Name: James Beshara: Big Ideas & Inner Growth | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2026-01-28T15:01:39.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Beshara: Big Ideas & Inner Growth | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Beshara: Big Ideas & Inner Growth | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-28. Transcript available.

James Beshara: Big Ideas & Inner Growth | You Made It Weird

You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird. You made it weird. With
Pete Holmes.
Yes, you did. You made it weird.
What's happening, weirdos? This is the return of one of my best friends in the
world,
James Beshara. He is brilliant. He is an angel investor. He is an entrepreneur.
He started the company Magic Mind. He started many companies that we know of.
He invested in companies that we know of now, like OpenAI. He had a lot to say
about the future of
artificial intelligence. Didn't see that coming. I thought we were just going
to talk about Vedanta,
non-duality. We do. I thought we were just going to talk about friendship,
parenting, all that fun
stuff. We do. But we get into a lot of stuff that I was not expecting, stuff
that we did not cover
the first time around. You guys are in for a treat. I'm so glad you're here.
Not too much to plug on my
end up top. If you're listening to this the week it came out, I am just barely
coming out of a six,
seven-day stomach flu. It's been awful. I only mentioned that to say that that's
why I had to
cancel Largo. Last week, I canceled the TV shoot that I had, and I also had to
postpone my North
Carolina and South Carolina tours. Stay tuned. We're going to announce a new
date for those. I'm
dreadfully and sincerely sorry to miss those. I was so looking forward to them.
As soon as we have
new dates, your tickets will be valid for the new date, or you can get a refund
at the point of
purchase. Go to PeteHolmes.com. When we announce that date, it'll be up there.
In the meantime, the next
date is at the end of February. I'll be in Miami, followed by Los Angeles,
followed by Royal Oak,
Michigan, Irving, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, and Denver, Colorado. Go to PeteHolmes.com.
Hope to
see you out on the road. It means so much when you guys all come out. It means
a lot. Yeah, my new
special, which is called Silly Silly Fun Boy, this is the first promo I've done
for it, will be coming
to YouTube in February. There's nothing really for you to do now. I guess you
could subscribe
to my YouTube channel, but I'll be blabbing about it, just kind of teasing it.
Very excited,
Silly Silly Fun Boy. My new hour will be on YouTube, free for everybody to see.
So that's it. In the
meantime, enjoy my chat with the wonderful, the brilliant, the kind, the
inspiring James Beshara.
Get into it. Use your microphone, we'll just begin. All right, let's do it.
Because that was
kind of interesting. I'm down to it. I don't want to grade how interesting what
you said was,
but it was, it was, it was mid interesting. I could spice it up if you want to
hear me. No,
no, no, no. Not to me. It was 10 out of 10 to me, but I was like, I don't know
if we want to start
the episode with that. Let's not, that's, it's really behind the curtain on how
much we went into,
into making magic wine taste good. Yeah. There's a lot. I think that stuff is
interesting,
but I think I'm in the minority. You probably are. But you know those shows,
how it's made? Yeah. Like it's so mesmerizing to see the, like the
manufacturing lines every time
that I'm in our bottler, I'm like, I love it. I love watching it. And what is
asked of them?
It'll make me feel almost like patriotic that we have so many, like, if it's a
beverage,
the water needs to be this, like it's, and I'm always like, glory, glory. It
really does.
And the manufacturing process is so dialed in, each machine of the five
machines does this special
thing. And then every probably 18 months, a new machine comes out. And so-
To replace it. Yeah. Our bottlers will be like,
the TX 5,000 is arriving on Friday. And yes, they, they love it. And I love it.
I love it
vicariously because of how much they love the tiny little improvements come
from it.
You're talking to a guy who, so Val was out of town last night. And so was Lee,
they were both in LA and I was just home alone. And when I'm left home alone, I'm
like, okay,
what can I do? And like, what am I, what am I really interested in? Like, what
am I going to watch?
I watch like iPhone settings videos. I want someone to tell me like how to go
in and which ones to turn
off. Meaning I'm this close to being interested in like, which machine mixes
matcha better. So it's
not gritty. Like I could have been a good salesperson. I think I could have
been a good entrepreneur.
And I think I could have been a good like overseer of mechanization.
With, with the heights of, well, with the heights of what you've taken your
career to,
which is you are a master of your craft. And now I'm going to, I'm going to
spend 17 seconds
highlighting things that you already know, but it is, isn't it so helpful when
someone highlights
these things to give some objectivity?
I'm going to actually stop because you're not going to...
No, no, no.
This is what I love about you.
No, no, no. I'm jumping in. I get 17 seconds in the driver's seat.
You can have it.
17 seconds in the driver's seat just to say,
top 10 comedian in the world. You have mastered your craft.
Tell that to everyone making a list of comedians, but go ahead.
Well, and now you know I'm being honest too, because I didn't say the best, but
top 10.
That's right.
And I've said this to you years ago. I said the same thing.
And you're my favorite comedian, but objectively speaking, yeah, that's right.
And zooming out,
objectively speaking, top 10 in the world at a craft that so many people around
the globe...
Yeah. This is what you're good at.
And you spent your life becoming a master at it.
Put the violins... I mean this, like put the violins behind this and I'll watch
it,
the clip before I go out on stage. Because you're so good at giving love,
finding like an authentic, positive feeling. Like I don't think of you as just
like a general
enthusiast. I think of you as somebody who takes time to consider not just like,
what do I love about people? What do I love about things? What can we be
authentically excited about?
But also how can I help? I really... Like if you put me into like a hypnotic
twilight state, like really deep in my unconscious, I think of you as like this
helper,
like, you know what I mean? Like just like a good guy, like your lightsaber is
green.
I love... Well, I love helping and it's pure... I think a lot of it is selfishness
of youngest of
five and a family with a lot of... Four different family members with bipolar,
which is statistically
astronomically low odds of that. Wait, so everyone except you?
Seven people. No, seven. So including your parents.
Yeah. To both parents?
No, one, my mother.
One parent and a couple of your siblings?
That's right.
And what is bipolar? What does that look like?
I know what it is, but what did it look like to you?
Yeah, it is... I know what it is. The guy that wants to not be vulnerable.
I think I got it. You tell me what your life was like.
Listen, dude, I do this all the time.
For the people who don't know how bipolar manifests, but like manic?
Yeah. Scary, scary. Mania is scary though.
So yeah, it is these oscillations between mania and depression. So extreme,
extremely high highs,
extremely low lows. And it's sensitive for the family members. I lost a sister
to... She had major
depression. So during a major depressive episode, I lost her when I was 15. She
took her own life and
she was 19. And it's a sensitive subject to talk about family members that I
know that they love me so
much and they listen to things that come on. Yeah, no, I understand.
You know the vibe of this conversation is people are listening.
Exactly. They wanna know how to understand.
And this is for the person that I've never heard anyone talk about on a podcast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is for anyone out there that... 74% of adults will go through a life-altering
mental health crisis in their life. What does that even mean?
So three out of four will have some... It might be two days of mania. It might
be seven months of
depression. It might be losing a job, go through a divorce and be in the lows
of lows for 12 months
and a 14-year-old sees their dad go through that. So 74%.
That tracks. That tracks.
So nearly all of us will either directly or indirectly experience family member
or oneself.
Last person in that four out of four is just at the dome in Vegas watching John
Mayer play with fish.
That's right. Never... Bounces through life and never goes...
I know, it's the Grateful Dead.
Never goes to it. Just totally fine.
Yes. But they never go through it. They never kind of experience it,
but they'll indirectly experience it if it's that high.
They'll... Yes. They'll have a family member, a spouse.
You're surrounded by people that do it.
Yes. So that's... I'm very open with all of these things as much as I can be
while respecting the
sensitivity of certain family members. But the mania and anybody that has gone
through this will
recognize that you'll just start to see a ramp up period of a family member
that starts to say certain
things. A friend starts to say certain things. It's like, "That's odd." Like I
have a...
Like a grandiose claim?
Yes. Like I had a friend in college that also went through bipolar. And I
remember he came and
picked me up. He's like, "Dude, jump in the car. I'm right outside." Got in the
car. And I was like,
"It's kind of a surprise visit. You know, 9:00 PM on a Tuesday. I'm studying
for a test tomorrow."
And I remember it vividly. But he's driven 15 minutes over to my side of town.
So he's picking
me up and he's like, "I got something to tell you." So we just... I get in the
car and he's like,
going about six miles an hour, leaving our house. And he's like...
It's funny when slow is the scary one. Yeah.
Usually it's like they're peeling out and blowing stop signs, but this guy's
going so slow you're
worried. Yeah. Worried where it's like, okay, I could try to... And when I was
21, I for sure
just kind of push it aside and rationalize it away. But I saw, now I know the
pattern. And he was going
six miles an hour. And he goes, "Let's just creep." And I was like, interesting.
I have no idea what
he's doing over here. He's picking me up and he wants to just creep six miles
an hour. He's laughing.
And I'm like, and this is... I say this story because it's your rational mind
could be... Or if you want
to rationalize it away, you're like, "This is interesting." And a week later,
he wasn't sleeping for three days
in a row. And the insomnia adds to the chaos. And then he ended up running his
car into the house,
three houses down. But he was only going four, so he's fine.
Yeah, exactly. The lawn chair stopped it. Still creeping.
But he raised... The lawn chair overtook the car.
Uh-huh, yeah. Seized it. If you go slow enough. And so it went from that,
this is strange, and quite literally six miles an hour to probably about 35
into the corner of a house,
three houses down. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting because when you're... I use the
term manic,
like I get manic, but that's maybe not appropriate because there's true mania.
And I can see that. Excitability is... Yeah, we use that kind of term,
culturally, excitability. But I will have excitability that lasts.
Let me put it this way, just because I want to bring it back to this guy.
It's a level of excitability where I need to warn people that I will... If you
talk to me,
this is always my example, I will pitch a TV show about your life. I'll be like,
that's...
I call it infinite potential. It's actually quite wonderful when I direct it.
It's one of my favorite aspects of you, to see what others don't see or see
what can be.
It is. With these three pieces that anybody could put together, but you do it.
I'm with you. I would... Look, I'm not saying I'm in this.
I'm getting a taste of what I think your Nikola Tesla's, some of the true great...
But there's a madness to it as well, that they're like, I think it's three, six
and nine,
and we can make electricity from the air. But that infinite potential, I get
these little
micro doses of it. And I just have to tell Val, I'll s