Name: Joe Rogan Experience #697 - Christopher Ryan
Uploaded: 2015-09-18T03:42:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #697 - Christopher Ryan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-09-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #697 - Christopher Ryan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-09-18. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #697 - Christopher Ryan

Let's start.
That could be, yeah.
Chris Ryan and I have decided that for my friend Steve Renazzisi,
who just admitted that he lied about working in the September 11th,
the Twin Towers during September 11th, that we're just going to lie all day.
So this podcast is all bullshit.
Everything we say, psychologically, this is a tough one for me
because I really like Steve.
He's a good friend.
I really like that guy.
I see him in the comedy store all the time.
I've known him for years.
I really like him.
And then I see this, and I'm just like, Jesus Christ.
You know what gets me?
What gets me when someone does something like this
is I imagine what it would be like to be them,
to have told some sort of a crazy lie and got stuck telling it
where you're repeating it over and over again.
And then you just got, it just becomes like it's locked in.
It's like, how do you erase it?
How do you go back and take a lie away?
Especially if you transition from like a regular guy
who just bullshits with his friends to a public figure.
Like I guess this guy got famous at some point, right?
So then you've got your lies that all your friends think are true.
And now you're doing interviews with the fucking Wall Street Journal or
whatever.
And if that comes up, what do you do?
You stick to your guns or you humiliate yourself, you know,
in your private circle, you know?
Because you got to, there's that.
Well, apparently he did humiliate himself in his private circle.
He pulled Ari and a few guys aside years ago
and told them that it wasn't true.
No shit.
Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just been fucking with him forever.
I just, you know.
Good for him.
He's coming out of the closet.
Although he got pulled out of the closet, I guess.
I think he got pulled out by the New York Times.
I think the New York Times got him.
Yeah.
You know, they do their research
and they found out that he didn't really work for Merrill Lynch.
You know, he said he worked for Merrill Lynch
for like a year and a half as an account manager.
Didn't really work for Merrill Lynch either.
Well, as you were saying before the mics went on,
like what a dumbass lie.
Like, oh, Merrill Lynch account manager?
Wow, let me suck your dick.
Like, who gives a shit?
You used to work for Merrill Lynch?
It's like, hey, I used to be an accountant, baby.
You know?
I like how lies for Chris Ryan
immediately translate into potential sex.
Why else would you lie?
Why else would you lie?
Nothing else is worth it, you know?
I guess to get a better job or something,
maybe that would be something.
I don't want a job.
My entire life has been about avoiding ever having a job.
Other than blowjob.
Writing books, even just like,
God, let me just get this out of the way
so I don't have to have a job.
Dude, I don't ever want to write
another fucking book in my life.
Even that I'm trying to get out of.
That's hilarious.
But you're an author.
You're an established, successful author.
And you're like, fuck, I don't even want to do that.
Dude, I wrote a book
and suddenly was running a business.
Like, I never wanted to have a business.
I'm not a business guy.
What is the business?
Chris Ryan, Inc.
You know what it's like.
If you're in the paper,
suddenly managers are calling you
and lawyers and you've got accountants, you know.
Right.
You've got the sort of parasite infrastructure
that gloms onto you like, you know,
those things on the bottom of boats, you know.
And it's like, no offense to any accountants who are-
Or parasites.
But you know what I mean, right?
I mean, you know, Joe Rogan Enterprises
is a huge thing, you know.
And that must take a lot of time, a lot of attention.
And so even in my, you know, micro scale,
it's just a giant pain in the ass.
It certainly can be.
Fortunately for me,
I don't think of anything that I'm doing
as like really work work.
You know, it's just stuff I enjoy doing
that happens to be an occupation rather than-
Right.
But yeah, writing.
Well, and also, I mean, what you're doing,
you're at a level where you can afford
to hire good people to help you.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not.
Right.
And my wife is useless.
So, I mean, she's a wonderful woman.
Don't get me wrong.
And she's very good at certain things,
but, you know, producing a podcast,
editing a book.
Right.
You know, the kind of stuff I need someone to do.
I mean, I have to answer her emails, you know.
She can't be bothered.
When you hear a guy like this Rent is Easy story,
when you hear a lie, does it freak you out?
You know what?
Here's the thing that freaks me out.
And it freaks me out.
Like, even like the Jared from Subway thing
or when I read something about some guy who was methed up.
I forget what the article was about.
I think the article was about a guy
who was friends with a guy who turned out to be a murderer.
And it was about a guy who got methed up
and got involved in some rough sex with some prostitute
and killed her and then sawed her up
and left her fucking body in bags and shit.
Could have been an accident.
Whatever I hear about anybody who's just gone
completely off the rails like that,
I always say, okay, if I was that guy,
if I was born in his shoes,
if I lived his life,
would I have been that fucking guy?
Like, how much of what we are is determinism?
You know, how much of what we are
is based on the events that took place
that are completely outside of our control
about how much of it is how we were raised?
I mean, we've all heard people tell, like,
terrible stories about how their parents raised them.
Terrible stories about the environment
they're forced into.
And you always wonder, like,
how much of who each one of us is
is based on a bunch of shit
that's completely outside of your control.
And how much of these events that take place,
whether it's the Jared from Subway thing
or I had my friend Barry Crimmins on,
who's this great comedian
and a real icon in Boston.
And Bobcat Goldthwait did a film on him
about his horrific childhood sexual abuse.
He was raped when he was four years old
by his babysitter's boyfriend.
And it was this horrific, horrific story.
And, you know, this is something
completely outside of this guy's control
and how much of who he is now
is based on that.
Well, he's, like, in his 50s.
And this is, like, still something he's dealing with
from when he was four.
You know?
It's just, you, what you are now
is, like, this series of,
these series of events
that have kind of,
a lot of them just laid out in front of you
without you having any control over it at all,
now here you are.
And when I see a guy
that does something really crazy,
I mean, this is, like, minorly crazy.
We're not talking about a horrific crime,
like a Bill Cosby thing
or something like that.
We're back to the comedian now.
Yeah, the comedian.
Yeah, yeah.
Not the chopped up prostitute.
No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, Steve Renazizi, my friend.
You know, what he did was just,
doesn't make any sense.
Like, and you just wonder, like,
what it must be like,
fuck, to be that guy who's done that.
Who's just, like, said this thing
for no fucking reason
that doesn't make any sense
and then has to stick with it.
Just, I don't, I mean,
that's my angle on these things.
Instead of getting upset about,
I mean, especially this one.
But how does that relate to what you're saying?
Do you feel like if you may,
if you were in the position he was in,
you might have done something similar?
I always worry that, yeah.
I always, whenever I see someone
do anything crazy,
like murder or craziness or anything,
I always say, well,
how much of who you are
is because of your life experiences,
a lot of them outside of your control,
your genetics, your parents,
the environment that you were raised up
and the people that you came in contact with
when you were younger.
Yeah.
How much of that is who you are today in 2015?
I think it's, goddammit,
I think it's a lot.
Yeah.
And so I see this guy,
you know, my friend,
and again, Steve Renazzisi,
what he did was just dumb.
It's not evil.
It's not, nobody got hurt, you know?
I mean, he might have hurt someone's feelings,
people that actually were survivors of 9-11.
That's potentially possible.
But you know what I mean?
He didn't rape anybody.
He didn't murder anybody.
It's just fucking, what happened?
How does that,
how does the brain get so fucking tweaked?
So, and of the lies he's been busted for,
the, I was in the Twin Towers at 9-11
is the one that everyone's focused on, right?
Yeah, no one gives a fuck about lying
about working for Merrill Lynch.
Right.
Well, although I don't understand why you would,
right, like you said,
unless you're trying to get laid.
And also like, you know,
I would argue that anyone who was a survivor of 9-11
who was actually there has bigger issues
to think about than some comedian is.
So I would argue he didn't really hurt anyone
except himself now that he's, you know, busted.
Rationally, yeah, you're right.
So who gives a shit, you know?
And everybody, everybody in public life
is lying on some level, right?
You're, you've got a persona
and you have to be true to that persona even,
I mean, I remember when I first sat down
with this producer to talk about doing a TV show
and, which ultimately never got made
like most TV shows.
But when we were like putting together
the whole chat, the summaries of the episodes
and all this stuff, he said,
so what's your, your on air,
who are you going to be on the show?
And I said, what do you mean?
It's like, I'm just going to be me.
He said, no, are you going to be like the funny guy?
Are you going to be the really smart professorial guy?
You know, what's your image, your persona going to be?
I said, I'm just going to be me.
He said, oh, you're going to be authentic
with air quotes.
I said, what the fuck is that?
No, I'm going to be authentic.
He's like, no, on TV, you can't be really authentic.
The most you can be is, quote, authentic
because you have to be the same every fucking episode.
And if you come in one day and you're feeling pissed off
because you just had a fight with your wife
or, you know, you got diarrhea or whatever the,
whatever your issue is, you can't express that.
You have to be the same guy you were last week.
But why is that?
Consistency.
Well, it's entertainment.
But that's the medium though.
The medium is just so limiting in that way
that people expect that every week.
That's one of the cool things about a podcast
is that they kind of don't.
Like when you do tangentially speaking,
you can kind of like, oh, thank you.
Be you.
Nice.
Yeah.
I try to, but, but still I am conscious
of the, the, the distinction between who I really am
and who people are getting the impression I am.
Hmm.
And I try to be like, just a lot, last episode I did a,
in the intro, I did a little thing about, um,
cause people were writing to me and saying like,
what's it like to go from like some nobody in Barcelona
to Ted talks and Rogan show and all this stuff.
Right.
What's that like?
Did you like feel it happening?
Did you expect it?
Did you, is it like being on a river
and it was just flowing that way
or were you swimming toward it or, you know?
Right.
And so I tried to address it a little bit.
And what I said was in my very minuscule experience,
fame is like wine that tastes really good
and can only get you drunk while it's in your mouth.
So you swallow it quickly.
I know it's not the best thing.
The other metaphor I thought of was like.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So if it's in your mouth, it gets you drunk,
but if you swallow it, you're fine.
You're fine.
Right.
Okay.
So you, um, I mean, you know what I'm talking about.
Someone comes up to you and like, they're like nervous
and like, oh my God, it's Joe Rogan.
Right.
And you're like, yeah, I'm just, I'm just me.
Right.
Right.
I mean, you know the truth that you're just a guy,
but they're reacting to what they think you are,
which is so much more than what you actually,
what anyone is, you know, that's the nature of fame.
It's this bullshit thing that on