you know, false privato. They want, even if it's got no backing, they want someone who... And this is what it is. And I'll tell you, and I know... Do you... I mean, do you... You don't think like people are finally getting fed up with that, like after COVID and whatnot, because that's what we had, right? Oh my God. The same people would say, you know, you got to do this this week and then next week with exactly the same level of authority and determination and commitment. Now you got to do this and... I thought people would get to a place where... And even that part of my act that I was doing after, you know, quarantine was over and I was back on the road about, it's okay to not have an opinion. It's okay to not know, did not get the reaction that I was hoping for. Yeah, so it's like it opens up for a little bit and then people are like, oh, now we got to go back to... Everyone's a conspiracy theorist now. I loved conspiracy theories as a form of entertainment, from 9-11 to Oklahoma City bombing, all of them. And, but for fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And not as a personality. And now everyone has got some conspiracy... And they're all... And they're bad. They're so bad, they're conspiracy theories. Why do you think there's a lot of conspiracy theories theorists and libertarians? Like, what do you... Is there a... Do you see a connection between those two? I don't know why I was so intrigued with... I mean, even UFOs. Yeah, this is kind of like, aren't we supposedly like, there's people now of like, I've seen the bodies? Allegedly. Yeah, but then it never happens. That's quite frustrating. There's so many avenues of information that you don't know who's reading what about what. And I, well, I read a thing, but there's 80 things now. There's not one like, loose change. All right. Oh, I saw loose change, and this is how I feel. But there's only a couple of sources that everyone's... What do you think is the pleasure of a conspiracy theory as, you know, from like an artistic point of view? What did you enjoy about it? I think it's just like any other be a sleuth. Why do people play Clue? I don't know. Yeah, and I touch on that in this special, but there's something about it that almost reeks of being a fucking narc. Hey, you know what? It's none of your business. If aliens came to this planet, they didn't come to meet you, so fucking leave it alone. You're the one who wanted a government. So let them fucking handle it. Why did you become libertarian? Is that like, were you born with it, or was it life teaching? Someone told me I was. Oh, really? Yeah, someone's libertarian. So when I was doing stuff that... Do you realize like everybody scores libertarian on the world's smallest political quiz? Like, it took me a while to realize that. It wasn't me, it was like... Yeah, it's that thing. So somebody told you you were. Yeah, based on seeing my act. They go, you're very libertarian. You're libertarian because the things you say, and I go, oh, okay. So I looked into libertarianism and yeah, I scored that. What, among your influences are Bill Hicks, or is that fair to say? Bill Hicks, I didn't get into till later on in comedy when I was already... Again, when you get compared to him, you go, okay. Yeah. But I knew of him, but I was... Because I was going to say like, what do you think of like a lot of comedians? And I think Hicks is a good example. Mitch Hedberg also, who you get compared to. They aren't libertarian. I mean, in a way, they're anti-authority, which is nice, but they're kind of like the worst sort of anti-corporate... Yeah, no, I... You know, that advertisers have... That's why I'm sucking on these cancer sticks, because of advertising. Yeah, I think that's the... Well, the drug angle, the free drugs and the socially... That's where they say, oh, Bill Hicks is libertarian, but no, I think he would definitely be like, taxing the shit out of corporations or Bernie Sanders. Yeah, he would definitely be more Bernie Sanders than Gary Johnson. Do you have... Did you even have a fucking candidate last election? Who's we? The libertarians. Oh, yeah, it was Joe Jorgensen, a psychology lecturer from Clemson. All right. Yeah, my wife and I, my tour manager, co-host, producer, best friends, they live next to us, and when the ballot scale would just drop it off in their mailbox, you drop our ballots off, you vote for us. Good. That says good processes just about anybody else's. Who are your... Who do you think are the best comedians and why? Like, today in general, names or types? Yeah, let's start with today. Yeah, name some names. I'd like to... You just put Hedberg and Bill Hicks in the same sentence, because when people do say what you're talking about, oh, comedy's about truth and comedy's about being real and saying what everybody thinks and is afraid to say, no, Hedberg talking about Duxie free at Subway wasn't... Right. Well, actually, that story is based on a true story, but he was silly. He was fucking fun and silly, and there didn't have to be any truth to it. It was ridiculousness. And... He's the one... I think he's the one who started the joke of, like, why would people who are high on LSD go to roofs of buildings to see if they could fly? Like, why wouldn't they just take off from the street? I don't remember that one. I don't know. I think it might have been. It sounds... Yeah. I remember him talking about doing acid in the woods, so they wouldn't run into authority figures, but we ran into a bear. His wayward... So you like that kind of stuff? Yeah, I love Hedberg, but he's always a great person to use as an example when comics start talking about how fucking lofty, and it's our position to fight for free speech, and we have to... And we're on the vanguard, and we shut the fuck up. You're the doctor of ensuring sixth society, right? Yeah, there's... Comedians have gotten so self-important. I have a... One, this girl... I do remember her name, I'm just not going to say it, but just a tweet where one Twitter became unfun, and she wrote, I will never meet a racist halfway based on whatever racist it is. I'm like, that's a completely wrong attitude. Yeah. We're all fighting for the minds of the stupid here, and if someone's outwardly racist, that means they're probably really lonely and they're joining a group that's going to let them in. Yeah, fucking me to racist halfway, and bring them over to your side of the street, and then you get a fan, and then you just mold his stupid little head with what you want him to think. Because, yeah, otherwise you're leaving money on the table, dummy. Who are some people today that you find really good? God, I have an answer for you by the end of the summer, because I am taking at least a year off. Okay, what about you? I'll start watching them, because during quarantine, guys like Sam Morrill, new guys that I just, because I don't want to watch comedy, I don't want to ever, I drink enough, I don't want to ever be in a position of, this is a great vid I just thought of, or did I see it from that guy's special? Maybe I should ask him, oh fuck, what's that guy's name? I watched his special, I can't remember. What about from the past, like who's on your Mount Rushmore of comedy? There's still a hold up, but guys like Steven Wright I loved, and the Hedberg, you can still watch, their shit still holds up. Sometimes you watch comics, it's sad when you watch a Bill Hicks, and a bit of his is still, that was a problem 35 years ago, and it's still a problem, that shouldn't be. Like I want that to be to a hackneyed, it's sad when even Lenny Bruce talking about, oh yeah, why can't we do this? I can't feed the poor or whatever. Too bad that's still a problem. What do you hope for, I was about to say for the future, like obviously not for your kids, because you don't have kids, do you hate kids? Yeah, I really, yeah, I have a real problem. So what, I mean you are, I looked it up, you're born in 1967, I can't do the math, so you're 56, you know, you're gonna live, especially now that you're drinking wine, and you're, you cut out smoking, you're gonna live for like another 30 years. Yeah, I don't know. How are you gonna handle that? Like what do you do to? It's, yeah, that's new. It's only a couple of months that I realized, oh, I might not die like I expected to. Like I was trying to live as long as mother, who made it to 63 with their, yeah, the emphysema and all that. And now, yeah, I don't know. Well, you're gonna blow by that, right? Well, yeah, that early retirement I was thinking about, think I'm probably gonna have to start writing some more fucking jokes. But yeah, how do you, like, what gets you, not what gets you up in the morning, how do you go through the day? Especially if you're peeling back, you're getting rid of the things that you use to get through the days. You're not smoking, you're not doing psychedelics as much, you're shifting to healthy, you know, fruit-based alcoholic beverages. You would have no idea how much joy I get out of just doing dumb shit. Just making new recipes now that I had to change my diet. And okay, okay, for cholesterol, I can do like red beans and rice. Never did that before. And I love to cook. I love to go through store shopping and find a bargain. That tuxedo I was wearing last night? A dollar, Nick, a fucking dollar. I'm a natural order. It was in my mother's jeans. So yeah, I like to hoard a quarantine. I get all my suits, like my color and order and my pants all folded. How many suits do you have? I think this was before I had the house fire. So I had like, I paired it down like 35 jackets. And then I've been buying for a year. Yeah, what's the most that you've ever spent on a jacket? Oh, there was one Lily Pulitzer green floral thing that I think I spent 600 bucks on. That's incredible. But generally. You could get a car for that. Yeah, I spent a lot of my early years in $600 cars. I don't want to go back there. Generally speaking, what do you pay? Like $5, $10 for a jacket? Yeah. Do you get them tailored then? If it's good enough, I'll get it. Yeah, it's great when you find a $3 jacket in a thrift store, but then it costs you like $25 to get it tailored. When did that start? That started early on in my telemarketing days, because my mother would send me like goofy suits from thrift stores. Back when the vintage was, it wasn't... Was this pre-vintage? This was just like... Late, late 80s. So this is just the shit that it just went out of style 10 years ago. So it's really cheap. And she'd send me these. So we'd all dress up in the telemarketing office and used car salesman suits. And then throughout my career, I've worn dumb shit for a while. And I'd wear a Santa hat year round for no reason. And then with the telemarketing stuff, you've been critical of yourself or at least of the stuff you were selling. Like you've described some of the telemarketing stuff you did as essentially scams, right? Yeah. Does that throw into any question for you, like the use of free markets and things like that? Because I could see a comedian who does that, and then it's like, this is why I hate capitalism and freedom. But you're not that comedian. No, I mean, I hate that I had absolutely no moral compass about, all right, I'm ripping people off. Because I've been to Moscow for a few hundred bucks. And you were definitely ripping them off. You were definitely ripping them off. It was a gray area. So you say, hey, you're going to win a big prize if you've ordered this product. And you know the price isn't going to be that big. And but you didn't say how big it was. You insinuated it's going to be bigger than what they're spending, but it's not. So they're not going to be happy. Hopefully, they're not so angry that they try to come after and find out who you are and prosecute it. So yeah, I should have had it. But as of early 20s, I didn't give a shit. I was making a lot of money. Do you I mean, do you think it's up to people like copyright amateur, let the buyer beware or? My problem with libertarianism is the more I get involved and realize how much I don't know. I can't call myself a libertarian. Like that fucking, that pharma bro guy. Yeah. Libertarianism say, hey, it's his right to jack up fucking this AIDS medication through the roof and fuck them if they die because I think that's a libertarian attitude. Yeah. I mean, on some level, yes. But then it's also like the pharma market is so regulated, et cetera. Like libertarians can weasel their way out of any bad market outcome, right? Because they'll say, well, the FDA runs all of that kind of stuff. And so the government's thumbprints are on everything because otherwise people would come out with generic versions of every drug and they'd be free or close to free. And that's why it's guys like that maybe is the answer to the question of why we're all into this fantasy murder stuff because you can't really murder people. So let's just watch other people who did murder people and elevate their status. I want to watch more Dahmer because I can't punch pharma bro in the face. Okay. When is your special going to come out? The special without a name. The special will come out as soon as I get it edited. And where will we find it? I don't know. That's then my manager will try to shop it around. I think I might just put it up. Here's I wanted to do this with the last special that came out right at the beginning of quarantine, but it had been filmed long before. You porn agreed to release my new special. And I thought that's really funny gimmick, but that was also right around the time that they were getting busted for having like revenge porn, rape porn that people say. I couldn't certify that you were above 18 because you don't have a driver's license because you're a libertarian. Do you worry at all? I was talking with other people in different contexts here at freedom fest. Some people who had put out, you know, they've created movies and documentaries that are pretty, you know, controversial. And they were saying like, you know what? I don't want to, you know, I don't want to go to Netflix. I don't want to go to Amazon video. I don't even want to get a YouTube because she put stuff up. And you really don't have any, you know, guarantee that they're not in a couple days are going to be like, you know what? We were blocking this and we own the rights and things like that. Do you worry about that at all? Because your comedy is, yeah, I hate like the word edgy just isn't right for it. But like you put out the type of stuff that you could see people getting really pissed at and saying like, we got to shut this. And a lot of it's out there. That's, I'm at a place where I'm not famous enough to know if I've been canceled. Like I had stuff on Netflix that it's not there anymore. But there's everything that goes on Netflix eventually goes away. Nothing's permanent. And they don't tell you, you don't have a, they don't go, hey, by the way, you're pulling, we're pulling your shit down. You don't know. So if you got canceled, a lot of the stuff that did air on Netflix, they would pull down for content reasons. There's stuff that you go, oh yeah. Yeah, definitely couldn't get away with that now. Do you think, I mean, are we too touchy or sensitive as a society? Like is that something to go back to the 70s? And this might be a good way to wrap things up with beautiful symmetry since we started talking about the 70s. You know, when you look at stuff that was on like, you know, CBS, NBC and ABC in the 70s, where, you know, I'm like all in the family or something, they would use racial and ethnic epithets like as filler words. But if you said shit, my God, the fucking roof's fallen off. So it's a trade out. You could say retard back then, but you couldn't. Shit is going to get you canceled. You couldn't even have beer, right? Like, I mean, for a wildlife TV, you couldn't have a brand of beer. It would just say beer on a can. Yeah, I think actually I still in play in ads for liquor. Liquor ads came back, but they can't show them actually drinking it. But again, they trade out one, you can't do this, but now you can do this, but you can't do the other thing. So there's censorship is like always in motion. But do you think overall, like if you tallied it all up and stuff like that, would you say it's, you know, it's freer now, like you can do and say more things in more places than say in 1980 or something? Yeah, a million outlets. If you want to just be really offensive, they can't stop you because there's too much whack-a-mole, OK, and there's a new streaming service opening up here. Well, let you say anything. And then they get shut down. And then so it's good. That's good. Exactly. There's a loophole. Do you exploit it? They shut it down. Do you open up a new loophole? That just keeps going like that. So that's kind of beautiful. Yeah, I know. That's why the government has always been just another thing. OK, I'm a rat in a maze and there's a bunch of things out there. Who do you worry about more? Like, do you worry about the government or the corporations or the churches? Or are they all kind of equal to you? In terms of they're all trying to trap you. Well, I think lawyers are the ones you worry about getting sued or audited. I don't know if that comes with age, but yeah, those are the ones that scare me the most. Final, I used to work as a music journalist and a teen magazine editor. And we would always say if you were talking to Kirk Cameron in 1986 or 1987 or Ozzy Osbourne or whatever, the final question was always message to your fans. Doug, Stan Hope, message to your fans. Yeah, don't kill yourself. It's not worth it. I don't have a message for my fans. If I do, I will wrap it in a fist-fucked joke and call it new material. So you'll get the message at the show. I appreciate that very much. That's a great message. Thank you. Thank you, Stan.