 The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic humps. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to us on iTunes. Give us a good review on iTunes and do all your Amazon shopping this holiday season via the David Feldman Show website. We get a small percentage of everything you purchase. There's a little Amazon banner. You'll see that and you click away and you shop away. And the great thing about going through the David Feldman Show is it doesn't cost you more money to shop on Amazon. In fact, you're taking money out of Amazon's pocket by going through my website. Your saving Main Street is what I'm saying. By shopping through the David Feldman Show website, you're putting Jeff Bezos out of business because it just reduces his margin that much more. Soon bookstores and record stores will sprout up all along Main Street. All because... John Feigl is saying... All because you shop through David Feldmans. I mean, if you want to make Bernie Sanders smile, you can go shop through the David Feldman website. Exactly. It's so easy to turn our economy around, bring manufacturing back to America and let the economic ladder be a solid pathway for working people to climb to the middle class by buying this year's Hanukkah Gifts through David Feldman's website. Bring back coal to the Appalachians, bring back coal and help build a wall across thousands of miles of private residential and commercial property along the southern border so people of Mexico don't have to see our crumbling roads and bridges. You can do that by shopping at the David Feldman website. Thank you. Donald Trump is selling a lot of coal because Steve Bannon's walking around in blackface. But John Feigl saying has not done this show for about five years because he's just so busy. But we had him on when we were doing it out of LA. Let me reintroduce you to our audience because it's been five years. John Feigl saying is the host of Tell Me Everything on Sirius. You should all subscribe to Sirius. You should go get that satellite. He's on the Insight channel Monday through Friday, two to five. And what is the channel? How do they find? Two to five East Coast. The channel is channel 121. It's called Insight. It launched last year. And it's sort of like NPR with better dick jokes than Carl Castle. And Frank Conif is on here. TV's Frank. Frank Conif, one of the great honors of my sad life, is having one of my favorite comedians sit with me every day. And Frank is hilarious on a daily basis. He brings the right mixture of pop culture knowledge, expert joke writing, and contempt for the culture. When did you start on Sirius? You said last year? Yes. 2015. It feels like, because I do the show all the time, it feels like I've been going up there. Two years almost. It feels like you've been doing it for like six years. That's how my audience feels too, but only just under two. And it's a three hour day show. What kind of prep work do you have to do? How does your day start? Well, it's actually quite a bit, David, because when they offered me the job, my first question was, how did you get this number? And then I had to clear it with my parole people. I get bored very easily, and I knew that my ADHD would be a factor. And I knew I didn't want to do just another political show. And I said to them, my conditions were, you have to let me do it on the road when I'm on the road. I'll find a place. I've done it from hotel rooms in New Hampshire. You know, I do it from LA like once a month. I said, you have to let me play whatever kind of music I want. And it can't be all politics. And they said, well, we'll let you say whatever you want. I said, I don't care about that. Just not all politics. So we try to do a show that's three formats in one every day. And when I first met my production team, I explained to them that it's going to take some evolution. But I really wanted to try to do a show that was one third political talk, one third NPR style interviews with actors and filmmakers and writers, authors, historians, science tech, family, dating, sex, children, nutrition, health, wellness, history, rock stars, wrappers. And then the last hour of the show, I wanted to be like early Howard Stern, just a bunch of comedians hanging around, going over the headlines and cracking each other up. And why is that just the three facets of your brain? I couldn't decide what kind of format I would want to do if I finally did a daily radio show. And I was offered several over the years, but they were always like, you know, be the angry political guy. I was offered to be the angry conservative guy, too. I was offered a fortune if I would do a conservative talk show. Really? And I was like, well, can I make up a name and make it like a satirical thing? No, no, it's got to be you. Oh my God, not the guy. Was this radio or TV? Radio, radio. But so I just kind of figured, you know, I knew I didn't want to do something that was all politics, because that'll make you crazy. And I didn't want to do something that was all knock, knock jokes, because that would make me feel like I was selling my audience short. So thankfully, Insight is a really cool channel. And it's a place where like Neil deGrasse Tyson as a show following mine, they have they have shows for, you know, conservatives and progressives and, you know, they have lots of cultural shows, Daily Beast as a show on that channel. So it was a really fun home. And it was also a neat challenge to try to help launch a whole channel. That was part of the appeal for me. So it's been fun. I mean, we just had, you know, Kathy Bates and Nick Mason, a Pink Floyd and Robbie Robertson just did it. And this week I'm talking with Edward Norton and we're doing a special with George Takei later today. So we get enough celebrities to hype it and then I get to invite in the smart people and the authors and the comics and such. The politics gets too much at some point because you walked away from even before this career, you were the host of America's Funnest Home Videos. You had an opportunity to be a game show host. You could have been Tom Bergeron. Yeah, I really could have been. Seriously. But Tom is very good at being Tom Bergeron. Yes, he is. He's terrific at it. There was a career for you. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. Yes. Seriously. Yes. All you had to do was keep your Jew mouth shut. That's true. And you couldn't keep your Jew mouth shut. Nine. And you're not even Jewish. That's true. But it's a filthy Jew mouth, nonetheless. Why can't you keep your Jew mouth shut? I just love killing baby Jesus, David. I just, I can't explain it. You know, a couple of guys were trying some kill baby Jesus at a party once in college and I thought I'll try a little and I was hooked. And I'm a functioning killer of baby Jesus. But I'm in, I'm in meeting, you know, to make a living, I'm in meetings. I have to, and I just write, I'll be in meetings. I just write to myself, keep your Jew mouth shut. Keep your Jew mouth shut. Well, I'm not actually Jewish, but I will be Gentile with you. So why can't you keep your mouth shut? Oh, I mean, I can. I've had to do that plenty of times. But why didn't you keep your mouth shut? Because you were looking at a nice career. As a prompter monkey. Yeah. But who cares? I turned out I did. I realized that. Why? Because I'm a snob. I realized it. Like, you know, I was, I've been, I've turned down so much work. We can talk about some of the shops I've turned down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So much money and I've turned it all down. And my friends all say, oh, you have such incredible ethics. You won't sell out. And I'm like, it's not ethics. I'm a snob. I've had the experience of doing work I'm not proud of for a lot of money. And I know it makes me unhappy. So I'd rather do work, I'd rather do work that makes me not want to kill myself for less money because I've had the experience. Now I have a kid. So I'll pour myself to anybody. Please, I'll be, I'll, survivors ready? Go! I'll do anything. But for a long, long time, I had the experience of learning firsthand that my definition of success was very different from that of my agents and managers. Last night, Robert Smigel took the writers out for dinner for Triumphian cellcomic dog. It was the end of the year. Went to a steakhouse. And a lot of young writers, and they were peppering him with questions because he has been their hero since before they were born. And he talked about Dino, I can't pronounce it, Dino Stamatopoulos. Legendary commentator and Louis C.K. and Robert and how they quit a job. They were working on a late night talk show and they just said, you know what, we're done. And they moved on. Let me start talking about the first wave of Letterman writers. A year in, they all just went, I'm leaving. This is boring. And they went on to The Simpsons and they went on to write movies and... CVS Letterman or NBC Letterman? NBC Letterman. Oh, wow, like the Merrill Day of Days. Yeah, 82 Letterman. They just got up and left. I'm sitting there and my jaw just dropped. Who quits a job? Who turns down? I've never turned down work. Yeah, somebody offers me a job, I take it. So you've turned down, you've walked away from work. Did your parents instill in you self-respect? No, they were very Catholic, David. Because I know that my parents would say to me, who are you to say no to a job? Yeah, well, that's true. And I did get a bit of that from my parents. But my parents had the experience as well of, you know, when I first got to find home videos and it was a strange job because I was just a kid. I was working as a VJ on VH1 in my first broadcasting job and I wanted to be George Carlin. I mean, that was when I wanted to be when I was a kid. When we had our first Persian Gulf War, remember the popular one? Remember the fun, the feel-good Persian Gulf War? Yeah, I was against that one. Yeah, I was against that one too. I was for the second one. 93% of George was ready. No, I heard you were actually for the war but against the troops, which made it kind of awkward for you. That was Hicks. That was Bill Hicks. That's a great one. I was one of the 93, I was not one of the 93% who supported that war to restore the dictator of Kuwait. I was paying a lot of attention back then. I was running a dorm for NYU and doing stand-up at night and I saw, you know, Bush, I saw the Ambassador April Glassby give Saddam Hussein a green light to invade and then they hired a PR firm to sell a war to people and then we had this little war to restore the dictator of a country where women are property, where half of the U.S. casualties were for friendly fire and the country went batshit. We had not had a feel-good war since World War II and it seems there was something in the national spirit that really wanted that kick-assery. Whitney Houston does a lip-sync of the national anthem in a stadium and it becomes a hit single. A lip-sync becomes a hit single and there was a victory parade in New York and there was some clergy silently praying and the crowd begins yelling asshole, asshole, at the clergy who were praying for the souls of the dead. It was an ugly crazy time and I thought I was going nuts because everyone felt so good about this war and my friends said to me, come see George Carlin at Westbury Music Fair and I, you know, I was like most casual Carlin fans. I like the dirty jokes and this was the jam in a New York tour which I think is his best album and he opened it with that scathing routine about the Persian Gulf War and how all the bombs are shaped like dicks and he did something that I think is the greatest thing an artist can do. He made me feel less alone and I knew that I wanted to do something like that in that spirit of channeling that spirit and doing my version of what he did and so I was very headstrong starting out and I turned down lots of stuff but with my mom and dad they thought it was great when I first did funny home videos because everyone's heard of that show and my dad would get tickled when he'd pay by check at a store down south. He was retired by then and the cashier would know his name. My parents couldn't believe they were walking around the south and people knew their last name and then after a few months they began to see that it was just not really me and that's great. I loved working with Daisy Fuentes. She was dynamite and I loved everyone who worked on that show, the best people I ever worked with but I knew that the spray tan and the suits and the saying the sort of things I would never say I wasn't mature enough to be comfortable and loose in that. Bergeron's amazing. He can just go there and shoot the breeze and he's having fun and I can do it now. I couldn't do it in my 20s. I just couldn't. I took myself too seriously. I was too headstrong. So you were in your 20s hosting a prime time television show making a lot of money. You were single. Well I was with my girlfriend but yeah, I was not married but we were living together. And it was everything that one would want on paper. It was everything my agents and managers would want on paper. Were you miserable? Yeah. Oh yeah. Just because of the work. You pick up the daily, you come home for Christmas, I'll never forget. We came home for Christmas and we picked up, we went to see Terrence Malick's thin red line which was just sublime and then picked up the newspaper and it had the 20, the New York Daily News had the 10 worst TV shows of the year and there's my picture and everything they said I agreed with. And the checks clear? The checks clear. I was an ungodly amount of money. I mean I was making more at this job in a night than I was making in a year in my old job at NYU but I would read bad reviews and everything I would read in the reviews were stuff I was telling my friends the night before. And for me it wasn't a matter of letting the checks clear because I have a rest of my career to worry about. This was just a first job for me and I began to think getting out early, getting out early so people don't really remember me in here might be the best thing. I was sort of like a Pope Benedict in between the two long popular hosts of that show. I was this little brief weird period. I was supposed to do it for- And there was some child mola station which you turned a blind eye to. Again that was Daisy and it's a Cuban thing and I'm not allowed to talk about that. But it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. I learned what I don't want to do and I don't really regret it. For a long time I did it really confused me very much. I thought am I just destined to have to be a mannequin to have to like look like a weather announcer in Omaha and come out here and here's clips of old people getting hurt. But this is what a lot of guys in their 20s do. You take yourself way too seriously and if I just loosened up and had more fun I might have enjoyed it but it was still a great experience. Do you have contempt because I do period. Let's move on. I live in contempt. I have so much contempt but I also have a child so I have to balance my contempt with the illusion of love. Right. I don't think I've ever quit a job. I didn't quit this. Yeah. I knew it wouldn't last long. It was supposed to be half a season. It lasted two seasons. I don't think I've ever- I don't know. I'm interviewing you. We're not talking about me. I'll talk about you. I have contempt for people like Colin Powell who don't quit. Whatever happened to people who just say, I don't like this, this is wrong, I quit. Nobody quits. Paul O'Neill in the Bush cabinet. Yes he did. Ron Susskind's book is worth it. But you- People who- you don't like people who don't walk away? I like people who- You like people who walk away. But who walks away? Nobody walks away. What are you talking about? I mean people know when it's the right time. Artists generally do. Politicians and people in government know. Everybody stays. They don't walk away. They go be lobbyists. They're still part of the same dirty system. We just found out that Taiwan was paying Bob Dole over a hundred grand to lobby Trump to take that phone call for over a year. Like Bob Dole's 93 and he's still taking bribes. Yeah. We'll get to that in a second. Less alone. You said that George Carlin made you feel less alone because I always say what's the point of being in an echo chamber where you talk to the same people over and over about how much you hate conservatives and- It's comedy death. A bunch of conservatives or a bunch of liberals sitting around agreeing with each other. It's good for whatever bubble you're going for but it's- you know, it's comedy death. There is some virtue to it. I didn't understand how I felt until I started listening to other people talk about the reaction to Trump winning. I thought I was- I remember just really having these weird feelings about Trump stealing the election and thinking- It's like your wife leaving you for a con man. And half your friends know it and half of them are conned. Are you bored with talking about Trump? No. Are you kidding? I'd have to hang myself. I mean we can't get bored. We can't get discouraged. Because somebody said to me last night at dinner, it's getting monotonous. Change the subject. Well I get Trump fatigue. And I said well when you say it's getting monotonous, are you afraid that he's going to destroy the country? And they say yes but it's still monotonous. So I said oh so just you'd rather talk about the Knicks than the end of the republic. There's a virtue to that. You know. To what? Thinking about the Knicks instead of the end of the republic. Why? What's the virtue? Well for your brain and for your audience. Like now that the election's over, I met with a film critic yesterday about a weekly segment on my show because I know there's that election fatigue out there and as a programmer I have to think in terms of like how do I still hit the right buttons every day but it can't be all this all the time because then you're propaganda not entertainment. And likewise if it isn't for the Knicks, if you can't look at basketball or movies or culture or whatever and you're just thinking this all the time, how good are you going to be for the people in your life or your audience if you're saturated in the injustice of this? I mean just to keep your, only in my case, I would never want to change you. I like Tasseter and David. But like for me I am such a depressive that if I don't watch myself, I will be no fun for anybody and having a kid has made it really hard for me to be that kind of indulgent anymore. Yeah I would say I'm in a joyless phase of my life. I understand it. After the age of five I just became, yeah I think there's, for me it's been more like junior high. You know I've had occasional lapses where I've been happy but generally I've stayed at the course. I'm going to talk to you about joy. I want to ask you about joy. Now your mother was a nun. Indeed. Your father was a Franciscan brother. Which means they both took vows of celibacy. They did. After they were married or before? Most people don't ever take the vow. They just realize it's been imposed on them. But they actually took the vow. They promised God I would never happen. At a young age I realized, wait a second, so because of religion I'm not supposed to be here but because of religion I get to be here. So your mother was a nun? Do you mind if I ask you these questions? Yeah I'd love to. How many brothers and sisters? Two. Two brothers. Your mother was a nun. Where'd she meet your father? Holy Family Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. My dad had TB and my mother, the convent had made my mom a nurse but through nursing school and they sent her to Brooklyn for a while before sending her off to Africa to work with lepers and a jungle hospital in Malawi. So your father was born where? Flatbush Brooklyn. And Irish? Irish, Danish, German, which means we get drunk, hide the Jews and look for them. And your mom? Much the same, Irish and German. Irish and German and where was she raised? She was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in Roanoke and later the family moved to the Virginia Beach area. I don't think of a huge Catholic population there. My understanding is my people came to the mountains of Virginia from Minnesota in the late 1800s. And we're talking Catholicism. Yeah, German Catholicism. But I don't think of Minnesota as Catholic. A lot of Germans there. Well then they would be Lutheran, right? Some of them were. Some of them weren't. I married a Lutheran, but my mom went into the convent right out of high school. Her prom date proposed to her and she's like, nope, I've already got a date. And thought she'd never get married and my father met her as a young man. She took the vow. She took the vow. She became a nun first, then became a nurse while a nun. So a trained nurse, a medical nurse and a nun. Yes. That's a mother. I'll say. My dad fell in love with her at first sight. And what are you trained to think when you take the vow of celibacy? Well that's a really interesting question because it's different for everyone. I mean you turn off, I'm trying to understand this because I know, I'm not making a joke. I've been married for decades getting a divorce and I took a vow of chastity. I mean I turned off the adulterous impulse. I really did. I said I'm not going to flirt with women, I'm going to remain faithful to this woman and I succeeded at that. I mean I think that's what a lot of people, not just men, are faced with at some point in their life. Like it's one thing to talk about a vow of celibacy but it's another to be in a marriage and be moving along and being an adult and doing all the things you're supposed to do and then realizing one has been imposed on you. And I think as many women have to deal with this as men. We talk a lot about women who lose their desire but there's also men who lose their desire for their women. And monogamy is the screwiest thing we've ever invented. I mean the humans, I'll tell you one thing about us, we don't just put reality stars in charge of fighting ISIS. We are also the only species to choose monogamy against our nature and then go through all manner of torment and confusion and guilt when it's hard to pull off. There's only seven species of mammal that actually mate for life naturally. Most mammals mate for a season or two and then move on, right? Charlie Sheen. But humans are the only ones to try and do it full time all the time against our nature. But when I got older and began reading more about the church, I saw that the first pope had been married, St. Peter. All the priests and popes and bishops for a thousand years had been married. It wasn't until 1139 AD that Pope Innocent II made celibacy the law not because Jesus was a bachelor, not because sex was bad, but because the church was greedy and didn't want priests leaving wealth and land to their kids way before Da Vinci Code. So technically, no vow of celibacy is the conservative point of view. Married priests are the conservative point of view. And this whole millennia of dysfunction has all come from greed. You get rid of the celibacy rule and allow married priests, you watch this pedophilia shit dry up in a generation. Well, I mean, I think that's a simplistic explanation. I had heard that. Well, that's all I have to offer. I know. I know. And I know a little bit more about the Catholic Church because I know John Fuelsang and his mother was a nun and his father was a priest. What I'm saying is like most of the stuff that the Catholic Church does that's so egregious and most of the stuff evangelicals do that is so egregious, I mean, we're in a society where the Christians, David Feldman, are the ones who just voted for Barabbas, the Golden Calf and Caligula, all in the same guy. And none of it is biblically supported. None of this bigotry, homophobia, gouging the poor, none of it is actual from Jesus. It's all Old Testament. Old Testament or just selfish, selfish tribal cult-like behavior. Yeah. It's not even being encouraged in the Old Testament. These are stories from the Old Testament that you can draw upon to justify the greed. Well, and so much of the Old Testament is also just, you know, like the Ten Commandments is like the top ten tips for keeping your nomadic desert dwelling tribes numbers up. Right. I mean, you look at that and there's the Ten Commandments, Leviticus is like the terms and conditions. You know, here's the 400 other things you're signing on for and most of it only applies to that period, but everyone picks and chooses the parts of their holy books they follow when you do it to justify being a dick is when I get to make fun of you. So with the celibacy, I know that they wanted to keep their furniture. The church wanted to keep the pews or whatever. But there's also some, some elegance to trusting a man to counsel you and you don't have to worry about him trying to grab your pussy. Well, sure. I mean, I think that's, I mean, I don't think it's just greed because having, but in the Bible, those men are called the Unix, you know, in the Bible, Jesus and Matthew 19 talks about the, you know, marriage laws, a lot of homophobes, Mike Huckabee uses this to argue Jesus was against gay marriage when he says male and female, he made them and all that. Jesus actually says, well, there's, you know, it's Jesus coming out against Moses' divorce laws because in Moses, you got tired of your wife. If you no longer delight in her, you kick her to the curb and you're done. Jesus said, you do that unless your wife is cheated on you, you're making her and yourself an adulterer. It was Jesus coming out against straight divorce, but on feminist grounds. And then he says, there's three kinds of guys this doesn't apply to, the Unix. And Unix was an umbrella term for anybody who's not going to interfere with a woman. He says those who were born Unix, those who are made Unix by men and those who become Unix for the greater glory of God, meaning guys who are born gay, guys who've been castrated and guys who become celibate. So in theory, you're supposed to be able to trust a sexless man in a dress to give you marital advice. I, I, you know more about this than I do. I think that we all agree that priests should be allowed to marry and be allowed to have sex, right? It's not going to bother me. Okay. Do you think professors should be allowed to have sex? The point I'm making is most professors, most English professors are predators. That's okay. Right. They, they every semester they pick the one girl, the beautiful, depressed, rich, white girl with the monster for a father in the front row. Yeah. And they are predators. Most professors are predators. They always have a girl. And I think most parents would prefer it if professors had to take vows of celibacy. I think most institutions of higher learning as private organizations have their standards as a company would. And I think that in a corporate setting, most parents, most women would want the bosses, the people in charge to take vows of celibacy, right? At least fraternization, right? Yeah. So don't you think I don't mind if my professor is praying on girls from another school, but not the one that I go to. So isn't the Catholic Church right? Because when you go into poor communities. Oh, that's where this is going. Okay. Yeah. That you have a certain authority. Mm hmm. You have the power of Jesus. You have the power of the Catholic Church. You can get a lot of pussy. You sure could, but we know all too painfully that some priests sort of make little mental quotation marks when they take that vow of celibacy. And I think a lot of them realize that it ain't cheating if it's a boy. Well, I'll get to that in a second. But there it's not just greed. I've heard, I've read a, you know, I've heard this that well, they people were allowed to get married and then they were what you just said. But I also think it's a power thing that if you're if you represent God and Jimmy Swagger, you know, these guys are. No, have you ever watched an usher in church? Holy shit. I call it a cut church usher disease. Like when a guy gets a little bit of power and suddenly becomes fucking Mussolini in the aisles, you want to get close to God? You talk to me. You right here. You're going to sit over there. You're close to God. You not nice shoes. You're in the fourth row. You ever see these old guys trodding around? It's like the one time of the week. They get a little inkling of power and it goes right to their head because they're sort of like, you know, ceding you in proximity to the man in the dress. Right. Act like a cow and chew my cut makes us all crazy. Look at the president. The illusion of power is always what undoes empires. And, you know, I talked about turning off the spigot once I got married. Well, the spigot's been turned the other way now. And, you know, I'm noticing women and flirting and stuff like that. Is that fun? It's, well, let's, let's talk about you. I know that if I was an attractive young girl who hated her father in a comedy class, I would love to have you defile me. So one of the things that I've been told is that women are turned on by powerful men. Now, how do you define a powerful man? That's a whole other issue. But there are a large number of women who would look at the guy who speaks for God as powerful. Absolutely. So isn't the Catholic Church correct by saying if you speak for God, you cannot use it to get pussy? It's a really good argument you're making. But the Catholic Church could always allow. I mean, I would convert. I think if they changed the law. If I could be a priest and I could get pussy. Oh, please. That's the one reason I didn't become one. When I was 13 getting confirmed, I had all the priests wanted me to become one because I was already into Shakespeare. I was an articulate kid. I understood spirituality pretty well. And I talked about love in a nice way. And a priest would say to me, why don't you want to be a priest? And I had to say because I want to have a family one day. Right. And, but what I'm saying is that the church will allow married priests, but they won't allow priests to have sex outside of marriage. That'll be the next step. But, but getting back to the celibacy, but they already do that. What they already there's priests already have hookups with women or but they're not allowed to. They're not allowed to, but it's never stopped them. You ever see the film Priest, that controversial film with Linus Roach 20 years ago that had all the picket about a gay priest. There's one scene where the older priest explains when he was in South America, what's his name plays in the Oscar nominee, the guy from in the bedroom, Tom, he was in Dark Knight, such a great actor. He says when I was in Berenstin, not Tom. No, when I was your on Tom Bergeron, excellent actor. He says when I was in Latin America and I was the village priest, like if I didn't pick a woman to be my lover, they would never have listened to me or respected me. You know, people, I mean, what's the line from the line from Broadwalk Empire? We all got to see how much sin we can live with. You know, I how many years I think all of this, all of this like church hangups with our PPs all come from St. Paul and the Old Testament, none of that comes from Jesus. My whole thing is, I'd love a government based on Christian values because Christ is the guy with the least amount of hangups in the whole book. Well, he was hung up at the end. Indeed. He had one major hangup. How many years was your father celibate? 15. He went 15 years. I mean, he might have strayed. I wasn't around, but I don't think he did. He walked the walk and my father fell madly in love with this nun and carried a torch for her for 10 years. Oh, so he fell in love with her five years in. He fell in love with her. Yeah. He fell in love with her. And when she died this summer, I found all these old documents and pictures of my parents together and like brochures for the hospital life to see a photo of your parents together 10 years before they married. And they're both wearing religious garb was a very strange experience, but he fell in love with this nun and knew he couldn't desire her. And they were pen pals for years. When she was in Africa, he wrote her every week about what was going on back in the States. And do they make a, what they do? They decided to She came back to the States and was working in a hospital down south. He, um, She was working with lepers. Leppers in Africa. Yeah. And then in a hospital in the jungle of Malawi. My dad drove down to Virginia. That must have been great growing up. Say I have a cold. Well, it was cool growing up because she was only a couple of years removed from Africa. So there was stuff from Malawi all over the house. Like, you know, we grew up fingers, noses, ears, dashikis. It was the 70s. So they might have been just lying around anyway. But I grew up with a, a father was a big passionate civil rights guy and a mother who was, you know, big on African culture. But my, my dad proposed to her. He told her, he told her he was in love with her. She threw him out of the hospital saying, you have no right. You have no right. But he had, he had pierced the habit and, uh, Whoa, wait, wait, wait. He proposed to her. He told her he was in love with her first. And she said, you have no right to say that to me. Look what I'm, look how I'm dressed. You can't talk that way to me. And then she went back to Africa, but he, he kept at her. And then, uh, when my mother's father died, she came back to the States to care for her mother. My mom actually committed her one act of disobedience and wrote a letter to the Vatican, begging to be sent back and gave it to a priest, a cool priest who traveled around by motorcycle in, in Africa from village to village. And he mailed it to Rome behind the mother superior, Sister Marie frigid of the immaculate menopause is back. And, uh, my mother came back to the States. My dad said to his, his superior, he just said, you know, I've been thinking about actually leaving the brothers. And without asking a single question, his superior said, if you love her, marry her. Really? Yeah. My dad was a good looking guy. I don't know how he managed to be celibate for 15 years, but he drove down South again. And this time he, he, uh, he proposed to her. Um, the first time he was down there, he went to her home and, uh, she introduced him to her sisters and her mother. And when they, my grandmother was like a Yankee from Brooklyn. I won't be able to understand a word he says. And my father was like six foot four and this big, big guy, 200 pound guy and, and, uh, and a complete gentleman. I mean, astonishingly lovely. And when he was done, he, uh, he kissed my grandmother. He kissed my mother's three sisters, turned to my mother and politely shook her hand. And that's how all the Southern ladies knew he was in love with the nun. And, uh, he, he finally proposed and, and she said yes. And they were married 60 days later. How, how often does something like that happen? Happened a lot in the 60s and 70s after Vatican II. Happened quite a bit. What was Vatican II? Vatican II was the church saying, let's be less dickish. Let's find a way to be a bit more in the 20th century. Was this John? Uh, yes. I, uh, Paul, I think it was John. And it was let's get rid of the Latin mass? Yeah. In many, in many cases, it's hard to find a Latin mass these days. And also it performs like being able to receive the Eucharist in your hands and stuff like that. What's the Eucharist? That's the, uh, that's where a woman conceives a baby. The Holy Eucharist? Yeah. Oh, that's a different organ, never mind. The Eucharist is the communion wafer they give you. I used to call it Holy Eucharist as a child. And that's why I was thrown out of CCD class. Okay. Yeah. Did your parents ever have arguments? We've lost the entire audience. No, no, no, no, no. We're so deep in the weeds. Did your parents ever have arguments? All the time. Fights? All the time. Screaming? All the time. Yeah. That's a different story. But yeah. Can I ask you, do you mind if I ask you? Go ahead. I, I should have stayed with the guy married first, was that it? I don't, I don't know about that, but I mean, it was hard, you know, when, I mean, quitting the clergy to have kids and be penniless at age 34 at that time would be like doing it at age 50 now. Um, my parents were much older than everybody else growing up. And it was, you know, it was, it was always rather shocking to people that they were older. And people used to think my parents were my grandparents when I was in my 20s. Um, and what did they want you to do? Well, my dad wanted me to be a teacher and my mom wanted me to be a good person. And that was it. So your mother wasn't instilling a career? No, my mom used to hide progress reports from school. We didn't do well. I mean, you know, consider the religious aspect, but also my dad was a high school principal. I grew up with a high school principal for a father. So that's a whole other, you know, area for my therapist to have to mop up my drool. So you're 13 and you had not seen George Carlin at the Westbury? No, I had not. So you wanted to be what? I wanted to be an actor when I was 13. I already knew and my parents were really supportive. My parents, I did, I did a regional theater production of Hamlet when I was 12. What would you play? I played the player queen in the play within a play. And I played the ghost of Hamlet's father in silhouette. They had me in this armor and they had a voice recording of an actor. And I just like would act out the gestures. And I got my first good review in a newspaper when I was 12 for Hamlet. And that was it for me. I was like done with my Atari games and my parents to their immense credit respected that and my dad drove me to so many rehearsals and my parents let me stay out so late on school nights doing rehearsals when I was a kid. And they were they were incredibly supportive. Is it fair to say that you will never find a job that's satisfying? No, I've had jobs where I think that no matter what you do, you're not going to be happy at it because I think you have so much opportunity available to you that you second guess everything. No, no, that that they're you're wrong, Mr. Feldman. What would be a perfect job for you that you would say acting on a really high quality one hour drama? You'd be miserable. I'd be thrilled. I'd be delighted. So you know how much I love just like working with actors and rehearsing and going to your trailer and be sated. Have you ever been sated? I've been sated because it's like you have a great job over at Sirius Monday through Friday. And it's very fun. Yeah, I learn a lot and I get to talk to lots of interesting people and the inside channel. Yes. That should that shouldn't that say to a man you get to talk to anybody. You talk to Mel Gibson. By the way, did you talk to Mel about Vatican II? I briefly at the end I did. Yeah. Is he still opposed to it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I said to him like I did the Mel Gibson thing because I wanted him to trust me because when it was all done and he knew who I was, he had seen my videos and I had worked with a friend with his partner at this web studio he has in LA. And we have mutual friends and he had watched my stuff and he knew who I was. So he, you know, agreed to come do this live thing with me. And I did it because I wanted him to trust me when it was all done. I said, So look, when you want to come into a real interview about faith, I hope it'll be me. He goes, Oh, you don't want to talk to me, man. I'm, I'm pre Vatican II. I'm not into that shit. I'm like old school. I'm crazy. I said, I know you are. That's why I'm the right guy for you to come talk to. Because I generally don't try to judge people for their beliefs. I'll judge them for their, their actions. And what do you hold on to? Because I know his dad, his dad, his dad's the square root of all of that. I think, but what are you holding on to if you're pre Vatican II? What is, what are you afraid of? I think that the commitment to honor thy mother and father is maybe the greatest double-edged sword in the entire Bible. But what, what, what is, what does he hate about Vatican II? Um, what, what was the main, I don't, I don't know. You'd have to ask him, maybe it's letting women be Eucharistic ministers or lectors. I don't really know what Mel's issues with Vatican II are. A lot of conservative Catholics didn't like the church to reform. They wanted it to stay as, as medieval as possible. To me, I don't understand why religion has got to be the one social science that can't evolve. I, I, I don't understand why it, why it can't and why it shouldn't. Jesus' whole message was evolve. And I don't really understand why his unauthorized fan clubs are so afraid of it. I mean, they're only, they're only marginalizing themselves. Like this pope has got to, Francis has got to realize that like, you know, the church is going to need women and gay people more than women and gay people need the church. They got another generation in the first world. They're going to be a third world church unless they, they wise up. And Francis knows it and he's tried to do as much reform as possible without actually reforming too much. Who runs the church? Or is it like the federal government here in the states? There are a couple of people running and there are many revolutions going on. Men, celibate men or men who claim to be celibate run the church. But I would assume, not knowing anything about the Vatican, that there are power struggles constantly going on. And in fact, the greatest reform that Pope Francis has done, which no one talks about, is the Vatican bank because they were laundering mafia money. And his first year in, in the papacy, he said, you know, the Cosa Nostra have no path to salvation. And I'm like, get this man a food taster. He's saying this in Rome, but under Benedict, they were laundering mob money. The Vatican was, was laundering murder. Well, according to Godfather III, right, the Pope, before Pope John Paul I, was murdered because he went after the bank. I mean, what that movie, when the Corleones are trying to save the Pope, Fonzie dreamed of jumping a shark like that. But is that true that the first, that the Pope before John Paul? A lot of people think his death was very suspicious. Well, what kind of power does the Pope have? The Pope has, he's the head of the largest religious organization in the world. And- But is he really the head? Sure. I mean, even if it's just a figurehead, sure. I mean, Francis could do, Francis could do so much if he wanted. He's already done so much just by, just by taking the positions he's taken. Who am I to judge gay people? That's huge. Yeah, he does a double talk in jive. He turns around, goes to the Philippines and talks about, we have to protect the family. You know, he's a businessman. That's all it is. This whole notion that women can't be priests, no knob, no job. I mean, that's an insult to the very faith you claim to believe in. What you believe in is God who makes 51% of the population unfit for the priesthood. You would tell the Virgin Mary, no, you can't say mass because ovaries. You know, it's, all of these religions, I don't necessarily think they're all just running a con and that they're all just milking the poor. I think that we can never underestimate the amount of good and evil religion is done in the society. We all have a choice of tapping into the good or tapping into the selfish. Catholics are guilty of both in spades, but this guy sucks on women. He kind of sucks on gay people. There's a lot he could do to bring the church just birth control, just birth control. Is he like Obama that if you put a couple of drinks in him, there's a socialist? Yeah, I think so. And then he's going to say, you know, I want to do this, but I can't. When he was Archbishop in Argentina, he supported civil unions. He was opposed to gay marriage, supported civil unions. That's, you know, big that that guy became Pope. And he's a Jesuit. And he chose Francis as his name. I mean, but if you get up to be Archbishop, right? You got to play the game. Yeah. You're a corporatist. You're a corporatist. You can't get, you cannot rise up to the top. Well, this was the hope with Trump, right? That he was going to be this ideological trojan horse, because he used to be a progressive Democrat. We all know he's not really in favor of criminalizing abortion, but that might be the compromise he made to get the power he wants. I think a lot of people were kind of hoping that Donald Trump would just rip off the mask and be a moderate. Let's get back. Well, I'll talk about Trump in a second. Let's get back to the Catholic Church. Because I sure there might be some people still listening. I could see myself becoming a Catholic. I could. There's a lot I like about it. There's a lot I like about it. And you can't live up to it, which is what I love about Judaism. That's what I think Catholicism and Judaism have in common. Growing up down south, I'd see these bumper stickers. Christians aren't better, just saved. Spiritual smugness is the least attractive thing in the world. And what I liked about the Catholics and the Jews, we can make jokes about guilt all day, and I will. But they're like, oh, you accept Jesus as your savior? Great. Now fuck you. Ring go back at the line. That's step one. You know, this notion that all you got to do is accept Jesus and your sins are forgiven and all your misdeeds are washed away is the laziest kind of way to go through life. I don't understand that in the Catholic Church, you have to do good deeds. Sure. And all Christianity, you're supposed to do good deeds. What is the attraction to just accepting Jesus and then turning on the TV? Not having to work too hard? It's very attractive to many Americans in general. How do they justify it? Because I put up a tree in my house once a year. No, seriously. And I go to church twice. I am serious. People think putting up a fucking tree in your house and going to church twice a year and hating the people that Fox News tells you to hate makes you a good Christian. I mean, there's a lot of Christians in this country. The people who elected Trump, if I may, are just, you know, their Bible is the golden calf and then skip to the book of revelations with a left behind book duct tape to it. You know, Christianity could be a powerful force for social change. The problem is we worship the baby Jesus and the crucify Jesus and we ignore all the teachings in the middle. Okay, so if you're a Lutheran, do you have to do good deeds or do you just have to accept Jesus? You have to hate Jews. I mean, that's what Martin Luther wanted. All Christians faith, all people of all faith, Islam, Judaism, of course, you're supposed to do good deeds. Well, there are, but there are certain religions where you, I think George W. Bush, what was he? Is he a Presbyterian, was he? Yeah, but he switched over to something. Oh, I don't know. The only religion where you don't have to care about anybody else is libertarianism. But going back to accepting Jesus is the good deed. Oh, yeah, I don't buy that at all. But what religions, what sex? I mean, I would say that's a simplification of the evangelical point of view. You have to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And then everything else. Oh yeah, be born again. Sell me on that idea. But it's, tell me why that's a good idea. It's cult being. But tell me why the people who proselytize believe that. Because the notion that you can pledge allegiance to a fan club and have all your misdeeds magically wiped away and get a clean slate morally, because it's cult mentality. And it's very, very attractive to people who are struggling. And the allure when you're at rock bottom or struggling of community, of acceptance, of people who will love you for who you are and tell you that you're good and that all the shitty things you did to other people before won't be held against you, that's very attractive. If you were running, if you were an evangelical. I'd be bad at it. And you were running the show. Why would you believe that? Believe what? That all you have to do is turn your life over to Jesus. Because that's the easiest possible way of selling it. You're being cynical, but I'm, because I... No, I'm not. I'm being... I think people believe their shit. So how could you get to the point where you believe that? Like, why is that right? Because it must be right for some people and it must work for some people. Well, and I got nothing against it, too. I mean, I think if your faith works for you and you're not bothering people or hurting people in your way... But I'm talking about the good deeds. Because we're talking about, because then we'll get to politics. Because we do have this phenomenon of Old Testament Christians. Sure. Evangelicals, fundamentalists. Mike Pence who believe all you have to do is say, I love you, Jesus, and then cut food stamps and get rid of Medicare. Yeah. And Huckabee is... I think Jesus wants you to help the poor by killing any programs that might help the poor. And the most insidious part of it... But how do you get there? How do you think that way? That's how people already are. I mean, I would argue to you that it takes a lot of growth to have empathy, and being selfish might be the default setting of our monkey species. But Huckabee doesn't think he's selfish. No, he doesn't. So how do... Help me... Like, I'm able to get to the point where I say, I get why the Catholic Church doesn't allow priests to have sex. Like, I understand that. Help me understand how you can be a Christian, evangelical, who doesn't believe that you have to do good deeds. Oh, I think they believe they have to do good deeds. But I think they believe, you know... But that's not what gets you into it. But I think a lot of people think... But a lot of people, David, believe that not letting gays destroy marriage is a good deed, that not letting women kill babies inside them is a good deed, that not letting poor people be lazy and get free stuff from the government is a good deed. I think it's very, very easy to get people, to get followers of Jesus on the side of the Pharisees. It always has been. So, I mean, it was very, very... Look, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the most misunderstood book in the world. I mean, that was all about how a bunch of Christians were so convinced that what they were doing was Christian. And when that woman in the book goes, God's curse on slavery, you know, it was really a radical, radical act of Harriet Beester Stowe to, like, take the position in the 1800s that slavery was anti-Christian. In the end, when Simon Legree kills Uncle Tom, it's a crucifixion. Into thy hands I commend my spirit. I mean, like, it was so stark, you know, this... I'm writing a book called Separation of Church and Hate, because to me it's all about how the church has always been used to prop up the opposite of what Jesus taught. And still is to this day, Jesus to me is a revolutionary character, because his ideas are still so threatening to the power structure. But again, we worship the one in the crib and the one on the cross, and we ignore all the teachings in the middle. Nuns on the bus. I interviewed a couple. Isn't she great? I didn't get to speak to her. I spoke to one of the lesser nuns. Oh, so you had one of the sub nuns. So you had one in the back of the bus. They were going to Paul Ryan's district to tell him he's not a Catholic. Yeah. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, Catholic. Huge Iron Rand fan. Claims he's not so much an Iron Rand fan anymore. He used to give Atlas Shrugged as a gift to all the interns in his office. Then he became Mitt Romney's vice president and found out that Iron Rand was an atheist who loved abortion and Social Security. I don't hit her that hard for that. I mean, yeah, she's a hypocrite, but she paid into it. So why shouldn't she take the benefits? I'll get into it for being a horrible person at other levels. Paul Ryan. The working title of Atlas Shrugged was it's totally okay to be a complete douchebag, and then wisely she changed it. I'm Rosenberg, I believe. Seriously. Oh, really? Yeah, she changed it. Wow. Yeah. That's true. But he reinvented himself after Romney and started obsessing with the poor. Yes. And yet he still believes in supply side economics. The Speaker of the House tried to reinvent the Republican party. In the past three years. Yeah. How can we help? He wanted to speak with the House for one year. Yeah, but even before he was speaker, how can we save poor people? And much to his credit for caring. But privatizing Medicare is not going to do it. So how does he get there as a... He's not going to get there. It's denial. That's his religion. But I would assume he's a proud Catholic, right? Yeah, but I think Paul... Look, I don't want to psychoanalyze the guy, but let's do it. I think at a very young age, he learned that he could play a nice boy and smile and make the grown-ups happy and then do whatever the fuck he wanted. And I think he's doing the same thing today. Except he has a base that doesn't trust him, that doesn't like him. You know, they created this Frankenstein monster, but now the monster has found a mad scientist that likes a lot more. You know, Lyndon Johnson, when he was Senate Majority Leader, passed a tax bill that said, if you're a 501c3, this is in the 50s, if you're a tax-free organization, you cannot be political, which prevents rabbis and ministers and nuns on the buses from criticizing our political leaders. And I remember when my kids were young, we used to go to Temple, and I complained to the rabbi. I said, this is BS. Your sermons are BS. This is Oprah. Why aren't you talking about the war in Iraq? Why aren't you criticizing... Injustice. Injustice. This is... You know, when I was a kid, my parents used to talk about the Reverend Martin Luther King, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. There were rabbis who spoke out about civil rights. Why are you talking about forgiveness and loving each other and talking and... That's equally important, though. Yeah, but not when you have George W. Bush as president, and there's an illegal war going on. And he said, I just can't. I can't do it. The country's too divided. You know what that means. Churches, I mean, they're businesses. Yeah. One thing I learned traveling this country is the church has a very smart business sense. They send the liberal priests to the liberal parts of the country and the conservative priests to the conservative parts of the country because the job is to get as many old ladies to write as many checks every Sunday as possible. So I went to the NYU Catholic Center when I was a kid, and we had priests who would openly welcome gay couples and celebrate their unions. And it was so progressive. And then I'd go down south with my parents and it was all brimstone hell hell hellfire. It's a smart business model, and it's all about getting the donations. So I... It's casting. Going back to this law that prevents churches and nonprofits from being political, we should get rid of this law that Lyndon Johnson forced upon us in the early 50s. I think a lot of people would argue that it doesn't matter because these churches and synagogues were already as political as they want to be. But I think what's happening now is politics has become a religion. And I don't want to worship with people who voted for Trump. I really don't. I don't blame you. I don't blame you because I don't know how you can read any part of the Bible or the New Testament, whatever you want to call them. I don't mean to be offensive by saying the Old Testament. I prefer to say the Old Testament and the Better Testament. That's... You can't. You can't claim that your Christian values or your Jewish values made you vote for Trump. And yet in America, you don't know who your rabbi voted for. Some do. Because he's not allowed. Some do. Right. We all know who rabbi Schmooley voted for. Yeah. And rabbi Luksteen, I'll get to that in a second. And rabbi Luksteen is Ivanka's rabbi. Oh, how good for her. That's wonderful. Yes. And... She's the smart one in the Trump family, you know, David. Yes. Yes. She's the one who's not a crazy batshit right-winger. She's just the one who knows better and does it anyway. I respect that. She's married to Jared Kushner and Boy Wonder. Yes. And Luksteen is the orthodox rabbi who converted her. He was going to speak at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, but the temple signed a petition that said, if you speak at the convention, we will all quit. And it turns out his conversions don't take in Israel. I was looking this up. So she is not allowed to... Be buried? Be buried in Israel. She's not considered a Jew. That being said... I hope she feels guilty for that. If politics is the new religion, why can't you keep your tax-free status as a church or a temple or a mosque and speak out on things besides religion? I think tribalism is the new religion, to be honest with you. I don't think it's politics. You go saying these folks are racist, but you bring in a Ben Carson. You bring in a Herman Cain. They just love them. It's not as simple as that. It's tribalism. We'll take people of different colors or backgrounds, as long as you talk, dress, vote like me. That's interesting. So I think tribalism really is a scourge of our society right now, and now we're averse to people who are different from us, more than bigoted, more than hateful. We're averse to it. We just don't care for it. And it allows us to be in these little slots where... Look at abortion, right? How do you get so many Christians to vote for such un-Christian? How do you get so many Christians to vote for making the poor poorer, making the rich richer, torture, death penalty, attacking countries that never attacked us, pillaging? How do you get Christians to do it? You make Christians believe that Jesus had dick to say about gay marriage or abortion, right? Jesus never mentioned these things. And in terms of abortion, God's the least pro-life character in the whole book. I mean, in Exodus, God says, if you strike a pregnant woman and she dies, you get death. If you strike a pregnant woman and the fetus dies, you get a fine. So God's weighed in on this, okay? In the Book of Numbers, God gives Moses detailed instructions, rather gruesome about how to terminate an unfaithful wife's pregnancy by another man, leaving her barren and mutilated for life. If you believe Noah's Ark as literal fact, then you believe that one day God chose to kill every pregnant woman and her fetus on earth by drowning. So, you know, to believe that the Bible's against abortion, once you can convince someone that that's what you need for virtue, then you'll have people who will be doing the most hateful, un-Christ-like things, but I'm protecting the unborn, so I'm covered. I got my hand stamped for God's velvet rope. And it works. It's working less well with gay people now, but for many years that was enough to convince people that hating these perverts was doing Jesus's work because, and, you know, one line of Leviticus. I mean, there's nothing in the Bible. I maintain there's nothing in the Bible you can use to justify discrimination against gay people, and I will have this debate with anybody who wants to have it, because I know the seven verses they'll use, and they're all bullshit. But, you know, once you can convince yourself that your selfishness is a virtue, then you can betray everything your religion teaches. And hey, I watch Rudolph's Christmas special, so I feel good. What happens if Trump becomes president and nothing happens? What happens if just four years from now we look back and it was just uneventful? Well, that's the best-case scenario, and I'll be grateful. I don't, you know, look, I don't belong to a political party, so, you know, I'd rather have a good Republican than a bad Democrat. But I think there's a very good chance that something like that could happen. I mean, he's looking to completely restructure the government and make it tilted toward the rich, even more so, which is how it's always been, right? The Founding Fathers only wanted themselves to grow. I don't see how you could, it's like being on a teeter-totter with Mike Huckabee. I mean, you can't go- But that's always been the struggle, right? Like, I mean- You can't go any lower. No, but that's what they said about Bush, too. You know, it's never been conservative versus liberal, right? It's always been aristocracy versus democracy. It's always been the rich, white, land-owning males who think that only they should have power, and suppress any attempt to give anyone else any power. And that's the one true story of this society. That's why I love this society. That's why I still believe in this society. I came to New York as a teenager at the height of the AIDS crisis, and I watched act-up protests right up front, and it made me uncomfortable as a nervous Christian straight guy. But what I learned from it was, you know, when AIDS hit, you could be fired for being gay. There were so many rumors, comedians were horrible with the AIDS jokes, and gay people stopped waiting for their rights, and they began demanding it, and we saw the swiftest advancement for civil rights of any minority in history. That's why I believe in the American dream. And I think we keep going in this pattern of, like, five-step forward, three-steps back. I'm thinking a lot about this lately. JFK, how progressive, there's the future, and they kill them, so they pull us back three steps. But then we get LBJ, who winds up being so much more progressive. The Civil Rights Act, Medicare, so much better than we could have thought, more progressive than JFK, very flawed. Then three steps back, we get Nixon, right? And then that, everything's corrupt. And then... But even Nixon was three steps forward. Well, even Nixon, but he was also a corrupt evil fuck, and a lot of dead guys in Vietnam. But he gave us a lot of great stuff. A lot of great stuff. Jimmy Carter, so progressive, flawed leader. They give us Reagan Bush. Trickle Down collapses. Bill Clinton, well, he's way more progressive than Jimmy Carter ever could have been. Flawed. We get W. Pull us back three steps. But every one of these presidents that's moved us forward, despite their flaws, has moved us ahead of where we were before. Barack Obama, for all of his flaws, was more progressive than President Al Gore probably would have been. Which tells me that whoever gets it in 2020, she will most likely be way more progressive than President Hillary Clinton would have been her first term. So this is the push me pull you of our evolution as a society. And I can't get discouraged because, number one, I'm not allowed to anymore. I can't. I've done too much time in therapy. I got a kid now. If I give in to my darkness, it's just indulgence. And it's boring. I'm just so bored of being miserable all the time. But I do also believe that in many ways we are getting better. The empire may be collapsing, but we are getting more decent. Talk to me. We have to wrap it up. But talk to me about giving in to darkness because... That's what I majored in in college. This is, we're in December. I have seasonal affect disorder. Which means, really, I found out how much I have to tip the door, man. I have seasonal affectation disorder. Robert Benchley said, my favorite quote, I just, it just reverberates every time. It's the holiday seasons are around my neck again. It is sort of an emotional barometer for where you're at every year. Yeah. And forced to gaiety. I mean, thank God, when I want that, I'll go to a renaissance fair. But joy to the world, because I find this to be the most joyless time of the year for me. It just always, always has been. Always? Always. I always find December... Never been a nice time for you? No. I don't, I don't like the season. And I always say to myself, I'm going to the southern hemisphere. Every Christmas, I mean, I got to go down to Australia during Christmas. Very wise. Because they celebrate Christmas during the summer. Did you know that? I mean, I guess it's summer there. Santa slides down an air conditioning vent. Really? Yes. Wow, I know. I could go on. It's an old... Never caught that mythology. Talk to me about joy. You have a child. What is the virtue of joy? And I'm going to tell you something that I've never said on this show. And I'm ashamed to tell people this. But I'm going to tell you anyway. I used to go to bar mitzvahs. When I was 13. And I would and I was obsessed. And still I'm with the Holocaust. And I would watch Aunt Frank. And this even at 13. I grew up with survivors. And I would see Jewish people dancing at bar mitzvahs. And I would get an upset stomach watching them dance because I would think why could you... How can you do that? How can you dance when there was a Holocaust? And they were insistent on dancing. And I've always to this day had trouble... Have trouble dancing. What is the virtue of joy? Why is that wrong to think that way? Tevia dances in Fiddler on the Roof. And he went through a lot of shit. First off, I don't think... I don't think one way of viewing the earth applies to everyone. And I don't think anyone should be obliged to feel joy. I don't think anyone should be obliged to appreciate anything or have gratitude for anything. We're all on our own trip. And if not experiencing joy is your battery and works for you, then I can't criticize it. But it's a faithless act to be joyless. It's a faithless act to not be true to yourself as well. But to be joyless, because I am not a joyless person. I just at this time of year... No, I get it. I have to tip the door a minute. Well, when I was young, I thought that was virtuous. But it's not. When I was a kid, I thought the more miserable I am, the more virtue God will find in me. And my mother was brainwashed by a particular cult, and she called the convent a cult before she died, where it was this very uniquely Catholic system of equating humility with self-loathing, right? The harder you are in yourself, the better a person you are. And I grew up thinking that those confident, happy, well-put-together kids in high school were dicks. God likes me better. Like, I was a real spiritual narcissist as a kid. And for me, I realized that joy is the same for me as gratitude. It's the same as appreciation. But I don't believe it needs to be imposed on anybody, because we're all on our own trip. You know, I think that there is a virtue to joy, just in the sense of... I kind of feel like when we're all dead, we'll look back and say, oh, I wish I had more fun. Why the fuck didn't I have more fun with this golden ticket I was given, this front row seat to the freak show, as George Carlin would put it, this one little whisper of a life where you get to take a trip. But what about Oscar Schindler? What about him? This watch. I could have saved three lives with this watch. I mean, yeah, in other words... But that's empathy, right? You always could do more. But instead of dancing, I could have been you know, feeding the poor. Right? Yeah. Did your mother have joy? Did she feel guilt raising you when she thought I should be with the lepers? No, I think my mother felt everything possible. I mean, I think that, you know, life is chaos. Life is entropy. Anything that humans can think of doing, no matter how divine or depraved, we're gonna fucking do. Someone's raping a child right now. And someone's saving someone's life. Oh, is that what your little alert is on your phone? Like, you know, I mean, as much... I mean, what's the line from Hamlet? There are more things in heaven and earth a ratio than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And we humans are going to do the most wonderful and the most horrible things. And it's always been that way. It's always going to be that way. So, you know, for every person who's got... who's stuck on joy, there's someone stuck on grief. And I've got to a point where I'm not going to condemn someone if they make the choice to be miserable. But if you're being miserable and you don't like it, then you're cheating yourself. And there are ways out of it. And I'm not saying that depression is not a disease. I'm saying that negativity is a habit. Depression is a disease, but negativity is a habit. Negativity is a habit. Your mother used to wear one. My mother wore one all the time, and it was quite negative. Fuckin' Africa wearing black. Crazy. And yet there's joy, right? That always amazes me is the joy that people are capable of finding in horrible situations. David, I've seen people like find joy at the ice capades. Like, I mean, in the most horrible conditions, people find a way to go on. John Fuelsang, Monday through Friday on Insight. Boy, this was a lot more theological than I expected. You didn't make it easy on a kid. Well, it was interesting. Host of Page 6 TV in 2017. Very quickly. What is that? That's based on the iconic gossip column in The New York Post featuring myself, Mario Cantone, Bevy Smith. We had a three-week tryout last summer. Fox picked it up, and now I spend my whole life explaining to people, no, no, I'm going to work for the Simpsons Family Guy Fox, not the O'Reilly Hannity Fox. And that'll be premiering in the fall. I'll be doing a pop culture show again, because it just kind of happened that way. And I realized... You're a pop, and you need to... Well, I thought once Hillary Clinton was president, I'd want to take a break from politics and go make fun of Kardashians. Now it looks like I'll be making fun of Kardashians in the morning on the TV and in the afternoon on the radio. And stand up. And stand up as well. Where are you going to be performing? I'll be doing a big show in Washington, D.C. on Donald Trump's first full day as president on the 21st of January at the Shakespeare Theater as part of Stephanie Miller's sexy liberal comedy tour, in which I play the role of tour. And it's myself, Stephanie, the great African-American female comedy duo, Frangela, and some special guests. And that's going to be the Day of the Million Woman March, the 21st of January in our nation's capital. I'll be there doing my radio show on Inauguration Day. And then we're going to do a great, big, huge fucking party. Our men will have to march with the women? I believe they are. I identify as a man who marches with women. Okay, John Fugelsang, thank you so much. David, I'd rather do your show than... Hang on, I'm getting a note here. You'd rather do my show. I'd rather do your show than the best podcast on iTunes. And I mean that. That's right. Another swipe left ACLU benefit is coming up. What are we doing this? This is what I've just been told. Again, you, me, the great Franco... You know, Franklin? Yes, I do. At Union Hall, that's in Brooklyn. And that would be December 28th. Yes, I'm in town. That's happening. What am I doing roast battle? I'm doing a roast battle. That's nice. I'd like to come see that. Yeah. John, thank you so much for coming by. David, I've just been in awe of you for years. You're one of my favorite people and one of my favorite stand-ups. And I learned so much about writing and about performing and about how to see the world from watching you. And congratulations, because he's too shy to say it. Congratulations on receiving two Writers Guild nominations for the year this week. Well, John, I just want to say, as long as we're talking about, you know, it's a mutual admiration society right here, because I agree with everything you just said about me. Thank you. I'm glad. That means a lot to me that I could help you on this stage of your path, David. I love you, buddy. From the showbiz, from the showbiz studios in downtown LA, Manhattan, I just found out how much I have to tip a door, man. And I'm just kind of... How much you have to tip a door? It's a lot. So it's been very depressing. It sucks having doorman, David. Yeah. From the showbiz studios in downtown Manhattan, that'll do for us. Thank you.