Name: Ep 595 - The Man Who Saves The World? (feat. Gabe Polsky)
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T13:01:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ep 595 - The Man Who Saves The World? (feat. Gabe Polsky)' from Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ep 595 - The Man Who Saves The World? (feat. Gabe Polsky)' from Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-22. Transcript available.

Ep 595 - The Man Who Saves The World? (feat. Gabe Polsky)

- Wow, wow, wow, Wes.
- All right, we're live.
Gabe Polsky, man, thanks for coming.
- Yeah, thanks for having me.
- Thank you for coming.
I wanted to bring you here.
I saw your documentary a while back.
I got a little screener copy.
Honestly, I said, I'm not just fluffing you.
I thought it was one of the best things
I'd watched in a really long time.
So, "The Man Who Saves the World," that's it, question mark.
Not "The Man Who Saves the World," no question mark.
That's about a guy who didn't drop the nuclear bomb
or something. - Yeah, yeah.
That's another film.
- Yeah.
Yours is "The Man Who Saves the World," question mark.
Which, dude, it's, I swear to God, I like, I,
Brandon, our mutual friend from Rafael sent it to me
and I was like, all right, you know, and I'm like,
I'm pretty like precious with my time.
So, someone's like, hey, do you wanna watch this two-hour thing?
I'm usually like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll watch it.
But I read the tagline.
I'm like, dang, that sounds kind of cool.
Dude, one night I just, I saw through it.
So, congrats on that, that's awesome.
- Yeah, it's 85 minutes 'cause I know that, you know,
the two-hour scares people, but... - Dude, now I feel like...
- Sure. - Now documentaries are six hours.
- Yeah, it's... - The murder mystery doc.
- Everything's long, it's... - I know, but the murder mystery doc,
I'm telling you, man, I don't wanna start by it on a negative note,
but like, dude, I would really like to move back
from the six-hour twisty murder doc.
It's like, just, I don't need to watch this for six hours.
Just give me an hour and 20, hit me with a twist at the end.
- I agree, I'm the same way. - It's like a full work day.
- Yeah.
- I'm signing up to watch this lady get murdered.
It's like, dude, hit me with the facts.
- I know.
- Give me the facts. - They're stretching, you know?
They're stretching. - Yeah, yeah, true.
But no, I thought your documentary was honestly fantastic.
And just to like, I don't know, I don't wanna give the whole thing away,
but just to recap, I try to explain it to people.
And I like, I always sound crazy.
It's about a guy who by the guy alone could have been,
what was his name?
- Patrick McCollum.
- Patrick McCollum.
I mean, obviously you could have just done one on that guy alone.
His life is crazy.
He was a peacemaker, you know, he's just does everything,
but he got convinced somehow that he was the center
of some ancient indigenous prophecy that he was going to,
was it save the world or bring everyone back together
and thus save the world by saving the Amazon?
- That's right.
I mean, the second part, yeah.
So basically these indigenous elders from the Amazon
came to this guy at like a peace gathering in India.
And they said to him, you know,
we think you're this guy in our prophecy
that we've had for, you know, hundreds of years.
So different tribes of the Amazon,
they all kind of got together and identified this guy and said,
you know, we think you're this guy.
And, you know, initially he's just like,
I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm just kind of a regular guy.
I don't think I'm the guy.
And they basically for eight years kept coming to him and saying,
you know, when are you going to come and fulfill this prophecy of ours?
Are you going to come and unite the tribes of the Amazon
and essentially save the Amazon and restore the earth?
And after many years, he's just like, all right, like, I guess I'll like do
what I can and go down there.
First of all, how that's crazy.
He was able to fight that off.
I would immediately be like, yes, I am.
Getting hit with the chosen one is my personal fantasy.
So that's crazy.
He got to live that out.
And it's nuts that he was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not.
Which obviously you're the chosen one.
If you're going to be like, no, I'm not the chosen one.
It's like you're definitely chosen.
Yeah, so he was right.
But dude, but then you saw him like, OK, that's first of all, that's a kind of
a wild concept.
Then you get into that guy's life and it's like he it's that guy was I've never
even
like heard of or seen a guy like that.
Yeah, I mean, most talented guy.
I think I know that that's kind of what drew me.
And honestly, the prophecy part of it was just to me, just so bonkers that I
was like this.
This is this guy's a bullshit artist.
This is crazy, you know,
and I was, you know, incredibly skeptical of it.
And then ultimately, I, you know, first of all, I started doing a lot of
research.
I hired a private investigator, you know, to look into this guy, you know,
he was saying he's best friends with Jane Goodall.
And I didn't really believe him there.
I forgot about that.
He was buddy, buddy with Jane.
Yeah.
And then and then I, you know, reached out to her personally and got an
interview.
And she said this guy is the most fascinating guy she's ever met.
And, you know, one of the and so obviously that vouched for him.
But really what would kind of drew me in was how weird and amazing this guy's
life was.
He was like the most fascinating guy I've ever met.
He's, you know, he's a carny.
He was a jewelry designer to, I guess, you know, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and
Russell Crowe.
He was, you know, a peacemaker at first, a carny.
So he basically at 12 years old, he like joined the carnival for like four
years because his
his brother got cut in half.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yes.
And his parents.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
I don't want to laugh at his brother.
I got half.
But yeah, his brother got fucking kind of.
Yeah.
And so he his parents had to go basically take care of his brother.
So he was left kind of on his own.
Yes.
At 12 years old.
And so what he decided to do was join the carnival.
And there he kind of met all these freaks and married a prostitute, which isn't
in the film.
But and and and then.
He's like a mythical guy.
I swear to you guys.
It's mythical.
It's like Forrest Gump.
It's like Zeelig.
It's like the guy has literally done everything.
Yeah, he's and so yeah, I just felt like him alone as a character study.
I don't know if you you sort of like character study movies or documentaries,
you know, just a fat just him alone.
I knew would be kind of fascinating.
And then on top of that, you've got this whole prophecy.
You've gotten, you know, indigenous, you know,
going into this sort of indigenous world that, you know, most people have no
idea.
Yeah.
About, you know, and learning about, you know, their wisdom and connection and
all that.
And then having this guy kind of fulfilled this prophecy.
It's just like the strangest.
Yeah.
Story.
And you kind of followed him around more so kind of like fact check.
Yeah, which I could pick up on towards the middle, towards the end of the doc
was
pissing the guy off when you were fact checking him.
And he was just like, well, you don't believe me, dude.
You don't believe me?
I'm the chosen one to save the world.
So, yeah, I don't want to give it too much away, but it was do the documentary
is fantastic.
So, so how does that work?
Like when you want to do a documentary, you just, I guess you just got a hot
tip somehow.
And then you got to go like, you just follow the guy around.
Like, what was it like?
I mean, I guess you weren't with him all day, every day.
When I, when I see a documentary, for some reason, I imagined you're just like
living,
eating and sleeping in the same quarters with the guy.
I was asleep with the guy.
You're sleeping in the same quarters with the guy.
But it's like, you're just kind of popping in, recording, popping out, you know,
going back and forth.
What is that like after a certain time?
Do you guys become like super close or is it just kind of like all biz?
Yeah.
Well, everyone is different.
I mean, this one, I actually really did sleep at his house twice, which was
pretty wild.
I mean, his house, he's got, he's got two places, one in Moraga, California and
one in New Mexico.
And they're both kind of really wild.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, I mean, in the, in this instance, you know, it was kind of on and
off and, and, you know,
you, you, you just, you know, I, I was kind of documenting him and following
him,
but it was, it was really kind of on and on and off, you know?
So I would shoot with him for, for a few days and then, and then like, you know,
maybe a couple of months would pass.
I would sort of shape the story a little bit more than know what,
you know, something else is coming up.
Then I would go and, and shoot that, you know, until I kind of, you know,
was trying to wrap it all up and say, where is this going?
When is this going to end?
You know, that was actually the most.
How long, and you filmed for how long you said?
Yeah, about three years, you know, on and off.
Dang.
So yeah, that's gotta be nerve wracking, especially if you're filming, filming,
filming,
and you're like, all right, come on, go meet these guys.
Go do the stuff.
Yeah.
How did you handle kind of like trying to keep him on a timeline with that?
Well, I would constantly ask like, where, where is this happening?
What's happening next?
Is the prophecy, you know, going to be fulfilled?
Like, you know, in our culture, you know, we're constantly, you know, we want
results.
You know, we want, and plus, like, I don't want to be shooting this for like 10
years.
Like I've got other things to do and whatever.
So yeah, I would be, you know, putting a little bit of pressure on him about
where is this going?
And that was kind of the most nerve wracking part of this particular
documentary that I made,
was just that it was so unknown where this was going.
And I had no, I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you get
involved in something,
you have just no idea where it's going.
And you think you're crazy.
Why am I doing this?
I couldn't even.
Like a marriage or something like a marriage?
Like you were saying, it's so hard to pitch.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I have a little idea.
No, a project like that would be, it would drive me insane to not know.
I was literally on the verge of insanity, like.
Yeah, especially because I, you know, I don't know if you've staked it yourself
or you have financial backers, you're doing this and it sounds awesome.
And you're like, fuck, dude, come on.
Well, this one, I was kind of on my own because as you said earlier, you know,
pitching this story to like Netflix and HBO and places like that.
I mean, it's just so far out and so weird.
They're not making this kind of stuff, you know.
I haven't seen anything.
Yeah, I haven't seen anything like that before.
And so I even going to investors, you know, they're just look at me
like, what the hell are you talking about?
This is too weird.
You're crazy.
And so I, I was kind of on my own at a certain point
when I decided to commit to this, you know,
I realized that I was kind of going to be on my own here.
So that, that put a lot of even more pressure on the financial.
Also, like one of my biggest fears is like wasting my time, you know?
Yeah.
If you spend three years of life, like, what have you been doing?
You know, you talk to your friends and family, like, well, what are you making
now?
A tough one to explain.
I'm just like, yeah, this guy, he's in the middle of a prophecy.
They think they're like, dude, dude, you're, you're out of your mind.
You got to go see somebody, you know?
And so it's been, it's been hard to kind of, but I did see a vision, you know,
about this film, no matter how crazy it was, I knew that somehow I could weave
all these really
interesting things together into something really meaningful and funny and
really bizarre.
It's like a trip because this whole thing's like just going into like a
psychedelic kind of weird
trip, but that also, I think, you know, gives you a lot to think about
afterwards.
Yeah.
And especially, yeah.
And again, it kind of does too.
And I'm, I'm actually reading a book right now, speaking of the Amazon about
the first
conquistadors who like sailed or like went down, I guess, in a canoe or
whatever,
navigated the entire Amazon 