Hairpiece Police (w/ Joe Rogan)
Literally! With Rob Lowe- 1,243 views
- 11 Feb 2021
In which Rob and comedian/podcaster Joe Rogan talk about sensory deprivation tanks, working with the late, great Phil Hartman, the art of happiness, sugar addiction, and National Carnivore Month. Plus: Joe tells Rob exactly how to get “Marvel jacked."
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Joe, Rob, somebody, how is the great state of Texas treating you? It's great, man. I'm enjoying it very much so. The new studio I love. But am I picking up on chatter that there are some that think you that you they don't like your new architectural taste, or am I just making this up? You know, there is no way that you can make everyone happy. It is impossible.
And if you do say no, wait, wait, you.
No, I'm telling you, this is what I've learned. I'm Rob Lowe. Welcome to literally with me. All right, we got the king on the king all hail the king of podcasting, the mighty Joe Rogan. I mean, Joe Rogan strides like a colossus. Over the world of podcasting and a show is weird and funny and interesting and controversial and in-depth and just he's revolutionized what this medium can be and I am going to learn a lot from him and have learned a lot from him.
And we are going to have a great talk.
And he doesn't do many podcasts out there. So this is this is a really big deal to have him.
And I hope you like it as much as I liked talking to him. Fasten your seat.
The decision to move here from let's move here to move the entire crew and put a studio and have it on the air all happened inside of six weeks. So it was really it was very quick. So that's that's what we decided to make happen in six weeks. And I'm eventually going to get out of that spot and move to another spot. And I'm actually looking at doing something like that right now.
What what prompted the six week turnaround? Well, I just decided I had enough of California. Are you so are you peeing right now? No, no. I'm pouring water into a container to make coffee.
So I just I just check. I don't. You never know. Well, I would tell you people, but you're going to hear the coffee machine any second now. The decision was just I wanted to get out of here for a while and I took my family to to Austin a couple of times. And they really liked it. And the girls were into my daughters were into it and they were into it. I was like, well, come on, let's give you a shot.
The worst thing that happens, we hate it. We come back to L.A., but they love it. And so we're here.
How hot is it like compared to Mars?
It's not dude, it's not that bad. It really is not that bad. And I don't mind heat. I've always liked hot weather. So the August weather was no big deal. But, you know, just like a hundred, sometimes it's ninety. But right now it's like in the 80s it's gentle. It's like eighty one eighty two yesterday. Seventy five. It's not bad. That's great. But it's so pretty. It's I love it here.
Do you, do you water ski or wakeboard or any of that stuff. I'm doing it now. I haven't actually begun but we got a boat so we're going to do all that jazz.
The thing that everybody loves now is like when I, when I grew up on the lake, it was like you had you're like the rich cool kids had the ski NorTech boat and like we were always on the lookout for the hot girls in the skin or cheek. And then you would and people who could get up on one ski were bad asses. If you could barefoot then you are really a bad ass. And then now no one slalom skiers and everybody does the thing.
Were they overweight one side of the boat to create a big wake and they surfeit of each. Have you tried that?
Yeah, I haven't tried any of those things, but I do watch them all the time. I see them and I will participate. But it's I think it's I mean, I'm not in no way want to jinx you, obviously, because you're my friend and I want you to live for a thousand years.
But but you definitely look at and you go there's an ACL injury waiting to happen there for sure, is there?
I think I think people get a lot of ACL injuries wakeboarding.
I would I mean, I would be the idiot who got it. That would be me. I've had two of those already. I know you how beat up is your body?
Really, it's not bad considering what I've done to it. It's pretty good. But I've had three knee surgeries. I've had two ACL reconstructions, one in each knee, and I had my meniscus go to my left knee as well. But that said, everything works pretty damn good.
This is, you know, the difference between Joe and I like like if there was a question of like who was more of a bad ass, me or Joe Rogan. Joe, in one in one quick sentence, tell me how you blew out your knee and then we'll compare it to how I did and we'll see who's more of a bad ass.
I blew out my left knee kickboxing in my right knee doing jujitsu.
I blew out my knee in the Footloose dance auditions. That's awesome. So I think there's a reason why you are you could host a show called The Man Show.
There's nothing wrong with dancing. No, there isn't any different.
I just want to dance. I just wanted to dance. I just wasn't wrong with it when they took me out on a stretcher.
I had to do a floor slide at the end of the at the at the end of the audition. I think it was to a Styx song. And I mean, I like I looked over and we all did it at once, it wasn't like Flashdance wherever, but there's a panel of judges and there's one person up there like, oh, like all all of the actors kind of did it in unison. I, I don't know. I think I might have looked over at Val Kilmer, you know, sliding heroically to the finish, but.
It didn't work out for me in that movie. No, he didn't get it either. He couldn't dance with the shit either, clearly.
I literally ran into him surfing about three years ago in Malibu and surfing martial arts is your obsession surfing as is mine. And I was taking off on a wave and ran over.
The sky in the water and it was about and oh, wow, yeah, he is he's he's a sweetheart. So I am fascinated because, you know, when you and I met people, people always just assume that all famous people know each other. Right. And then. And elsewhere. Yeah, it's weird.
Oh, hey, are you in the famous club? Me too. When did you get your card?
We'd never we'd never met.
And we hit it off like a house afire. And then I was looking over your research. And I think it's because a lot of our the way we grew up is really, really similar. I looked at you, my my my folks divorced when I was five. Your your folks divorced when you were five. Then you immediately moved from one part of the country to another part of the country that could not be more different. Yeah.
And, you know, knowing what you want to do it at an early age, like your passion being, you know, starting with Taekwando and taking it all the way to where you are now with all mixed martial arts stuff and me always wanting to be an actor, I think I think that might be be part of it. Right.
Well, you're interested in things. You're interested in a lot of things. And like when we went shooting guns together, like you're you're a guy who likes to, like, learn the details of things. You're very you're obviously detail oriented. And I saw when that guy was coaching you and they were showing you how to do things like you're a good learner, like you, you you get fascinated by things. I think we have that in common. You know, whether you're talking about wakeboarding or any of the things that you're interested in, you can get interested in things and people that are curious, they often have really good conversations.
And I think that's one of the reasons why you and I hit it off so well.
Well, yeah, me too. I was fun, by the way, that that range we shot at and you're good. You're fast.
You're you were fast. We were also smooth. And, you know, they say smooth is fast. Right?
Well, I've done I've done it at that place probably a couple of dozen times now. And it's really that's like we're the change for John Wick and Halle Berry TransFair. And it's just a really great place. That guy can't Butler's No. Multiple time world champion shooter. So he just knows perfect technique to do everything correctly. And so you don't develop any bad habits. And it's really fun. I mean, it's just such a polarizing subject, guns.
But yeah, you know, if you could take out the violence aspect of it and think of it as a task, as a difficult thing to learn, it's really fun to do as a as a discipline like like like anything else.
You know, it's yes, it's it's a very technical discipline and it feels really good to be proficient at it.
Yeah. Yeah. And and it's funny I find that. I'm sure there are people that can be trained to be a good shot, but I, I. Was just a natural good shot from the first time I ever started shooting. Just one of those weird things, but it's very detail oriented, your person pays attention to what you're doing. I think if you follow all the instructions and you look down the site correctly and you don't flinch and you know all those things, it's like I was saying, it's just it's I think learning things, learning anything.
I mean, I've never played a musical instrument, but I'm sure it applies there to learning things that are difficult to do. And as you get better and progress at them, it helps your brain does something good to your brain where it rewards you, like your brain enjoys these new tasks and it likes this new stimuli. And I think it makes your brain better at other things as well. I think the more things that I'm interested in, the more I'm better at the things that I primarily do.
I think you're probably right. My issue is that I've learned to fake do a lot of things.
We talk about that with the guns.
Yeah, like like I fake like my my whole introduction to guns was shooting in movies and TV. And of course you have blanks and they don't make any noise and there's no recoil. So I was trained to fake a recoil, which is not what you want to do. You don't want to fake that when you're out there on the range. I was it's like if you and I got into a fight, I would stunt fight you, which means I'd missed your face purposefully by six inches.
That's a good way to get your ass kicked in the real world.
Yeah, the fake gun thing, I would imagine if you learn how to do it that way, it's probably difficult to unlearn. Was it hard to unlearn, to like to stay still?
Yeah, because really what it was is just not raising the nose, you know, and just just in that that was the one thing I needed to know. But you look, you have so many. I did we talked about this on your show that you have an interest in the sensory deprivation tanks that we talk about that I can't remember.
I don't think we did anything we did know. Did you see the movie Altered States like I did?
Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's what got me into it originally. OK, thank you.
OK, see, I knew we were simpatico. I so for those of you who have never seen the movie Altered States, it's an underrated 80s classic that stars William Hurt in the prime of his movie stardom. Right. It's post Body Heat. He's gorgeous. He's always been a great actor and is and basically, I don't even know how you would. Take a crack at the logline, please. Well, it's based on a real man, the real man is John Lilly, and John Lilly was a scientist who really got heavily into psychedelic drugs and he created the sensory deprivation tank.
And Lilly is also a pioneer in interspecies communication. He did a lot.
So this is where it gets very good. This is where it gets very good. Continue.
Lilly was a fascinating human being, but he was like a legit research scientist who was trying to figure out how to separate the mind from the body. He was trying to figure out how to get the influence of the body of the sensory input that comes from standing or sitting or even lying down, just just being aware of your body and just get straight to the mind. And he experimented with drugs to do that. And ultimately, he discovered this idea of floating and the original way he did it used like scuba gear.
So he had like a scuba headset and he would he didn't have salt in the tank. He would just be standing upright and like the scuba headset was like suspending him in the water. So it was just like like a harness that kind of strapped him there. And after a while, he forgot that the harness was there and he could relax and but he didn't like that because you could still feel the tank. You could still feel the the the headgear.
So he devised a method of just filling this tank up with salt water. So the water was filled with a thousand pounds of salt and he heated it to the same temperature as the surface of your skin. And if you lie in that because it's so salty and dense, you float and because it's the same temperature as the surface of your skin, you don't feel the water. It just really does feel like you're flying. And so then he figured out that if you can seal off the sound and make it completely silent, and he had really weird systems rigged up where he could stay in there for days, he pooped in there and peed in there.
And he had like like a whole sewage thing that cleaned everything out for him. Really bizarre stuff. But that's where the sensory deprivation tank was invented because he wanted to figure out how to be completely free of any sensory input from the body.
OK, there's so much to unpack.
First of all, I think I clearly was in one of his actual personal tanks when I did it, really? Because I got that he clearly was pooping in because I got the ear infection of a lifetime.
I mean, my whole memory of the sensory deprivation tank was the most virulent ear infection a human being has ever had. And it was the first day of shooting on a movie I did called Class. The night before, Andrew McCarthy and I were probably stoned and we decided we're big altered states fans and somehow we got it in our heads to look in the classifieds in the Chicago Sun-Times and see if there was a tank anywhere nearby. And we found one.
And it was on the the south side of Chicago, which if you are a music fan, you know, it is the baddest part of town where Leroy Brown lived.
It's really why us. So Leroy Brown was running a basement sensory deprivation operation. And McCarthy and I got in like mutual tanks, it was it was brutal, but I was I was obsessed with it. And have you done it? I think that might have been one of the earliest iterations. Have you done it more recently where we've where people aren't pooping in it? Have you done a good one?
Yeah, I have my own. What? I have my own tank. Yeah. I come on at the studio. I wish we talked about it. I would have shown to. Yeah. At the studio there's a sensory deprivation tank, the studio in L.A. and now have it installed in my house out here in Texas.
OK, I have a couple of many questions. First of all, is it worth me doing it? Yes, even though I'm sober, yeah. Oh, yeah. You don't have yes. It's just great for relaxing. It's really great after a workout. It's really great to just to relax your muscles. It's fantastic for recovery. A lot of like professional athletes use it just for recovery.
One of the things we neglected to tell the listeners about the movie that we're obsessed with is that he turns into an ape. Yes. Inside the sensory deprivation tank. At one point, William hurt us.
Well, that is that's the part of the movie that's based on Lily, because Lily got really obsessed with drugs. And what was that movie was supposed to be about was like a version of ayahuasca, which is a shamanic brew that the people in the Amazon created. Right. So the idea was sort of loosely based on Lily, who is this serious research scientist who gets really obsessed with drugs. And in the the movie he takes this brew. But with Lily, Lily was really actually into ketamine.
He was really into cat tranquilizers. And he would he would shoot himself up with ketamine and then get into the tank. And he was so out there and so, so bizarre in the way he would act and behave afterwards. That's in many people's eyes. What inspired that that movie. But clearly, it was inspired by Lily because in the movie, William Hurt sort of creates the tank using the tank and he uses various iterations of the tank to actually go through the whole evolution of the tank.
In the movie. In the movie, it starts up he's in the tank with the helmet on and then eventually he's in the tank where he's lying down. And then he becomes the monkey.
He becomes a monkey. It's the best. Yeah, I remember that. I remember it. It's awesome.
I think I saw it with Charlie Sheen at the National Theater in Westwood. And of course, you could only imagine me and Charlie Sheen in the 80s watching a guy on drugs in a tank become a monkey. And we were like, yes, this is this is absolutely what I want to do.
Charlie might have never recovered.
That might be the answer to all the Earth's problems. I don't understand. So is there a whole thing now where there are lights inside of it? If you have you heard about this?
Yeah, some people are into that. There's lights and there's actually there's a guy in Venice, his name is Crash and he created his name's Craig, but everyone calls him Crash. And he created like the most advanced version of the tank. And this place is called the Float Lab. It's the best sensory deprivation tank company in the world. And he's in Venice and he has a place in Westwood as well. And he also developed a screen where you can it was like the lowest light emitting screen ever.
And his concept was because there's no distractions while you're inside the cage. He wanted to show people like instructions from in there and he felt like you could learn much quicker. And he was really obsessed with this. I don't know where he's at with it right now. I haven't talked to him in a couple of years, but he created my tank, the tank that I have in L.A.. Yeah. So people are into lights. They're in the music.
There's a lot of weird speakers set up, so people put in there. But for me, I just like silence and darkness. That's what I like. I just lie in the darkness and the silence and I work on breathing exercises and it to me, it recharges me. And the most amazing way. It's it's awesome. I love it.
See, I know with me, I just know the way my life works that I would get in there and all of a sudden there I would just hear a leaf blower.
Just IBM and IBM have like, fuck really now no here would put put earplugs in.
First of all, that also prevents ear infections. And then once you're underwater, half your head will be underwater and you're not going to hear anything you really want. I mean, I've set up alarm clocks next to it to remind myself, like, in fact, I was late to the gun range once because I thought I was in there for an hour and I wound up being in there for almost two hours.
That's do you fall asleep now? You just get lost in the trance and these breathing exercises. And I set the alarm clock, but I couldn't hear the alarm through the walls of the tank, the crash tanks, the float that you makes these really thick, heavily insulated tanks that they block out all kinds of sound. And it's just they're amazing. They're really well insulated tubes to retain the perfect level of heat. Everything's digitally controlled. So he sets it to ninety four degrees and it just stays there.
It's such a it's I need to do it again without Andrew McCarthy distracting me.
Fucking Andrew McCarthy man. He ruined everything for you.
Ruin the movie. Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
Hold that thought. We'll be right back. See, I want to get to the point in my podcast where I can can have people on like that, like like people like who invented a sensory deprivation tank. And just that's what's important about it has always been so fun about your show, is how how quickly did you pivot into being able to have people on that you just were interested in that. The public would not know when they're looking at the menu of what episodes to download.
Well, luckily, when I first started, no one was listening, like literally no one. Right? So I can get away with all kinds of stuff because no one cared. Right. Like it was it wasn't like now. Now the expectation are already there that I'm going to have a bunch of weirdos. So it's no problem. Right. But back then it was you know, people thought that podcasts were for idiots. I was like, what are you doing?
Why are you wasting your time? It wasn't a serious thing at all. Nobody took it seriously. My professional career never revolved around the podcast. It was just something I did when I wasn't doing standup or if I wasn't doing the UFC commentary, I was just doing that for fun. And so if I had a chance to talk to someone like a John Lilly or Graham Hancock or these interesting, strange people, I love Graham Hancock.
I love them to love, love, love when he's on a fascinating human being. He really is. And his obsession with ancient civilizations and and the just the history of humanity, it's amazing. But so I had him on he was actually one of my earlier guests, like really early on. He and I corresponded through email and became friends. And it's just back then, it didn't like no one. No one cared what I was doing. So I could have on a comedian in the next day, I could have on a scientist, and the next day I could have on a fighter.
No one cared. So it was easy to just do whatever I wanted to, because if you had to try to do that today, like if there was no such thing as a podcast and someone poured a bunch of money into it, built a studio and had all this infrastructure and a bunch of producers and executives, there's not a chance in hell they would have let me do what I did. They would still would have told me, no, no one wants to hear that.
Which you need to do is interview famous people or interview some singers or, you know, it would they would want something that would guarantee eyeballs. Yeah.
And they were here and they wouldn't they wouldn't be wrong because it took it took I mean, your show was really successful, right. In that sort of first year. But the explosion to where it is now has taken a bit. But I mean, yeah, it took forever.
It took forever. It wasn't really successful at all in the beginning. I mean, for the first few years, I would get like a thousand a couple thousand people would listen. It was nothing that was. So they would be right. They would have been right. It wouldn't a bit. But nobody was listening to podcasts back then. And it was certainly not something I thought of as a career. It was really just for fun. I didn't make any money for the first five years.
It was just fun. We just I just did it because it was an opportunity for me to talk to my friends and talk to interesting people.
I'm I'm having a similar with this is I I'm loving doing this more than I ever thought I ever would. And I thought it would be really fun or I wouldn't have done it. But it's so fun. And I have to say, I don't know. But for you.
But when I run into people out in the world who are like, hey, I listen to the such and such as your guest in the podcast, this and the podcast, we immediately have a conversation that is way different than somebody saying, Hey, I love you and Wayne's World or Parks and Rec.
It's a whole different phenomenon.
It's my favorite. It really is. And when you did my show, I knew you would be really good at it. You could tell right away you're such an easy conversationalist and you could tell that you enjoyed talking to people. And that's really all it is. And you enjoyed talking to people. And guess what? People enjoy listening to people who enjoy talking to people talk. That's really is really that simple. It's like it's not rocket science.
So I was going to ask you what the secret sauce is. That sounds like it's. You've got it. You've already got it.
You know, so you could tell us from your lips to God's ears, kid, this is curiosity and being a good conversationalist. That's all it is like being curious and knowing how to listen and how to do it, just just how to talk to people. And that's kind of cool. I mean, we know, you know, both of us have done some acting. We know what it's like with some actors. Some actors just they don't talk to you.
They wait for you to stop talking so they can talk and then they talk about you. And yes, that's not something that people like to hear. But you're not like that at all. And that's why I thought you would be really good at this. Well, thank you.
I another another thing is I'm not a. I'm very obsessed with how people communicate, like I'm really obsessive with words with like I just am obsessed and very specific and it annoys my my family. But I've diagnosed this thing with with people that's going on right now. And maybe it's because so many people have grown up texting and the art of conversation is is withering on the vine as we speak. But I've diagnosed a new way of speaking is called second askers.
And there are people who ask you a question. And as you're answering, they ask the same question again, but in a different way. So I'm going to show you what I mean right now is a play along with a little improv. I'm going to ask you some questions. You just keep answering and I will be a second ask her. OK, so, Joe, how do you like Austin Hajo? How do you like Austin? I love it here.
It's great, isn't it? Because Texas is great, right? Texas is great. Yeah, because that lakes there and it's really warm.
Right. It's very warm. Yeah. Do you do swimming in it.
Because I love swimming. Swimming. You're swimming. I know. How did your kids swimming. Swimming in it.
Do they know how to swim to where are you right now. Like the second askers drive me insane and and just everybody out there listening.
Like ten years ago it was uptalk where everybody talk like this.
Yes. And I don't I don't know if I'm really going to be able to make it. I don't really know if I'm going to like this podcast. So so 10, 10 years ago, it was up talkers and now it's second askers, so just they would be bad podcasters, do you think they would be the worst?
Yeah, the uptalk is a tech thing. All those tech dorks, like if you go to Silicon Valley, anybody who works for Google or Apple, they automatically talk like that. It's almost like that's the only way they allow them to communicate. And so that's like a strange signal. But you're letting everybody know that you're in the tech clan. You know what I mean?
I had forgotten that you were on Newsradio with my one of my favorite people, the late, great Phil Hartman.
Yeah, he was awesome. Amazing guy. I love that dude.
Phil Hartman was like Lou Gehrig on Saturday Night Live. He was like the Iron Man, the man who could play everything. What was he like? What was he like on news radio?
He's just a super professional, like a great person and really fun to be around, like always smiling and laughing. He was just a just an interesting guy, but really into things, too, like why we were doing news radio. He got into aviation and he got a pilot's license. In fact, I bought a house out in the West Valley because he like he was telling me, like before you buy a place, let me take you up on my plane and I'll show you, like all these spots out in the West Valley you probably don't even know about.
And I was like, oh, OK. Wow. So he took me up on his plane and yeah, he got like really into air travel and like in-between takes of the television show, he would go to his room and he would be working on taking his aviation exam. This is a really smart, super professional, like he made me feel like such a slob because he had, like, tabs for his script for each scene that he was in and they were colored differently and he was awesome.
I miss that guy so much. It was such a bummer, man. Oh, that's one of the most horrible Hollywood stories, I mean, for the people listening are familiar.
It was I mean, it's almost impossible to say he was killed because his wife killed him and then killed herself, just brutally killed herself with the kids in the house.
Yes, she killed herself with the kids. And the way I found out about this is through my friend who was a cop. It was it was a real bummer, man. I was it was two weeks after the murder and I hadn't I hadn't done stand up. I couldn't I just couldn't do it. And then I was like, you know what? Let me just I got to get out of the house. I can't just stay home. Let me just go to the store and I'm on my way to the store and I stop at the gas station and I run to a buddy of mine who's a cop and he's like, how are you holding up?
And I'm like, I'm good. I did do. And he goes, man goes, You know, we were at the house. You were at the house. And he goes, yeah. He goes, One of my partners broke in the door because she was in the bathroom after she shot Phil. She was in the bathroom with the kids with a gun. No. So they broke down the door to rescue the kids from her because oftentimes when the mother kills herself, she'll also kill her children.
Right. And so she had just killed Phil and they were trying to talk her into getting out of the house. They knew that she had killed Phil and the cops broke down the door and then the kids ran away from their mother. And when the kids ran away from their mother, she blew her brains out. So I hear this from my friend, and then I drive to the Comedy Store and fucking bomb. I mean, like I've never bombed before, like I was so sad while I was on stage, nothing that came out of my mouth was remotely funny.
And I should have just not did it. But I had already committed to being on stage. I had a spot at the Comedy Store to give you a 10 o'clock spot or whatever the spot is. You do your spot, you're a professional. Mizzi expected you to do your spot. And so I. I just I'll never forget that. I never forget talking to him while I'm pumping gas or my spirits sank through the bottom of my shoes listening to that story.
I've never forgot it. I've never forgot the thought of that lady being in the bathroom with her kids and a gun and then the cops breaking down the door and the children running away from their mother and then hearing the gunshot. The crazy, crazy. It's so, so shocking, and he was one of the so terrible.
And, you know, they got the family got a they won a case. They got some sort of restitution from Zoloft. Yes. Because she was on Zoloft. And Zoloft is one of those drugs, apparently with some people.
If you mix it with narcotics like she was on Zoloft and she was doing cocaine, it literally makes people psychotic. And it's just a horrific side effect of that antidepressant.
Well, when mixed with coke. Yeah, pteropod just. Yeah, where are you on on on anti-depressants and as far as antidepressants and SSRI? I think they certainly have their place. I have friends that it saved their life. I was one of my best friends. He was very suicidal and he got on antidepressants. Now, here's a weird one. It turns out he was having a reaction to taking Propecia to stop his hair loss. Oh, wait, wait, wait a little bit.
A little Propecia hair loss. Very important subject. Subject for Rob Lowe. What what was going on?
Well, Propecia, what it does is it blocks your body's production of DHT. It's dye, hydro testosterone. And what that is, is that's the cause of hair loss. It's a testosterone derivative that causes hair loss. So Propecia, which was originally Proscar, it was a prostate enlargement drug for guys who have enlarged prostate. And while they were giving to these guys, they realized these guys were actually growing hair back.
And so then they stopped using it for that and started using it for hair loss. But for some people, what it does is it adversely affects you in a way that you get severely depressed and even suicidal. And again, it's one of those some people I took Propecia before I gave up and shaved my head. And it didn't do that for me. It didn't it didn't do that for me at all. But it did just make me kind of listless and tired.
And it just when I got off of that, I had much more much more energy. And it was like it was stunning. And I only got off really because my prescription ran out. I was planning on upping my prescription again, but I had to go to the doctor and I had been off of it for a couple of weeks and I got energy like crazy. And my bonus were out of control. And I was like, what is going on here?
And then I realized, like, oh, it's the. And then I got back on it again. And the same feeling, listlessness and my boners were not nearly as excited. And then I realized, like, oh, I'm probably doing something bad to my body with this stuff. And then eventually I tapped out to shave my head, but my friend was very depressed, like suicidal. And he there was something wrong. And he eventually got off of Propecia.
He got on SSRI, leveled himself out, became much happier, and then got off Propecia and realized that that was probably what was causing it for him.
When was the day when you raise the white flag and said, I'm going, I'm Shavon, I'm going bad ass bald guy, I'm done?
Well, it wasn't an easy one. I mean, I had hair transplants. I did the whole thing. I tried forever. I used minoxidil. I did. I wish I just shaved my head from the job. But I had been, you know, like when I got on news radio, I couldn't believe I was on TV. I was like, oh, my God, I'm on a television show. Like, I'm making money. Like I didn't want it to go away.
I was worried that I was going to lose. My career was very fragile. Right. You know, it's like one of eight on a sitcom. And I was like, God, like, I would love for this to be a permanent thing, because what I was really hoping for was to develop an audience that would come see me in comedy clubs. And back then in the 90s, the best way to do that as a comic was to have a sitcom.
Right. So here I am. I mean, I have this incredible break on the sitcom with Phil Hartman and Dave Foley and Andy Dick and Maura Tierney and Kathy Alexander and Stephen Root and Vicky Lewis. And I'm like, this is amazing. How am I so fucking lucky? I'm here. I'm like, I got to keep this rolling. I got to do. And my hair was falling out. I was like, shit, I do it, I'll do anything.
I'll take this, I'll do that. And so I got a I got three hair transplant and I have this big smile on the back of my head, this long scar where they took I have a joke about it where it's like having a hair transplant is like taking people who are really healthy and moving them to a neighborhood where everyone's dying because they take their they take the hair out of the back of your head where it never falls out. And they put it at the top of your head where everything's falling out.
Even even after they put that hair in, the other hair falls out. So now you have just like just a few hairs that are left. And it got to the point where even if I would get a nice hair cut, my hair would still look like shit, like, OK, I'm just going to shave my head. And I would have done it earlier if it wasn't for the scar on the back of my head. But then I decided that scar would serve as like a public service announcement to other guys, like don't just shave your fucking head, just throw it, submit early.
So, yeah, well, I'm happy. I even if I had hair today, I would most likely keep my head shaved because it's so easy. It's just I just every couple of days I just whack it was buzzer's and I got a good shaped head. So some people have weird. They have, like, weird flat area in the back of their head. You don't have to take one of those Peruvian ancient alien skull heads. That's not good.
Exactly. Yeah, I got lucky. I have a good Roundhead, but I'm very happy that I did it. It was a huge weight off my back because I was always wondering, like, when are they going to cure baldness? What are they going to have something that doesn't mess your body up or does it require surgery that just fixes it? But they still haven't figured that out, which is kind of amazing. I yeah, I it's it's insane who do you I'm obsessed with hairpieces.
I'm obsessed. That's hair. I just m I'm obsessed with. All of it, and I always try to identify, like, um, I think he's a secret hairpiece wearer. Yeah, like peacefully. Peacefully. Hello, everybody.
I got to check your wig line.
Be right back after this. I have a question for you, been married now, how many years I met your wife? She's lovely, but very sweet. And by the way, she seems like a bad ass. She was training at the studio and she was getting at it.
Yeah. So you get to ask her, do you guys have a hall pass?
What's your what's your position? No, no. I don't like the Jada Pinkett thing. No, no. I think if you open up the door to that, like you're going to be doomed. Don't you think? Oh, I do, I'm listening. Moderation has never been in my wheelhouse. So, I mean, what, you know, did you see the Jada Pinkett Smith thing?
You saw that thing that was bizarre beyond belief.
I feel so strange. I was like, guys, just tap out. Don't don't do this podcast. Just quit. Just whatever you do and just stop. Just cut it out.
But it got them eyeballs or ear holes or whatever it would be like you're looking for your voice.
Yeah, well, there's was visual as well. That's true.
That was actually the most disturbing part of it. Yeah.
Was it's uncomfortable because, you know, when, when the actor, famous actors, you've seen them your whole lives and great actors like Will Smith, you've sort of you've seen every face they can make.
They have no faces. They have no faces they can make that you haven't seen.
That's true.
So as that as he starts unveiling his various faces during the conversation, you are like, oh, yeah, yeah.
He didn't look like he was having fun. It's amazing that they decided to do that. I wish I was his friend. I would have pulled him aside and go, hey, hey, hey, no fucking way. I would have been like, dude, let them talk. Just let everybody talk. Just stay off line for a couple of weeks. No way, man. You're not to do this. Don't do that because there's like a certain he couldn't help express through his eyes and his face, you know, could be uncomfortable.
Feelings that were going through his head in that moment and the fact that they decided to do that publicly, but, hey, you know, that's what they want to do. Maybe they're different. Maybe they feel like this way they can tell their version of it and just get it out there. I don't know.
I just keep coming back to if he wasn't such a good actor and wasn't so famous and we hadn't seen his faces, maybe we wouldn't have known how painful it was. You know, it's like I ran into Marlon Brando in in a 7-Eleven, of all places once, and he weighed like 300 pounds and was pushing a shopping cart. And my wife was like, are you Mr. Brando? Are you ever going to act again? And he said, no, probably not.
And he said, why is this?
I've run out of places and well, that's heavy. He's a guy I wish I'd met. God damn. He would have been an amazing podcast guest. Marlon Brando. Holy shit. Holy shit.
Have you seen the great Larry King quiz on Larry King? And he's going berserk about the then president of of MGM, about some movie that he didn't release? Well, I mean, he his interviews were pretty extraordinary. I, I never met him, but there was a really fancy I think the only five star restaurant in L.A. for years was on La Cienega. I can't remember the name of it, but it was one of those French restaurants where you can only go to like once a year because it took five hours to eat dinner.
I mean, and just one of the it was an ordeal, but the food was super, super French and high, high. And I just remember halfway through my meal behind me hearing this voice and this is what the voice said.
What exactly is this taste I'm experiencing? Is it some sort of Neal?
And you just go, Oh, you like that? I didn't even need to turn around. I was like, very fucking nice. But I did turn around.
And he was sitting there in a memo with with five Haitian tourists with like the old Instamatic cameras on the table was the weird while he was a trip, I almost think like to be that good when no one else was like, if you go back and watch On the Waterfront, he was so ahead of the craft.
Yes. You know, and he was just so authentic back when people were still kind of like being weirdly actory, like weirdly actory was expected of you. You know, if you if you watch a lot of the films from that era, like there's a style of acting that was I guess it emanated from stage acting where you're projecting. Yeah. And you can't quite be real. You have to kind of be like a little louder than you would be real and project more than you would be real, a little bigger so that the people in the back of the room could read it.
But he he had abandoned all that and he had found this very authentic way of behaving like in On the Waterfront, that famous scene where he's talking about his manager selling him down the river, that he could have been a contender. That's a fucking amazing scene, man. I think to be that good when no one else is, whether it's Brando or Lenny Bruce or any of these like really Richard Pryor. And he's real legitimate pioneers. You got to be out of your fucking mind.
I mean, I really I really think if you're not, you become out of your mind in your pursuit of excellence. There's something about it. It's just those those guys, the great ones are almost always crazy. Like Daniel Day Lewis. The guy decides to make shoes. Yeah. He's going to make shoes. The fucking cobbler. What's he doing? Like, what do you do? You're one of the greatest actors the world's ever known. You see, a man like there will be blood and then the next thing you know, the guy's sewing.
Well, just you've got to be crazy. There's something wrong with those guys. Maybe not wrong. I mean, that's just the way they interface with the world is just very different, which is why they're so fantastic in the first place. Well, they have.
The other thing is they have a tremendous case of the Phuket's. Yes. Like, yep, tremendous. They have stage four. Fuck it. It's incurable.
Fuck and brand move to a fucking island.
Oh, he used to come when he was doing A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. He would routinely come downstage center in the middle of the show, turn his back on the audience. Which you never did ever under any circumstances, but his thing was like, I'm sorry, in what reality is there an entire wall of this apartment? That I don't turn my back on from time to time. Right. And it was revolutionary. It was like it was like electrifying audiences could not believe it.
Yeah.
And it's that kind of of he didn't get he didn't give a fuck what the audience thought he was going to do, what was real.
We knew what was right to do. He knew what he was doing. And even if they didn't understand it, he knew it enough. And he was so immersed in the idea of portraying a character that he knew the right way to do it. I think that's the case with musicians and all kinds of artists and just the people that are just really, really, really good. There's there's a certain kind of madness that comes along with that for the ride.
And I don't I don't know of any examples of someone who's truly great, who isn't just a little fucking crazy.
Well, and then the other thing becomes when you get to the point where you want to have a real life and how do you how do you reconcile? All of the madness, the varying levels of it, if you have it with talent and then just wanting to be like a regular functioning, decent citizen, you know, and it's hard for people, it's hard.
It's hard to have both of those things.
I think one of the other I mean, I tell you, I look at I look at people whose talent I really admire. And then I could never even come close to emulating. And I go, I don't want that life, but I want it.
Yeah, there's a value and there's an art to happiness. I think happiness is an art in and of itself. And some people never master that, are they? They put all their eggs in the talent basket and they put all their eggs into the craft of whatever, whatever they're obsessed with. You see it with athletes whose personal lives are just a horrible disaster. You see with musicians, you see all kinds of people, because I think I have this phrase that I've said that I think greatness and madness next door neighbors and they borrow each other's sugar.
I don't I don't think you get great without madness. I don't I don't think you do. And I think some people have given up on greatness just for love and happiness. I think there's an art to that, too. It's underappreciated because you do that at the cost of your family. You do that with your friends. It's very rare that, you know, because it's such such a weird road. And here's an example. Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson, when he was young and when he was the heavyweight champ of the world, was clearly a man obsessed.
He was just a destroyer, without a doubt. One of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time, one of the greatest boxers of all time, but also one of the greatest achievers, like a guy who was thirteen years old. His life was lost. He had nothing going for him, nothing but despair and poverty. And then he gets adopted by this man, Cus D'Amato, who's this legendary boxing trainer. Cus D'Amato takes him and doesn't just take it, but actually hypnotizes.
Cus D'Amato is a psychologist and a hypnotist and and trained him, his mind and his body for one task to be a destroyer. So he goes on to be one of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time. Cusamano Die's Mike Tyson gets lost in fame and celebrity. And you know the story. This is all this time and it eventually retires. After he retires, he becomes a pothead and he starts Tyson rants. And I interviewed him after all this.
And he was this peaceful, sweet guy who didn't even work out. He told me he couldn't work out. I go, you can't. He goes, I don't want to reignite my ego. He goes, I don't even work out. Sometimes I get on a treadmill for a little bit, but that's it. But he just smoked a ton of weed. And so the podcast was great. Me and Mike Tyson just getting blasted. We got high as fuck.
We talked about life. Amazing. Ten months later. Ten months later. He's back on the podcast again, and he's a totally different human because now is training for this Roy Jones Jr. fight. And what had happened was his wife had told him that he was getting fat, so he started getting on the treadmill and seriously working out. So he was right. He knew what was going to happen. He got on. He goes, well, it started off in like 15 minutes.
I would do a treadmill for 15 minutes. And then after a while, I'm doing it for two hours. And then it became obsessed. Then he starts working out hard again. And then someone says, would you fight someone for 30 million dollars? And he goes, Well, I fight goes, wait, hold up.
How much? Thirty thirty million dollars is thirty million dollars. Suck it up. And then next thing you know, he's training like a madman. So when I met him the second time, so the first time he does my podcast, then he comes back on ten months later, he's a different human. I mean, told it, first of all, he weighs 40 pounds less, he shredded, I mean, shredded, like you see every muscle in his forearm.
He's completely obsessed. And he was so high strung and so focused on destroying the scene, the intensity and the dedication that was in him. And but he talked about that on the podcast like that. He gets upset at his family and that it's like he's just obsessed and that he's back to being he even said it. He said the gods of war reignited his ego. We want him to do battle. He did. It was intense, too.
It was so intense that I got this new studio in Austin. And one of the things I was thinking of with this new studio in Austin was making the table more narrow because I had a certain distance between me and the guest in L.A. and I was like, maybe I should shrink that for the Austin studio because the Austin studios a little smaller space. But then we did the interview and the Tyson interview was so intense and so nerve wracking that I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I need space because if I was closer to him, I probably would have been too nervous.
I probably would have fucked up the interview or wouldn't have been as good because he was so ready to go. He was Tyson from like 20 years ago. He's ready to go to war. And it's it's amazing to watch. But I think that that kind of maniacal obsession that made him the heavyweight champ in the world when he was younger probably wrecked havoc on his personal life.
Well, that's what I was going to ask you when you can you look at an athlete and go, oh, yeah, he's on something.
No, you really can't, because some some people are just exceptional. There's there's some guys that are just they just have amazing genetics. But, you know, you can tell change the guys who have amazing genetics. They've had amazing genetics their whole life. But when guys change radically, that's that's really a good sign. But it's hard to tell. There's this people that just look at me because.
So if I were if I got a job as a Marvel guy tomorrow, what would you. What what what what what cocktail. Would you put me on? Well, the first thing you would want to do is get your hormone levels checked from a doctor, find out where you're at natural because you don't want to ruin your body. Right. Then the second thing I would say is you have to change your diet. Like if you really want to get bulked up, like see if you wanted to be Captain America, you really have to change your diet.
You have to cut out all your sugar because you want to lose all the fat. You have to cut out most bread and pasta and just eat leafy green vegetables and meat. That's what I would say. The next thing you have to do is get a real trainer, like a serious person with like a degree in kinesiology and someone who really understands how to train a person correctly and get them to see where your body's at currently, but get you to perform plyometrics, get you to perform deadlifts, get you to perform, you know, kettlebell cleans and presses.
They got to see what your body is capable of doing right now. Then they have to look at your bone structure. Some people have small hands and small bones, and no matter what they do, they're never going to get big. They just have that ectomorph morphic frame. And so then once they've assessed all those things, what they would want to do is raise your testosterone and raise your growth hormone. Now, for a guy like you who's in his 50s, you would have to get on some stuff.
You'd have to get on testosterone replacement therapy. You'd have to get on human growth hormone. They probably want to put you on peptides so you could heal quicker and they would want to make sure that you didn't do anything that was detrimental to the development process of muscle tissue and of growth. So like anything like drinking alcohol or eating cake and sugar, cut all that shit out, you have six months to get jacked.
It's not just like, oh, we just put them on steroids. Like, that's not not good enough. You got to you've got to make sure that you maximize all of the progress and minimize all the the detrimental things that you could be doing to your body. Cut out all the soda, drink nothing but water, cut out all the bullshit.
That's what you well, you hit the hardest thing of all of it is to cut out the sugar. Yeah, it's I mean, dude, I wake up in the middle of the night and a voice tells me, go to the kitchen and and and have lucky charms all the time.
Good Lucky Charms. They're so good. So good.
And you know, my secret weapon, I got these ACON bars which have that. You're just fucking great and they kill the sweet tooth that for the most. But man, I struggle with that. What would are you off of sugar?
For the most part, I allow myself to have sugar sometimes. But here's an example. I went out to dinner with a buddy of mine the other night and at the end of the meal they came by with dessert. I had a big piece of chocolate cake and oh my God, I felt like shit. I had a hard time sleeping and my stomach was killing me. I was farting terribly. It was like my body was like, what did you do, man?
Like, why did you do this this terrible for you?
Because it wasn't like though because it's so addicting. It's sugar is more addicting. That heroin you weren't like instantly back to being a junkie looking for the fix after doing one big piece.
Oh no. I felt like a moron. Really. Really. I just feel like a moron. Yeah. So I don't want to do that stupid. Just for a little bit. A temporary mouth. Pleasure. You don't feel like crap and you get a bad night's sleep. And then, you know, yesterday during the day, like when I went to work out, it's terrible. Just my but my body's like, why did you do that.
It was a huge piece of cake the size of my head, too. It was awful. But for the most part, I avoid that stuff.
I'm perfectly capable of taking out a pint of ice cream in one sitting on my own.
But I hear I mean, what what would you OK, you've got to give me some direction today like you've got this is like we were talking about at the gun range. You tell me what to do. I'm gonna learn it. I need some steps to get off the sugar.
Yeah. You just got to tell yourself the killing you, because it is you know, it's just it's one of the worst things people do to their body. And it affects so many different parts of your body. It affects so many different systems. It affects your hormonal system. It affects your your body's ability to develop growth hormone. It affects your body's ability to regulate insulin. It's just terrible. It's terrible across the board. But it doesn't mean you can't have it sometimes.
In fact, after you're done, working out a little bit of sugar is actually good for you. Like there's a lot of folks who actually advocate, like, having a candy bar or a chocolate bar after a heavy weightlifting session. I don't think there's anything because you're replenishing glycogen. Some folks would prefer fruit, but there's nothing wrong with a little bit of sugar every now and then.
The problem is. Your body's not used to sugar in that form, like when we're drinking a soda or we're eating a piece of cake, like the amount of sugar that's in that food is so unnatural in the real world. Most of the time when in the real world, if you're eating sugar like it's in fruit, like an orange, a delicious orange, it has fiber, it has vitamin C, there's there's water in it. There's a lot of nutrients in it.
And it's actually good for your body to take it. So it's like this trick sugar is in some form and glycogen, it is an essential nutrient. It's actually important to have in your in your diet a little bit of it, but your body's confused as to why it's in this massive quantity, in this crazy form that just doesn't exist in nature. And so you just gorge on it and you almost can't help it. And your your your body's like you never get full.
You want more and more and more because there's no there's no nutritional value to it. So it's almost like your body's eating it, hoping it's going to find some nutritional value in it eventually. Really bad. It's the worst addiction in terms of dietary addictions that we have is sugar. And there's all these studies that confuse like epidemiologic studies that confuse like red meat eating with all these horrible health outcomes. But if you really pay attention to those epidemiologic studies, they never study someone just eating grass fed steak and like broccoli, like, oh, yeah, red meat is bad for you.
Look, this guy eating grass fed steak, one of getting colon cancer. No, it's people that eat meat. And so you said, well, what kind of meat are you eating? Cheeseburgers. Are you eating subway sandwiches? You know, they found out that subway sandwiches, there's so much sugar in the bread and it can't be considered bread. Did you read that?
No, I just I just assumed it was a Danish. I just thought it was an actual Danish.
It just came out like this is like new dietary guidelines. It's subway sandwiches. Bread has so much sugar in it, you cannot consider it bread. I know there's a reason I like that people are so addicted.
So they think it's very exciting. And that's that's the number one health problem in America today is our overconsumption of sugar and simple carbohydrates.
Did you've got you've got to get these Atkins shakes that I that I'm listen, granted, I'm their spokesman. But did I'm telling you when I feel like if I want a milkshake or something, I hit that and there's very little it's like kills my sugar thing because otherwise they're very good.
They're really very good. Then it tastes great. And yeah, you think they have to be bullshit because they taste so good and. Yeah, because otherwise if I don't do that, if I don't like kill it, if I don't kill the craving in its infancy then, then I it could, it could be a Beny, a Ben and Jerry's massacre.
It just gets out of control. You can't have. Yeah I get it man. We can't have. I'm on basically a mostly meat diet and that every January I do January's National Carnivore month. So every January I only meet for the whole month. Wow. I feel great when I do it. It's nuts. I eat mostly like fatty cuts of meat and liver. I eat a lot of liver and bacon and eggs that makes my stomach hurt.
Nothing I'm thinking about that makes my stomach hurt.
It's crazy because you get full really easily. Like we were talking about how you can eat so much ice cream, you never get satisfied because there's not much nutrients in that right. It's called satiety. You don't really reach satiety. It's not satiating. But when you eat like just meat, you get satiated very quickly and your body winds up leveling out and you wind up actually losing a lot of weight. I lost twelve pounds. Wow. Not only did it for a month, I lost twelve pounds.
Did I tell you this, that Stallone gave me a movie and TV body shaping advice once I know what he does, what he said and this was like I was training in the same gym when he was doing Rambo two.
And if you can remember, like no one had transformed their body ever, like, now you have to do it. If you're doing Merval, you got to have it just expected. If you're Paul Rudd and you do Marvel, then you've got to show up looking like Arnold in the movie.
But right when Sly was doing it in Rambo, it was like it took people's breath away and that movie.
And so I was training in the same gym and he was like, this thing was all about the only thing people care about is you.
Your are you. Because that's what people. There's obviously a woman and and then and then years later, I saw him, and he's a very much, for example, full of snow.
And is it because you think about if I just roll my sleeves up long sleeve, should they see what they do and they see everything else?
And it's so funny that you say that because there's a famous photo of him when he's like 70 years old and he's walking down the street and his show, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and he's got these jacked forearms with these giant veins. And I always wondered, I was like, is that a candid photo? Why is he walking down the street by himself? How does the photographer know he's going to be there? I bet he did like a set of like.
Yes, curls really jacked his forearms up and then rolled his sleeves up and walked us to our photographer was clicking it.
I'm telling you, he said the man's a genius genius. Absolutely. And I mean, in every way, the guy's a genius and.
I'm I'm inspired to work my farm in firearms because if it's good enough for Sly Stallone, it's good enough for me.
I know. I hear you hear him do this.
This has been great. I want to come visit you in Austin. I expect you to be a good wake surfer, though, by the time I get there.
I'll try. I haven't even done it once yet, so I'm going to need some time. I'm supposed to be taking lessons next week, so we'll see what's up. So good.
All right. So we have a standing date, so let me know when you're when you're coming to L.A.. Thank you so much for doing this. This is great. As you know, I learned from the master. I sit at the feet of the master in the podcast world.
My pleasure, brother. It is an honor to be on your show. I appreciate it. And it was an honor to have you on mind as well. Thank you. It was fun hanging with you. Did. You're a good guy. I really enjoy it.
Oh, thanks, brother. You too. I'll come back on you on yours and we'll have some fun. Sounds great. Beautiful. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Take care. Man by. Well, there you have it. Thank you, Joe, I know you don't do many of these, and we were lucky to have you on. It was a great talk. So interesting.
So fun, so funny. I had a blast. Anyway, hope you guys liked it as much as I did. And don't forget, next week, more literally with me and the guests or we're on a sort of murderer's row right now.
We're sort of knocking it out of the park with the guests. And I'm really psyched about next week, so I will see you then. Bye bye. You have been listening to literally with Rob Lowe, produced and engineered by me, Daventry Bryant, executive produced by Rob Lowe for low profile Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross, Team Coco and Collin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Stitcher. The supervising producer is Aaron Blake, downwith producer Jennifer Sanders. Please write and review the show on Apple podcast and remember to subscribe on Apple podcast, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast.
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